Construction Marketing Strategies

March 4, 2026 12:00 pm ET

Learn construction marketing strategies from this webinar featuring insights from experts at CG Schmidt and Wehr Constructors as they break down the state of construction marketing in 2026, from AI workflows and small-team challenges to capturing authentic jobsite content.

What You’ll Learn:

• Actionable ways to use AI in construction marketing to streamline proposals, content creation, and research
• How to build efficient marketing systems when you’re working with limited time, budget, or headcount
• Practical tips for capturing high-quality jobsite photos, time-lapses, and video content without being on site every day
• Proven methods for building trust and credibility in a high-stakes, relationship-driven industry
• How to align your construction marketing strategy with business development goals to win more projects
• The marketing channels that move the needle most for contractors, including website, social media, and SEO
• Real-world examples of campaigns that supported proposal efforts and increased visibility in target markets

If you’re a construction marketer trying to do more with less time, budget, or headcount, this session is packed with real-world tactics you can apply immediately.

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Transcript

Intro and Overview of Construction Marketing

Lauren (00:00)
Hi everyone, welcome. Thanks for joining today.

I’m glad everyone could join us today. We’re to get started. ⁓ I’m Lauren Shur. I’m the social media and content manager at TrueLook. I’ve been working in construction marketing for about five years now. But before we dive in, get started, just wanted to give a few quick housekeeping notes. The session is being recorded. So if you have to step away at any moment, feel free to, or if you want to revisit it later.

We’re going to be sending it over via email and you’ll be able to watch that. If you have any questions during the webinar, it is going to be a Q &A. We have pre-prepared questions, but feel free to drop any additional questions you have in the chat and we’ll try to get to them at the end of the session. So now the fun part, we’re going to introduce our experts who are going to be joining us to share their insights and tips. We have two brilliant marketers in the construction industry joining us today.

First, let’s welcome Courtney Bondar, Digital Marketing Specialist at CG Schmidt. Hey Courtney.

Courtney (01:00)
Hi, how’s it going?

Lauren (01:02)
Good

excited to have you. Will you give one fun fact about yourself and a quick snapshot of how you ended up in construction marketing?

Courtney (01:10)
Yeah, definitely. So my name is Courtney. I’m the digital marketing specialist at CG Schmidt located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Fun fact about me is I am a cyclist. So I spend most of my time doing that or I’m in the gym. In the meantime, how I ended up in construction, very serendipitous. Family members of mine are in the trades. And so I heard construction, been told about construction. I have a subcontractor, her cousin, who’s actually working alongside my company. And so when I got

the opportunity to apply and to be here at C.G. Schmidt, heard nothing but good things and it all just aligned and it felt like the right choice to make. So that’s why I made the choice to be in construction and now here we are almost 10 months later and I’m thriving. I love it and it’s amazing. Couldn’t expect any better than this, honestly.

Lauren (01:56)
Awesome, yeah. And then we have another awesome marketer joining us today, Tyler Higdon. He’s a construction tech specialist and marketing coordinator with Wehr Constructors. Hey Tyler, will you tell us a fun fact about yourself as well and then how you ended up at construction?

Tyler (02:12)
Sure, hope everyone is having a good day. My name’s Tyler. Fun fact, brand new father. Wife and I welcomed a little boy not too long ago, he’s four months old. So that’s a fun fact. And got into the industry during a grad school internship. Really enjoyed hitting the ground running and all things marketing. Since I’ve been here, working with social media, graphic design, proposals, website, digital content.

photography, drone work, and more. And it’s been a privilege to help build marketing, our marketing department here at Wehr, alongside our business development leaders.

Evolution of Construction Marketing

Lauren (02:47)
Awesome. Excited to have you guys. So as I mentioned, it’s going to be a Q &A where I’m going to ask them a couple of questions, but kind of what we’re going to be talking about today. So as you all know, construction marketing is tough. You’re normally balancing an audience who values trust, authenticity, while balancing published brand standards and multiple different tactics, especially most of the time with a small team.

