Posts By: Stuart Dinnie

3 common construction email marketing myths debunked

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An effective email distribution list can achieve a number of key goals for marketers within building products manufacturers.

  1. It can improve the online REACH of your products (and consequently extend the knowledge of your brand and other products).
  2. It can help build confidence and trust in your prospects to ACT on your integrated marketing messages.
  3. It can encourage prospects to CONVERT into leads through permission-based* calls-to-action on your building product landing pages.
  4. 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

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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

What happens after someone recommends your company?

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In an industry where word of mouth (and golf courses) play a huge part in how business gets done it’s interesting to see what happens AFTER the word of mouth interaction occurs. Even if you are on a golf course or at a networking event and someone recommends you, it’s important to understand what the next step is in that process or journey especially as we all have the internet right at our finger tips.

Do you know how many people Google you as a result of someone recommending you? You may or may not. Do you know how many phone calls you have had as a result of someone recommending you? You may or may not.

Here’s an example of a ‘what happens next’ once some one recommends a company on Twitter and then researches the company via Google. Read More

What if your key audience on Twitter use it the most after 7pm? Who’s at work at 7pm?

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So you have identified the need for your company to be on Twitter and will be at an advantage over competitors if you jump onto Twitter before they do. Let’s assume you have done your homework and identified that there is a large audience, one which you want to communicate with, already on Twitter and seem to be quite active. Let’s also assume that you have taken the necessary steps to give the control of the corporate Twitter account to the right person within the business. We’re not talking about personal accounts or profiles here, we’re talking about company accounts and profiles.

Here’s the big one.

What if your key audience is most active on Twitter, and most likely to be responsive to your communication, after 7pm!Read More

Better product positioning (and why it will help you become more profitable).

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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 web-build projects you undertake.

We will expand upon a popular article on ‘Why your Construction Website needs Targeted Landing Pages’ and the more recent post on ‘What makes a good construction products landing page that generates leads?’.

Positioning for profit.Read More

Are construction publications link policies ruining online PR campaigns?

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I’m always stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to trying to get links included in our client online PR strategies. Trying to keep the SEO guys happy and not irritate the web editors is a juggling act – one that I’m sure many PR’s within the construction industry are struggling with at the moment too.

Essentially, all I’m after is a unique URL within a news item or feature where readers can find out more information about the story. Sometimes it’s a more in-depth blog post, or a bank of case study images; sometimes it’s a video, or even a microsite/forum hosting an industry debate. We always make certain that we create valuable content, so it’s not like we’re chasing links to homepages or sales enquiry forms. Think of it as a half-way house as the journey towards the social media news releases picks up speed.

It’s beneficial to measurement for our clients, and ultimately to the website running the coverage. For example, if we see that lots of their readers have clicked our link and watched the video or read the blog post, we will undoubtedly value the publication higher and push more editorial content their way. At the end of the day if we can measure the success of our coverage in this precise, accurate way, we’re going to prefer using these outlets in the future.Read More

What makes a good construction products landing page?

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When it comes to designing websites you have to understand and make note of how people interact and travel through your website (The user journey). Not all of your website visitors will enter via your homepage and therefore the messages on homepage such as what you do, your positioning statement. your most popular products etc have been completely missed. The page a visitor lands on first is therefore the landing page. A well optimised website will encourage visitors to land on pages which are relevant to their search terms and avoid the need to have to enter via the homepage and then make the visitor work hard to find the relevant content.

If you think about, this means every page on your website is essentially a landing page. But are you treating it as one?Read More

The Perfect Lead Generation Dashboard for Construction Marketing Websites

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Are you a construction marketer who hates using Google Analytics because the information you require is so hard to find?

You’re a marketer who doesn’t have time and would prefer everything you need to know all on one screen?

Well, a Google Analytics dashboard might just solve your problems.

We’ve spent the last couple of days creating a number of dashboards in Google Analytics for the Pauley Creative website and our clients.

By creating a lead generation focused dashboard it allows us and others within the business and our clients to get a quick snapshot view. To see quickly how the website is performing and where leads are coming from.

Users don’t need to go through multiple reports or tabs and nor do they need o keep applying lots of filters to get the info we all need.

So what does this dashboard look like?

Dashboards are accessed and created in the ‘Home’ tab located at the top of the screen in Google Analytics. Dashboards are made up of a number of configured widgets which you can create depending on what you want to know.

The dashboard looks something like this (click to enlarge):Read More

33 Searching Questions to Ask Before Redesigning your Building Products Website

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Following on from our post on “Benchmarking Website Performance” we have collated some fantastic questions to help to start kick the process off. If you have any questions about how you might find some of the answers out feel free to ask…

Visitor behaviour:

  1. What questions are new visitors asking in search engines to get to your site?
  2. Are you answering those questions sufficiently within the landing page copy and is there a clear next step for them to take?
  3. How long do visitors stay on your website for?
  4. From which pages within the site do most people exit from and is this page an important page within the user journey?
  5. Which sources are your new visitors coming from?Read More

Infographic: The EU Cookie Law Numbers

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Following on from our EU Cookie Law Taking the first steps post published a few days back there has been a number of sites now who have started to introduce various ways of informing visitors about cookies and ways in which to get visitors to opt in to have cookies set on their computers.

Econsultancy have just released this useful infographic containing some interesting numbers. One which sticks out in my mind is 93% of marketers survey think the consumer has no idea about what cookies are.Read More