When times are tough in the B2B construction marketplace – as they currently are – marketing doubles in importance. Share of marketing voice in these uncertain times will equal share of market after them.
Many marketing agencies will tell you this. But there’s a catch not many of them are quite so keen to discuss: since, in a downturn, marketing budgets tend to be frozen, your marketing needs to work much harder for the same spend.
But how can that possibly work? How can you increase your marketing productivity without it costing you more?
It’s about giving your marketing the edge by knowing your customers and prospects better than your competitors can.
And at BCM Agency, we do this for many construction industry clients, from flooring manufacturers, to drainage specialists, to sustainable construction consultants - and more - every day (and we were delighted to talk about them to so many visitors to our stand at this year’s Futurebuild event).
Here’s how we do it.
Precision targets, precision content
We could tell you that what makes our approach different is that “it is based around building knowledge-based, segmented relationships with customers, so that you can then engage them with communications that are relevant, timely, and permission-based.” But that would be marketing gobbledegook, and we don’t do that.
So, in plain English, what we do for you is this: we suss out what’s on your customers’ and prospects’ minds, and tailor content to them over time that they welcome because it speaks to these issues at the right point, and arrives through their preferred channels.
The critical piece here is our use of extensive data and deep analysis to find out who your true target audiences are, (bearing in mind a B2B buying decision can often have seven or more individuals involved in it), where they are on the buying timeline, and what content will gain their trust and move them to the next stage on that timeline.
Bang for buck, not spray-and-pray
And make no mistake, when we say “extensive data”, this goes way beyond just the standard characteristics of industry, company type, job title, and so on, and the use of off-the-shelf mailing lists – and it’s absolutely not about the size of the database.
Instead, we focus on understanding your customers’ and prospects’ desires, ambitions, pain points, and values, based on 1-to-1 conversations with them, social media analysis, focus groups, surveys, and other qualitative methods.
It’s a lot of work – so why do we do it? Because a huge part of your customers’ and prospects’ B2B purchase decision process is actually based around emotional – not rational – factors. So by targeting buyers based on emotional as well as rational factors, and communicating with them using content that pushes their emotional buttons, your marketing moves up a gear.
And best of all, you slice out all the useless, scattergun, spray-and-pray, “mud sticks” marketing “activity” along the way – so you end up spending no more than you were before, for far greater customer engagement and conversion.
That’s a seriously good look for you and your department.
But does it really work for the construction sector?
What we do is real, measurable, proven, and trusted (check out just some of our construction sector clients here).
It’s not sorcery or theory. We might call it Cognitive Marketing, but all that really means is marketing done properly - superior segmentation driven by what is actually on the target audience’s mind, not what you guess that might be.
Because one thing’s for sure: talk to the wrong people about the wrong themes, through the wrong channels, at the wrong time, and you’re spending marketing money for nothing.
And that, in today’s construction sector climate, is not going to get your voice heard.
If you’d like us to show you how we can make your B2B marketing more productive for no additional spend , contact us today.