Sandy Bassi
The UK Construction industry is worth an estimated £110bn in revenue every year, and construction product sales turnover more than £50bn annually. Architects are responsible for the specification and selection of a very large proportion of this expenditure.
So how does this impact your construction marketing strategies and why does Inbound Marketing become the ideal method of adapting to this change?
It is little wonder that Architects are the second most marketed profession in the UK.
If you sell any type of product that is specified by architects, it is critical to the health and future growth of your business to understand how to engage with architects using modern marketing techniques and inbound marketing.
Construction Inbound Marketing: How It Works For Architects
Inbound marketing works to produce content that targets the right people at the right time. This is because the content is produced to be helpful and educational to essentially solve the issues that your audience faces.
Inbound marketing moves away from cold outreach sales and toward helpful, trustworthy and unbiased content. Inbound combines all of your digital marketing efforts into one cohesive strategy that effectively "attracts" possible new specifiers and clients to your building product company.
All of the parts work together to support broad campaigns that are all intended to increase your online visibility, direct traffic to your website, and turn that traffic into leads for sales and paying customers.
These leads are then tracked and monitored using cutting-edge technology and AI when they interact with your brand, giving you the lead intelligence you need to "push" relevant material to architects
How To Get Architects To Specify Your Building Products
The way that specifiers research information today has dramatically changed.
Ten years ago, it was much more likely that an architect would be willing to talk to a salesperson, attend a CPD or visit a trade show to find out about new products. These days, people investigate and weigh their options by opening their browser and typing a question directly into Google.
If you’re not getting your proposition right online, you’re missing out on a significant amount of business. And there is a chance that, if your competitors have taken this onboard, they may develop plans to profit from these shifts in buyer and specifier behaviour at your expense.
Therefore, making sure your digital marketing techniques are sound and effectively implemented is the first step in becoming specified by architects in today's market. Inbound marketing needs to be used throughout your online presence to target architects. Make sure your website, products page, knowledge base, case studies and your CPDs are optimised.
5 Ways to Optimise Your Website For Architects
Your website should be set up to allow specifiers to access information seamlessly. This means an intuitive user experience. If a visitor can't get to the technical information they require in as little as 3-5 clicks, they are likely to navigate elsewhere.
Some key things to consider for your website:
- Clearly demonstrating accreditations. With recent changes in regulation, there's a lot of uncertainty right now. Architects want to be confident in your products, and clearly defined accreditations demonstrate you comply with building codes and regulations.
- Links to specification tools. Provide links if you're registered on any specification sites such as SpecifiedBy or NBS Source. This is a quick way for architects to copy and paste your product info into their specifications.
- Don't just outline your product features. Be wholly transparent about what your product can AND CAN'T do. Your product won't be suitable for everyone, so make that clear on your website.
- Consider tools to help make their research easier. Many building product websites utilise calculators and configurators to provide an enhanced experience.
- Personal Touch. people want to be confident that they are getting one point of contact, every time. So a 'meet the team' with individual contact details is a helpful, yet often overlooked feature of a great Inbound website.
Don’t Forget To Include Case Studies
Case studies aren’t new. Many companies take the time to share case studies on their website to showcase their product or service in action. Create a strategy to improve your efforts around this important marketing element if your brand isn't sharing case studies or isn't sharing them frequently.
Nearly 90% of consumers read product reviews before they make a purchase, which means gathering and publishing social proof is a crucial activity for architects to specify your products/services.
Interrupt quoted thoughts from an architect - "Although we will each utilise your product in our own unique endeavour, it's interesting to see how others have used it. We will feel more comfortable specifying your product in our projects if we understand how and why others have used it to provide a visual impact and great performance.”
So, What Is Not Inbound Marketing?
Whilst this blog has run through how to market to architects the inbound way – it's essential to understand what is not inbound and what is bad marketing. Are you guilty of these cardinal sins?
- A brochure website that doesn’t have detailed technical information
- A website that talks overly about themselves. Your website should speak to your audiences’ problems. It shouldn’t be brand-centric.
- Biased information that isn’t clear on your products’ limitations/inappropriate applications
- A website that has poor imagery. Remember, architects are creative people. They need to see the beauty of what your product can achieve.
- Poor user experience. People should be able to access information in as few clicks as possible.
- Too transactional. Many people will be just browsing and obtaining information. They won’t want to be sold to.
Be unbiased and communicate what your product/service is not good for, what problems it doesn’t solve and when it might actually be a bad fit. This ensures transparency for architects and also means you’re more likely to get positive reviews.
RIBA CPD
RIBA-approved CPDs hold significant weight within the construction/building product space. And they increase specification and awareness amongst the architectural landscape.
Here are the benefits of RIBA CPD:
- Exposure: Each month, thousands of architects will search the RIBA CPD website for a CPD where they can earn the required points.
- Backlink: A backlink to your website will raise your website's domain authority, increasing the likelihood that you will be listed higher than your rivals.
- High-quality perception: Accreditation can be difficult to obtain, but once you have it, your CPD will be seen as being of high quality and authority.
- Additional advantages: These include entry to special events, chances to speak at roadshows, and an expansion of your networking options.
Gaining specification through CPD takes time. There are also no assurances. Instead, it ought to be viewed as a touchpoint that supports your complete inbound marketing strategy, which attempts to assist clients and customers.
Conclusion
Inbound marketing is a change in the way that you engage with architects. Rather than interrupting them when you want to, with cold calls, advertising, exhibitions.
Set out to attract or pull customers towards you by providing them with information and advice to help them solve their problems.
Architects are looking for a few things on your building product website. But it boils down to one key theme: they want to quickly access the information they need at a time that suits them.
They don’t want to fill out forms, make phone calls, or have more inquiries after they begin.
By setting up your website with the architect in mind you make their job easier. If you consistently do this, by providing them with useful accessible information, then when they’re ready to specify it’s your building product website that they’ll turn to.
About Insynth
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.