Marketing Your Building Product
Marketing your building products may have been going well for years, but as you may have found out the hard way, the same ole traditional ways of marketing are no longer as effective as they once were. Theres been a major shift in marketing that has affected almost every industry and how they interact and advertise to their key audiences. Print marketing has decreased sharply in the last 5 to 7 years, with digital marketing rising steadily. This is the new way forward for marketing building products.
Aim Your Marketing Strategies at Your Key Audience: Specifiers and Consultants
Specifiers and consultants are the most important customers in the construction industry and they are the key audience for building product marketing managers. This means your digital marketing strategies have to be inclusive to them.
Consultants are:
- Architects (most important)
- Quantity and building surveyors
- MEP and building structural engineers
In order to market to specifiers or to market to architects, study the recent trends in these fields. This will help you to target these consultants with information thats relevant to them.
Drop the Traditional Marketing Avenues
Print marketing strategies such as magazine articles, print directories, and product cards were the main methods of marketing building products until the recent boom in digital marketing. The rise of digital marketing signaled the beginning of a more effective marketing era and the inevitable decline in paper marketing. Not only is digital marketing a more effective method of targeting your key audience, but its also more cost efficient.
Now this doesnt mean that print marketing is obsolete, it just isnt used as widely anymore. With that being said, magazines (widely circulated weekly and monthly publications) are still a good way to get your brand out there. This method, along with print directories is still effective in generating short term enquires, just not on a wide scale.
Best Digital Marketing Strategies Digital Content
Before getting into creating a good marketing strategy, you need to have a few points ironed out. They include:
- What image you're trying to project
- What media path your key audience is likely to frequent
- What information appeals to your key audience
Once you have these points established, you can target your content effectively. Effective digital marketing is marketing that not only builds your brand, but also increases your income by hitting the right target audience.
Content needs to be straightforward and relevant to the audience youre marketing your building products to, but when creating this content make sure it:
- States facts
- Considers the beliefs your audience is likely to hold
- Is simple and brief
- Is clearly written
- Is not plagiarized
Content should also utilize SEO. Having a good SEO strategy can boost the likelihood that your website will be seen when a consultant searches a particular phrase or service online.
Dont forget About Social Networking
As part of marketing your building products using digital strategies, dont forget about social media. Social media isnt just a way for people to interact; it is also a way for businesses to interact with customers and a way for businesses to target potential clients. Social media works to generate traffic to a business website. You can also use social media to build your brand by creating shareable posts and images. Businesses are now beginning to use social networking sites such as Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook as part of an effective digital marketing strategy.
