Know your customer
Fiona Lund, managing director of Brouha, discusses how businesses can best harness their marketing resource to face current challenges in a positive and productive way.
Rising interest rates, increasing cost of materials and energy, interruptions in the supply chain, changing consumer behaviour: These are not ideal conditions for any organisation to start 2023 after a challenging couple of years.
Businesses in the UK need to look carefully at their operations in order to protect themselves against this ever-changing economic, political and domestic landscape to future-proof their companies. It is tempting to cut costs to the bone to protect the bottom line, and one of the first budget lines to be sacrificed is often the marketing spend. But is this the right approach?
Understanding the market
Barbour ABI, one of the UK’s leading market intelligence companies in the construction sector, offers hope to businesses operating in the home improvements market.
They report that the top 20% of the UK by income spends around twice as much as the next 20% on home improvements, and around three times as much as the next 20%. The 30-60 age bracket spends the most with the 54-60 age range having the highest level of spend.
Why? Homeowners are evaluating how they use their homes more than ever. Home working has become a trend that’s here to stay, fuelled by the pandemic and increased digitalisation, which in turns has driven demand for home office extensions; fluctuations in house prices mean that homeowners often decide to improve rather than move; families with children need more space.
All this represents diversification opportunity for the traditional door and window business and as such, huge marketing opportunities.
To capitalise on these shifting trends, companies must understand the behaviour of the end consumer and adapt accordingly in order to set clear objectives. If you have no marketing resource in place, an industry-specific agency will be a great asset as they have market knowledge and an understanding of industry behaviours, issues, challenges, and personalities and relationships.
A two-way partnership
Once your agency is on board, having specific, measurable objectives is key for them to understand just what it is you want to achieve.
Your agency can then provide you with the right support to direct your marketing budget intelligently to get ‘bang for your buck’. The communication plan should then be put in place to support those objectives at every turn.
The key ingredient to planning and implementing a successful PR and marketing campaign is communication. If your agency is kept fully informed about what is happening for their customer, good and bad, and what it is they want to achieve, they are in a much better place to deliver what you need when you need it.
Another key point is that any agency needs to know who has what job responsibilities and who their points of contact are. The more your agency is included in sales planning and other relevant meetings, the better they are going to be able to serve your account with the best possible outcomes.
While an agency can provide you with communications plans, advice and guidance, the client/agency relationship determines how successful you will be. Planning, market knowledge and communication underpin any successful campaign.
While conditions are tough and this year will provide its own challenges, there are ways to overcome them with commitment, forward-planning and a bit of bravery.
Use your agency’s experience and knowledge and let them be your go-to team to help drive business forward.