Look for the easy wins
Antoniya Stoycheva, digital marketing and communications manager at Aluk, presents her marketing tips for fabricators and installers.
Whenever fabricators or installers ask for advice on marketing, I always start by saying – hire a professional! Whether that’s an in-house marketing manager or an external agency, any investment you make will be better spent.
However, there are plenty of easy wins that anyone tasked with the marketing role can focus on – primarily around websites and social media.
Websites
- Invest in local SEO. Use location-based keywords and ensure there’s consistency in your business across all the online directories where local customers might be actively searching.
- Optimise your ‘Google my Business’ info. Think of this as the first impression you make when you meet someone, so ensure the information is accurate, add some nice, quality images and encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews.
- Enhance/refresh your website regularly – this will help your SEO, and also highlight any problems. Aluk’s marketing support package includes a useful website audit for our customers, which reviews everything from backend and technical issues to page speeds and load times, user experience, content quality and SEO.
- Add a digital/virtual tour of your showroom – even if you haven’t got your own showroom, ask your supplier if they can help. (Aluk customers can add a link to our showroom tour and show the complete Aluk range).
- Run targeted Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. It’s a good way to get more impressions/leads on social and move your website up the Google rankings, but set yourself a firm budget because this can become very expensive, very quickly.
Social
- Be active and don’t neglect any of the platforms where you know your customers might be – from Instagram to LinkedIn. This is where you can improve your brand visibility and recognition at only minimal cost, so if your budget is limited, consider making this your priority. Engage as much as you can with customers and suppliers on social media, and you’ll be surprised just how quickly your own followers increase. Again, Aluk has social media assets available which customers can use for free.
- Consider advertising on Facebook and Instagram – this is cheaper than PPC campaigns on Google and you can target your audience as locally as you like.
Email marketing
This should still be an essential element in any business’ marketing portfolio. It’s affordable, easy to measure and easy to analyse your return on investment.
Try not to sell your product too hard though – that’s an almost guaranteed way to make recipients unsubscribe. Instead, try to sell your brand and the values/strengths of your business. Promote any local initiatives you’re involved in, and it can help to strengthen your reputation and build loyalty amongst your customers.
Remember though, about 54% of all emails are opened on a mobile device so you need to plan for this. Aluk’s marketing support package includes help with design and copywriting for marketing e-shots.
Artificial intelligence
In some respects, AI looks like a gift to marketing teams, but use it wisely! Chat GPT is a very good starting point for generating marketing copy, but it’s completely generic and doesn’t help to communicate what’s unique about your business.
Let Chat GPT take the pressure off when you’ve got a blank page or screen, but always review and edit what it produces to ensure it’s accurate and properly aligned with your brand voice and marketing goals.