Beyond Project Management: Marketing Apps to Boost the Bottom Line of Your Construction Business 

Construction industry apps have been flooding the market in recent years with the goal of streamlining processes such as field reporting, construction management, CAD drawings creation, team collaboration, workflows, and even equipment tracking on job sites…just to name a few. Apps have, indeed, turned the mobile device into the virtual office, a trend that is only increasing throughout the building industry and beyond. 

With app downloads exploding as people in all walks of life are looking for easy, in-the-moment online solutions, it makes sense that marketing apps are becoming a dominant business solution across the construction industry. Mobile apps are not just for project management anymore! They’re also powerful tools for building industry professionals to reach new customers and get them to actively engage with their “brand,” with the ultimate goal of increasing the bottom line. No matter the size of your construction business, and regardless of whether you have a dedicated marketing team on hand, building relationships with your customers is an imperative. Every business needs to market itself, and building professionals are no exception.

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As business and software experts at The Blueprint by The Motley Fool share, “When it comes to marketing for the construction industry, whether you’re building homes or doing B2B sales as a commercial construction company, you need to be promoting yourself through all marketing channels.” And that includes mobile apps. The sheer volume of marketing apps out there can make deciding which ones are best suited for your own business and budget a daunting task. Here are some suggestions from marketing industry leaders that may help you narrow the field.

First, don’t let budgetary concerns stop you from branding your company like a pro. If you’re looking for free or low-cost mobile apps for marketers, below are some top picks to help with everything from social media and image publication to grammar tools and tracking analytics. 

• Buffer, an app aimed at helping users build their brand and grow their audience on social media.
• Canva’s new app allows users to create professional images for social media.
• Google Analytics helps digital marketers track business metrics.
• Grammarly Keyboard automatically scans writing for typos and grammatical errors.
• Hootsuite, a social media management tool.
• Later, an app that allows users to schedule and publish posts for Instagram at their own convenience.
• Mention is an app designed to monitor social media, blog posts and news sites to keep track of what’s being published about your brand.
• Over, a graphic design app geared toward editing images and videos to create compelling content.
• Plai app combines analytics reports from Google Ads, Google Analytics and YouTube.

Here are some additional B2B marketing apps that have a particular focus on the important business strategies of connectivity and collaboration (with both customers and internal teams) and automation. 

• AirTable, a productivity app providing a unique spreadsheet/collaboration solution.
• Rep app, “an influencer marketing platform,” offers brands and other influencers a marketplace to connect and collaborate.
• Shotzr is a photography app that uses AI and machine learning tools to help automate image selection.
• Slack, an app designed to bring teams together in “channels” for better collaboration.
• Unbounce, a landing page builder as well as a sales conversion platform.
• Zapier, an automation app that has found itself on the Forbes Cloud 100.

Then, of course, there’s social media. Statistics show that just about 50 percent of the world’s population uses social media. Chances are, your company already has some presence on social media platforms in order to connect with customers, increase brand awareness, generate leads and—if executed well—convert to sales. It can take a lot of time and effort, though, to maintain a good social media strategy and stay organized. That’s where social media tools can help. 

According to Hootsuite, the best social media apps include these four essential platforms:

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Of course, there are others, too, but those four represent the biggest social platforms.

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Hootsuite then takes it a step further, listing out 16 of the best social media apps and tools for marketers. These are:

1. Planoly

2. Crello

3. Facebook Pages Manager

4. Fastory

5. Captiona

6. Storyheap

7. Hootsuite Composer

8. Botletter

9. Story Slicer

10. Apple Clips

11. Campsite

12. CutStory for Instagram Stories

13. Adobe Premiere Clip

14. Keyhole

15. Hootsuite Analytics

16. Hemingway App

Finally, some apps are aimed specifically at those in the building industry and serve to help streamline both workflow processes and marketing initiatives. GetApp highlights one such app, Houzz Pro, which the company bills as “a suite of software tools that remodeling pros can use to manage their residential construction businesses” and is “the only business software on the market that builders and remodelers can use to manage the full project life cycle, including attracting and converting new clients, creating estimates, communicating with clients, and handling billing…all in one place.”
 

Conclusion

While this is by no means an exhaustive list, the apps highlighted here are a great starting point to go beyond project management, putting powerful and effective marketing tools right in the palm of your hand.