Craig Hancock: How to Sell What No One Thinks They Need
In this episode of The Build Up Podcast, host Dan, Creative Director at dissident creative agency, is joined by Craig Hancock, a freelance marketer with extensive experience in the construction sector.
We explore the challenges of marketing in construction, from branding and B2B strategy to the unique difficulties of selling services like facilities management and maintenance contracts. Craig shares insights from his work with Ignite Facilities, discussing how personalised marketing and real-world experience can help brands stand out in a competitive market.
The conversation also covers the role of health and safety in marketing, the often-overlooked value of preventative maintenance, and how to engage customers in industries where marketing is traditionally an afterthought.
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Buildup. This is the podcast for marketing
Speaker:in the construction industry. I'm
Speaker:Dan, the creative director at Dissident. We've been working with construction brands for
Speaker:a number of years. It's an exciting and rapidly evolving industry, and
Speaker:that's why we created a podcast dedicated to the weird and wonderful world
Speaker:of construction marketing. I'll be speaking to leading brands, other agencies,
Speaker:creatives, influencers, and startups. This is the
Speaker:resource I wish we had when we first started out in the industry. Thank
Speaker:you for being here and welcome to The Builder. Welcome
Speaker:to another episode of the build up. I'm Dan, the creative director at Dissident. We're
Speaker:a social first creative agency that makes cool, hard
Speaker:hitting content and social media marketing for construction brands.
Speaker:And today I'm joined by Craig Hancock. I don't know why I
Speaker:checked. I don't know why I checked my phone, because I've known you for years. I'm
Speaker:with, I know you, but Craig. Craig. And
Speaker:Craig, you are, you are, I'm alright, so
Speaker:freelance, but you actually do long-term projects with brands and
Speaker:Yeah, so Ignite Facilities. All the main brands, but
Speaker:yeah, helping out with their marketing. So I think it's a great idea to
Speaker:Amazing. I mean, and you've had experience in like construction industry in the past with
Speaker:other brands and stuff like that. So I thought it'd be really, really cool. And we, Key, we've
Speaker:not, I mean, shout out Key. Shout out Key in the new dissident hoodie as
Speaker:well. Check out the piece. Can you tell
Speaker:we only got these on Friday and literally it came in the whole team's
Speaker:all wearing the new Dissident merch. You
Speaker:Thank you. And everyone is wearing it. Yeah, we all look immaculate. Put
Speaker:You watch, one wash and these will be wrecked. But
Speaker:yeah, it's nice to have some creatives on the podcast, which is something I've been talking about for
Speaker:a while, because we get the in-house marketers, we
Speaker:get the agency guys, but it's nice to see
Speaker:some proper creators, because your background is design, right?
Speaker:Yeah, so I've worked for a few different creative agencies,
Speaker:digital agencies, specialising in print and
Speaker:digital, and then took the punt and
Speaker:went at it on my own. But yeah, I think when we first met,
Speaker:I was working for quite a big agency. And we've, yeah, I've just
Speaker:We're good. And so I thought it'd
Speaker:be really nice to kind of get you in from from the kind of more creative perspective, also,
Speaker:again, marketing as a whole, because I remember, I
Speaker:mean, your big thing's brand, right? Like, I've always known you
Speaker:as being like, really, really focused on brand, which is massive in
Speaker:construction. And I don't think brand actually gets enough
Speaker:kind of I don't know, airtime when it comes to
Speaker:the marketers and stuff like that. I think when you think about branding exercises
Speaker:and all that kind of thing, you think of like Surreal or,
Speaker:you know, all these like big brands that like go mad on their creativity
Speaker:and their culture and stuff like that. But branding and positioning is
Speaker:massive in construction. It
Speaker:needs to get more of a, well I'm nerd out about
Speaker:I've got to admit Surreal is one of my favourites. And it's,
Speaker:I think whoever runs their marketing, you would go, that's not going to work. And
Speaker:then it works. And even on LinkedIn, which I
Speaker:think is B2B focused there, their
Speaker:marketing is not B2B focused as we would think of
Speaker:it. If you went to a uni lecture, you would not be taught
Speaker:that. But then it works so well, I think just because it
Speaker:is so out there, it just really... I think a
Speaker:It's just fucking cereal. You know what I mean? You know cereal.
