Marketing for Contractors: 2025 Edition

Before we dive into trends and tactics for 2025 – specifically for the AEC industry (architects, engineers and construction) – let’s talk strategy. Grab your safety gear.

Most contractors I start working with have an upside down funnel in their sales and marketing approach.

They are working “bottoms up.”

Contractor A:

“I don’t have time for marketing… I’m too busy managing projects, approving bids and taking calls from my team and important customers, putting out fires and chasing work. This is more important than marketing.”

Does this sound familiar?

Being busy bidding, fielding bid questions, managing and capturing hot leads about to become business does not equate to long-term success.

In short, being busy does not equal success.

You could be ignoring your marketing funnel, and when you ignore the funnel – the natural progression of sales and marketing – leads dry up and market share shrinks.

Your marketing funnel may be upside down.

Here’s how the funnel works.

As I stated, the funnel is the natural progression of sales and marketing. Human nature at work. No matter the industry.

The top (larger part) of a marketing funnel is brand awareness – capturing attention and interest. Educating the market on company name, brand, capabilities and specialties.

It’s generating demand. Without education and brand awareness, there is no demand for the service or product. (Many of my new companies don’t think they need to generate demand. They think the demand comes to them.)

The funnel becomes smaller once the market becomes more aware of your brand and decides to become a buyer who is interested in your product.

Your demand generation is working. Buyers are becoming educated to see a problem and consider your company for the solution.

The bottom of the funnel is the smallest part, and that’s where leads occur. That is demand capture. You capture the demand by converting those leads to sales.

Leads shoot out of the funnel and hopefully someone is there to convert them to business/revenue.

Marketing helps sales by creating the right kind of demand generation, creating strategies for the right kind of funnel to get sales the best kind of leads. Demand Generation (marketing) = Demand Capture (sales). You have a great strategy and tactical plan when they both work together.

Leads don’t come first. Brand Awareness comes first – just like sales don’t happen overnight. The market has to become familiar with your company and remember it for when they are in need of your service.

If your sales is tied to an owner or big sales personality and only referrals or repeat business, you are a “bottoms up” company.

You are a busy bottoms up company, an upside down funnel that just happens to be in a really good balancing act.

In B2B (business to business), there’s a well-known formula called the 95:5 rule. It means that 95 percent of your market is not looking for your product/service right now… only 5 percent is. The chances of your lead chasing, balancing act, one act wonder of a sales person capturing that 5 percent buyer market to go down his upside down funnel is slim to none.

Ninety-five percent of the market needs to go from top down marketing. They need to become aware, familiar and educated on the market. They are not exactly ready to buy. In fact, they might not even know what they need yet.

These are called in-market and out-of-market buyers. Five percent are in-market and ready to buy. Ninety-five percent are out of market and need to be educated because they’re not yet ready to buy.

Here’s what’s happening in the funnel. Chutes and Ladders.

The top end of funnel – the widest part – is about awareness and building relationships with the broader market. This is where you create your tone, messaging and go-to-market strategy.

This is where your special events are important, brand-building events, sponsorships, award submissions and website. All broader aspects of your company’s overall image are important – they capture the larger market – ones in need of your service now and in the future – through a wider net of awareness.

Our strategy would be how we create that message/tone/culture and how we strike the right balance of our marketing awareness with what our market needs.

The middle of the funnel is brand and relationship-building strategies. LinkedIn, thought leadership, generating content – written and video – face-to-face meetings, presentations and expos all support your value in the marketplace. More educational content, spotlighting projects and people – these fill the middle of the funnel with more than just brand awareness, but also culture, capabilities, education and touchpoints of differentiation in the market – people. For buyers who are going through the journey, the middle part of your funnel is very important. B2B buyers like to be educated.

Buyers each have a different journey in this funnel, like the game Chutes and ladders. Some buy right away. Timing is right. You meet at a large marketing event – top of funnel, set up a lunch meeting, hit it off, there’s a need and perfect timing turns into a lead/sale. That’s a chute from top to bottom.

Sometimes the journey is more difficult. You get all the way to the finish line on submission and it’s an uphill climb. You don’t win the bid. You are not low. Now it’s time to climb again to get another opportunity. That’s a ladder from bottom to top.

The important thing is that you have an actual marketing funnel built. For being builders, so many contractors haven’t built their own marketing infrastructure to create long-term success – to capture the leads necessary to grow their business for 5-10-15 years to come.

Relationships create chutes within the tunnel. Referrals, repeat business and negotiated work.

Lack of brand building creates a vacuum. An upside down funnel only focused on tactics to get work and not strategy. Ladders aren’t available for an upside down funnel.

Marketing helps creates chutes in the funnel and builds infrastructure for climbs back up – the ladders.

If your funnel is only focused on sales and leads, you have tunnel vision and no marketing funnel exists.

Chutes are a freefall and ladders are nonexistent.

Sales without marketing clogs the funnel, too many uneducated leads that aren’t tied to a cohesive message. It’s like trying to catch candy out of a pinata.

A “bottoms up” approach can also clog the funnel. Examples are starting with leads, trying to hard sell with product knowledge, hard bidding, or price wars, or counting on only relationships without brand awareness – demand generation. That is not long-term success.

Marketing trends and tactics are important in 2025. Video and AI and relationship building are a few… We have to build the infrastructure of our marketing funnel first.

Even as a contractor, leads will dry up.

Don’t take a bat to the pinata. Build your brand.