Posts By: Stuart Dinnie

What defines a market leader in building products?

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Any business has a specific target market(s). ‘Markets’ can be defined and grouped in different ways such as by geographical location, demographics, customer type or a combination of several elements. This concept is relatively easy to understand but the tricky question lies in defining a market leader. The word ‘market leader’ seems to have different meanings for different people. Most importantly though what does it mean for your customers? They are the ones who are buying your products so you need to know how they define it, not just how you define it.  According to an online business dictionary it means:

A brand, product, or firm that has the largest percentage of total sales revenue (the market share) of a market. A market leader often dominates its competitors in customer loyalty, distribution coverage, image, perceived value, price, profit, and promotional spending.

This definition includes a variety of elements and some market leaders dominate in all categories whilst others might only dominate in a few of them. When specifiers and architects are choosing building products, what is most important for them and how do they a define market leader? Do they focus on the company with the largest sales volume and profits, the widest distribution network, the best proven product performance?Read More

Google Expands Site Links

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Yesterday, Google changed the way it displays and formats site links for any website by expanding each link to show more content within the site. Previously, a website listing would appear in the search results page and you would see 8 listings (2 columns with 4 links in each column) like this:

old sitelinksRead More

What information are specifiers expecting from product manufacturer websites?

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Research has been carried out by the NBS on what exactly architects and specifiers are looking for from product manufacturers when choosing products and services and how they see specifications developing in the future. With over 500 respondents the results highlight some interesting points that construction product manufacturers must take into consideration. It is important to know what information your prospects are looking for and therefore these survey results will show what’s valuable to specifiers when they are choosing products.

Type of information wanted

Making sure your website is working for you and contains the right type of information is vital for product manufacturers. In the survey, 90% of specifiers indicated that the main resource they use when writing specifications are product manufacturers’ websites. This is a huge number and if your website is not optimised for search (for both branded and non-branded keywords), how will architects and specifiers find it? When they do land on your website, have you got the appropriate content, such as product guides, brochures, whitepapers that they can download or newsletters that they can subscribe to? If not, these prospects may end up going to your competitors for the information they require.

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Top 100 UK Product Manufacturers on Twitter

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** Update 21/03/2016: unfortunately the [TCN] top 100 UK product manufacturers on Twitter list no longer exists so we’ve removed the link**

We will review the situation and find a way to update the top 100 manufacturers on Twitter. Any questions give us a shout.

 

** Update 7/10/2011: Here is the released top 100 UK product manufacturers on Twitter list **

After the success of the #tCntop100 and #ajtcn100 in grouping together UK construction professionals and architects on Twitter, next in the series is the top 100 UK product manufacturers.

It gives architects and specifiers a chance to interact with product manufacturers that are embracing social media. To date, tCn and Peer Index have found over 300 qualifying accounts and have released the details of the top 50 product manufacturers. This list includes official company accounts as well as individuals who are tweeting on behalf of their employer.

To make sure the list is as accurate as possible, tCn are asking product manufacturers or product suppliers within the UK built environment to nominate themselves or others if they are not currently on the list but would like to be included.

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CIMCIG survey to find out how marketing budget is spent by construction companies

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How do you decide your marketing spend and then justify it to the Finance Director? Even when starting with a bottom-up process it is useful to have a comparison with other similar companies. But this information is just not available in an up to date form.

CIMCIG (Chartered Institute of Marketing Construction Marketing Group) are compiling an anonymous survey of marketing spend in the construction sector for Manufacturers, Contractors, Professional Services and Suppliers (Wholesaler, Distributor, Merchant).Read More

Thinking of using Twitter for marketing? Ask yourself these 5 questions first

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An increasing number of construction companies and professionals involved in the industry are joining Twitter to find out for themselves what the fuss is all about, and hopefully work out how it can benefit themselves or their business for marketing purposes. But what do you do once you’re on it? You set up an account, start following some people/businesses and may even have posted a few links from your website, but …. now what? I’ve seen too many companies launch Twitter profiles, tweet some information for a few months and then disappear off the face of Twitter altogether. Could it be that their was no strategy? Did the marketer within the business have no idea how much time was required to maintain and monitor mentions? Could it be that they didn’t see the value of it? Or did the personnel change and the new person hired to look after the profile had no idea what to do with it? There are so many possible reasons.

In the end it all comes down to planning, forming a social and content strategy, identifying the right metrics to measure your activities and then sticking to it. So, here are 5 questions to ask yourself before you start out on Twitter to ensure you don’t become one of those companies who makes a lot of noise one day but is gone the next.

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Google Plus: what makes it different from other social networking sites?

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Since its release over 3 weeks ago Google plus has seen tremendous growth, with nearly over 20 million users already. People who are even remotely interested in search, social media and marketing have probably been spending a lot of time figuring out how best to use this new platform. This growth will probably continue once Google+ becomes available to everyone (it’s still in beta) and Google starts marketing the social network through its other widely used, and trusted, channels such as YouTube and Blogger.

Below is a graph to illustrate the tremendous growth of the platform compared to Twitter and Facebook. Yes, we could say the growth of Google+ can also be attributed to the fact that it was largely promoted and shared through these other 2 platforms which could have contributed to it’s rapid adoption but it’s still a massive difference.

Source: http://www.zurmat.com/2011/07/22/google-plus-growth-vs-other-social-networks/

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Are Google Plus Circles teaching us Marketers a thing or two about segmentation?

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I’ve been using Google Plus for a couple of weeks now and still yet to really find a way of using it for something that isn’t just a duplication of my Twitter and Facebook efforts. I’m sure I will find something new it’s just a matter of time. However, what I have found very interesting to use is the use of the Google Circles.

Google Circles allows users to group people based on certain interests and then share information or content specifically to each segment or Google Circle. For example, I have a Google Circle called ‘Industry People’ and another called ‘Industry Marketers’ and another called ‘Web Analytics People I have met’. Each Circle contains a group of people who fall into one or two of those buckets and I can then separate them out based on interest or area of expertise. Segmentation. You may decide to keep ‘Friends’ separate to ‘Work Friends’ or ‘Architects – Customers’ separate to ‘Architects – Prospects’ and create circles for each and then put the relevant people into each one. This allows you to send or share information and messages based on their interests or needs. I can now share information on Web Analytics with just the people within my ‘Industry Marketers’ circle and not with ‘Industry People’ who have no interest in marketing measurement as they are people who are talking about procurement and supply chain issues.Read More