Speaker:They're like a marketer's like kind of like... It's
Speaker:like marketing porn. It's just like a cereal company,
Speaker:It's high protein. Yeah, they got Barry Scott back. Have
Speaker:you brought any cereal, cereal though? No. No, I found
Speaker:that, so I love the marketing and loads of people in our industry
Speaker:love cereal, cereals, marketing. And you go, have you brought any?
Speaker:What's it taste like? No idea. So I
Speaker:Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, my excuse
Speaker:is I don't actually eat cereal at all. At
Speaker:the anytime I will, like if I'm hungover, I'll eat cereal. And
Speaker:that's pretty much it, really. I just like, as a rule, not
Speaker:Again, unless I'm hungover, in which case... So if I listen to this, there's going to be
Speaker:a surreal campaign of, have you had a good drink? Yeah.
Speaker:That's an angle. And Barry Scott behind it going, bang, and your hangover's going
Speaker:slowly. So, background in marketing design,
Speaker:worked with quite a few construction brands. Now you work for, do you want
Speaker:me, I mean, you might as well tell us about Ignite because I think that's going to
Speaker:sort of set the precedent for the rest of the conversation. Give us a little intro
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, for me, obviously I come from agencies and
Speaker:then sort of got on my own, Ignite, sort of one of the biggest clients of
Speaker:mine, and that's who I'm happy to talk about, because they're
Speaker:within the trades industry. I mean, they were founded in 2018, and it's
Speaker:Chris and Rachel who run the company. They've got
Speaker:a background within facilities management, so it started
Speaker:off primarily as sort of like your plumbing, your heating, and then they've
Speaker:now got electrical, And
Speaker:anything like gas, so the gas safe, they've got all the accreditations that you need now.
Speaker:And as well as that, they've just started
Speaker:to do heat pumps. So that's a whole new
Speaker:market, which I think is, especially for me,
Speaker:I love trying to, I love when you can get a marketing campaign is something that is
Speaker:a heavily saturated market. if you scroll on Facebook, if you're on
Speaker:any social media, there's always heat pump grants available. And
Speaker:you get loads of really in your face marketing. So actually I think people
Speaker:really have become desensitized to the heat pump marketing. Whereas
Speaker:actually I'm finding that if you do the sort of personalized approach or
Speaker:actually getting stories of what's happened and how good they are, that's
Speaker:becoming a lot better for us. We're getting more reactions for that one.
Speaker:And the main one for us is Chris, who runs the company, he got a heat pump in his
Speaker:own house. So, A lot of the time,
Speaker:if a customer has something installed or we've done work for a company, you
Speaker:can't then go, how's it going? Is everything okay? Whereas because it's Chris's actual
Speaker:house, can you just get a photo of that when you go home tonight? Yeah. Oh,
Speaker:how's it going? And just, you can bug him for every question. And I think
Speaker:I think, yeah, in any situation where you've got
Speaker:a product that goes out to launch that having any kind of experience in it is
Speaker:ideal rather than just relying on the sort of the sort
Speaker:of the sheet that comes with the product that tells you the features and benefits and
Speaker:all that kind of thing actually having some like real world experience. You
Speaker:know, you mentioned about like, on the on the pre roll
Speaker:about like, you know, how you would kind of set it to sort
Speaker:of standby, almost like standby mode when you get on holiday and having that kind
Speaker:of like, you know, typical experience. Like,
Speaker:if you've got normal radiators and stuff, you always kind of put put the like the radiators down
Speaker:to like, don't freeze mode or whatever. And it's nice to kind
Speaker:of have like specific piece of experience so you
Speaker:can kind of obviously get that feedback and then relay
Speaker:that in some kind of marketing and almost like take more of a personal approach to some extent.
Speaker:That's it, because I know like client testimonials are great, but you
Speaker:can't repeatedly bug clients for it and you get customers that are going to be busy, like
Speaker:clients you'll, you can't, how's it going, you end up bugging them like I
Speaker:don't want to push them away, whereas because it's his company. we
Speaker:can keep bugging him. And yeah, it was exactly that. And it's also the
Speaker:little thing, he came back off holiday when we're
Speaker:going through it, because it tells you how much it costs
Speaker:per day. And then obviously when you turn it back on, it tells you the cost
Speaker:of that. And it was in essence like three times, it was
Speaker:about three times a normal day's usage. So
Speaker:actually, if you got it turned off when it didn't really use anything, we
Speaker:realized that if you're away for three days, turn it off. If you're not
Speaker:away for, if you're away for just like one night or two nights, just leave it running. Just
Speaker:leave it running because they're so efficient, you're not using anything anyway. And
Speaker:it's probably quite similar with traditional conbini boilers and normal boilers. And
Speaker:there's a whole like campaign that I want to do on that because
Speaker:people won't be thinking of it. They'll say, oh right, I'm going on holiday now, or I'm
Speaker:going away tonight, I'm staying in Manchester, I'm staying in Birmingham tonight, right. Turn the boiler
Speaker:off, right, we're going out, everything done, all the plugs off, and then you go out. actually
Speaker:that's not the most cost effective route.
