Following on from our recent blog post ‘building strong brands: essential for construction companies’, discussing what a brand is, what makes a strong brand and why branding is important even in the construction industry, some research has been published re-confirming this need for brand building.
Survey says….
We came across this article in Building Products Magazine today, who published some interesting findings from a survey conducted by Arch-Vision (research hasn’t been published on their website yet). It revealed that UK architects list Trespa and Kingspan as the two strongest building material product brands. The research is conducted quarterly and includes the opinions of over 1200 architects across Europe. They were asked to mention two brands they thought were the strongest in building materials such as concrete, bricks, aluminium systems, roofing material, construction floors amongst others. In the UK, the top 5 companies mentioned were Kingspan (40%), Trespa (15%), VELUX (8%), Schüco (7%) and Otis (6%).
Do your brand values and mission statements match what your customers say?
Other aspects measured were brand preferences based on different criteria. UK architects considered the above brands to be the strongest because of ‘good quality’ (56%), ‘reliability’ (49%), ‘good pricing’ (35%) and ‘sustainablity’ (26%). This information is very useful for marketers working with construction product manufacturers because it gives them an idea about what Architects and Specifiers are looking for when selecting products and which company to specifiy from. If good quality and reliability are the most important factors, then how are you going to effectively communicate those benefits to others within the supply chain? As the research firm, Arch-Vision states, architects are “not only a reliable indicator for future building volumes, but they are also very influential in how projects are built and which materials are used.“
The big question?
…What makes a brand?
Why have these architects chosen Kingspan and Trespa over all the other available product manufacturing brands? Do more architects engage with these brands than others? Is it because they are reaching out to their target audience through various sales and marketing touch points to collaborate and communicate on an individual basis? Or because they are constantly technically innovating and manufacturing products that serve architects’ needs and developing products which meet the requirements of today’s environmental criteria better than others? Is it because the se companies really do offer a ‘turn-key solution’ and have proven to deliver quality every single time? A big part of branding is building relationships. Have Kingspan and Trespa focused on engaging with architects in order to build communities and thereby develop sustainable relationships that make them their top choice?
What do these results mean for Kingspan and Trespa from a marketing perspective, but more importantly for their competition? How are other product manufacturers going to reach out and engage with architects when they are making their building product decisions?
Is it more about product quality or the people that make the brand?
To find out more about how product manufacturers can use social media to target architects, have a look at our recent CIMCIG presentation ‘Social Media Marketing to Architects.’
