Owen Philipson

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What is Content Marketing for the construction industry?

January 8, 2017 by Owen Leave a Comment

Content Marketing is the idea that any company can act like a publisher or media company, and market their business by publishing articles, video, audio or other content that offers true value to the customer without being a pushy sales message.

Marketing in this way aims to create customers that know, like and trust your company. The benefit this brings is that it can be easier to convert prospects to customers in the first place, they will remain customers for longer, and will spend more with you.

Content Marketing isn’t a new concept – a podcast called ‘This Old Marketing‘ seeks to prove this. The show hosts, Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose, are long-time publishers and marketers that are passionate about how better quality content can create better customers.

Is Content Marketing a buzzword?

The show’s eponymous ‘This Old Marketing’ segment looks at ways that quality content, have been used for decades, in some cases hundreds of years. Examples like in-house magazines can create value for customers and consequently the businesses publishing them.

In one recent show, their This Old Marketing example is an article published in a journal called Office Appliances – The Magazine of Office Equipment, in 1916.

The article, House Organs Lower Distribution Costs, covers a keynote speech by Robert Ramsay, advertising manager at Art Metal Construction Company from a conference called The Associated Advertising Club of the World in St Louis in 1916.

The ‘house organs’ mentioned are in-house and external magazines that were used to build an audience in a way that were not about pushy advertising but were about a business acting as a publisher that delivers useful, valuable content to your customers.

Back then, it was considered just as difficult to prove the value of this type of marketing –

There was lots of data, but no proof.

However, Mr Ramsay had spent one year interviewing 72 different editors of in-house magazines and went on to explain 19 ways that the content marketing can provide value for a business, including 4 mentioned in the podcast:

  1. Direct results – you can check the results by including a return card
  2. Creating good will and confidence with our customers (SW Strauss & Co)
  3. Saving salesmen’s time by paving the way for new products (Johnson & Johnson)
  4. Clinching salesmen’s arguments (Marshall Wells Hardware)

How can Content Marketing be used in the construction industry?

What does this mean in real terms for the construction industry? I have listed a few quick suggestions for different areas of the construction industry below, and hope to cover some specific examples in future blog posts.

Content Marketing for construction product manufacturers

  • Compare and contrast the benefits of your type of product with others
  • Be open about the options and factors that affect the cost of the product
  • Address head-on the potential problems of specifying or installing the product

Content Marketing for Property companies

  • Opinion pieces on the state of different segments of the market
  • Predictions on where opportunity lies in the future
  • Assess the benefits and drawbacks of different ways of financing a project

Content Marketing for main contractors

  • Analysis: how can building new assets reduce maintenance costs for a local council?
  • Cost: surface some of the common design / construction implications that could mean the difference between a £5m build and a £10m build.

Content Marketing for interior design consultants

  • Space planning: share ideas on how a homeowner can make the most of limited floor area
  • Share your knowledge and suggest pallettes of colour to match furniture or furnishing styles
  • How colour theory can improve profitability in retail and hospitality interiors

Content Marketing for landscape design consulants

  • How quality play areas benefit the health and well being of children
  • Why high quality public realm can increase footfall in town retail centres
  • How planting and external garden areas can benefit

Vertical brickwork, Forth Valley College, Stirling

Filed Under: Content marketing Tagged With: construction, content marketing

How ebooks are perfect for construction marketing

May 29, 2016 by Owen 1 Comment

Do you ever find these sorts of enquiries coming in to your business? Those that are time consuming to convert, or where people say your price is too high after they receive a proposal. They may be residential customers, who are not a priority for your company. Or the site they are working on, or the application, might not be suitable for your product.

Creating a detailed ebook can help to solve these problems.
There are two main ways they work for you:

1) to attract people in, so that when they contact you, they are very warm leads
2) to prequalify enquiries, and make the sales process easier and more effective

1) attracting people

Ebooks, when written properly, are an attractive, helful resource for your audience. A good construction marketing ebook should explain the challenges that your specifier or buyer needs to overcome – the information should not solely be centred around your product, but should provide well-researched, useful, actionable advice on many of your ideal customer’s related topics and challenges.

Your prospects download the ebook themselves, after browsing your website or noticing a call to action somewhere else – on your social media channels, for example.

(As the quality and value of your ebook is high, it’s fair to ask for the person’s email address in return for downloading it. This is a great way to add to your opt-in email list.)

Clients will be self-selecting – after reading your material, they’ll know if the products or services are right for them. They’ll already know about your products or services in depth, and may be much closer to making a buying decision, or be in a position to specify. If they contact you after reading, they’ll be a very warm lead – you are creating better quality enquiries and ensuring that the right type of people contact you.

2) prequalifying

Alternatively you can send the ebook to people who email or call you, to pre-qualify your enquiries. This approach is known as ‘assignment selling’ – you give people an assignment to do before taking the enquiry further.

The ebook can be used to explain and answer the common questions the people pose. Do you find a lot of time is spent explaining the same things? Or are there a common set of potential problems that people want to be reassured about? You can answer these once, in depth, and quickly send the information to people before following up for a further meeting. (In addition to, or instead of using ebooks, you can use blog posts, podcasts and videos for assignment selling.)

In construction marketing, ebooks can shorten your sales cycle, reducing the time spent answering questions about your products or services – issues like sitework and preparation, compatibility, methods of installation, potential problems, options and how these affect price. It is worthwhile addressing how your product/service compares to alternatives – if your product is not right for the designer’s application, better to uncover that early. Or, if you aren’t the cheapest manufacturer in your sector, you want to avoid wasting time on people whose primary requirement is price. If the prospect can’t afford you, but want the product/service, they may come back in a year or two when working on a project that does have the budget to accommodate your product. A good ebook is not just a thinly-veiled list of the features and benefits of your products – that’s your brochure!

For example, one of your USPs might be that you can produce products in grade 316 stainless steel, finished so that they are resilient in salty, coastal environments. You could prepare an ebook outlining the broader design considerations for an exposed scheme – including how other materials that you don’t specialise in are affected, such as woods; concrete, render and natural stone. If you aim at landscape architects, you could even look at what types of planting will be resilient in the areas that your product is often specified for.

This is one of the key principles in content marketing – producing content that your audience actively wants to consume because it is helpful to them and doesn’t only push your sales message.

Construction marketing ebooks  – examples and further reading

Best practice example: AC Architects introduction to self build
SIG Design Technology: Green Roof guides (informative article with downloads at the bottom)
The Sales Lion on Assignment Selling
Pauley Creative on white papers
Hubspot on eBooks vs white papers
Hubspot free eBook templates

Filed Under: Construction Content Tagged With: content marketing, ebooks

Content marketing for construction

April 5, 2016 by Owen 1 Comment

What is content marketing?

It’s about building an audience that knows, likes and trusts you. It is said that 80% of the buying decision is made offline, before a customer gets in touch with you. The objective is to publish hepful, valuable, free content that is targeted to your audience’s needs, so that. As a result, you can become a trusted expert in your sector.

Content Marketing is an approach, and a communication philosophy, that is ideally suited to the construction industry.

Helping and educating

Content marketing is about creating content that focuses on your audience first, and addresses their needs by being genuinely helpful.
Become a teacher in your sector, educate them and answer their questions. Over time this boost your reputation in the industry and will generate better quality enquiries for you.

Learn more about content marketing for the construction industry from my other posts on this topic.

Filed Under: Construction Content Tagged With: content marketing

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