The SiteVisit

Buildex 2024 D1E4 | Strategic Marketing for Construction Companies with Olivia Olczak Day, President at Olivia Day Consulting

• Andrew Hansen, James Faulkner, Christian Hamm

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Transform your construction company's brand from invisible to invincible with insights from Olivia Olczak Day from Day Media Consulting, straight from the BuildEx Vancouver 2024 event. This episode is a goldmine for anyone eager to nail strategic marketing with a blend of storytelling, long-term vision, and a suite of services that are changing the game. Olivia elucidates on the often-overlooked issues plaguing the sector, such as the pitfalls of poor communication and a reactive business stance. Our conversation doesn't just stop there; we unravel Day Media's comprehensive approach, which includes everything from captivating videography to essential business consulting, all designed to catapult brand visibility and cement engagement in the competitive construction landscape.

Listen closely as we break down the strategic use of social media to reflect your company's culture and how this resonates with your audience and potential hires. We dissect the power of platforms like LinkedIn and navigate the subtleties of Facebook and Instagram, providing you with a blueprint for leveraging your unique strengths online. Furthermore, we celebrate company culture's monumental impact on branding, sharing anecdotes of our own Fun Fridays and why leadership's role in fostering a positive work environment can be a game-changer. By the end of our chat, you'll be equipped with the courage to be bold and fearless in your marketing ventures, ensuring your message is not just heard but felt.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Site. Visit podcast. Leadership and perspective from construction With your host, James Faulkner.

Speaker 2:

Live from BuildX Vancouver 2024.

Speaker 1:

321,. We have Olivia Day from Allchuck Day Media, or just Day Media Day Media. Oh, thanks Okay.

Speaker 2:

So how are you? I'm good.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, rock and rolling.

Speaker 2:

Busy Rock and rolling. I feel like it's been forever. I feel like we should have had a catch up before this we should have, we should have.

Speaker 1:

So give us the lowdown. So elevator pitch what you guys are doing right now, and then I will dig into each part. So let's go. What are you doing these days for construction?

Speaker 2:

Well, we've added a videography team, so we're doing a lot more videography. We're doing a lot more project submissions, Work for the VRCA Project Submissions. They're right now, so a lot of that is happening right now.

Speaker 1:

Take us through Project Submissions.

Speaker 2:

So preparing for their project to win an award, right? So we're putting all the details together, making it look fancy and pretty.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I see For submission to the VRCA. Okay.

Speaker 2:

Okay, Strategic, Strategic shorts on construction projects for social content. So we're taking handhelds and we're in the boots, in the hat, going to the site positioning your super, making sure the project looks good behind you. We're giving you a little bit of a script, if you need assistance taking a quick short and then posting that on your social media.

Speaker 1:

I see.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Okay. So lots of business consulting on the three to five year out. I find we're really bad at that here.

Speaker 1:

Insulting or consulting Consulting? Okay, consulting. I used to insult, I used to be an consultant. You can use that one.

Speaker 2:

Thanks Business consulting on the three to five year marketing strat plan. So I find we're really bad in North America with projecting.

Speaker 1:

At what At?

Speaker 2:

planning, yeah, and planning three to five years out. Everyone is just reactive here. Why do you think that is?

Speaker 1:

In Europe it's different. Do you know why it is? Why? It's because our real estate market is a yo-yo this is true and people don't know where to be. Yeah, and they're like where is this going? We've had huge real estate bubbles.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's probably why.

Speaker 2:

I agree. Yeah, speaking sessions If you watch my LinkedIn, I'm doing a lot of those with associations.

Speaker 1:

So you're doing a speaking event today here?

Speaker 2:

No, I'm not speaking.

Speaker 1:

So you are a media partner here today? Yeah, so do you have a booth over there? What do?

Speaker 2:

you do no, so I'm taking pictures, so you have teams doing pictures here.

Speaker 1:

No, just me, just you, just me.

Speaker 2:

My team is working on projects.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And then I can sell those pictures. Those images I use them for my clients. My clients want pictures here, so we're going to go do some upstairs nice shots, that kind of thing Right. Okay, so we do that. And then yeah, with chambers. So not just construction focus but outside of the construction world, helping businesses, you know, start their business up. You know, project their marketing what they're doing, Especially family businesses. Right now I'm talking to a lot with succession planning what that's going to look like in a few years out.

