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INDUSTRIES / CONSTRUCTION AND PROPERTY

A twelve-month decision does not fit a thirty-day funnel.

Building is one of the longest considered purchases there is. An enquiry today might sign in eighteen months, or never, depending on finance, land and life. Most marketing measurement in this sector reports on a window far shorter than the decision it is trying to influence.

What makes this sector different

The length of the cycle changes almost everything about how marketing should be built and judged.

  • The cycle outlasts the reporting

    A monthly report on a fifteen-month decision measures noise. Spend gets cut on campaigns that were working and increased on ones that were not, because the evidence arrives after the decision.

  • Finance gates everything

    Genuine interest and readiness to proceed are different states, and pre-approval usually separates them. Treating both as one pipeline makes the pipeline meaningless.

  • Certainty sells more than price

    Buyers are afraid of overruns, variations and delays more than they are chasing the lowest quote. Marketing that competes only on price argues on the weaker ground.

  • Portals own the relationship unless you take it back

    Third-party enquiry sources are efficient and rented. Without a direct channel, the cost of an enquiry is set by someone else.

Residential Construction

Home builders deal with buyers who are excited early and quiet for months. The job is to stay useful across that gap without pushing for a decision the buyer cannot yet make.

  • Enquiries are qualified too early or not at all

    Filtering hard at first contact discards buyers who are twelve months out but real. Not filtering at all buries the ready ones. Staged qualification handles both.

  • Nurture stops after three emails

    Most sequences are built for a short cycle and run out long before the buyer is ready. What is needed is a low-frequency, genuinely useful cadence measured in months.

  • Display home visits are not connected to anything

    The highest-intent action a buyer takes is often recorded on paper, or not at all, and never linked to the enquiry that preceded it.

  • Inclusions and upgrades are where trust is won or lost

    Vague inclusion lists create the variation anxiety buyers already have. Clear ones are a marketing asset, not just a document.

Commercial Construction

Commercial work is won through prequalification, relationships and capability, not through enquiry volume. The website has a narrower but sharper job: satisfy a professional buyer who is checking whether you are credible enough to shortlist.

  • The site is built for the wrong reader

    Developers, architects and procurement teams are looking for sector experience, delivery capability, compliance and safety record. A consumer-style site answers none of it.

  • Capability lives in a PDF nobody can find

    The capability statement is usually the most useful asset the business owns and the hardest thing to locate on its website.

  • Few opportunities, each worth a lot

    Conversion-rate thinking breaks down at low volume and high value. What matters is being on the shortlist, which is a positioning and relationship problem.

  • Prequalification data is scattered

    Insurances, accreditations, safety statistics and past project data get reassembled for every submission instead of being maintained once.

How we help

The work itself is the same seven areas we do for everyone. What changes is which of them matter first.

Common questions

Our sales cycle is over a year. How is marketing measured?
By tracking movement between stages rather than only closed sales, and by holding attribution over the full cycle. Otherwise campaigns get judged on a window that ends long before the decision does.
We get most enquiries from portals. Is that a problem?
Not on its own, but it is a concentration risk. If the portal is the only channel, the cost per enquiry is set externally and can change without warning. A direct channel is leverage, not vanity.
Do residential and commercial need separate approaches?
Yes. The buyer, the cycle and the decision criteria have almost nothing in common. Firms doing both are effectively running two marketing functions, and problems start when they are treated as one.

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