Trade Marketing Insights

So your building products brand has a Twitter account, and an iPhone app is in the works. Think that’s effective marketing communications to successfully engage Millennials? A new generation is beginning to buy starter homes and tackle home improvement projects, and their attitudes toward advertising and branding are vastly different than other age groups. Millennials – young people ages 16 to about 34 – are sophisticated consumers who are fluent in technology, heavy users of social media, and they can see right through traditional advertising techniques.

Here are a few tips for successfully engaging these young consumers:

Give something back. A study by PR News found that Millennials are 7% more likely to choose a product if the purchase supports a cause than non-Millennials. If your brand supports a cause, especially a cause the brand shares a relevant and authentic connection to, it can be easier to gain the attention and respect of the Millennial generation according to a study by Cone Inc. and AMP.

Cause marketing can also be an excellent loyalty strategy when targeting young consumers: Millennials who feel a deep commitment to a cause can be more likely to develop a “strong personal relationship” with a brand that supports that cause.

Be a smart social butterfly. The importance of having a social media presence for your brand is old news by now, but make sure you’re managing your accounts in a thoughtful way. Social media is first and foremost about interaction, so don’t just broadcast promotional posts and tweets and call it a day. Look at what your target audience is already chatting about and converse, don’t sell.

Millennials want the opportunity to speak to and about your brand. Ask them engaging questions through your social media accounts, and provide space to rate and review products. The younger generation can be turned off by straight marketing pitches, so conversation is key.

Creativity counts. One of the best ways to gain the attention of Millennials is to produce fun, creative social content. A relatively small investment in creating a unique campaign on Facebook or YouTube can result in millions of impressions if the content is appealing to young consumers and they find it to be something that is worth sharing.

This point is particularly key in the building products industry. Prospects need education on the process and the products. Edutainment fits the bill: inspiring confidence and action.

Finally: keep your messaging consistent across all your earned, owned and paid media outreach. Not only will you maximize awareness, you build trust with a generation that has an innate mistrust of marketers.

In the wake of founder Richard Schulze’s sudden departure from Best Buy last week, I shopped there this weekend.

After doing my research online—with the usual frustration that I couldn’t match top reviewed products from CNET within the Best Buy site search—I settled on a new camera that was on sale.  I put it into my shopping cart, intending to buy online and pick-up in store. But then I had a change of heart, and abandoned the shopping cart in favor of the in-store experience, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.  I still tend to kick it old school when shopping for major purchases, thinking that the sales reps will know a lot more than I do.

Wrong.

The sales rep not only didn’t try to upsell me on anything, but he didn’t even know about some of the upsell opportunities I had found through my research.  He followed me around like an eager Labrador puppy, trying to be helpful, as I snapped up accessories that I wanted, but he was ultimately pretty clueless and unable to answer questions.

Then I noticed that the online sale price was lower than the price listed in store. I showed the salesperson where I had bookmarked the sale price on my Android phone.

“Oh, yeah, we’ll match that,” I’m assured.

“Match it? It’s yours. This is your site, Best Buy.”

“Oh, yeah, and I mean we’ll match the online company’s pricing.”

The store was his employer.  The website was practically a foreign entity.

That’s a problem.

While unable to help me find accessories to improve my camera experience, the salesperson was, however,  very well trained in selling the extended warranty.

That’s a problem. (Talk about kicking it old school!)

I got an auto email precisely 24 hours after I had abandoned my original shopping cart, asking if they could help me. Not aware of a transaction made in store. Two separate systems.

That’s a problem.

No follow up from Best Buy to help me use my new technology. No links to videos or other cool helpful content.

In the end, Best Buy got the sale, but it’s probably for the last time, after a good decade of complete customer loyalty.

Next time: Amazon.

For an industry with a generally long purchase cycle and an incredibly complex route-to-market system, we collectively do a really terrible job of nurturing prospects when they raise their hands.  Does this sound like your marketing department?

1. You collect leads at trade shows and mail every one the same generic “information” package after the show. You have no idea if anyone ever closed that sales loop
2.  You have no idea that you get leads from certain publishers related to your advertising and media relations investment.  Or you have no idea who handles them in your department, if anyone.
3. You have no idea why or how many people have registered at your website, nor if anyone has closed the sales loop.  Nonetheless, you feel compelled to send them all the same enewsletter of things you think they should know about you.
4. You supply every lead to channel customers and field offices and they never do anything with them.
5. Your channel customers and field offices say they never do anything with your leads because they’re lame.

