What Happens When You Give a Trade Union a Marketing Department

See how The Harbinger Group built Powering Chicago’s marketing department from the ground up and made them the go-to name in a crowded Chicagoland electrical industry.

OVERVIEW

In 2019, Powering Chicago had no marketing operation. They branded themselves as “safe, skilled, qualified and reliable,” but so did every other electrical contractor in Chicago—and their limited outreach did not set them apart.

We took over. And in seven years, we transformed a labor-management partnership with little industry presence in a crowded market into the go-to resource for facility managers, operations leads and owners looking to employ union electrical contractors in Chicagoland.

Here’s how we did it:

Step 1 (2019-2021)

Put Powering Chicago on the map by building a strong audience

+34,000,000 total audience reach
+3,872% social media growth
+873% social media web traffic

Step 2 (2022-2023)

Make useful content for that audience—eBooks, email, video—and turn it directly into leads

204+ eBooks downloaded
+1,000,000 YouTube video views
+1,000% email contacts acquired

Step 3 (2024-2026)

Become #1 by connecting leads with contractors through Powering Chicago

340,000+ website visits
145,000+ Find a Contractor directory visits
1,241 qualified leads generated in 2025-26

POWERED BY RESULTS | A 7-YEAR SNAPSHOT

Since August 2019, we’ve helped Powering Chicago achieve:

2,466

Business leads for Powering Chicago members

430,246

Visits to the Powering Chicago Find a Contractor directory

381%

Increase in website traffic from Year 1 to Year 7

25,000

Contacts acquired after starting from 0 initially in 2019

3,317%

Increase in LinkedIn community growth in the first year

7,400%

Increase in engagements on LinkedIn in the first year

505%

Increase in Facebook community growth in the first year

1,400%

Increase in engagements on Facebook in the first year

More results while staying under budget annually

THE CLIENT

Powering Chicago is a partnership between IBEW Local 134 and the Electrical Contractors’ Association of Chicago. Since 1900, their members have built the city as it grew—from wiring its first telephone system and subway to helping build landmarks like the Willis Tower and Wrigley Field. Today that same partnership trains the next generation of electricians and connects skilled contractors with the people who need them.

THE PROBLEM

In 2019, Powering Chicago had the superior quality, reliability, safety, training and technical skill to stand out—but no way to communicate that expertise in a crowded electrical contractor market. They had no formal marketing department—promotion relied on word-of-mouth efforts and sports sponsorship placements that cost thousands without bringing in new business. Their union electrical contractors and the electricians they employed went unnoticed.

At the same time, the unionized electrical industry was changing. Demand for resources to keep up with training, compliance, safety and new government initiatives meant Powering Chicago was behind the conversation.

Powering Chicago needed a marketing group that could:

Communicate the advantages of union labor to facility managers and operations leads
Make them a go-to resource by boosting web traffic and social media followers
Increase lead generation by making great content that spoke to real people
Attract qualified candidates to its apprenticeship program
Respond to a changing industry on demand

Enter The Harbinger Group. We met with Powering Chicago and developed a plan to not only meet—but beat—all of these goals.

THE STRATEGY

There was no existing marketing operation to fix—our job was to become the operation and create a plan from the ground up. As Powering Chicago, its audience and the industry changed, we adapted, always with one goal in mind: make Powering Chicago the premier voice of the Chicagoland electrical construction industry and build new business by connecting facility managers to its network of union electrical contractors.

We split the work into three phases, each improving on what came before.

Phase 1: BUILD AN AUDIENCE

Before we could start generating leads and connecting managers with contractors, we needed someone to generate from. We rebuilt every social media channel from scratch and started targeting facility managers, operations leads and building owners who wanted what Powering Chicago had: the superior safety, quality, training, reliability and skill of qualified union electrical contractors.

Phase 2: CREATE LEADS USING CONTENT

Once our audience was established, our goal was to give them a reason to trust and rely on Powering Chicago’s unmatched track record of service and experience. We did this by creating content—eBooks, video, email, earned media, sponsorships—that answered the real questions facility managers had about safety, compliance and training. Along the way, we captured their contact info, allowing Powering Chicago to continue the conversation.