Speaker:Leave it running. And it's these like little hidden gems that
Speaker:Let's push that out there. He almost kind of like positions you as like a trusted,
Speaker:almost like partner. And it's like, you're not just like, hey, get our
Speaker:heat pump and have it installed by us because it's great. It's like, did
Speaker:you know this? You know, it's kind of giving them a little bit, giving them a bit
Speaker:of information that is like useful and these
Speaker:Yeah well I know we were saying earlier on before we
Speaker:started on the b-roll about sort of apprenticeships and with the
Speaker:apprentice that's working there Quite often, if
Speaker:there's a big job going on, you can get hands on help. But if it's just
Speaker:a quick job, go in, do that, he'll just be standing around waiting
Speaker:and just picking up as much as he can. I said, well, actually, I want to know what you're
Speaker:picking up. The key element, and there was one thing that was said the
Speaker:other day, it was when you're doing install, like say a stock tap,
Speaker:stock cock, when you install it, you tie it up all the way, and then you
Speaker:just turn it back half a turn. Which, if
Speaker:you're in the industry, that's standard. Everyone does it. But
Speaker:to us, oh I'd never think of that. I'd tighten up as tight as I can on happy days.
Speaker:But is that stop it like season or something? Yeah, stop it season. But it's
Speaker:something that just comes naturally to them. You're probably never going to be taught that, but
Speaker:when you're in the industry and you're doing it, you're on the tools. It's
Speaker:that little, it's the hidden gems that I love. They're the most, for
Speaker:me, they're the most marketable elements. Stuff that is natural
Speaker:to you, Oh, I always do that. Or something that you
Speaker:think, I always do that and everyone else would find it
Speaker:boring. It's not boring. That's the things that you go, wow, I
Speaker:love that. I want to get that out there. It could be the best piece of equipment
Speaker:going. There's going to be adverts out there for it. There'll be promotional
Speaker:products for it. But the little hidden gems, that's what
Speaker:I think it's that element of like, It's
Speaker:weird, it's like advice from, I don't
Speaker:know, it's hard to describe, it's almost more personal. And
Speaker:if you're positioning yourself as almost like a
Speaker:personable, relatable company
Speaker:that cares, perhaps one that's local, perhaps one that's family-run, it's perfect, perfect
Speaker:I think that's worked well. So the ethos with Ignite is
Speaker:for the emergency call outs, it's a one and a half hour call out from
Speaker:their head office, which is Hanley in Drone and Square. So actually, you
Speaker:are getting that personal service. You will get to know who's coming
Speaker:out to you. It's going to be someone who's worked
Speaker:in the company, they know what they're doing. It can be Chris himself coming
Speaker:out. And if you've got an issue
Speaker:with a boiler, you know, your heating's gone, you're not water, you want someone coming
Speaker:quickly, you'll find a lot of, say, the big blue
Speaker:chip companies out there use a national service. there
Speaker:was a company recently that, it's
Speaker:a financial decision they've made to go with this other company, to
Speaker:go with the National Facilities Maintenance Company. And
Speaker:I think that they've chosen it for purely financial reasoning,
Speaker:because they were probably cheaper, but their call-out time, they've been waiting two
Speaker:months to get their heating sorted, and they're
Speaker:in the car industry. And I'm thinking, How has
Speaker:that been marketed to them? Because the
Speaker:heaters weren't working, so the paint wasn't drying. And
Speaker:without saying names of any companies, you think, they've been waiting for that long.
