Angela discusses what its like advertising in the construction industry and how it’s different from marketing other companies.

Tae: How did you get to where you are at in your career?

Angela: I’ve been in the marketing business for quite a while, but mostly for the entertainment industry. So when this job came up I thought this was definitely something I could do. However, I was the first marketing person Sierra hired so it was a whole new department for the company and there was a huge learning curve to understand the construction industry. There were all these construction terms I didn’t know and I could plan several weeks of social media only to have to scramble when a site’s schedule changes.

Tae: How do you prioritize and manage your marketing campaigns for Sierra?

Angela: Often people within the company will come to me with what they want to have advertised, whether its a new build or a job opening and then I come in and figure out how to market it appropriately. A lot of our marketing is digital but sometimes we need to also take a traditional route with tv, radio, print ads, etc.. It really depends on who we want to target and the benefit of marketing online is that we can be very specific about who we would like to see the ads.

Tae: How do you measure ROI of your marketing campaigns? What tools or platforms do you rely on to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts?

Angela: We don’t have a direct way to measure ROI, but we do track our effectiveness through the software we use for our online marketing. I use Buffer to schedule posts on social media platforms and it lets me know how many clicks I get and how long they linger on a post. If there’s a post that’s doing particularly better we may decide to boost it to get a little more attention.

Tae: How do you stay up-to-date with trends and changes in the construction industry that affect your marketing approach?

Angela: I will often look to see what other companies are doing to promote themselves. This gives me inspiration on what ways I should be marketing the things that are happening at Sierra. I also look for successful posts that I can reuse for new purposes. We have also started using newer platforms like TikTok for some video content and are seeing some good traction from that!

Tae: What are some of the biggest challenges you face in marketing a construction company and how do you overcome them?

Angela: Probably the biggest challenge for me is the unpredictable nature of construction. I can plan out exactly what I want to post about but, for exxample, if the steel wasn’t delivered in time to the site then the schedule gets pushed back and I have to scramble to find other things to post about. It definitely requires a lot of communication with the project leaders at Sierra to know when things are happening. For example, if there’s something that’s being flown in by helicopter I want to be able to capture that but I need to know exactly when its going to happen so I don’t miss it. It’s really crucial to keep on top of everything that’s happening at all the sites.

Tae:  If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice what would you say?

Angela:  I would tell myself to be less rigid. When you’re young your overly excited to do your job and sometimes you get something in your head you want to do but then things don’t play out the way you wanted so it’s important to be flexible and adapt to the business. Keep the overall picture in mind and don’t get too stuck on just the way you want to do it.