Phase 3: MAKE POWERING CHICAGO #1

We built the audience, the leads and the traffic—now we could do something with them. We pointed facility managers toward the Powering Chicago Find a Contractor directory, a tool built for comparing and choosing a union electrical contractor, and made it the go-to resource for finding qualified service in Chicagoland.

HOW WE DID IT

Phase 1 | BUILDING AN AUDIENCE

Year 1

After a deep-dive review of facility managers, operations leads and the electrical contractor market, we built audiences through social media, web traffic, email, earned media and targeted ads. In the end, we reached an audience of more than 34,000,000.

Audiences targeted → general contractors, developers, project engineers, operations leads
Building socials from scrap → +505% Facebook growth, +3,317% LinkedIn growth, +895% X engagements
Moving social audiences to site → +7,000 website visits from social media
Boosting site visits → +76% total site visitors, +34.5% total pageviews, +67.3% web traffic sessions

Year 2

We doubled down on building awareness in new ways—creating a signature Powering Chicago video series and other content, reaching new people through digital ads and polishing our end destination: the Powering Chicago website.

New content produced → 33 videos, 12 newsletters, 9 industry panels, 27 media placements
New audiences reached through digital ads → +800,000
Site optimized → Find a Contractor page overhaul, 100+ site additions, +196% pageviews on Find a Contractor directory
More social growth → +118% Facebook engagements, +490% LinkedIn engagements

Phase 2 | CREATING LEADS USING CONTENT

Year 3

With a strong audience in place, our next step was to grow and generate leads. We did that by creating content on subjects facility managers had real questions about—compliance, safety, technical training info and resources on new markets like solar power and EV. The more they clicked, downloaded and read, the more contact info we gathered.

Year 4

We had proof the content was working—now it was time to supercharge it. We launched a new video series, The Power of Better, and used it alongside other content to double down on attracting leads. By now we were generating more leads than ever before, and the end destination, our optimized Powering Chicago website, kept growing.

The Power of Better video series views on YouTube and LinkedIn → 1,000,000
YouTube subscriber increase → 120%
Qualified leads generated → 425
Total increase in web visitors → 22%
Increase in web traffic from LinkedIn YOY → 443%

Phase 3 | MAKING POWERING CHICAGO #1

Year 5

With our audience and lead pipeline in place, we set to work making Powering Chicago the primary resource for facility managers looking for qualified union electrical contractors. We did this by getting more specific—targeting the industries, job titles and job functions directly involved in the contractor hiring process. LinkedIn was a key resource in this phase.

Powering Chicago reaches #1 organic Google rank for → “electrical contractors Chicago,” “electrical contracting services Chicago,” “Chicago electrical contractors”
Web traffic from targeted LinkedIn audiences → 16,563
Power of Better views on LinkedIn → 543,460
Qualified leads generated → 750

Year 6

By now, our operation was running on all cylinders. We estimated a 26% increase in results in Year 6—and outpaced our goal by over 120%. We built a bigger audience across all platforms, earned more subscribers, created even better content and generated more leads than ever before.

Year 7

With a rock-solid audience and leads, we pointed every tool—ads, email, organic and paid social, YouTube—toward a single webpage: the Powering Chicago Find a Contractor directory. This directory was all-important, because it helped visitors compare and choose a qualified electrical contractor through Powering Chicago.

Total Find a Contractor directory page visits → 145,000+
Percent of site traffic leading directly to directory → 42%
Contractor link clicks → 3,577
Find a Contractor directory page visits from LinkedIn → 40,162
Qualified leads generated → 1,241

THE OUTCOME

In 2019, Powering Chicago had no marketing department and a message that was true—they did offer a proven track record of superior service, safety, quality, training and technical knowledge—but sounded like every other electrical contractor in the crowded Chicagoland market.

Seven years later, they have a growing audience of facility managers and operations leads, platforms that earn millions of views and direct thousands of annual leads their way, and a polished directory that connects customers with qualified union electrical contractors.

The Harbinger Group did more than run a campaign. We built an entire marketing operation from scratch, created content that solved problems for the people Powering Chicago wanted to do business with, and turned Powering Chicago into the place Chicagoland facility managers go to compare and choose a contractor.

For labor-management organizations, construction contractors and trade associations without a real marketing operation, The Harbinger Group can help you get results like these—all without having to build the department yourselves.