Speaker 1:

We're just talking about that with Janine just now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, scary thing.

Speaker 1:

It is a scary thing, there's a TV show about it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there is A good one. And then lots of event planning. So team events, barbecues, unique events customized to your market for construction, trying to target HR, new hires, that kind of thing. So being very specific and catering to your construction business and who you're trying to speak to, and making it fun and interesting and innovative at an event that you're trying to put on, you know, come six months out, whatever it is. And then fencing signage, I know. Fencing signage Fencing signage what?

Speaker 1:

are you doing with that so?

Speaker 2:

corporate worker pal. So we do all the t-shirts, hats, vizze vests, all that kind of stuff. We put your logo on it. But then we also do fence signage. It's not the big stuff, that's blowing in the wind.

Speaker 1:

The big board yeah, that's usually what developers do now, but you're talking about just on super safe fence and then they stick a sign on it. Yeah, okay so you have a service that goes and puts that up.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. So we give you the plaque and off you go, but it lasts and lasts for the next job, and so forth. I see yeah, so that's sort of tapping into construction, but we're helping lots more businesses outside of construction too.

Speaker 1:

We can't talk about that, I know. So just give us the so when somebody's. That's a pretty diverse menu.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1:

So when somebody is thinking of what are the main problems in construction that your firm is helping people with, Like, what are the? If you were to go, okay, here we've had. You know, last year we had 20 construction clients. This was the bulk of the work, bulk of the revenue for your company. What, how are you really helping construction companies in general? What's the main things?

Speaker 2:

With their communication and messaging. So right now I just find people are throwing stuff on social media seeing if it sticks. They have no idea who their actual target market is. They're not speaking to their target market. They're spending money on Google ads and it's not going. They're not. No one's assessed their current marketing plan and how that builds on the pillars of their actual business.

Speaker 2:

So if you've got two strong pillars that you're bringing business forward through, you want to make sure that, once you've brought the business in, that the communication strategy is widening and deepening and you're continuing with your you know why story or you know who you're marketing to, and I just I don't feel like that's being done. So we come in and we kind of do a marketing gap assessment, we audit it, we tell you what you want to position and where you want to position it next, and then I would say that's probably it's getting people's communication strategy aligned, Because it's just right now. It's so reactive, Everyone's doing everything reactive and, as you know, there's no if there's no plan. Right, how are you going to get to that goal Right? Throwing stuff against the wall and hoping it sticks?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and let's talk about social for a minute. Yeah, social marketing is really tough because it has to be authentic and then being able to do that via third party. So do you create social media calendars that the actual people have to do themselves, rather than you guys doing it for them?

Speaker 2:

We do a little bit of both, so we create a social media calendar ahead of time, up to a month ahead of time, with 10 posts for them.

Speaker 1:

We put reels, or so you can tell them exactly what they got to do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then I tell them here's the content I want to see, these are the pictures I want, these are the things that I want you to see you do, and if you're not going to do them, then I will photograph it for you, I will take it for you, I will be there to do the work for you, bye. Yeah, it's getting people's mindset.

Speaker 1:

So what channels are working in construction right now?

Speaker 2:

Totally depends on your industry that you're tapping into, right? Your buyers aren't going to be living on Instagram. I hate to sadly say that, but that's a different, a younger market, right? That's why I spend so much time on LinkedIn, because it's a professional network. It's both buying age right. Facebook is slow, but it's there.

Speaker 1:

Does anybody use Facebook anymore? Facebook is worth so much because of Instagram these days. Yeah, it is yeah, and obviously Mostly for an HR.

Speaker 2:

Feel right For hiring and putting more information, because you can only say so much in pictures. Right With the amount of text that's available in Instagram.

Speaker 1:

It's interesting. I was listening to this podcast the other day and they were talking about how, when they hire people oh, it was Kevin O'Leary, yeah, on Megan Kelly, okay yeah, and he was saying that when they hire this is like I know we're getting off topic a little bit here, but we'll dovetail itself back they were talking about, like DEI, quotas and all this stuff, and he's like we don't hire based on any quota at all, we hire only on who are the best people for the job and we go through all of their social media. We look at everything and judge them on what they've done in the world. Wow, crazy, huh, Wow.