So we’re going to jump right into a few questions for our experts. Again, if anyone has any questions, feel free to put them in the chat and we’ll try to get to them at the end. So first question, kind of a fun one. Tyler, I’ll pass this off to you first. If you had to describe the state of construction marketing in 2026 in one word, what would it be?

Tyler (03:30)
Innovative.

Lauren (03:31)
That’s an awesome word for sure. Courtney, do you have a word?

Courtney (03:34)
I would say ever-evolving.

Lauren (03:36)
Definitely things are always changing in marketing in general, especially in the construction industry. If I had to pick a word, I’d probably say automated. I think nowadays everything, everyone’s trying to find different ways to use AI to make their lives easier with marketing. And we’ll get into that a little bit later in the discussion. But in your experience, what is, we talk a lot about doing more with less.

What are some of the things that’s kind of like the less or that marketers are currently struggling with most? Whether that be like budget time headcount who wants to take this one?

Tyler (04:09)
Ladies first, Courtney.

Courtney (04:10)
Thank you. I would say time. There is a lot going on always, and there’s always something new happening around the corner with obviously the age of AI and things that are evolving. Time is something that we are probably all short of, and I can attest to that daily. There are multiple tasks, there are things I’m doing, there’s integrations I’m using and collaborating with, and just day to day, I always kind of reflect and tell myself, like, oh,

wish I had more time on my hands. I wish, you know, there’s more hours in the day to get, you know, things sorted, done, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on. So, I mean, it was a big wish of mine if this could come true to have more time, maybe more hours in the day if possible. But, you know, that’s just the nature of construction and the nature of what’s happening currently, especially within marketing.

Lauren (04:57)
Yeah, for sure. Tyler?

Tyler (04:59)
Agreed, it’s time. It really is. I think with AI, you want to leverage it to save your time. I think ⁓ if you have some automated processes that you can standardize and get the ground running on implementing those through AI and just do some future planning that way, then you can go back and review it, insert creative input, and go from there. think it’s leveraging time right now is our key asset with smaller teams.

Lauren (05:22)
Yeah, for sure. We definitely hear that marketers are expected to be like photographers, copywriters, data analysts all at once. And most of us aren’t short on ideas. We’re just short on time resources. So we’re going to talk a little bit more about challenges and how we overcome those. So Tyler, how has the job description of a construction marketer evolved in the last two years?

Tyler (05:45)
Well, you just mentioned it. Marketing as a role in general for any company wears many hats. You are doing, well, expected to do a lot. And within the construction industry, that has grown. You have more responsibility, more knowledge gap that’s there, and more complex details to understand and also showcase that you’re a knowledge expert on. I think the coverage has expanded with types of construction.

whether you’re a CM or GC or subcontractor, you’re trying to position yourself to be a thought leader and being in the marketing position, you have to kind of go above and beyond that, wearing those mini hats. So it’s definitely involved in growing your responsibility.

Lauren (06:26)
For sure. Courtney, do you have anything to add?

Courtney (06:29)
Yeah, I agree 100 % and Tyler is correct with that. I mean, currently, just within the age and how marketing has definitely evolved, mean, you know, smaller teams, sometimes between like two to four people, you are taking on a lot of different tasks and you are trying to complete the same, you know, goal and objective.

At the same time, you know, you’re being utilized in all these different avenues and trying to be, you know, creative and produce a video or you’re trying to copyright or you’re doing this or you’re doing that. So there’s never a shortage of work. There’s always a shortage of people. So, yeah.

Leveraging AI as a Construction Marketing Strategy

Lauren (07:05)
Yeah, for sure. So as a small marketing team, you guys kind of touched on this. But we wear a ton of different hats. So what hats does AI help you wear? And is there anywhere that you think you should not be using AI?