Marketers across all industries are stepping up their game to better capitalize on and manage sales leads, according to a survey conducted by marketing automation service provider Eloqua.   Of responding marketing executives across a variety of industries, 88% reported increased their lead analytics activity, with almost three-quarters forming a better understanding of conversion rates.

Two-thirds are digging deeper into the funnel in search of shorter sales cycles and improved sales intelligence.

The biggest hurdle reported—perhaps answering the question in the headline of this article—is a lack of processes.

Yet with the changing the shape and nature of the sales funnel driven by the increase in social media, content marketing and mobile, is it a process you can afford to put off much longer?

What’s a nice girl from the building products industry doing at an e-commerce conference?

Simply put: any phenom that brings together everyone from big boxes to independents in a collective shudder is something I need to better understand.   I’ll be sharing what I learned discovered at eTail 2012 in posts over the next few weeks, but here are the 10 most amazing things I learned:

1. Conversion measurement is getting harder to track.  How do you know if someone scanned your email headline and then went back to your website later to take action?  Or if someone has been a quiet fan of your Facebook page, enjoying conversations from afar enough that when it came time to buy, she went to a showroom and chose your brand?

2. By 2017, CMOs will spend more on tech than CIOs.  (Gartner Group data via a Bain Ventures presenter). Which means marketers better get over their fear of tech PDQ.

3. E-commerce is by no means an easy, low-cost venture compared to traditional retailing. Spending on search and keyword advertising is easily five figures a month for considered purchases such as building products. It’s also at least as labor-intensive as a storefront. A presenter from Vintagetub.com noted that 58% of their sales are by phone.

4. Low engagement on emails—low rates on opens and click thrus—can reduce your email deliverability. If no one ever responds to your emails, Internet service providers (ISPs) are increasingly seeing that as a sign of spam.  Email service providers such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp and Bronto will reject your lists.  Make sure your emails have the right message targeting the right people.  Even unsubscribes are better than apathy.

5. Our industry is not only way behind the curve on managing and converting leads, but also behind the curve in valuing leads. How many brands follow up with trade show leads with any more than a letter and a brochure mailing?  A solid CRM system is the necessary starting point, but even then, what’s the comeback to “our sales reps and/or showrooms never really follow up on the leads?”

6. Email is getting people to Facebook, but Facebook isn’t getting people to opt in for email. And virtually no one is experiencing direct sales from Facebook. Over and over at eTail, presenters said it was a waste to put your product catalog on Facebook.

7. Friends, fans and likes on social media are not great metrics, but they are they are the best we have right now. (See #1)  Still nearly impossible to plot a direct causal link, other than what we’ve known since commerce first began: we buy from people we like.

8. Related: happy people sell product.  The most overlooked sales people are your own employees. “No one ever bought anything from an un-enchanted employee,” said day-three keynoter Guy Kawasaki.

9. Everyone underestimates the time it takes to get things done for online engineering.  Getting two to three major initiatives done per year on your website and customer relationship management is actually a pretty reasonable pace.

10. The slickest CRM and retargeting technology can’t overcome bad copy, cheap images and boring videos. Content rules.

My favorite quote from eTail?  “WTF stands for website, Twitter and Facebook.”

A near perfect metaphor for today’s marketer, IMHO.  Want to learn more? eTail Boston is scheduled for Boston in August.

If you are actively involved in the HVAC business—whether wet heat, forced air or some creative combination of the two—and chose not to attend AHR Expo 2012 in Chicago last month, you owe yourself a heart-felt apology. You really should have made the scene—no excuses, please (if you didn’t, there’s always AHR Expo 2013 in Dallas).

The beleaguered construction market of recent years has taken a terrible toll on everyone’s marketing budget, and trade shows have been a particularly conspicuous target of sharp spending cuts. More and more decision-makers, potential exhibitors and attendees, are opting to hang onto their cash and stay home with scant regret, convinced there is precious little ROI to be gained spending another four or five days living out of a suitcase in Las Vegas, Orlando, or Wherever.