Speaker:So actually their production times would have been going downhill rapidly. Whereas
Speaker:when the guys came out, fixed it, there you go. And you think, well, why
Speaker:aren't more companies researching into it? They just
Speaker:stick with whoever they've been using. Oh, we always use these guys. We'll stick with
Speaker:them. Why? And I think it's the,
Speaker:we were talking the other day and sort of saying, you know, your
Speaker:insurance, if you stay with your insurer year after year, it's
Speaker:not normally to your, it's not normally on your, on your
Speaker:terms. Whereas actually people shop around. with
Speaker:facilities management, with your trades, people don't seem to
Speaker:shop around once you've got someone to use them. So why
Speaker:not shop around? And I think there's definitely a marketable campaign
Speaker:Take us back to the facilities management then. So like,
Speaker:can you talk us through that as a business model in general, just for people who aren't like perhaps
Speaker:familiar with that. So you've got multiple trades in under one roof going
Speaker:Yeah, services, maintenance, installation. So, you know, you're
Speaker:going back to your core trades, plumbing, electricians,
Speaker:gas. So, and if it's heating, if it's water, if it's
Speaker:electrical, it's covered. That's facilities management. And
Speaker:you'll generally find in big businesses, there's sort of one person who's in
Speaker:charge of that, especially with Ignite. You're
Speaker:going to have, so it's the Stratland one call one solution. So
Speaker:actually, if you've got an issue, ring up, it'll be sorted. And
Speaker:if it isn't, if it isn't something that say we obviously it was a window repair, there's
Speaker:someone that we know we can, so it's one call one solution for whatever you need
Speaker:and you can be helped with. And it helps that, so actually shopping around,
Speaker:you can be using us, we'll be able to tell you who we can use and who to,
Speaker:because if there was a company that's going to be, you know, somewhere up north, we've
Speaker:helped a lot of companies all over, but you wouldn't want, if you need a quick repair,
Speaker:you're going to be wanting someone who can come and help you quickly. So that's, yeah,
Speaker:it's sort of the ethos and it is the family atmosphere because it's family company. a
Speaker:family run, and I think you get that ethos from
Speaker:within, which I think makes it more fun to market. Like
Speaker:going to exhibitions, you get to know, you go, yeah, no, this is the Boston,
Speaker:yeah, it's the family, there you go. Yeah, it just makes it, I
Speaker:And especially because, so facilities management in a local area, it
Speaker:kind of makes sense. It's got to be like, It's
Speaker:got to be nice to be able to have a market that's
Speaker:within a catchment area as well. Like just from a logistics
Speaker:point of view, being like anytime you're doing any sort of digital stuff, any
Speaker:Keep the budget tight. And with it being stoke as well, things like
Speaker:you're going to be looking at pottery industry. If
Speaker:a kiln goes down, yeah well then they stop production they
Speaker:just sit around there getting annoyed yeah so actually
Speaker:we'll go out there and get it fixed immediately and it's knowing
Speaker:the pains of that there might be a pottery company somewhere else
Speaker:but Stoke we're predominantly known for that so that's one of these industries that
Speaker:you want to be getting into because it's just it's
Speaker:it's a great industry to market to but also we know it because it's
Speaker:a Stoke one it's the catchment area so yeah it's
Speaker:And B2B as well. So your
Speaker:marketing material and your sales is going straight to another business, right?
Speaker:Okay. We'll do heat pumps for residential, so
Speaker:the domestic side of it. Okay. And boiler installs. Okay. But
Speaker:then a lot of it you do find, especially like in the shopping around, if
Speaker:there's just, if it's someone who's got a really small job, they
Speaker:probably don't want to use a facilities management company. They're just, we
Speaker:are primarily aimed at businesses. It's mostly B2B.
Speaker:The B2C side of things is when it comes to heat pumps and
Speaker:boiler installs. But yeah, mainly B2B. You want to get into
Speaker:those businesses that you know you can help out, you know they need the
Speaker:help. And especially when, you know, if a lot of companies say,
Speaker:you know, you've got an electrical issue, and then you
Speaker:have a plumbing issue at the same time well that's all that's two companies right so and then
Speaker:the facilities manager within the company is trying to ring one guy and relate the
Speaker:other and get him come in don't need to do that, just ring us and we'll
Speaker:It's the agency model essentially, isn't it? Yeah. Although more
Speaker:and more agencies are becoming specialists now, as
Speaker:Well, I know you hate the full service agency.
Speaker:The more, the longer I'm, that
Speaker:we're a non-full service agency, the more I keep adding stuff.