Courtney (07:18)
Yeah, so I can actually talk about this one first. So I graduated with a degree in journalism. And so when I was in school for journalism, you know, AI is a big no-no. And at the time when I was in school, it was just starting to come around. So, you know, people were very hesitant and didn’t understand it quite clearly. But within my career, I mean, from being with different employers to being here at C.G. Schmidt, mean, AI is used so differently and in different ways

that I would say like I still write captions. I still write blogs. I still write stuff on the website. I’m still doing all the manual work and writing. And that to me is something that should always stay true to a person is to keep that human aspect, the human interest there always, because you can’t really lose that, especially within your content, connecting with your audience, branding brand awareness. Like, you know your brand voice and you know which direction your brand is going. And I often rely on AI just for like

spell check or proofreading or reformatting like long text summary like text that I have and just splitting it up just to make it easier for me. So like when I have my I would say like 15 different tasks happening I can help like organize in that sense and not rely on it to do the thought work for me because depth comes from you as a person and how you write not from AI

typically, but once again, it’s great for integration to help you formulate stuff to format this to elevate like little bits here and there or to help with like SEO. I do that for the website, helping with SEO and keywording. That’s always a great one because with AI integrations within Google and social media, for example, you’re playing against all the different types of AI integrations that, you know, it’s getting more saturated. So to work with it to help with those

aspects to help your brain grow is great on that end.

Lauren (09:13)
Yeah, for sure. I think it’s always funny writing captions with AI, like asking it to try to help with things like that. It doesn’t understand humor. And I think the thing in our industry is that a lot of people have personality and want you to be authentic. And it’s silly seeing what ChatGPT or Gemini comes up with if you ever ask it to be funny or have that kind of personality or brand voice.

Courtney (09:37)
Mm-hmm, absolutely.

Lauren (09:38)
Tyler, anything to add there?

Tyler (09:40)
She covered a lot of the writing portion, proofing, organization. I think she touched on it, but analysis is huge. I think being able to pinpoint an area for a market that you’re trying to identify and utilize that with your business development team and leadership and having AI at your disposal to curate any sort of analysis that you all can go after. Markets to pursue, clients to…

meet with and different projects of procurement sites that you’re wanting to be involved with. It is so advanced that it makes your one week of doing this turn into one day. And it’s very valuable.

Lauren (10:17)
That’s awesome. Yeah, the analyzation part and kind of doing research has been really big for marketers in the industry. So kind of on the same track there, but how do you build simple AI workflows or how do you kind of work AI into your day to day tasks to make sure it’s not creating more work for you?

Tyler (10:36)
Yeah, so I think all of us marketers have our workflow. I know that I’m very run the mill as far as you have your creative ideas. At some point in the day, you have a lot more of your admin work that you do. And I think being able to streamline all of those different aspects of your day-to-day through AI really helps. I think within the past year or so, AI has gotten very intelligent to where

if we’re going after a certain project, you can plug in the RFP into Chat or Claude or whatever platform you’re using and insert and also too, it’s apparent that you need to showcase all the details from your side. Like the more that you put in for your firm, the better results that it’s going to spit out for that RFP proposal. So not only proposals,

Creating SOPs and operating procedures for different processes that the company has. Quick data migrations or organizational tools to help get a project going quickly and reporting back to leadership that it’s almost done. Lastly, think just being able to be a sounding board for content, like you mentioned earlier, is key. Hey, is this idea dumb or is this right along brand?

I think that it’s just gonna keep going from there.

Lauren (11:54)
For sure, yeah. Sometimes just typing in the simple, like, is this idea dumb? Does this make sense for our industry? Is helpful. It’s just like another person to kind of, you know, be a sounding board, for sure. Courtney, do you have anything to add?

Courtney (12:07)
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you, Tyler. And like on the social media side of things, you know, using like we use Copilot or ChatGPT and also like just bouncing ideas or maybe streamlining like different ideas and like different things to like formulate into something greater in that sense is often like typically like what I do for like a workflow or like I will look into in that sense to like help generate more of, you know, ideas and avenues that we could take directly.

