By connecting with Green Building Design’s (GBDs) audience at an emotional as well as rational level, we helped GBD exceed its sales targets month on month without increasing marketing budget.

Energy prices have soared, so it can’t be hard to sell green and renewable energy design into commercial projects, right? If you’re a smaller but growing Hertfordshire-based SME, looking to win market share from more established players in an already competitive market, it’s challenging.

Legislative pressures and 2030 targets have seen a big push to go green when it comes to building design, but there has been a definite attitude amongst specifiers of needing to do this, rather than wanting to. And with supply chain issues and material costs mounting, green building design has been a bitter pill for many to swallow.

 

The Solution

BCM organised a series of round tables to gain insights from construction industry colleagues to really understand the challenges being faced when it comes to green building specification. Understanding how surveyors, architects and project managers buy, and importantly why, led to a factual, business case-led campaign that saw GBD beat its monthly sales targets every month in 2022.

Sustainability has become an overused term. It no longer pushes the emotional buttons it did and has all but become a hygiene factor – every company boasts green credentials, so how could GBD differentiate? By simply talking sense. Forget the green bling, the pretty pictures. Our research identified specifiers’ need to understand the pound and pence advantages of GBD’s proposition and with payback periods on green energy solutions decreasing three-fold, GBD’s commercial narrative was keenly received; “no nonsense, just sense”.

Identifying opportunities in less saturated market segments, such as datacentres, private hospitals, and historic buildings, enabled GBD to carve a niche position as green building experts UK-wide, capitalising on the company’s existing dilapidations specialism – often a precursor to the award of larger commercial projects.

BCM aligned GBD’s B2B marketing efforts with the strategic goals of the company, listened to prospects so they felt truly understood, and delivered permission-based communications that were relevant, and emotionally engaging to develop knowledge-based, segmented relationships.

 

The Results

Circa 50% of revenue generated by GBD following this campaign was attributable to a segment that BCM’s marketing strategy had enabled the business to target for the first time.

Engagements increased across all channels (LinkedIn up 94%, web traffic up 83%).

This uplift was all achieved in a period of economic downturn, demonstrating the increased marketing productivity BCM’s cognitive approach delivers even when budgets are under pressure.