How To Set Your Construction Company Apart
What comes to mind when you think of the average construction worker? Steel-toed boots, check. Hard hat, check. Toolbelt, check. Protective gear, check. It’s pretty easy to pick a construction worker out from a lineup, but that “stock” construction worker look above puts you and your staff in a pool of 5.6 million construction and trade workers. Worried you might blend into the crowd? The million-dollar question always will be “how do I set my company apart?” A simple, cheap answer to that question just might surprise you…read below for more.
Brand, Brand, Brand
At the end of the day, your brand is king. Your brand encompasses everything from your logo, to your colors, to your font, to your layout, to your content messaging. Your brand extends to and inspires your website, your social media, your sales collateral, your bids, your business cards. Quite simply, your brand goes to fight in the trenches every time someone evaluates your products or services.
For the majority of construction business owners, brand is the last thing they think about. It’s expensive to start designing a logo with a graphic designer; it takes time fire up a new website; it takes multiple rounds of edits and proofs to debut new sales collateral. However, you can cover a lot of branding bases with a cheap and often-overlooked strategy when it comes to uniforms and protective apparel. Based on your company structure and hierarchy, your employees probably already need cohesive uniforms and protective gear, so why not kill two birds with one stone?
Humanize The Firm
One of the strongest moves that a construction company can make is branding uniforms and workwear. Apparel featuring your brand showcases your company every minute it is worn – it’s nearly free marketing that never runs out of impressions, coverage, or publication dates. Think about your jobsites now – chances are that before and during the project, you will put up a big sign that clearly shows you’re handling the project. These signs turn heads, and if you do an excellent job completing a lasting project, they will create a 1:1 connection in people’s minds between your company and quality.
Why not carry over some of this branded mojo to the actual people doing the work themselves? It’s easy to think about construction firms as cold, rigid operational beasts – they’re not necessarily known for their human-centric brand positions. However, when you provide a set of branded workwear for your staff, you are humanizing the very actionable arm of your workforce – no longer is your company a vague, featureless organization. Now you have a group of workers ready to answer questions, provide guidance, and solve problems while representing your firm confidently and professionally. There’s now a face to match to the brand that encourages employees to take pride in their work; from the top to the bottom of the operation, every individual is now motivated to deliver a quality product that meets the customer’s needs.
Trust and Success
In the construction business, taking pride in your work is essential – it’s what separates the wheat from the chaff. After your company nameplate fades and people forget about you, the only thing that will remain is your work. In fact if you’re in this vertical to just make a buck, you probably should switch careers in the interest of sustainability. As a construction business owner, you must build the tenets of trust and success into your business and staff at multiple levels to ensure the operation is successful.
When you outfit your team with branded workwear, you’re essentially trusting the onsite staff to represent not only your company, but also the quality work your company provides. It’s no secret that your team will look more professional, be treated with more respect, and better represent your company ethos both on and off the jobsite. Building a culture of trust and success by providing branded workwear also means you’re putting a large stake into the past, present, and future work your firm carries out. Branded workwear places a large amount of trust in the individual employee – it motivates them to put your brand’s best foot forward at all times, making them more than just another cog in the system.
All in all, setting your construction firm apart from the rest isn’t as hard as you think. Don’t get bogged down in price comparisons, overwhelming yourself with different vendors all pedaling different solutions. Start your branded initiatives small and controllable – build from there. Something simple like sets of branded workwear can make a dramatic impact without exhausting your entire budget. While this strategy is an excellent external marketing tactic, it also empowers and motivates your internal staff to properly represent your core values every single day they don the clothing.
About CSLS:
CSLS is the largest contractor licensing school in California with over 25 locations throughout the state. We have the highest success rate of any school – 99% of our students pass their exam on the first try, and that’s guaranteed or your money back.
Our teaching process prepares you in a step by step manner for everything you need to know to pass the law, business and trade portion of your exam. Our programs are designed for convenience. We have online programs, home study, crash-course and in-school options, making it easy and affordable for you to become a licensed contractor.