Capturing Marketing Visuals

Lauren (12:36)
Awesome, for sure. Yeah. So another kind of challenge that we’re going to talk about is in construction, you want to get the authentic content, the content on site, but it’s not always easy to be on site or every site even, you know, having multiple sites. So what is the best way for a small marketing team or even a larger one to capture marketing ready visuals without being on site? Do you have any tips for that?

Courtney.

Courtney (13:05)
Yeah, so I rely on my team and my team helps me in that sense. So even though I’m not on a job site, my co-workers and colleagues will often like help in that sense of gathering content or let me know that there’s content happening ahead of time. But sometimes I can’t always be there. However, we work as a team collectively to really like gather together to help each other out to really expand on those ways to fill those gaps. So we’re not

feeling like there’s a loss there that we’re all incomplete together.

Lauren (13:35)
Tyler, to add there?

Tyler (13:36)
Yeah, shameless plug for TrueLook Cameras. I think being able to pull up a active time-lapse from an hour ago is key. But she mentioned it. Empowering your team, even from daily reports or construction documentation that you have, reality capture. Empowering your team to learn how to take great photos for marketing.

There’s some tutorials out there that we share with our guys of, can I get a landscape, know, wide angle of the exterior? Can you send that to me? I can’t be out there all the time and nor can our business development team. And so getting things in the interim is key. And then when I do show up or our teams show up and do your cadence, photography, aerials, what have you, then you can just add and layer to that.

Courtney (14:20)
Yeah, I really mean, we use TrueLook cameras all the time, too. I mean, I put together a really wonderful video with our TrueLook Cameras at the West Dallas Central High School. And then I’m also sending my team to like a graphic of like this is a horizontal and this is what it looks like this is a vertical nine by 16. This is what this looks like to like really lean on each other, help each other out and leverage those things. So 110 percent.

Lauren (14:43)
Yeah, I think that’s a key thing too with sending your team kind of tips since we can’t be everywhere at once. I’ve had to do that a little bit with some team members going to trade shows of, you know, sending them like, here’s what kind of shots I want you to take. I think nowadays like iPhones are empowering everyone to kind of be their own photographer. So yeah, you know, they might not have like the marketer’s eye, but there’s always a way I think, especially with construction.

people want authentic content. yeah, and then love that you guys mentioned TrueLook Cameras. We do hear from our customers that they often use the photos and time-lapses that are taken from the cameras for marketing content. And then also sometimes embedding the live feeds on their website as well to try to get people to get more excited about the projects and see that.

Any kinds of like drones, 360 cameras, I think those have been beneficial for our customers to get marketing content that way too.

Courtney (15:35)
Yeah, people like live feed content, whether that’s like an Instagram live or even like watching like live construction. Those are the things that keep people coming back and growing an audience and also just helping that understanding of like what’s happening. Because people are naturally curious, you know, they want to know what’s going on. I I sit in front of windows all day and like I’m often looking at like the nature that goes past my windows, like deer and birds and whatnot. But for the curious, yeah.

For the curiosity of the regular human being watching the Trula cameras and just seeing the progress and enjoying that with us and giving that understanding in another way is so beneficial.

Construction Marketing Strategies to Develop Trust

Lauren (16:10)
Awesome. Yeah, so we’re going to talk a little bit more about more ways to market well and construction. So another thing we’ve talked about is how construction is a high trust industry. So how are you guys focusing on gaining trust with your audiences through marketing?

Courtney (16:26)
Yeah, so we gain trust by pushing out our brand awareness and our brand credibility in many different ways possible. Whether that be collaborating with partners during construction, post construction, having that long term relationship, showing all the different elements between construction and after construction, showing our brand in different ways. Like for example, this week is Women in Construction Week.

So we’re building that credibility, building that trust continuously by highlighting these different avenues and factors and really welcoming our audience in to who we are, what our brand is, and how we grow with you too during that process. But also, you know, for us, our tagline is building a better tomorrow today. So, you know, building that trust with them during that project, even beforehand, during the pre-con, and then afterwards, even beyond the warranty. So…

That’s how we continue, especially on social media, show those things without necessarily telling them, but showing them in a way that they can help connect and help feel that, see that, and also live that as well.