Speaker:So I kind of understand. There's like, yeah, I've
Speaker:never, there's an element of like the full service agency. So
Speaker:there's, I'll get off my sort of like, what's
Speaker:it? I didn't have a lot of sleep last night. What's the soapbox? Is
Speaker:it the full service agencies? Full
Speaker:service agencies are great. What I And
Speaker:I think they definitely have their place. And some of them will do everything amazingly
Speaker:well. But I think the more services that you bring on, the
Speaker:less specialist you can be, the less resource you can put into that. So
Speaker:if you, for instance, if you've got, let's
Speaker:say, web design as part of your service offering, but
Speaker:you don't do a lot of websites. You've got one guy, one girl doing websites. And
Speaker:then a company comes to you, they go, hey, we don't want all of this stuff. And
Speaker:you're really good at social media marketing, you're really good at content. And
Speaker:you do websites, but you've only got one person, and they're kind of limited on resource. And
Speaker:the client wants that you're probably not the best fit
Speaker:to go and do that website compared to an agency that specializes in
Speaker:That's you'll find I think you do find as well when you've got that
Speaker:there'll probably one person there that's amazing with WordPress and
Speaker:then you get a company coming and saying I want this this this that I want to integrate and
Speaker:I want our e-commerce in the back end you know well that's probably a bespoke build
Speaker:then and then that's going from WordPress to a complete
Speaker:coded bespoke website for you. Totally
Speaker:So there's an element of that. But I do think full service agencies are
Speaker:still valuable. But there's certain elements where if you have a
Speaker:situation where, look, I just need everything looking after. And
Speaker:not one specific thing of these needs to have serious
Speaker:priority over others. Full service agency is great. But
Speaker:if you go to a full service agency for social media marketing, and
Speaker:Because you're going to an agency that doesn't just specialise in that.
Speaker:Because I think, coming from the agency world, I always find it, with
Speaker:facilities management, people go, oh so they do plumbing and
Speaker:electrical. Well yeah, but the amount of accreditations that you have to
Speaker:have, whereas in a full-service agency you don't really have to be accredited.
Speaker:Anyone can start doing social really, they can just start to
Speaker:do it. When you're in the actual industry for trades, all
Speaker:And it's not just that, the amount of training they have to do. Because we're
Speaker:going, oh yeah, where's one of the lads that will be on a training course? Oh, he's on another training course.
Speaker:And it's just, and I think it's unreal how accredited they
Speaker:have to be. The health and safety side of things, and comparing that
Speaker:to like a full service, no, full digital marketing agency, anyone
Speaker:You could download a free WordPress template, just edit it and tweak it.
Speaker:Because you've got the eye for design as well. And with a team, you could
Speaker:get it started. But if someone said, I want a full bespoke build website.
Speaker:I mean, 50 grand's worth of website. That's a big job, that. I
Speaker:think the two worlds are so
Speaker:similar, but so different because you don't have to be accredited to
Speaker:Well, a lot of the time as well, you know, with the agencies that kind of get, most
Speaker:agencies don't have production in house. And if they do, they're usually pretty
Speaker:shocking. And I don't mind saying that full service agencies, sorry,
Speaker:that this production agencies that are doing incredible work. But most
Speaker:of the time, a videographer, a photographer, a graphic designer, maybe not a graphic designer,
Speaker:but those kinds of like, the content side of media,
Speaker:they're way too expensive to just have sitting around. And if you're not, if you're
Speaker:not literally dishing out work to them constantly, they're not gonna be making making
Speaker:their money's worth. So a lot
Speaker:of the time they won't have them in-house. So we get contacted
Speaker:by other agencies fairly regularly to quote on shoots. And
Speaker:we usually lose out on price because agencies looking
Speaker:at other agencies, you know, they might have told the
Speaker:client roughly what it's going to be, but they kind of based that on like one guy with
Speaker:a gimbal's worth of production as opposed to a full production. Um,
Speaker:so, um, but then when I saw it, but I keep in touch, I'm like,
Speaker:yeah, that's how that's how the world works. And,
Speaker:um, and then I see the actual film that this whoever's done
Speaker:it, I'm like, I'm like, no
Speaker:one took this film seriously. I'm like, This
Speaker:might have been part of a huge campaign where the design's amazing, the
Speaker:website's great, the PR's amazing, the film's toss. And
Speaker:I'm like, how has no one put any priority on this film?
Speaker:And it's because they've just hide it out to a freelancer that's
Speaker:done it for a grand or 800 quid or however much, because
Speaker:neither the agency or the client took it seriously. I don't know where I'm going with this rant.
