I recently viewed a keynote by the great Guy Kawasaki who tells us the 12 things Steve Jobs taught him. One of the things Steve taught him was marketing and providing unique value. As always, I try to find ways to translate this information and insight and make it relevant to our complex industry full of intricate supply chains. As a building product manufacturer with lots of competitors how do you make yourself unique and valuable? Most products are ‘me-to’ products and the only difference is the size of the organisation.
Posts By: Stuart Dinnie
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.
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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 boot. That space could be filled with golf balls.
2. Stop doing the same things you did in 2007
Start experimenting. Try something new for a change. Challenge the status quo for once. Push the boundaries and start learning something new. Stop something and see what the impact it has on the business (hold-out test) then you’ll realise how valuable that tactic is.Read More
A REALLY simple way of explaining what search engine optimisation is
Having presented many times on the subject of SEO and articulated lots of ways of describing what search engine optimisation is and how it can benefit building product manufacturers, I stumbled upon this video which I thought was fantastic. A great visual analogy and methodology of how SEO works.
Where do Construction News readers share news stories?
Yesterday I had a look at where Construction Enquirer readers were sharing its news stories and interestingly most news stories were shared on LinkedIn and not Twitter as I thought it might have been.
So today I’m going to take a look where Construction News readers share articles. Over 40,000 pages from the website were scanned and a total of 4123 pages had been shared across social networking sites.Read More
On which social sites do Construction Enquirer readers share articles?
Below is a table to show the most shared content from the Construction Enquirer website since it’s launch a few years ago and where stories are being shared. A total of 4229 shares had been counted from just 586 pages scanned on the Construction Enquirer website.
Predictably, the most shared content is from July probably because more Construction Enquirer readers are now on social networks than ever before and probably still growing. Only 1 story from June made the top 20 stories. The most shared story is the recent ‘No UK firms in world construction top twenty‘ which has been shared 107 times.
The ‘Contract Spy‘ page has been shared on Facebook more than it has done on Twitter or LinkedIn. Interesting?Read More
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.Read More
Top tips for managing a PR crisis for construction companies
Does your construction company have a crisis management plan? Crisis planning is becoming increasingly important in our digital age, and should plot your response – or response procedure – to everything from a factory fire or flood, through to a major product failure.
If you haven’t already got a plan, the point at which your company creates a social media marketing campaign and policy, is also the point at which your crisis management plan MUST be implemented. Lack of response or a poorly considered response to a social media crisis can cause irreparable damage to your business communications, due to the speed and mass communication elements of the medium.Read More
“We’ve just launched our new building products website” Now what?
Most marketers would consider the launch of a new website the end of a successful project and off they move onto the next project or job on the list. For us at Pauley Creative and our clients it’s only the start. This is where the action begins.
After launching a new site it’s perfectly normal to allow for a few weeks to monitor the change over from old site to new site from a visitor level and from Google perspective. Visitors who were regular visitors to the old site are now having to adjust to the new site. New visitors will have never seen the old site so it will be the first time they navigate through your website. Where will they start and where will they end? This is the period where lots of information can be collected on how users behave on the new website.Read More
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 before you all go and spend a small fortune on a big old list from a broker, based on SIC codes and other useless data drivel. There are two points to remember here:Read More
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 specified date.Read More