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With more than two decades of experience working with clients in the built environment, Chemene Phillips is founder and president of branding and marketing agency BRIXBranding in Roseville, California. The opinions are the author’s own.
Your potential customers are inundated with options, so if your brand doesn’t have a distinctive story, you’ll struggle to stand out.
A brand story goes beyond the basics of what you do and illustrates Because you do how you do and the impact it has on your customers and the world at large. It’s your chance to give personality to your brand, give it your values and create a deeper connection with your audience.
Despite these advantages, construction companies often overlook storytelling and are instead stuck in a low bid mentality, relying heavily on their existing connections to serve as a referral channel.
Chemene Phillips
Permission granted by BRIXBranding
While producing quality work will lead to referrals, storytelling complements it by giving your work context and a compelling narrative.
By showing the types of projects you enter into in a particular area, region, or industry, you’re helping potential clients understand your company’s unique capabilities, services, and points of difference. This is where many companies in the built environment miss the opportunity to stand out in a crowded market.
Storytelling transforms your construction projects into compelling stories of innovation, determination and customer satisfaction.
Create lasting impressions
Additionally, competition for labor is fierce in the construction world, making branding and storytelling as important to potential clients as it is to attracting future employees.
A strong and authentic brand story helps you create a great first impression on social media and on your website, leading to better brand recognition and recall. And if customers and potential employees remember your brand, they’re more likely to choose you.
By emphasizing the values that underpin each project and celebrating client successes through detailed case studies, you demonstrate that you’re not just a transactional service in a crowded marketplace. You are a committed partner who invests in the success and long-term goals of your clients.
Creating a brand story that resonates with your target audience and keeps you on top when the bidding process begins is a critical step in building your construction company’s reputation and attracting the right clients. Here are the building blocks of every brand success story:
Create your origin story. Every construction company has a unique “Once upon a time…” moment that sets it apart. How did your company break onto the scene? What ignited that initial spark? Your origin story isn’t just a backstory, it’s the foundation of your brand, influencing the way you do business and operate.
This compelling beginning creates a narrative that only you can tell, weaving through every project and client interaction, setting you apart in a competitive market.
Define your brand’s mission. Your mission is the purpose of your construction company, the “why” behind what you do, and the impact you hope to have. This is the reason your brand exists in the first place, and this part of your story sets the tone for the rest of your brand identity.
Create your brand values. Your core values are the guiding principles that govern your actions, decisions, and interactions with customers and stakeholders. Consider incorporating the story of how your company’s mission and values were established and how they have evolved over time.
Examples of values might be accuracy, communication, integrity, reliability, and safety. If you need help determining your core values, ask yourself: What do we value as a company and what do our customers value in us?
Identify your unique selling proposition. Every great brand has a strong USP that weaves its entire story. Your USP is the brand superpower that sets you apart from everyone else. It’s what your customers can only get from you: your secret sauce. This is the part of your story that describes, “What sets you apart and makes you untouchable by the competition?”
Create customer personas. The best brand stories forge strong emotional connections between the brand and the audience. To achieve this, you will need a clear picture of who your audience is.
Develop customer personas to represent the different types of customers you serve, so you can tell your story in a way that really resonates with your target audience.
Take advantage of customer pain points. Your brand story should directly address the challenges your customers face. Identify the most common problems among your target customers, then emphasize how your services alleviate them and provide tangible benefits and return on investment.
Elaborate an authentic narrative. Brand storytelling ensures you don’t just create none story, but that truly reflects your company. Share anecdotes and authentic experiences that have shaped your business through messages and case studies. Be transparent about your company’s growth path, including successes and challenges.
Look to the future. Finally, your brand story should provide a vision for the future. What is your vision? Where do you see your construction company going? Your audience should leave your story with a sense of excitement and anticipation for what’s to come, as well as a desire to be a part of it.