Speaker:Give us some money, basically. Give us all the
Speaker:I suppose it's also the care, and because you know
Speaker:the industry, things like, if someone isn't within the
Speaker:construction trades industry, they wouldn't know. So if I'm doing
Speaker:a shoot or I'm doing anything like that, I'll know that, right, that's a
Speaker:walkway, you can't have a cable on that. Health and safety is
Speaker:paramount. And if you're doing a shoot, you
Speaker:want to make sure that, I mean, obviously everyone always is, but there could be,
Speaker:someone could take a photograph of the guys not actually on the tools and
Speaker:then use that And it looks like they could be on the tools, and
Speaker:they're not wearing the PPE. They're not wearing the safety gear. It's a huge thing,
Speaker:PPE is massive, man. Anytime we're on site, the
Speaker:thing that either any of the, because there's usually about
Speaker:two or three parties involved. So if we're going to build, if we're going to a
Speaker:building site, we've got the guys have got one in London next week with
Speaker:one of our clients. And so they're
Speaker:on a big building site for, I think it's like a care home. Central
Speaker:London, beautiful place. Our client's supplying some
Speaker:of the arch brick support, lintels
Speaker:and stuff like that. So we're going in and shooting all that kind of stuff. Got a
Speaker:videographer and a photographer. And I
Speaker:can already tell like I'm getting seasoned into all the email. So you've got the client, you've
Speaker:got the brickwork contractor, and you've got the main contractor. And there's sometimes there's
Speaker:even like another tier one contractor or a housing builder or
Speaker:whatever. in there and all of them are concerned
Speaker:about what's going to be in the film and if they're going to get screwed because
Speaker:they're just so concerned about like all of the dangerous shit
Speaker:that happens on a building site that you know health and safety to
Speaker:you know they can try their best but they can't police everybody And
Speaker:some of these builders are animals, let's be honest, you know. And
Speaker:we're all the same, like, you know, what I'm
Speaker:doing now with my PPE is silly, it's not actually that valuable. You
Speaker:can have those kinds of thoughts and as soon as the health and safety person isn't looking, you're
Speaker:not going to be wearing the gloves because they're getting in your way, you want to get your job done. But
Speaker:in the film, I mean, the construction industry is like so
Speaker:I think you're going to think it's that as well, because we
Speaker:know it, you've then got to go in and go, you
Speaker:need to put your gloves on. You know they're going to go in, oh fine,
Speaker:but you've got to just force them to do it. And then if they're not actually
Speaker:on the tools or not in the shot, make sure they're not in any
Speaker:video way. And if you've got someone there who's just come in, they
Speaker:can normally do beautiful landscape videography. They've come into construction,
Speaker:the shots are amazing. The cinematography side
Speaker:of it is, wow, you can't use that. No,
Speaker:can't use that can't use that can't use that it's hard it's heartbreaking when
Speaker:you get those films back and they go nope nope nope nope nope because it's and
Speaker:they're literally haven't even looked at the creativity they're just going pp pp pp
Speaker:it's not right i remember i was on a shoot again in central london and
Speaker:um uh anyone any
Speaker:any videographers that and photographers that work in central london will realize
Speaker:how much of a fucking pain it is to go to go and do that kind of stuff like
Speaker:just just being just not being able to park uh
Speaker:is is expensive anyway um and there
Speaker:was a guy there on site and he was like yeah yeah i'm
Speaker:like just because i'm not gonna be wearing gloves you
Speaker:know um whatever happens i'm not wearing gloves i never wear
Speaker:gloves i'm like cool do me a favor don't get in any shots and
Speaker:he was like and turns out he's the main fucking guy he's there
Speaker:he's in every shot going yeah do this and he's and i'm like no
Speaker:i could have really done with you not being like the manager of
Speaker:these guys uh so we we kept rolling on him
Speaker:and yeah the you know the in the end the It
Speaker:wasn't our client. It was, you know, again, one of the steps down. They
Speaker:were like, yeah, you can't use any footage with him. And I'm like, you could
Speaker:have told him not to turn up that day. If you don't know,
Speaker:he's going to be such a nightmare because we were like, everyone's got to wear PPE. And he was the only guy
Speaker:that was just like, respectfully, no. And
Speaker:we were like, cool, you know, he was nice about it. But he just happened