Speaker 2:

And.

Speaker 1:

I'm like I think probably most do. They just don't want to admit it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but yeah.

Speaker 1:

But yeah. So it's interesting. Companies have to do the same thing. They also are getting judged by the candidates or clients or whatever it is. They're looking at them from the outside. In they're going. How does this company's culture, does it vibe with how we want to do work? So what kind of stuff are you posting that's engaging, that? Can you just give me a? You don't have to say the company's name, because obviously we don't want to do that, but maybe tell me what kind of company it was, like it was a sub trade, it was a GC and then tell me what kind of posts you were doing for them.

Speaker 2:

So it would be a GC and they wanted to be very prevalent. So I always suggest you start with LinkedIn first and you get your company profile All dialed, dialed Super strong, and you should piggyback your messaging from there to the Facebook or whatever you're going to do, but the posts should be a little bit of corporate culture, a little bit of education. You've got your holidays in there, but you have to tie to your mission statement or you've got to keep that all tight and secure, even though you're changing the platform A little bit lighter for Facebook and Instagram, then the heavier feel on LinkedIn, but you have to be open to suggesting that you're talking about authenticity. I'm here, this is real life. This is a project we're working on. Here's what we're showcasing on the project. This is relevant today because this is how we do this differently, because these are the whys behind what makes us different Always looking at your competitor Like I know, we're all in the industry together but looking at what sets you apart.

Speaker 2:

Marketing is to set you apart. So stop delivering what everybody else is delivering and put yourself out there. Put yourself out there as the next leader, the next innovator, the next whatever. Everybody is so scared with Instagram and all these things, they want to be perceived a certain way. But if you get down to the core of the why, where I spend a lot of time with companies, in corporate culture and values and where the company's why sits, and usually everything stems from there, but it's been jaded by shiny object syndrome with social media. We should be this way.

Speaker 2:

Because, our competitors doing this Instead of just focusing really hard on what we do really well. And there are some companies out there in construction that have been doing what they've been doing for a long time really well and they have excelled. But those companies are usually slower on their social media, when they could be propelling a lot more information, helping the industry learn. But then there's that whole clause with well, I don't want you to know what I know.

Speaker 1:

And this is what I talk about. They don't want to share.

Speaker 2:

They don't want to share. No, no.

Speaker 1:

Why would they Right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Secret sauce right.

Speaker 1:

I know, but look at, on Moscow, all open platform baby. Yeah, yeah, look where he's going. Yeah, pretty good.

Speaker 2:

So, and then parlaying, I guess, into what I do.

Speaker 1:

Parlay. I like that word, Jeez. What does parlay mean?

Speaker 2:

Just moving to the next phase.

Speaker 1:

The only reason I heard this is because I was watching the Super Bowl. Yeah, they had the fan duel came up and said multiple parlays. I'm like what the hell is a parlay? And then you just said parlay. I'm like it's the second time this week I've heard parlay. Okay, it's been so much. Maybe it's two contacts. Yeah, okay, fair enough.

Speaker 2:

But the discrete marketing has come up more in the special projects that we do?

Speaker 1:

What is the discrete marketing?

Speaker 2:

So that's marketing with government agencies, and you know we're constituents.

Speaker 1:

Covert marketing yeah.

Speaker 2:

We're. You have to finesse the communication in such a way that you're not tiptoeing, but you're saying what you need to say, but you're not saying too much. And yeah, there's a very. You know it takes experience in the industry to know how to do this.

Speaker 1:

I see corporate massaging.

Speaker 2:

Corporate massaging. I like it.

Speaker 1:

Massaging of the massage. The message.

Speaker 2:

The message.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, massaging the message. Massaging the message. Right, fair enough, okay, so what do you think is? Let's just take the next number of years here. Where do you think the secret sauce is going to be for branding marketing companies? What do you think they need to be doing? What are the trends?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think someone needs to stop let go of yellow and orange in construction. I think they're being overused and green, Green, yellow and orange from branding perspective.

Speaker 1:

What's left.

Speaker 2:

I know, I know.

Speaker 1:

What's left.

Speaker 2:

I knew you were going to say that you were going to say yellow field.

Speaker 1:

No, but I mean, there's only so many contrasts to black.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. Well, you don't want just everything black either.

