Marketing Strategy
How to make Ecobuild pay for Building Product Manufacturers.
For the sake of this post I will assume at this late stage that everyone exhibiting has a rock solid set of objectives for this years Ecobuild. It’s no secret that Ecobuild 2012 delivered nearly 60,000 professionals to one place over three days. 24% were from a specifier background (architecture or design) and the majority from senior decision making roles. From my own experience, most building product manufacturers will typically have three key drivers for exhibiting (in no particular order): To show off new and existing product. To meet existing [...]
4 tips for getting the right fit between building product manufacturers and specialist marketing agencies
Einstein is often credited to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. If I thought about it too hard I’m fairly sure this is something I can be guilty of and in more aspects of my life than I care to mention.
5 tips to help you plan your marketing for 2013
As we go into the final quarter of the year many marketers will be finalising budgets and preparing their plans to be carried out during 2013 to achieve various objectives. Now is the time when you may assess on what the marketing department has achieved during 2012, benchmark, re-evaluate if you like, and make the necessary plans to improve next year. (Or you could just delete 2012 and replace with 2013 on your 60+ page word document and re-do all the things you did last year.) 1. Let the boss [...]
5 Google Analytics questions you should ask your agency today
For many who follow this blog you will be aware that we love working with data, especially Google Analytics data. Using Google Analytics to assess the performance of tactics, channels and content effectiveness over periods of time help marketers do better with their online marketing. Some marketers will use Google Analytics quite a bit and some won’t so I’ve tried to include questions everybody can ask their agencies, designers or in-house web teams today.
Why a cut in marketing budgets might not be a bad thing for marketers
Over the last few months there has been various studies released focusing on headcount and marketing budgets as we approach 2013. Research conducted by Lead Edge ‘Construction Market Barometer‘ recently showed that 28% of companies are expecting no change to their marketing budget, with 36% expecting growth. Whilst that is a good sign I personally also think that leaves more room for random acts of marketing (do more! do more of the less effective stuff!!). Which means the remaining 36% of companies surveyed are looking at reducing marketing budgets. I [...]
15 things Marketers must stop doing now!
Here is a list containing 15 things marketers must stop doing now largely based on recent conversations I’ve had with marketers, things I’ve observed and also from my own previous experience working client side for a large product manufacturer. <rant> 1. Stop wasting money on big, heavy, glossy product brochures Start putting things online. Drive people to the website where the information is most up to date and can be viewed on mobile or tablet. Save money on print costs and valuable space in the back of sales reps car [...]
Marketing to the construction industry in a multi device world
A few days ago I came across a very interesting slide deck by Michael Lanz, Industry Director at Google (shared by one of my Google+ buddies) about ‘Making the Web Work for You’. The presentation was focusing on the recent web trends, behaviour changes and the choice of devices available which in turn causes an acceleration in sharing on the web today.
3 common construction email marketing myths debunked
An effective email distribution list can achieve a number of key goals for marketers within building products manufacturers. It can improve the online REACH of your products (and consequently extend the knowledge of your brand and other products). It can help build confidence and trust in your prospects to ACT on your integrated marketing messages. It can encourage prospects to CONVERT into leads through permission-based* calls-to-action on your building product landing pages. It can start the relationship-building process with your prospects by opening a channel to ENGAGE in conversation. But [...]
How to manage embargoes in a digital age
Last week I used an embargo on a news story, it’s not something I do often (certainly not yet this year) and as a result it started to make me nervous that journalists didn’t respect the embargo any more… in this digital media relations age, was the ‘embargo trust pact’ dead, or alive? What is an embargo? Well, technically it’s a ‘stop’ caveat on a piece of information that you’re sharing ahead of time with journalists, which hopes to stop sensitive material from being published before ‘full disclosure’ or a [...]
Better product positioning (and why it will help you become more profitable).
We’re continuing to explore the challenges facing today’s construction marketers when it comes to putting together an effective web presence. Delivering a website that not only qualifies new leads quickly, but builds confidence and credibility – encouraging prospects to buy or specify your products over the competition’s – is the key goal for building product manufacturers when improving their website. This post on ‘Why better positioning will help you become more profitable’ is part 2 from our new series of posts that discuss how to get great results from the [...]