Speaker:to be like the most animated, cool looking guy that seemed to
Speaker:I'm lucky that I've never
Speaker:come up against that. I've been on some like
Speaker:big shoots with multiple guys. And they always seem to
Speaker:understand when you say, If I get your photo and it ends up
Speaker:on social media and you're not wearing the PPE, what are you going to get? All
Speaker:the people will start commenting and having a go at you, and that means a
Speaker:great marketing campaign will flop. You're going to
Speaker:get publicity, but it's bad publicity, and I think that's when it starts to fail, because
Speaker:then they go, oh, if he's not wearing the correct PPE, and everyone then will just focus
Speaker:on that. It doesn't matter, you've just done the best brickwork, you know,
Speaker:you just put the best piping installed to a boiler, it looks
Speaker:of that. No one cares because he wasn't wearing, oh he hadn't got
Speaker:his safety glasses on. And they'll pick up on that and I
Speaker:have always found that the guys on site, if I hardcore
Speaker:explain to them that, they have been quite
Speaker:happy to go, all right then. And if anyone asks you, you always wear
Speaker:it, yeah cool. But yeah, if someone doesn't know that, they won't
Speaker:be looking through it. And you know what, blue roll, I don't know about you, blue roll ends
Speaker:up in shots. move that, move the blue roll because it doesn't
Speaker:look, we all know it's used, everyone knows it, every trade will
Speaker:have blue roll or some big wipes. Big wipes,
Speaker:yeah. They are used but unless it's like a professional shot,
Speaker:blue roll just, it always looks a bit messy, you want to be moving out the way, it's
Speaker:not a nice sleek box like Vicar Wipes, you'll be moving it out the way
Speaker:and if someone coming in just getting like that cinematic, you
Speaker:They don't want to think about that. It's a scratchy, half-soaked roll
Speaker:Or just a dirty rag. We all
Speaker:know they're used. You can't do a job without using rags. You
Speaker:just don't want them in the shots. Even in b-roll shots, you don't
Speaker:want it in there. You want it at least looking professional, sleek, and nice and
Speaker:The thing that I've always found about the construction industry is it's actually quite
Speaker:catty when it comes to like people getting on
Speaker:social media and being keyboard warriors. I think it's one of the worst industries
Speaker:that I've ever worked in for just pointing out stuff that's
Speaker:got no relevance to them at all. They're just, you know, if
Speaker:they see something, they go, oh, yeah, I wouldn't be doing that. You should be doing this kind of
Speaker:thing. And oh, that bloke's being dead dangerous or whatever. I'm
Speaker:like, like even even if I saw like
Speaker:something in my industry of someone doing a shit job I wouldn't think
Speaker:to just go on socials and go to a brand and go that's
Speaker:shit that is like you wouldn't be able to do that and he's like breaking the rules
Speaker:or being unsafe and for some reason in construction especially
Speaker:these men just kind of riled up
Speaker:by the by all the health and safety stuff and i just think it's bizarre because
Speaker:most of the time um when you see this it doesn't happen to
Speaker:us a great deal um but i'm aware of it even
Speaker:in marketing material as in like it's obviously fake
Speaker:yes it's a fake photo shoot this is this is practically fashion
Speaker:with a tool yeah do you know what i mean i thought i should be wearing pp i'm like
Speaker:He's definitely not on site. He's in a production studio, which is
Speaker:super safe anyway, and he's just showing the tool off.
Speaker:It's not even plugged in, mate. You can see the plug just hanging
Speaker:over. Yeah, and it's like, so we have to do this, you know,
Speaker:it's one of those things, you know, we were shooting with Werner, We're in
Speaker:a ladders, great client, great ladders by the way.
Speaker:And it's one of those sort of situations where you get everything set
Speaker:up right and then the model's kind of doing their
Speaker:thing. And usually this is an actual builder. And then we're like, right, okay,
Speaker:we've got to put a load of PPE on it now. And I'm like, damn, this guy
Speaker:wrecks all our light and all the high vis stuff's reflecting like crazy. We've
Speaker:got all like safety glasses, the work boots are an obvious thing,
Speaker:but even like the gloves, I'm like, damn. We could have really done without that.
Speaker:I get it. Especially with the reflective side, I think. You've just set all your lighting up.
Speaker:Yeah. And then you go, yeah, we're now going to have loads of reflection. Yeah.
Speaker:Okay, let's rethink about this. But if you don't, you start getting hate. It
Speaker:does seem like you could have the best marketing campaign out there.