Speaker 1:

No, you got red left.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

You'll see Blue blue's taken.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, blue's taken. Yeah so yeah, sorry, it's going to be a mishmash.

Speaker 1:

I know we can't just like get rid of it. The thing I think that the yellow orange, all of that it says, hey, pay attention.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Colors, yeah, and construction is about hey, heads up, pay attention, pay attention. So that's kind of what it is. Yield.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yield.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yield or stop what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, stop what you're doing. No, I don't think they're going to disappear, but I just think people are. You know, when I look in construction companies, it's like this person has almost the same name as this person, right, and then when you talk to people, they don't really understand what the difference between the two companies are.

Speaker 1:

Oh, okay, yeah, Okay.

Speaker 2:

Some of the construction companies here. I don't know if they're actually here, but In my neck in the woods.

Speaker 1:

Well, I was the first site max, by the way. Yeah, I was the first, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Which is great.

Speaker 1:

I love it. Even site docs used to be safety docs before they met me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's just saying, Just saying yeah, but I think it's going to construction companies are going to evolve, hopefully get a little bit further out there with social media. I think that's that trend.

Speaker 1:

Where is it going? Like social media, are people getting tired of it?

Speaker 2:

I think they are getting tired of it.

Speaker 1:

There's a huge fatigue, I think. I think there's a trend Like my daughter's, like no, we just yeah, we're on it, just to sort of they chat on it quite a bit, like on Snap, yeah, and they'll do that, but they're not spending. Like when they start to hear that the kids of the Google founders, parents and all that don't let their kids use it, yeah, then they start attaching prestige to not using Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

Well, I don't like social media myself.

Speaker 1:

I got into a few. You're in the wrong business, lady, I know.

Speaker 2:

I know. No, I keep it very like. It's like everybody.

Speaker 1:

I hate this, but let's do this.

Speaker 2:

No, I enjoy.

Speaker 1:

It's it's fatiguing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, to be in that world all the time.

Speaker 1:

So I'm very.

Speaker 2:

I treat my time very precious. Do you think it's toxic? I think it can be.

Speaker 1:

Like I know that you know when I've done posts and I continue to do posts. And then you were like well, what was the reaction to the post? It's constant, like you're looking for the reaction to what you did and you're marking your own happiness on what depth of reaction you got.

Speaker 2:

I would say that's more personal, social. I don't know if really people are marking on.

Speaker 1:

Well, I mean, let's put it this way If you're the marketing coordinator at a construction company and then you're doing posts, you're going back, okay. So we got former likes and we got oh, look at the engagement we got here. It's like hang on a second, don't really give a crap, but we do need to be. There's only so many channels to be visible. Yes and I spend a lot of time on that topic. But I do like the site signage situation because that's not going away.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I spend a lot of time with people on. You don't need all four or five platforms, need one. Somebody's going to follow you on a platform they really love. Just make sure that, if you're a professional that you're linked in, you're driving that from your LinkedIn and then you can start talking. But I will challenge what you just said, because usually those stressful moments of are you getting enough likes, it's because you're trying to post content that doesn't. It's not ringing with what's going on.

Speaker 1:

But what does ring in construction?

Speaker 2:

what you're doing different.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so here's some people that have really good tons of following, are people who do crazy high quality video of the work they do and it's like dialed. There's a couple of people in Eastern Canada that have like millions of followers and it's just because they keep doing the same thing and there's a craft to the romance around sort of the visuals, but other than that after 4.30, they're out Like it's a very difficult industry to get engagement from a social level because the job site closes down. There's a significant part of the population that does not want to even think about work at all. I am out out, out, I'm doing whatever, I'm looking at the sports scores, I'm going to want to go to a bar, I might be in pain from the job day, it's been horrible weather, I might all that kind of stuff. There's a group of people like I'm out. But what's interesting when you're talking about LinkedIn and then you're also talking about Instagram, for instance? Because it really is surely what we're talking?

Speaker 2:

about it is Facebook, whatever, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But Instagram is kind of where you can dance the line about what it's like to work somewhere and the sort of what would you call it Playfulness. I guess you can get away with playfulness. On Instagram, yes, you can, whereas on LinkedIn, I think it's more of a. This is how we operate.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Agreed. So it's interesting, the word culture has come up a couple of times. What do you think, or is, what is the impetus of the beginning building blocks of what a company's culture is?

