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Avoiding digital waste PDF Download

Construction marketing in 2011: easier to get connected, yes.
But beware missing shots in front of your ‘goals’

Taking an occasional step back and seeing a bigger picture is never a waste of time. Especially if it can help enhance the value you’ll get from investment in connecting with your markets.

So spare a couple of minutes to look around your world of Building & Construction.

Which are your nominees for Vogue Word of the Year? The words you’ve noticed cropping up most often under various guises and in several contexts.

Significantly, there’s one that would probably figure on many short-lists: sustainable

Today, you’ll see it on websites, in ads and annual reports, on exhibition stands, in sales presentations and literature, and in much of the most recent legislation. And also across the full spectrum of marketing communications for the sector.

Sustainable solutions, policies, performance, designs, resources, commitments, environments, materials sourcing. All of them, in one way or other, pursuing or promising sustainability.

An important word, undoubtedly. But how many different nuances of meaning does it embrace?

The majority touch on environmental issues, of course. About preservation of resources, for example. Or the absence of damaging consequences, lasting or otherwise. For many people, “sustainable” has arguably become a general alternative for “environmentally-friendly”. This inevitably touches on global warming, carbon emissions and facing up to the implications of climate change – man-made or otherwise. Territory that can trigger lively debate about the reality of the threat, and the degree of its consequences.

But there is one interpretation of sustainability – one unifying goal – on which virtually everyone can readily agree:

The principle of reducing and avoiding waste.

It should be a no-brainer for everyone. An objective that’s clearly desirable – commercially, ethically and logically. Because natural resources are precious and finite – or take time to replenish.

The same goes for marketing budgets.

This is where we can point to the benefits of technological progress. We’ve come a long way from that familiar quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

[For the record, the ghosts of (American) John Wanamaker and (British) Lord Leverhulme are still disputing who said it first...]

Thank goodness the old blunderbuss marketing strategies are long gone: saturating a given customer category with communications and hoping that a reasonable number find their mark.

Implicit waste factor? Extremely high – but, hey, that was the way back then.

Even when targeting precision improved, the time-lag between despatch and receipt of responses remained a fact of marcoms life, not just one of its interactive options. More of the right people were being found, informed and their interest aroused. But would that interest be sustainable? [There’s that word again...]

Would interest last long enough to be acted on? How many good intentions would be wasted, falling victim to the frailties of human nature and the “I’ll-do-it-later” syndrome? Let’s assume these newly-motivated prospects did use their reply-paid cards right away. Even so, none of those leads could be followed up until they’d completed the postal journey. Time taken, time passing – and the risk of interest losing some of its heat and momentum.

But we don’t have to put up with that any longer because technology has marched on. Today we can have digital immediacy, including personalised one-to-one communications via your target customer’s email inbox.

Now we can deliver precisely targeted messaging, with the facility for your targets to respond instantly via online links rather than via the outgoing post-tray. We have the chance to engage customer interest and make their consequent response action easy.

Implicit waste factor? Minimal....or, at least, it should be.

But ‘waste hazards’ remain, even now you are within digital ‘touching distance’ of prospective customers.

Once you’ve validated and optimised your target lists, sending emails to the right people may seem ‘easy’ because it appears all you really need is message, e-address and the “send” button. As they say on Top Gear, “how hard can it be?” given that emailing is part of everyday life for most of us these days.

But consider this: while your message is one-to-one, it will nonetheless be fighting for attention in the destination inbox among a crowd of others. Many of these are likely to be among the 200 billion spam emails sent daily.

Even if the destination address spam filter is hyper-efficient, and gets rid of the waste-of-time rubbish, there’s still no guarantee that the recipient will get your message. Why? Because you firstly have to get them to open your email. The subject line is critical.

Get that wrong, and the opportunity to communicate will probably be over. So time and skill devoted to getting the subject line right – and avoiding the common pitfalls – is one essential to avoiding digital waste.

Technology may have made communications faster, but this progress has a flip-side: email browsers have much shorter attention spans.

It means your digital communication has little more than a micro-second to register its relevance for the reader among the crowd of other emails, and so earn its ‘open-me’ status.

But that’s only one stage in the home straight to connecting with your target audience. Once email opening is achieved, there are two further pivotal needs to ensuring value from this communications effort.

