Unlock your marketing strategy potential
Katie Bregazzi, operations director at Balls2 Marketing, talks about the importance of collaboration and identifies some key marketing opportunities for the glazing sector.
When it comes to a successful marketing strategy, embracing innovation, relationship unity and working in partnerships can unlock so much potential.
I believe it was Steve Jobs that said: ‘Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.’ Or as Vanilla Ice more succinctly put it: ‘Stop, collaborate and listen!’
As a relative newcomer to the glazing sector, it was fascinating to see just how much shared knowledge and collaboration was present when I recently attended my first FIT Show – and it’s these cross-cutting themes that should be at the route of any marketing drive.
As an award-winning chartered PR practitioner, and with a career in marketing spanning more than 11 years, my background in construction and home improvement has stood me in good stead with this switch, and I’ve identified several opportunities as I’ve taken my first look through the keyhole into the window industry.
As the sector itself evolves its innovation to offer more and more personalisation options, from hardware and sustainable material decisions to glazing detail and colourways, it’s vital that companies take the same approach in their marketing to drive an authentic base to engage customers.
However, this doesn’t mean ploughing quadruple the budget into the marketing bottom line to hit core audience groups. This is about developing the right marketing strategy, and to do this you need people in the know.
A strategic workshop is the ideal starting point to establish where your audience sits and what they want to know, utilising internal knowledge and advice to set your brand position. Identifying your ‘why’ and undertaking competitor benchmarking is also integral to this process.
Goal setting doesn’t just need to be calculated in figures. Selecting different editorial and marketing missions for each of your target groups, and what channels and MarTech tools you’re going to need to reach them, is a great approach as an audience connectivity strategy.
Now, more than ever, there’s so much opportunity in this sector for one piece of content to work hard across different audiences and missions. There’s no need to produce a higher volume of content, it’s about telling the right story to begin with and getting across what that means to the customer you’re talking to.
The same messaging that a system house has for its fabricators, who in turn has it for its installers, is exactly the level of detail and insight a consumer audience wants to know now. While there will always be the nuances and unique drivers for each group, a content marketing strategy that focuses on the shared story and works it hard across paid, earned, shared and owned channels to build reputation and drive leads, will reap reward and remuneration.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth infinitely more. While this isn’t a new tool for companies to have in their marketing armoury, enhancing video output in 2022 could be huge, particularly given the innovations coming out in this sector.
Utilising the medium of video to bring products to life through unique storytelling also plays to the strengths of audio trends as they continue to dominate how we distribute content. Whether it’s built for TikTok or the next big thing to arrive, short form dynamic content is made for this sector.
The days have passed when a product simply had to look nice, perform well and cost the right amount – the customer experience goes way beyond that now. Consumer ethics dictate that a variety of other concerns need to be addressed – the sustainability of a product, its carbon journey and the staff employment laws you uphold, to name but a few.
Businesses need to provide more than just the standard features, and most do – they’re just not telling that chapter in the story yet and that needs to change quickly. Retention marketing that’s built to educate, instill, and then sell, will work much harder.
PR and communications is a people business and in sourcing any third party assistance to deploy your marketing strategy, it’s vital that you choose the best of the best. Not all PR, communications and digital marketing consultants are equal.
