With content marketing costing 62% less than traditional marketing but generating 3 times as many leads, content marketing is a game changer for businesses worldwide.
But, what does this mean for your building product business, is it relevant for you?
Read on to find out more.
Content marketing is the strategic process of developing, informative and useful content (blogs, videos, CPDs, ebooks etc) which educates prospects and specifiers via your marketing channels to build trust rather than sell.
The latter point is crucial.
Trust isn’t an aimless term thrown around. Trust drives sales. In fact, trust is the most important thing prospects consider when purchasing a product.
Being sold to at the wrong time is the main reason leads get old feet and lose interest. However, many building product brands get this wrong and continue an aggressive sales approach.
Are your email marketing campaigns being flagged as spam? Prospects becoming unresponsive? Low engagement content? Well, now you know why.
Content marketing is essential when trying to reach a technically demanding audience less interested in a bargain and more focused on the high performing nature of your product.
The challenge in reaching this audience is that the industry is saturated with value engineering competitors, so it can be difficult to justify the benefits of your product over that of another when 'price' seemingly is the most important factor.
However, building trust could be a game changer in generating a predictable flow of customers, and reaching this hard to reach audience. After all, customers are willing to pay 22% more if they trust a brand.
Traditional marketing is a term which covers a range of advertising methods such as: Direct mail, advertising, tradeshows, and cold calling. We call these methods outbound marketing.
Traditional marketing can get competitive therefore it can become expensive in comparison to other options such as Construction Inbound Marketing.
The big difference between traditional marketing and content marketing however, is the manor in which your audience is exposed to your content.
Traditional marketing pushes content in front of your audience (think cold calls) while content marketing attracts your specifiers straight to you (think website conversions).
How does it do this?
Consumer behaver has changed. The way people buy and specify now is no longer the same. People no longer want to be advertised to, instead they want to find a solution to their problem whenever and wherever they feel the urge to search for it. In fact, 80% of the buying process is conducted online.
After all, isn’t that why Google exists? A solution to a problem.
If your sales and marketing strategy aren't in line with the behaviour of your audience when they are searching for information on products like yours, they will find it on a competitors website and your competitors will most likely convert.
Content marketing works around the clock for this reason.
Unlike traditional marketing which only works when your audience is exposed to your ad, content marketing is available at your audience’s earliest convenience.
Compelling content which is highly targeted and helpful, will engage prospects consequently promoting them to either interact with your content and convert into a lead, or help build brand authority and thought leadership.
When considering the average person is exposed to over 5,000 adverts everyday, it can be difficult for you to have a substantial effect on your audience. When comparing this to the measly 4 searches the average person conducts daily, there’s no competition. Offering solutions to to a small amount of searches could completely change your business, thus the power of content marketing.
The specifiers journey is a process of actions taken by your typical architect or consultant when they have a design challenge and in understanding it your can better understand how to position content that converts.
The process is made up of 4 quintessential stages:
Understanding your specifiers pain points throughout your specifiers journey will enable you to create highly targeted and effective content which helps your specifier identify you as a solution to their design challenge. Remember 80% of the buyers journey is conducted online, so in offering helpful content where your prospects are looking for them, will help convert them.
Without doubt, content marketing is a powerful tool, however it does has it's drawbacks which you need to be aware of.
It doesn’t produce immediate results – Content marketing is a long term solution to revenue engine challenges, therefore it may take a period of time to see results.
Content marketing can be time consuming – Creating in house content for your audiences queries can be a tedious process, and being a building product manufacturer in a turbulent climate 'free time' can be valuable yet unrealistic commodity, you may want to outsource this responsibility.
ROI – It can be difficult to grasp that elusive ROI figure, however when paired with a dynamic CRM software, like HubSpot you’ll be able to obtain this figure.
For many building product manufacturers maintaining their current system is priority over adopting a new approach, and that’s a risky path to toll when consumer behaviour is changing so rapidly in recent years.
Adopting content marketing has the potential to completely reconstruct your revenue engine, however its best to speak to the right people to see if you have the capacity to execute it to your standards. Effective content marketing demands commitment and buy-in from your entire organisation for you to truly see the value it can bring.
If you’d like any support on how content marketing could help you, don’t hesitate to talk to an expert today.
Insynth Marketing is a leading UK construction marketing agency based in Shifnal in the West Midlands.
They use the latest inbound marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to support building product companies to grow their business by proactively driving sales lead generation activity.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major on construction marketing, we bring together construction marketing strategy, digital strategy, website design, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation and HubSpot CRM implementation to produce successful campaigns and great results for our clients.