The next essential is to persuade the recipient that it’s worth devoting the time to reading your e-message. What they see, or read, must hook them in and hold them – or you’ll have lost them. Typically, there’s less than a minute to retain their attention.

Now comes the final shot at your goal of scoring a positive response: providing the right links to enable and encourage their action in response. It’s the first two links in the message that are most likely to get the click-through that completes the connection.

It’s all part of ensuring that you don’t miss opportunities within reach of your communication targets. After all, your marketing investment is always another sustainable goal. It would be a pity to waste it.

Digital content – time to get serious

It can never be said too often: ‘content is king’ for business websites. They only succeed if they offer site visitors fresh and original material.

So content strategy needs to be nailed down, and fully committed to. Fundamental questions need to be asked – and answered: Who do you want to reach out to? Why they should listen to you? And what you want to achieve as a result.

A content strategy gives focus and a clear objective. When everyone in the business understands it, as well those producing the digital content, there’s little chance of any embarrassing or ‘off-brand’ material getting through.

Patience is needed. Instant results are rare. Eventually, you’ll know if the strategy is working and, if not, it can be refined. This isn’t failure – it’s learning. More is risked by doing nothing at all.

Getting productive

The thought of having to produce engaging content on an ongoing basis can seem daunting. So it’s best to start gradually and let the momentum build up.

Your company has a wealth of resources to tap into for content. Those people with specialist knowledge and experience may not be accomplished writers – but they can provide valuable raw material for a copywriter and designer to shape into compelling content.

Start socialising

An important consideration is how to format and deliver all the great content that can be generated. At first, it might just mean adding a few extra pages to your existing website. But in the long term, you really need to ‘think social’.

Social media – including the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – are a relatively recent phenomenon. In 2005, there were no social websites among the internet’s top ten sites. Today, they make up more than half of it.

Setting up a Facebook page, for example, may not be appropriate for your brand or its strategy. But what’s important is to realise how these sites have changed the mindset and expectations of your website visitors. People no longer want you to treat them as passive readers or viewers. Rather, they need to be seen as a community or network of users.

The medium can be the message

The simplest way to address the social media wave is for a blog or a ‘blog-like’ section to be set up on your website.

A blog works much like a diary, with a series of posts ordered by date of publication. The advantage is that the content of a blog is searchable and can be re-arranged by the user according to subject, tagged keywords, author and other variables.

It’s a very straightforward way of publishing and managing your company’s content, without requiring endless modifications to your current website’s architecture. It can be highly flexible too, capable of incorporating all kinds of content. If you choose to, you can allow your blog’s visitors to leave comments under each post, giving the opportunity to build a useful dialogue and relationship.

In conjunction with an email newsletter, you then have a powerful social media programme in place. One that encourages sharing and interaction, with the potential to engage a much larger audience than you’re used to.

Down to the nitty-gritty

At its most basic, content is simply words on a screen. And yes, that’s still a powerful tool, especially if your site takes an interesting editorial position or presents exclusive information. But think how those words might be made even more engaging:

– Images – digital technology means that photos and other imagery have never been easier to create and publish. A series of relevant snapshots will improve even the driest article. Many facts and figures are more easily understood in the form of a chart or diagram.

– Video – product demonstrations, case studies, tutorials and more all come vividly to life with the moving image. Many people would rather watch a short clip than simply read the same information. These can be uploaded to your own website and/or to YouTube.

– Podcasts – perhaps your target audience is routinely out and about – trade end-users on site or working through their daily job call agenda, for example. A downloadable audio file featuring news and interviews makes your brand portable and memorable.

– Micro-blogging – Twitter allows you to talk directly to people in quick and easily digestible chunks. These can point your company’s ‘followers’ towards more in-depth information that you’ve published elsewhere.

It’s about standing out

So there are numerous possibilities for creating digital content. And while it takes patience and determination to make it work, it’s an investment that can pay handsome returns in brand recognition and new business.

The ultimate aim is for your company to stand out from your competitors and to show that yours is the one that offers added value.

Increasingly, in every sphere of business, your digital identity is the main point of contact with customers – on a global scale.

So it makes sense to ensure that your digital content, strategy and execution is handled properly. After all, the world is watching.

