Navigating the Complexities of Marketing in the Construction Industry: Insights from an Expert

Hey, hi, everyone. Welcome to E-Coffee with experts. This is your host, Ranmay here. Today, we have Oliver Smith, who is the director at SWW Marketing with us. Hey, Oliver, how’s it going?

Yeah, I’m good, thanks. How are you?

All good, yeah. I can’t really complain. Oliver, before we move forward and pick your brains on the industry that you work in on marketing in general, let’s get to know the human behind the mic. Why don’t you talk us through your journey? How were you growing up as a child? How did you land in the digital marketing space at large? And also a bit about your agency, what do you guys do, what do you guys specialize in, and then we take it off from there.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I grew up around construction. At the age of three, I was on my first building site. My grandfather had run a main contracting construction business, and then my dad did. He was a QS. I suppose just growing up around it, I learned to understand the different characters, the way in which construction works. I went on to study marketing at university, which is where I gained good understanding of marketing business and how that all works. Then worked in various different roles in terms of marketing and business development within construction. I really just thought then that there was a real need to have a marketing agency that focuses solely on the construction and the manufacturing areas in construction as an agency and offering us almost like a label marketing department.

Absolutely. Coming from your family background has been in construction, right? You also has worked in different capacities, different tools in this particular niche. How does it help when you interact with your end clients? Because you understand the domain versus any other business or agency who has just gotten into doing construction, right? Because you have been there hands-on. How much does it help to have those interactions going close clients and deals?

Yeah, I think a question. I think it helps enormously. I think that every industry has its complexities, but construction, particularly, is very, very complex, and especially when it comes to marketing to it as well, because it’s not the root. It’s not always like a straightforward consumer route you’ll be offering. You’ll be focusing on businesses. It’s a very complex one. I think understanding the way in which the industry works and also the characters within the industry, you need to know these things in order to market to it, because The way in which you might market to even a life science company that’s still very much business to business, but actually to construction, the way you’d communicate to each one of those demographics is very different and very unique. Having an understanding of it is absolutely crucial. I think that’s why we’ve seen the growth that we have and we work with some amazing clients. I think that’s very much down to the fact that they might work with an agency that doesn’t specialize in construction before and now do, and now they’ve found us. I think that finding us really helps because we understand their needs.

Absolutely. And talking about business, starting an agency is not an easy decision. While you have made it and you are in the nature and you have quite some experience, how difficult was it the early days? The challenges that you might have faced, keeping the lights on, getting first of those clients and making sure that the delivery goes out on time and the quality is being met? And from that to now, what has been the journey?

Yes, it’s agency, certainly. I think any business is a challenge, and certainly agency is no different. I first started essentially doing some stuff, I guess, Moonlighting, as you might call it, in terms of just helping out with one company. And then that grew. They liked what we were doing. And then I thought, essentially, I’m doing two jobs, and it has come to a point where really I need to think, I’ve got to go for this, or I carry on with the corporate route and find the ladder. So I thought, I’ll go for it. I can remember the first week, that being self-employed, and it was really scary. You sat there thinking, Oh, what have I done? You’re thinking that to where you are now, it seems, Yeah, it’s a lot harder. I’ll never get to that point. We still got growth to come. But yeah, it’s really challenging. But I think because Ultimately, we care so much about the clients we work with. I think that’s the thing that’s just resonated with… That builds a lot of loyalty with the customers that we have. I think that’s also helped with a lot of word of mouth in terms of the business that we win.

But yeah, it’s certainly been a challenge, and it still has its challenges. But I think the fact that we’ve got a great team, and I think that we’ve got a team who really care about the clients that we work with, and we do it for that reason. We get a lot of joy and satisfaction from seeing them succeed.

I completely understand. And construction industry has its own challenges. How do you feel that construction companies can leverage content marketing to establish their brand voice? Because the target audience is quite different to, let’s say, the normal or day-to-day Businesses.