But while it may be a bitter season for most exhibitions, the annual AHR Expo continues to flourish. You’d think the prospect of spending three days in Chicago in mid-January would be reason enough for all interested parties to just say “no,” but you’d be wrong. In fact, this year’s event broke all the records any trade show covets. According to the AHR Expo’s website, the 2012 event saw…

• Record visitor attendance: over 39,000 contractors, engineers, distributors, facility managers, manufacturers, reps and other HVACR professionals.
• Record total attendance: over 58,000 visitors and exhibitor personnel.
• Record exhibit floor: more than 428,000 net square feet of booth space in two halls at McCormick Place.

Much of the credit for this success goes to ASHRAE, its staff and membership for all the hard work that goes into making a successful exposition of this magnitude year after year after year. But I don’t think it’s especially radical to suggest there’s an even larger, more critical reality at play here, given the enthusiastic crowds at the AHR Expo in recent times.

National phenomenon: It comes down to two words: energy efficiency, and the galvanizing impact this movement is having despite the economy, or perhaps because of it. This impact affects not only on the people who attend the Expo, but also—and more importantly—American society as a whole. After all, absent a vibrant market for energy-efficient products, the number of exhibitors and attendees at the AHR Expo would be far fewer, no matter how hard show organizers worked.

Americans continue to regard the green movement in general with a skeptical eye. But when it comes to saving money on their fuel bills, a critical mass of homeowners are “all in.” A recent article by John K. McIlwain in Urban Land, the online publication of the Urban Land Institute, summed up the trend by quoting an unnamed developer to the effect that energy efficiency has become the “new granite countertop.”

“After all, no one asks what the payback period is for a countertop. Just as items that were once added to a new home or condo for an additional price are now standard, so too are energy-efficient equipment and design becoming standard features expected by the buyer or renter.” (Italics mine.)

The makers, designers, specifiers and installers of heating, ventilating and air conditioning equipment understand this happy reality, and its beneficial resonance on their businesses and their careers. That’s why McCormick Place was humming with activity in late January—at least for the first two days of the AHR Expo—and why it will likely be humming again next January when the show moves to Dallas, and then in 2014 when it returns to New York, New York.

It’s also why if energy efficiency is the core rationale for how you earn your daily bread, you just might want to check out the AHR Expo, one of the very few trade shows these days that isn’t struggling to justify its existence.

Iconic Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield retired earlier this year after 25 years with the magazine.  In his final column, he offered a rundown of the best and worst ad campaigns he saw in his career.

Included amongst the “winners” was American Standard’s 1993 “It’s Seen You Naked” ad, which “subtly anthropomorphized” bath fixtures like faucets and tub drains and featured the copy “It’s seen you naked. It’s heard you sing.”

The campaign was the brainchild of advertising executives Tom Gabriel and Mark Razidlo, now at Gabriel, deGrood, Bendt, who worked closely with the then-Marketing Communications Manager at American Standard, Nora DePalma to develop the ad.

Gabriel’s goal with the campaign was to change the way people thought about American Standard and even about their relationships they had with their bathrooms. “Their competitor owned the luxury position, the ‘house on the hill,’” he explained. “We felt there was another way into the minds and hearts of upscale consumers: to demonstrate that American Standard understands the way we really live…specifically the relationship we all have with this one special room in the house. These days, creating shared connections between brands and their consumers takes different forms, but it’s still all about finding that common ground and evoking empathy and understanding.”

At the time, not everyone was entirely on board with the bold campaign. DePalma remembered that “literally everyone from office peers to my parents hated the ad.  But I felt confident in the risk, because I’d seen the research.  I knew what our competitors had to spend on marketing and I knew we couldn’t overcome it; we had to go someplace different as a brand to be accepted in consumers’ minds.”

While DePalma and Gabriel were both right in their feelings about the ad, even they weren’t able to predict just how big of a splash the campaign would make. A few years ago, Gabriel saw Bob Garfield at an ad function and was surprised when the critic told him he thought “It’s Seen You Naked” was the best print ad ever done. “At the time, I thought he was pulling my leg,” Gabriel recalled. It turns out that Garfield was definitely being genuine in this compliment.

In equally good news, our Uponor client now works with GdB Advertising, where Gabriel and Razidlo now work.  All of us at O’Reilly/DePalma are thrilled to have the opportunity to once again collaborate with with our old friends and look forward to doing more great work together.