Reaching trade end-users

Trade end-users are specialists – demanding specialist communications

Getting through to trade end-users is a specialist task, but it is not simply a job for a sector specialist. Rather, it is a job for an integrated grouping of communications experts in different disciplines. Knowing the construction sector, or having a long track record in building products, is undeniably essential – but it is not enough. New and evolving skills are also needed alongside traditional areas of expertise.

It is not simply a question of knowing all about the proverbial tabloid-reading white van man – apart from anything else, most of their vans are not white and increasing numbers of them are women. And, the tabloids are the least cost-efficient way of reaching this audience.

Trade end-users do have one common characteristic: when it comes to products and services, they know what they like and are conservative by nature. This is good news if they like your particular offering; otherwise, your challenge is to persuade them into the Trial-Switch-Loyalty process. You need to understand in detail what their needs are, how these are currently met and, above all, how to engender a desire for change.

With trade end-users being human beings first and professionals second, factual product information will be important, but emotional triggers will invariable be key. Arousing peer empathy, via case studies, may be an option. Playing upon doubts, with ‘horror stories’ of poorly completed projects, may be more appropriate in some sectors. Only once the correct triggers are identifed, can you start to communicate with your audience.

Trade end-users are unlike anyone else and demand highly customised communications. The messaging style is not the same, the content has to be notably different and, above all, communications techniques have to be used in very specific ways. It is only the beginning to know who they are, how they think, what gets their attention and, just as importantly, what turns them off.

Yes, traditional print advertising can still deliver results – in the right places, at the right times, saying the right things. These days, though, the trade end-user has a computer. And, they use it for work-related purposes.

Fully 85 per cent of the UK’s 70,000 plumbers already use their computers for work (source: Professional Heating & Plumbing Installer). There are equally significant statistics concerning how they use their mobile phones. The UK’s 10,000 tilers increasingly use online resources for everything from product sourcing to generating customer quotes. There are at least three online forums regularly used by a growing proportion of the UK’s 40,000 electricians. And so on...

Whichever type of trade end-user you target, you can take nothing for granted. You need to know which web sites they use occasionally, frequently or all the time. You also have to realise that some sites which may look relevant do not receive traffic; site traffic analysis will be essential.

Identifying and prioritising the relevant digital media – because, unless budgets are infinite, they do need to be prioritised - and ensuring a presence, is just the first step. Trade end-users visit sites for different purposes, so messages have to be tailored to suit both the individual media and the reason that each is used. What works on one site may not work on another, even if the same people visit them both. Again, analytics will be key in highlighting the best areas of a site to inhabit, and with what types of messaging.

Some traditional media truths continue to apply in the digital arena. Advertising still carries less credibility than editorial matter. So, public relations is more vital than ever, to feed both print and online editors’ voracious appetites with the right sort of material. Note: creating the ‘right sort of material’ means rather more than simply remembering to include click-through hyperlinks. A book could be written about Search Engine Optimisation in the construction sector, for example.

Marketers know about the importance of recycling content, to make the most of every written resource and to ensure message continuity. When addressing trade end-users with repeated messaging through a variety of channels, timing becomes crucial. Are some days better than others for targeting trade end-users with EDM? Of course. What’s more, there are even good and bad times of day for trying to get their attention.

A trade end-user who receives an email with a scientifically crafted subject line – and subject lines are another book-worthy topic – may ignore it, simply because they think that they have already seen this somewhere else. If the timing is off, they will be right and an opportunity will have been missed. With the right EDM analytics, deployment times can be refined to optimise open rates and click-throughs.

So. The channels have to be used properly – and we have only scratched the surface. We have not mentioned, for example: texting, blogging, social media, spam filter bypass, tweeting and re-tweeting, online forums... Each of these is a specialisation in its own right.

We have also not mentioned distribution channels: the trade counters, the builders’ merchants, the specialists, sometimes even the DIY sheds. Each of these may have a role to play in the communications process, varying according to the purchase decision point for a given product. It may be informative or consultative and could involve anything from point-of-sale display to partnership promotions to co-operative EDM. The channels could be a source of individual customer data and should certainly be a source of general customer feedback. The role of the distributor means that, typically, they will be as important an audience as the trade end-users themselves and require equally thorough understanding.

Once you know everything there is to know about trade end-users and their influencers, you can develop a strategy with confidence in the chosen communications channels. Now, though, you have to consider what to say and how to say it. If the communications channels are the weapons, content is the ammunition. And, that’s another story – a big one.