Digital and Social Media Marketing - Growing Market Share for Construction SMEs

Simon Malesev,Michael Cherry

doi:10.5130/ajceb.v21i1.7521

Abstract

The construction industry has not been an early adopter of social media and digital marketing, due largely to lack of knowledge of and skills in these areas. Nevertheless, effectively deployed, digital and social media marketing can be a disruptive force allowing smaller residential construction companies to build brand awareness and win business from larger competitors. This study uses a qualitative approach - interviews with residential construction small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and adjacent industry actors - to obtain data addressing the key questions of the residential construction sector SMES' digital marketing attitudes and capabilities; whether digital and social media marketing is as or more effective than traditional marketing strategies; and the challenges facing SMEs in making effective use of digital marketing strategies. The findings confirm widespread recognition of the value of digital marketing strategies among SMEs but reveal that uptake and effective use of digital marketing is undermined by deficiencies in external environment analysis and a lack of the investment and training needed to plan, monitor and maintain effective and up-to-date marketing mixes, strategies and objectives. Based on the findings, recommendations are offered for improving residential construction SMEs’ uptake and effective use of digital and social media marketing.

Highlights

The 1993 announcement that Sydney had won the right to host the 2000 Olympic Games, together with sustained high-level economic growth throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, sparked a surge in housing investment in Australia and drove the country’s largest long-term boom in the residential construction sector (Figure 1)
This study set out to examine whether digital and social media marketing strategies could be used by small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to maintain or grow market share in the increasingly competitive residential construction market
It was noted that older company directors did retain a bias towards traditional tangible marketing i.e., print media advertisement

Summary

Introduction

The 1993 announcement that Sydney had won the right to host the 2000 Olympic Games, together with sustained high-level economic growth throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, sparked a surge in housing investment in Australia and drove the country’s largest long-term boom in the residential construction sector (Figure 1). The continued growth in housing demand, unsurprisingly, saw many start-up businesses competing for market share, with the number of residential construction companies in Australia more than doubling between 1996 and 2015, from 19,403 to 42,673 (ABS, 2018). The beginning of this housing boom roughly coincided with the start of a seismic change in the marketing world: the emergence of the internet. Print advertising accounted for 70 per cent of media revenue, with revenues continuing to climb until a decline commenced in 2008 (Papandrea, 2013) For much of this period, Australia’s print media were dominated by four companies: News Corporation, Fairfax, Seven West Media and APN News and Media. For many businesses – especially SMEs in the residential construction sector could not afford television or regular newspaper advertising – the only affordable option for reaching a large audience was to appear in hard-copy business classifieds directories, such as the Yellow Pages

Objectives

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion