The building materials industry continues being extremely competitive, so just one mistake in your marketing efforts could cost you some customers. It's all the more reason to delve into a deeper understanding of your customers.
The most important thing you can do is truly know your customers so you don’t become complacent and let things move on autopilot.
It's easy to fall into a trap of thinking you'll automatically attract the right customer base. If you think this is a way to do inbound marketing, it's monumentally off course. Even though inbound campaigns attract people to you rather than you seeking them, it won't work without knowing your customer personalities like the back of your hand.
You may already understand your main customers as contractors and architects. What you may not know is what their specific needs are, what they look for, and what kind of budgets they have.
These are just a few things to consider. Continue reading to find out more on what you should know about your building materials customers to improve your inbound marketing strategy.
Creating Customer Personas
Maybe you've ignored customer personas for years out of thought you'd always find enough customers to survive. You can't assume this in today's overly competitive market. Building material suppliers are ubiquitous around the nation, though you may offer something unique connecting directly to a particular type of customer.
The best way to get started on understanding your customers is to create customer personas. Evidence shows that when B2B companies use customer personas in marketing content, it creates higher click-through rates and makes websites easier to use. B2C typically knows the benefits of creating personas and uses them!
For some, it may feel overwhelming putting personas together. It's not overly challenging to glean existing information on customers through interviews, surveys, analyzing data from your sales team, or using Google Analytics.
Using Social Media to Find Out Information
The possibilities with social media are enormous, and you can find out more than you think by simply finding where your audience spends most of their time. A major mistake in building materials marketing is thinking typical buyers hang out on all social media channels.
Most likely, they spend most of their time on one specific channel over others. Whether you find out it's Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, you'll know a lot about their personalities based on this. What's particularly important is to start conversations there so you bring some loyalty and trust about your expertise.
Proving Knowledge in Social Conversations
We forget that social media is one of the best places (other than face-to-face) to start meaningful discussions. On a place like Twitter, it's easy to do a hashtag search for a topic related to building materials. There, you'll see what people are talking about in your industry.
It's here where you'll be able to start conversations, despite not being a good time for a hard-sell. By merely creating new relationships and proving your expertise, you'll already gain a follower.
Later, they'll automatically see your posted content and discover your knowledge. Since many architects and contracts want educative information fast, they'll find it through you thanks to the conversations you started with them first.
Creating Content That Addresses Pain Points
Maybe you've found out a lot about the personalities of your customers, but do you really understand their pain points? Finding out the latter is the true soul of your audience since your products already help solve construction challenges.
Be sure to fully grasp what these pain points are and incorporate them into your inbound content, especially videos. When visitors to your website they see visual proof of how you solve their issues. Your site will say as much about you as the social conversations you started.
There are so many reasons to discover the layers of your customers. Not only does it give you tremendous insight into marketing, but it also helps with sales and customer service. If you don’t take the time to get to know your customers, you will be doing a disservice to them and your company.
