Posts By: Stuart Dinnie

5 ways to turn your website into a resource

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I recently was involved in a LinkedIn discussion about the value of a website and how much budget should be allocated to a redesign. I asked what the objective of the website was and to which I got the reply ‘no objectives, it’s just a shop window to our business’. My answer was ‘then spend £0’.

A website for any building product manufacturer should never be considered as a shop window. This is the old 1990’s way of thinking about websites, the web has moved on since then and so should you if you still use this phrase. Read More

How to make Ecobuild pay for Building Product Manufacturers.

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Ecobuild - Excell

Spud the Dulux dog – An exhibitor who doesn’t have a follow up process…

It’s Ecobuild time again for all us construction marketing folks.

 And for the sake of this post I will assume at this late stage, everyone exhibiting and visiting has a rock solid set of objectives and goals for this years Ecobuild.

From my own experience, most building product manufacturers will typically have three, now four (updated Nov 2013 and again in Feb 2015) key drivers for exhibiting. In no particular order:

The months leading up to any large exhibition are generally more about project management than marketing.Read More

What building product manufacturers need to know about BIM

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stephen-hamilWe kindly asked Stephen Hamil, Director of Design and Innovation at NBS/RIBA Insight to answer some questions which we had regarding BIM and getting started.

We’ve had lots of conversations with clients and prospects over the past 12 months and many are in the ‘wait and see’ boat and then there are some who are doing the hard work now to maybe reap the rewards later on when everyone will be playing catchup. Following on from our infographic on BIM Survey 2012 I thought it’d be good to get a quick low down on what manufacturers need to know about BIM and where to get started.

PC – If there was one message to manufacturers with respect to their BIM strategy what would it be?Read More

How to Select A Specialist Digital Marketing Agency The Right Way

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There is something about the way the construction industry buys marketing services and the way some ‘full service’ or traditional agencies sell their services that has an ever-decreasing-circles feel about it.

Einstein is often credited to have said that the definition of insanity is; Doing the same thing and expecting different results.

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Are people searching the web to find out more about the Green Deal?

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Many product manufacturers who will be involved in the Green Deal scheme will probably be ramping up their marketing activity to gain some attraction from all the talk about Green Deal.

One of the things which has interested me over the last 12 months is whether or not the interest levels in the Green Deal is growing (are people googling ‘green deal’) as awareness increases (or not as we found out recently) or if it’s flatlined throughout the last 12 months.Read More

Using Google Analytics to tell you which Architects and Contractors have used your website

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If you are a product manufacturer then you’ll be targeting Architects and Contractors in the main and be marketing to them through a variety of campaigns and channels.

What I like to do for clients is to show them which specific Architects and Contractors they have increased awareness, engagement or even goals (registrations, downloads, sign ups, enquiries etc) by using Google Analytics:Read More

Does your on-site search help Specifiers find what they want?

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Google Analyics have just produced a very entertaining video to show what Google Analytics is like in real life.

The video is aimed at e-commerce businesses but there is no reason why this video also contains a message for us marketers in the construction specification market. Can the specifiers who visit  your website find what they want? What are they searching for when they hit your site?Read More