Yeah. I think that the construction market as I mentioned when I spoke about how it started is very unique because a lot of it is around brand awareness and building trust. Because I think in the industry, new companies come and it’s all about showcasing that you can deliver the work that you’re being asked to do. A lot of it is around just showcasing the work. Our job is almost just to extract what’s happening in the companies that we’re working for and then showcasing that in the best way possible. I think that, yeah, in terms content, communicating it really clearly, it’s a very fast-paced industry. It’s a very busy industry. So you’ve got to make sure that everything that’s being communicated is clear, concise. And I think also, as I mentioned about the demographics, it’s not necessarily where you’re going to buy running shoes, you go on to Google, you’ve spent your Google running shoes, you find a shop, next thing you know, you bought them. We’re talking about some of the clients we work with will be delivering products or services to projects that might be worth millions. So the way in which we’ve It’s making them look as professional as possible and showcasing that they’ve got the ability to deliver the work.

Absolutely. At SWM Marketing at your own agency, Oliver, how do you balance creativity with the technical aspects of marketing in the construction industry, which can sometimes be seen as more traditional versus taking the digital approach?

Yeah, absolutely. Our big thing is in the tagline of developing the digital space of our clients. I’d say it’s still an industry that is probably not as advanced as some industries, but actually, and I think I read somewhere about it being the least digitized industry in the world, but it’s catching up and it’s really playing a big catch up. So I think the thing, especially within marketing, where maybe 20 years ago, marketing in construction was you send them a mug, you send them a pen, job done, you’ve done your marketing. Whereas now we will look on really advanced ad campaigns, SEO work. We’re there trying to drive as much traffic to our clients’ website. So Although it’s still got a way to go. It’s catching them very quickly. I think with that, our approach is a bit of a no nonsense approach in terms of just we give it how it is. We’re not going to give the fluff that comes around it. We want to get straight to the point. We want to give results and deliver for the clients.

Absolutely. Oliver, you have it in this niche for quite some time. With your agency, what has been your favorite client story?

Yeah, it’s hard to choose on because I think that there’s a lot of-A lot of Hamza.

Every time we work with, we enjoy working with it.

I think that certainly where we see, where companies have come to us and they’ve said, We’re struggling, we’ve not got much awareness, we’ve not got the leads through, we’ve not got the name out there as much as possible. We’ve shown them the results and they’re then winning awards, getting leads through their website. The traffic’s grown by 70% in some cases. That for us is a hugely rewarding thing just to see that transformation from where they came to us to where they are now. I think when they’ve gone on to work with They’re a large concreteing company, and we’ve done everything for them. We’re like their in-house marketing department. A lot of the videos we’ve done for them, they’ve said, have actually led them to win multimillion pound jobs because they’ve seen we’ve showcased the work that they can do and they’ve delivered, and then that’s led them to win huge jobs, which is hugely satisfying, present. That makes it all the worthwhile when you get a phone call saying, We just want a job. They saw a LinkedIn post, they saw that we did that, and that’s when the work. That process is really rewarding.

That is a wonderful experience when you see your clients getting their due importance in terms of getting those revenues in for the work that they have done. That is quite fulfilling. Soliva, thank you so much for the insights that you’ve shared. This has been a brilliant conversation. But before we let you go, I’d like to play a quick rapid fire with you. I hope you’re game for it.

Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it.

All right. Your last Google search.

I think it It was… I’m not be very quick here. It’s a minute to be quick. Yeah, sure.

We’ve got time. Don’t worry.

I think it was we were searching for a competitor, one of our clients’ competitor’s websites to see… He was asking us to check them out, so we did that.

Okay, work then. All right. Okay. And your last vacation?

Turkey. Literally just got back on last Friday. So yeah, I was there for a week. How was it?

I’m planning early next year. How was it?

Very nice. Yeah, I really enjoy it. You’re going to enjoy it. Great country, good food, nice people. I really enjoyed it.

Lovely. All right. What did you do with your first paycheck, Oliver? First paycheck of your life.

First ever paycheck of my life. Yeah. It’s going back some time now that I think it was probably buying a pair of jeans or something like that. Yeah, it’s probably in my teenage years and getting the end brand of Jean, probably.

All right. We’ll get the last one. We’re not going to gilding it further. Where do you find Oliver on Friday evenings after office?

For me, the weeks are intense. They’re busy. What’s nice is to go home, spend time with family, with my wife, and relax, really. Just unwind and recharge ready for the week ahead because like I said, the weeks are busy and full on. It’s really nice just to see loved ones.

All right, Oliver. Once again, thank you so much for taking our time to do this with us. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for having.