How Construction Marketing has Changed in 20 Years
Understanding construction
Twenty years ago, in June 1999 I started Competitive Advantage when I took on my first consultancy role working with Pirelli Cables, now Prysmian Cables, and still a client. Little did I realise at that time that 20 years later we would have a turnover in excess of quarter of a million and be providing regular work, directly or indirectly, for ten people.
As we hit our 20th year I thought it would be interesting to look at what has changed and what has not changed on the marketing landscape.
How it has changed
Probably the greatest change is our digital society. Back in 1999, although it had been around for almost 5 years, email was still in its infancy and we were still learning how to use it effectively. The Royal Mail was our principal means of communication, with the majority of documents in hard copy format. Our early editions of the Competitive Advantage newsletter were hard-copy and required a significant investment not to mention a lead time of weeks to prepare, with envelope stuffing a family activity!
There was no high-speed broadband, and most people working from home would connect to the internet via very slow dial-up connections.
Although websites had been around for a few years, they were expensive to produce and required specialist programmers to make changes. As we entered the new millennium the first DIY websites were just starting to become available. But websites were used as an online brochure, it was only as the search engine developed that they became more visible and started to include technical information and useful downloads.
Amazon had started in 1994 and was introducing us to a new way of shopping, for books at least. In construction, Product Directories were major tomes, the Barbour Directory was two or three inches (5 to 7 cm for you millennials) thick and the RIBA Product Directory came in three volumes. They took months to prepare and must have been very expensive to distribute.
Even by 2008, when we conducted our predecessor to the Construction Media Index research, only 14% of architects used online product directories. Although by then, the research tells us, all of them did have an internet connection.
Communications were completely different. We did not have communications agencies, but Ad agencies (who earned their fees from the adverts they placed) and PR companies who wrote articles and submitted them to journals. The journals then tried to earn some income by charging for colour separations. Journals were the principal means of informing decision makers, being delivered by post, sometimes taking many weeks to work their way around the circulation list in the office.
The development of social media led to a step-change in the way companies could reach out and engage with their customers. The arrival of LinkedIn in 2002, followed by Twitter and Facebook in 2006 started the change, enabled by the first iPhone in June 2007 which heralded the start of smartphones and mobile communication. With these developments came online editions of journals and blog posts, making it easier for building product manufacturers to engage with decision makers and setting a whole series of financial challenges for the journals who are still working to refine their income models having lost so much advertising revenue.
Email has replaced direct mail as the principal method of communication (although I read that DM is making a comeback). Yes GDPR means that we have to be careful who and how we make contact, but it has never been an effective policy to bombard people with information they don’t want to receive. Marketing automation software should have led to a much more focused approach in this respect, but it seems that in many cases it has just enabled large volumes of badly thought through communication to be issued automatically, content which most people don’t want.
In the UK, the principal construction industry exhibition was Interbuild, with companies spending significant portions of their budgets to be there. Over time it tried to re-invent itself but could not survive. By 2005 there was a growing interest in sustainability with Ecobuild launched as a niche event. This in turn grew into one of the major exhibitions and is now going through a process of reinvention as Futurebuild.
Another change was in the way that companies approached sustainability. Prior to Ecobuild companies re-use waste material to keep down costs but kept it quiet, not wanting specifiers to think they were getting anything but pristine products. Then it became popular to recycle material and suddenly companies became green overnight by admitting to recycling.
Back in 1999 CPD for specifiers had been around for just 2 or 3 years and was the latest tool for companies to engage with architects and engineers. Today it is still important, but there are a lot of providers making it a very competitive market. Unfortunately, some of the seminars look as if they are still the original versions written 20 years ago. This is just not good enough and companies need to up their game.
Another tool which has arrived in recent years, but I think has still to evolve its role in construction, is the App. It will be interesting to see which construction specific Apps are being adopted when we conduct the 2019 edition of the Construction Media Index.
I’m also pleased to see the growth of the Construction Marketing Awards since their introduction in 2001 as a means of encouraging and sharing marketing best practice in our industry. There have been some really impressive entries in recent years.
How it has not changed:
Sadly, there are some aspects of the industry that have not changed. Back in 1999 a major challenge for a premium manufacturer was to prevent substitution by sub-contractors with a lower cost product. This is still a big problem today, and the Hackitt review highlights many issues that have been around since I first started work as a marketing assistant forty years ago. Despite the best efforts of the industry, things will probably not change significantly while decisions are based on lowest cost and not best value.
But to finish on a marketing theme, one aspect that has not changed are the basic principals of good marketing. Conduct research to understand your markets and decision makers, focus on delivering value and ensure your communications have quality content your customers will be pleased to receive.
Chris Ashworth is founder and Managing Director of Competitive Advantage Consultancy Limited. He has served on the UK government’s Green Construction Board Promotional Working Group, has been a member of the Construction Products Association external affairs committee, was Chairman of the BIM4M2 Promotional Working Group and is Vice Chairman of the organising committee of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Construction Industry Group (CIMCIG). June 2019 marks his 40th year working in sales and marketing in the construction sector and 20 years since the founding of Competitive Advantage.