Speaker 2:

I think the company culture stems 100% down from leadership.

Speaker 1:

Okay, good.

Speaker 2:

So if you're not walking the talk and you're pushing this out there to marketing and your project managers and so forth, but that's not what you're doing up the top.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree 100%, it's not going to work.

Speaker 1:

So we also have. We talk about culture quite a bit because it's such a word. Our culture is this, and it is almost like it's similar to the word brand. You know, you're someone to say what's your brand? And somebody will say, well, this is what our brand is, and you're like that's what you want it to be. Yes, because you're actually not in control of it, you can only steer it. Yes, and then other people are assessing whether or not that's true or not. Culture is very similar because you have your company's values, et cetera and half the time I don't live by those and then the culture is the net behavior of everybody who contributes into the company.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

But, as you said, it does start with that core from the top.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

So and that's where you can have some toxic things that it's almost as though if you look at like liquid, for instance, and you were to drip dye into, into, and you can see it kind of go down.

Speaker 1:

It's the color that's left when everyone's opacity of drips. It's whatever color is left for the culture. But what's interesting is is that a toxic person can be, can impact a culture so badly that it is like black dye and suddenly there's no color left. It's just black Right, and you can't you can't put any yellow, blue or whatever. It's just black now. So it's interesting how companies talk about culture as a thing that is disconnected from people and it's a it's more of a flag.

Speaker 1:

You know, what I mean when really everybody contributes to it on a daily basis. Some have more velocity on how much they input to that. Some people might be quiet at the office and their culture is kind of reserved or whatever it is, and there's other people who are just you know. Let's say you have a culture of like some Wolf Wall Street. There's an example.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

You know there's. There's the scenes where they've got all sorts of stuff going on yeah. And that would be the culture, the party culture of that company?

Speaker 1:

Yes, so what would you say is, how can companies get some zip to be exciting enough and have a culture of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, something where leadership can really interact on a genuine level with the rest of the company?

Speaker 1:

So I always find, like we have our fun Fridays, that we do, and you know, like the one the other day was on, we have this massive TV and everyone wants to play Mario Kart, like to have Mario Kart on Friday. I'm like I don't know, but everyone, I I had this feeling like I wasn't connecting and it wasn't my idea, because everyone has to do their own Mario Kart thing. I did actually have a meeting I had to go to, so I couldn't be there, but I did come back for a little bit and everybody was doing their thing and I'm like, okay, this is good, I can just, you know, I'm happy, everyone's happy. So what sort of? When you talk about, you know, marketing and marketing strategy and messaging and all that, it has to kind of come back in to the company.

Speaker 2:

I do.

Speaker 1:

I worked daily on the marketing that's a really long, tangent roundabout.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, I got there Working on filling the marketing circle. I feel like a lot of people have pieces of the circle and they're trying to fill it but they're not getting the like whole holistic view that's helping with all the organic traffic or whatever you want to talk about. But when you come back to the culture, all that branding and messaging, we spend a lot of time in our marketing gap assessments interviewing leadership first to understand the corporate culture before even touch marketing. Yeah and that's been most beneficial because you had some nasty conversations.

Speaker 2:

I have.

Speaker 1:

Hard conversation.

Speaker 2:

But I also ask that everybody this the same 10 hard questions, yeah, and I just I check it out right there and then right, and I find typically leadership is so out of touch with where the business is going on the day to day that they need more Mario Kart time or they need more yeah of that kind of time, because it's one thing to scale and grow your business, but when your tentacles are everywhere right, there's still a body attached to that that you got to check in with right and if nobody's checking in it's, it eventually goes sideways yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1:

I definitely got a new phone Friday this week or I think it's next two weeks away. Right, yeah, two weeks. Okay, so these are short interviews, so what would you like to leave everyone with?

Speaker 2:

Um.

Speaker 1:

Got a sale on site signage for 1995.

Speaker 2:

No no, no, just to be more fearless. Be bolder with what you're looking for out of your communication and your marketing and contact me and contact you.

Speaker 1:

Okay, good, and your website is.

Speaker 2:

Don't you dot Davemediaca.

Speaker 1:

Davemediaca. Okay, well, this is a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1:

You're welcome, I love you cool well, that does it for another episode of the site business. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for a monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.