What type of Architect are you marketing to? Part 3 of 3

Over the previous two days I’ve introduced you to two types of Architects you could be marketing to. Firstly there is John, the traditionalist, whose preferred communication method is phone and print. Then yesterday you met Geoff, the transitionalist, who uses a ‘mash-up’ of communication channels to obtain information about your company and products and is slowly moving towards a fully paperless office and managing to get online a little more than he did 5 years ago. How will you market to these personas? Do you even know what type of Architects you are marketing to?

Let’s meet our final character.

The Transformationalist: Joanne

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What type of Architect are you marketing to? Part 2 of 3

Yesterday you met John, the 56 year old Architect. He is the traditionalist who loves to read material and his preferred choice of communication channels is print. John is your ideal Architect who hopes you don’t spend more money on mobile apps, online advertising to promote a new product, SEO to get the right product in front of him, microsites for him to visit, blogging with product content and social media to inform of an upcoming event. It just doesn’t appeal to him and nor does it add any value to him. In other words ‘don’t try to get him online’ if you are looking to strengthen your relationship and inform him of company info or product related information.

Let’s meet our second character.

The Transitionalist: Geoff

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What type of Architect are you marketing to? Part 1 of 3

It’s a good question huh? Do you really know what type of Architect or Specifier you are marketing to and how they consume information? I recently read a fantastic blog post written by a marketing and business consultant a few weeks back. He works with printed catalogue mail order companies to help them increase sales and profits in a slow dying sector (dying to online by the way), but most importantly, understanding the changing landscape into how specifiers specify and what type of information they require. This then got me thinking about the types of Architects building product marketers are marketing to. So in this case, how Architects and Specifiers source, consume information and refer business your way. How effective is your marketing strategy at targeting the right Architect in the right way? Are you marketing by channel or type of customer? Is the business adapting to the various types of customers you may have?Read More

Infographic: Results of the national BIM survey 2012

To introduce our latest infographic, we have asked Martin Brown, an improvement advocate and consultant for the built environment at Fairsnape, to give us a bit of an overview on BIM and how he sees it working within the built environment. Many of our readers might already know of Martin, but for those who don’t, he is a co-founder of be2camp, tweets as @fairsnape and blogs at fairsnape.wordpress.com. Martin is also a Constructing Excellence Collaborative Working Champion and regular contributor to the Guardian Sustainability Business, Built Environment Hub.

What is BIM?

There are many definitions of BIM, but unfortunately many are wrapped in technical, project management or design terminology. We can understand and describe BIM as “the total and virtual modelling of all aspects of a project prior to construction, during construction and in use.” A BIM would typically model all data relating to, for eg, design scenarios, costings, build ability and clash detection, scheduling and procurement, sustainability impact, life cycle and facilities management factors as well as in use predictions. Championed by the Government, milestones are set for achieving increasingly mature levels of BIM. The first being level 2 by 2016.

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Measuring Brand Awareness for Construction Product Manufacturers

Using Google Analytics to measure the performance of your website can reveal so many useful insights and give you some really good actionable outcomes. At Pauley Creative, prior to doing any form of online marketing we carry out an extensive website technical audit which includes a full Google Analytics audit & analysis so that we can recommend actions, activities and projects based on data, and data which actually means something and can be benchmarked and measured against. It’s all well and good saying “Visits to our website increased by 130%” but what if I told you that 90% of those visitors stayed on your website between 1 second and 10 seconds? Not so successful now huh?

This is where Advanced Segments in Google Analytics can really help you understand and breakdown those larger numbers into more smaller, more meaningful numbers. Firstly, Google Analytics already comes with some pre-defined advanced segments for you to choose from. These are great but they are basic segments such as ‘search traffic’ which will display all the stats only for those who came to your website from a search engine or ‘mobile visits’ or ‘non-bounce visits’. However, Google Analytics does allow you to create your own segments based on the type of website you have and the information you want to extract from the analytics software.Read More

The SEO benefits of using Pinterest

Last week I wrote about the growth of Pinterest and how it can be used by businesses in the construction industry. The article proved to be very popular so I decided to approach it from another angle and specifically look at the SEO benefits. If you decide to create an account and start using Pinterest, it’s also a good idea to add Pinterest buttons to your website (yes, ANOTHER button). Since social signals are becoming increasingly important for ranking positions, encouraging your audience to pin and share your images/videos can only help increase your online visibility. To add these buttons to your site visit: http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

1. Driving traffic

The main reason Pinterest has been making headlines over the last few weeks is because of the vast amounts of traffic it’s driving. Pinterest can bring new visitors to your site that might not have come across you or your products and services before. At the moment, I don’t think much of that traffic is targeted or quality traffic but this might change as Pinterest comes out of beta and more people from your target audience group sign up. Below you can see that within about a week, Pinterest is already in the top 5 traffic referring sources to our site.

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What is greenwash and why will it affect your construction business?

Post updated in November 2015.

Since this post was first written in 2012, CAPS [the Committee of Advertising Practice] have published new information on ‘Green claims in Advertising‘ which is well worth getting familiar with.

The UK market place is now flooded with products and services shouting about their ‘green’ credentials. There are now over 73% more ‘green’ marketed products in the UK market place today, than at the end of 2009.Read More

Ideas, hints and tips for your Ecobuild 2012 marketing plan

We have taken the Ecobuild award criteria and expanded on some of the points to give you an insight into how we’ll be evaluating use of integrated digital marketing at the show.

Strength and breadth of digital marketing used in the approach to the show

  • How many social/digital channels are being used to promote your presence at the event?
  • Is the messaging consistent and regular?
  • Does your website support your Ecobuild campaign eg. do you have a separate landing page or area that you’re directing specific Ecobuild traffic to?

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How to make the most of your digital marketing at Ecobuild 2012

Finalised your marketing for Ecobuild yet? Have you considered how you’ll maximise your presence at the show, collect qualified business leads, and measure your activities afterwards? We’re aware of just how frantic and fretful the approach to a big show can be, and often planning marketing activities at the show takes a back burner.

Below are a few straightforward ways you can make better use of your digital marketing toolkit at Ecobuild. If you would also like to enter our ‘best use of digital marketing award‘ then tweet @PauleyCreative with the hashtag #digibuild. For more information on the award criteria please see our award blog post.

Don’t worry we’re not going to bamboozle you with weird or wonderful technologies – hopefully these are all mediums you’ll be familiar with, if not engaging in already; we’re simply hoping to make your digital marketing tactics work harder for your business objectives.

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MDi TV Episode 13 – A brief introduction to Pinterest

Welcome to this week’s episode of MDi TV. Ayaan gives a quick overview of Pinterest and describes how this social platform can be used by businesses within the construction industry. Earlier this week we also published a blog post with a case study on how McKay flooring are already using Pinterest, and this episode takes a closer look at their profile once again.

Hope you enjoy the episode and if you have any further questions (or would like an invite to join Pinterest) then please tweet us @PauleyCreative.

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