If you have building materials that you want to have specified, it’s important to raise awareness with a number of constituents – architects (architecture firms), owners, and general contractors, to name just a few.
If marketing to architects is important to your bottom line, we’ve outlined three steps to help improve the performance of your inbound marketing efforts.
#1 Attract Interest in Your Building Products
You can’t create leads or revenue without first generating interest. That’s true in any field, of course, but it’s especially important when selling to architects because they tend to be visual, detail-oriented people. This means you have to be careful about the way you present your products and make your case.
Specifically, you need to tell the story of your offerings and include high-quality photographs, along with detailed descriptions and case studies. In some businesses, you can be more general. When selling to architects, though, you want to be as specific as you possibly can about terms, dimensions, options, and so on, because this is the level of specificity they work with in their daily lives.
In addition, your product descriptions should be clear and concise. You should highlight exactly who your products are for and how it can help them. Does it open up design opportunities, help customers to achieve a budgetary target, or assist them in meeting tough deadlines (as examples)? Be as clear and direct as possible.
#2 Fill Your Sales Funnel
No matter how good your products and presentation are, no one is going to buy from you if they don’t know about your company. That’s why filling the top of your sales funnel usually means attracting visits to a website or landing page.
There are a lot of ways to do this, but when it comes to selling products to architects (and architecture firms) you’ll likely want to focus on placing internet ads, writing detailed blog posts, and using social media to grab their attention. Remember: you are trying to attract people who haven’t yet heard of your company or product, so you have to earn their attention by showing them something of interest. You want to convey the specialized information you developed for your product description and show off the high-quality images you generated. Remember that the goal is consistency. You’re looking to attract a certain kind of buyer and then persuade them to take the next step.
Without the right imagery and product descriptions, your advertising and promotional methods won’t bear fruit. Likewise, you can’t generate online sales without first generating traffic to your web pages. Once you advanced past those first two steps, though, you’re ready to make that work pay off.
#3 Create Conversions
The final step in your architectural building products marketing plan is to create action. That means making it easy for buyers to follow up or contact you.
In some rare situations, this might be as simple as using an e-commerce “buy” button. Most of the time, though, architectural products are complex and costly enough to require a bit more. You might rely on an email link, contact form, or even a series of autoresponders designed to turn interest into action (and eventually revenue). In fact, you might even test several different conversion paths to see which ones are most popular with the architects you target.
Once again, it’s important to note that conversions might be the ultimate goal of your inbound marketing plan, but they won’t come to you in a vacuum. Each of these steps needs to be followed correctly if you want your product to succeed.
Ready to Make a Splash with Inbound Marketing to Architects?
If you are looking for a detailed guide, be sure to check out our more in-depth guide to selling to architects. We’ve created an eBook to help guide you through the process of selling to architects.
