The internet is revolutionizing almost every business aspect, especially marketing and advertising. Websites, e-mails, videos, and social media ads have rendered billboards and newspaper ads almost obsolete in marketing. That's why even the smallest businesses now have some digital marketing strategy like a website, landing pages, or social media campaign to build their brands and reach more potential customers.

Thus, as a building product or material manufacturer, you can't afford to be left behind. Your digital marketing strategy and online visibility determine how Architects, Engineers, and Construction practitioners find you, view your brand, specify your products, and set you apart from other competitors – all these translate into higher sales.

Now let's look at how you can develop a digital marketing strategy for your building product manufacturing businesses and get AEC professionals to specify your products more.

Evaluate Your Existing Online Presence

Having a great website or social media campaign isn't enough to propel your building products business to greater heights. A good online presence or visibility defines your brand's and products' presence to AEC professionals. Online presence determines how many AEC individuals visit your website, which translates into better chances of product specification, thus sales.

Your products ought to be highly visible on most search engines like the Google or Bing to increase the number of visitors to your website or landing pages. By looking at your current status, you can boost your online presence through strategies like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and making your website user-friendly. 

Manufacturers that use a Microsite from CADdetails have seen an increase in awareness, interest and conversions from Organic traffic; for example, manufacturers targeting architects looking for building product drawings can find the manufacturer microsite in the #1 spot on the search result page.

Determine and Set Your Goals

It's important to ask yourself the purpose of setting up the digital marketing strategy. What do you want to achieve? Is it to engage AEC (Architects, Engineers Community) professionals, add your e-mail list, boost your brand awareness, generate more leads, build your reputation, or to boost sales? Remember to clearly define your goals, narrow them down to specific ones and work toward them.

Your goals should be SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Set a Sales Funnel that Reflects Your Online Presence

It's crucial that you align your goals, online presence, and digital strategy to your sales funnel, which defines the journey your potential AEC clientele go through on its way to purchase. To achieve this, you'll need to:

  • Analyze your audience,

  • Know how to capture their attention

  • Make them aware of your products

  • Get them to buy your product, and

  • Work towards retaining them by creating loyalty.

All these depend on your online presence's level and the goal of your campaign. For instance, you'll need to go through all the stages from creating brand awareness to retention if you're starting.

Find Your Audience and Be There

The next step is to know more about your customers. Are you dealing with all AEC professionals, including designers? Get to understand everything about them to know how best to reach them. Every target audience will be different. For instance, an architectural firm you want to deal with might prefer a different approach from a construction firm when seeking inspiration and specifying products. Conduct thorough market research, leveraging your sales funnel strategy as a starting point.

Add to Your Digital Product & Design Library

AEC professionals are always seeking inspiration when specifying building materials. Don't just include sales materials on your website or landing pages without "hands-on" material they can see and use in their projects. These materials can be your past and new projects included in a digital product and design library within the website from which your target audience or customers can get inspiration. Again, by doing so, you'll be boosting your brand awareness and reputation.

At CADdetails, we can help you develop high-quality drawings and files like BIM objects, 3D SketchUp Models, and CAD Drawings to help enrich your website's digital library to better your building products business.

Continuously Track Your Results

Once your digital strategy is up and running, you need to keep track of your progress and results to help make any necessary improvements. There are many digital marketing strategy tracking and analytics tools in the market. But, CADdetails has the ideal analytics tools and services specifically designed for you, the building material manufacturer, or business person. That way, you can access metrics that provide the most in-depth tracking data in the construction industry.

The Bottom Line

An excellent digital marketing strategy will propel and sustain your building material business provided you have the right partner to work with. Enhance your digital marketing strategy with CADdetails and improve your awareness and conversions by connecting with more than 600,000 North American architects, engineers and design professionals.

Please don't hesitate to contact us today or book a free demo.