Lauren (17:34)
Awesome. Tyler, how about you?

Tyler (17:35)
Yeah, I think it’s integrity. It’s, you know, kind of propelling off of that. It’s doing the right thing when no one’s watching, making sure that your clients and your team can speak on that to heart. Transparency is key. I think showcasing a strong relationship with your client and building that trust from the beginning to the end of the project, like she mentioned, is paramount. Part of transparency is lessons learned. Hey.

We own this certain aspect of what happened. Let’s create a solution and go from there. But one thing I think too, a lot of businesses are implementing now and we definitely do this. Our business development team is top-notch. They are ensuring that we’re kind of like third-party consultants to the project. Are we walking our talk? And a lot of that comes from the integrity that our team has.

and creating a cohesion with our project team. And following that all the way through, like you mentioned, from pre-con to your warranty and making sure that we’re delivering what we say.

Courtney (18:34)
Absolutely. And also to incorporate brand values as well. We do that. We show that. mean, no surprises is one of our things. Building on integrity, expertise, safety, sustainability, and caring. Caring about the client. Caring about why we’re building that trust with you.

Lauren (18:54)
Yeah, exactly. So kind of switching gears a little bit, but what’s one campaign or tactic that you’ve done that has surprised you with how well it performed?

Tyler, do you have anything?

Tyler (19:04)
Yeah, I got one. ⁓ So this was a few years ago, but within social media and digital marketing in general, you want to create that recognition, but you also want to springboard off of things that are happening locally. And I think if you can mesh the two, it’s great. One example is we were doing a proposal for a new courthouse here in Kentucky. Well, we’ve had some relevant projects. We had some photos and some content that we could share on social.

Let’s just say we’re submitting on Friday. We post our relevant experience on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday in that area. We boost it. We got a lot of eyes and we ended up having some success with those campaigns. And to be able to marry the two is key. I think you don’t want to drop the ball on one component of you submitting a proposal, but you also don’t want to just

you kind of want to create some relevancy where you’re really wanting to pursue work and get some eyes. So that really worked for us.

Most Effective Channels & Campaigns

Lauren (20:02)
That’s awesome. It’s great to hear. So I have a different question for you, Courtney. If you had to delete another fun one, all but one marketing channel, which would you keep for construction? So that can be anything from like Google ads, social media, organic search, SEO. What would be your main one that you think helps you move the needle the most?

Courtney (20:23)
All but one, my goodness. I honestly like lean towards the website considering the fact that it’s our main driver and has all of our content and it has everything about us on there as possible. Whether that comes from like the project spotlights to the blogs to the project profiles to all of the information about us and about our projects about our team and our work.

That’s the channel that I would keep. My runner up, though, would be social media, obviously. However, the website is very telling and it is a driver and it leads people to who we are once again and also to our projects. So that really just emphasizes and shows there. But also to like even if I did have a second pick, I would say social media, just because in the digital age currently, we have a lot of people that are getting their information via social media.

So that is a consistent driver of once again, alongside the website, connecting those two together is really going to leverage and really going to help support you, your team and your company in that sense to gather a younger audience or returning audience and also expanding your brand into different ways and avenues. So I feel like I’m tied, but I’m also trying to connect that since they are very much connected, especially within this day and age.

Lauren (21:44)
Awesome. Yeah, for sure. I think I read a statistic. I’m not going to get the percentage fully correct, but it was around like 80 % of people tend to kind of make their vendor shortlist before hopping on the phone with people before sometimes getting on a website or things like that, just by looking at social media. So that is a bigger thing, kind of hard to track and measure sometimes when those like leads come in. But

Yeah, I would agree on both of those as being important channels for sure. We’re going to switch a little bit into AI now, talking more about that. So what is an AI use case that you think is actually working well in construction marketing today for your team, Tyler?

Construction Marketing AI Strategies and Tactics

Tyler (22:26)
I think, ⁓ really when you look at it from a broad scope, things that really are more of a priority than anything else is, is trying to leverage your website. think, ⁓ a lot of people are gung ho with social media, but everything, like you mentioned, Korty reverts back to the website. That’s your, that’s your, like your main hub. And so what I would tell marketers leverage AI to

help write script for your website. If you have an idea or some sort of connection that you want to reach within this region, even if it’s simple as like, hey, write me a code for our locations on a map that we can scroll in and here’s the legend that I want. Being able to do that with Claude or Claude, very, I like Claude a lot, probably more in the chat, but it’s nice to go back and forth.

⁓ So definitely writing code, think is very helpful. ⁓ Stop wasting time on that. Use that to plug in, get your ideas across, and then go from there.

Lauren (23:22)
Awesome. Courtney, do you have any specific use cases? I know you’ve mentioned a few, but any other examples of how you’re using AI?

Courtney (23:28)
Yeah, so I agree 100 % with you, Tyler, about using AI for code for website. That’s what I also like do as well. And I will sometimes refer to them. ⁓ But I will say like, I use AI in a variety of different ways. And I use it especially within more social media, because once again, with all the integrations happening, I mean, you have to collaborate with it, you know. So with that being said, like Sprout Social is a huge AI tool. It’s a scheduling tool.

So you’re helping, you know, look at trends, look at data and comparing and trusting. Like what’s doing well. What do people like? Like where are people coming from? What’s, where is all this information generating from? So that is a platform that I love very much because it helps tell that backend story of like, okay, this is happening when the content gets posted. This is the best time to post your content. instead of like,

sitting down and trying to manually put everything together and then look at these blue charts to see when are people, you know, active across the board. All of your content, all of your stuff is specialized to you and your account, all depending on, you know, audience and feedback and everything from when your account starts to now. So I feel like that to me is a great tool to utilize and also help leverage

better content to see, you know, what’s doing great and what’s not. Also how to pivot as well. So you’re not second guessing or guessing in general, you know, which direction to take. You know which direction because you’re seeing the data points, you’re seeing how the contents are performing. And then you’re also seeing, you know, maybe like competitors out there too, or you’re seeing people around your area as well. And like getting all that information to help you grow you and your brand.

Lauren (25:08)
We do have a quick question in the chat from that. Someone talked about other social scheduling options. What led you to go with Sprout? Just a quick answer here. We’re a little low on time, but.

Courtney (25:19)
Yeah, no worries. So I actually worked with Hootsuite many moons ago at a former job and I thought it was okay. I mean, personally using it, was, you know, just, it was good, but it wasn’t great. I wasn’t thrilled. My standards are pretty high. So when it comes to a scheduling platform like Sprout, they met all of my standards and I’ve been using Sprout for a while. And this one I got hired at C.G. Schmidt. They were automatically on Sprout before I got here. I was like, great. Like we’re all in this together. We all understand. And once again, Sprout was

is wonderful and it does a great job at getting all that content, helping you as a marketer and really pushing towards greatness when it comes to building and presenting your brand on social media.

Lauren (26:01)
Awesome. Yeah, so unfortunately this went back quickly and we’re going to close out here, but this has been so awesome. I want to say thank you to Tyler and Courtney for sharing your expertise and your construction marketing strategies. I’m going to drop their LinkedIn profiles along with mine in the chat. My manager do that, so feel free if you have additional questions. I there’s a lot to talk about with construction marketing.

⁓ Feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn. Tyler, I know also is working on more construction tech. So if anyone has construction tech questions, Tyler is the go-to person for that as well. And then we’ll be sending out a recording of the webinar later today. So if you want to look back over any of the responses or anything we talked about, you’ll get a copy of that too. But thanks again, everyone, for joining and have an awesome rest of your week.

Tyler (26:53)
Thank you all.

Courtney (26:54)
Thank you.