Speaker:You've just something, you know, it's a goldmine. Something that people aren't
Speaker:talking about. You know, it's the hidden gem of the
Speaker:industry that once you get out there, people go, oh, yeah, great. Yeah. But
Speaker:if there's not a bit of PPE, people will pick up on it. Yeah. And
Speaker:they just go mad. And I don't understand, it seems like an industry where you think it
Speaker:wouldn't happen. But yeah, they really do call you out.
Speaker:Middle-aged sort of, you know, sort of hard-working blokes getting on
Speaker:their keyboards and going, oh, I should be wearing PPE. Where's this
Speaker:come from? I don't know. Do you know why I think it is? I
Speaker:think it's because for some reason there's been this kind
Speaker:of thing about construction being so competitive. It's
Speaker:a really, really competitive industry and there's a lot of hate between
Speaker:brands. There's a lot of like secrets and
Speaker:you know, there's almost like a bit of bitchiness around like, well, you can't, you
Speaker:know, I've sometimes felt weird commenting on
Speaker:a post that's like a rival of one of our clients. Even
Speaker:though in any other circumstance, like I can speak to my direct competitors
Speaker:and be very friendly with them because we're friends most of
Speaker:the time. It's nice. I mean, the creative industry is a nice industry
Speaker:to be in, even though it is still incredibly competitive. but
Speaker:in a good way, whereas I think construction's like competitive in a bad way a lot of the
Speaker:The creative industry, yeah, I would say, and I
Speaker:think we're always happy, like if I have a phone call from someone
Speaker:who I know is doing work with someone I've worked with, they're
Speaker:like, oh, I just, I don't want to pick your brains. And I think with creatives, we
Speaker:do love to just spout what we're thinking and go, right, this
Speaker:is what I got an idea on. And they go,
Speaker:right, so I've got, you know, I'll do a marketing campaign. And it can be something completely
Speaker:different to the industry you're working in. But it can work quite well. When I was at an agency,
Speaker:when I was doing agency work, I can always remember there was, I did a campaign that
Speaker:worked really well for a butcher's and a solicitor's, which was,
Speaker:it was a direct mail campaign that worked with, it was on my channel, so
Speaker:it also went with social. And they both worked really well. It
Speaker:was very similar, I'm thinking, but you'd never get that. If
Speaker:it was just in-house, they would never have the same things working. And
Speaker:if someone rings me and I've done the same, I've rang other people
Speaker:up and said, I've got an idea about this. What
Speaker:do you think? And it's just that sort of having that backup and
Speaker:just having someone to run ideas with. Whereas in the construction industry,
Speaker:Yeah, you might imagine like, like the CEO of DeWalt,
Speaker:ringing up the CEO of Bosch and being like, any
Speaker:advice? What's working for
Speaker:you at the moment? It's mad, but like creatives and marketers will
Speaker:just do that. And it's because I think, because I think there's a lot of ways to
Speaker:skin a cat when it comes to marketing, whereas I think a lot of construction is just like, our
Speaker:thing is better than the competitor. That's like all for a lot
Speaker:of the for up until Recently, when they've started
Speaker:getting clever marketers in, that's been their only differentiation
Speaker:is we need to make our thing look better than the
Speaker:other thing. And I think they're only just, this is why this podcast exists,
Speaker:is there's more
Speaker:clever, more creative marketers coming into the industry and educating,
Speaker:you know, the C-suite, whatever, execs, Is
Speaker:With us, the C-suite, they're the top level. For
Speaker:facilities management, you want to be getting below that. Because they've
Speaker:put someone in charge of facilities management, that's who you want to get to. You're
Speaker:above the gatekeeper, but you're not C-suite level, you want to be to that mid-level.
Speaker:is it's a hard market because they're the ones that actually are
Speaker:normally quite busy so that you can't get to them is it the c-suite level
Speaker:there's normally a route in yeah and then if you're aiming for the gatekeepers to
Speaker:do a campaign for them you know you want to be sending all them some nice gifts that's
Speaker:quite getting to that mid-tier range that they might not have an email address
Speaker:they're just they're not linked in they're not linked in they haven't
Speaker:got a direct phone number But if anyone in the C-suite wants them,
Speaker:they've got the mobile number, just give them a call. They're the ones that we're
Speaker:getting in. So we're marketing to them. And it's fun to
Speaker:market too, because it's a challenge. I think that makes it more
Speaker:fun. And actually going back to what we've just been saying, I spoke to other people. And
Speaker:so one of my mates who works, he
Speaker:works with sort of garden centers. He never has this
Speaker:issue, because he knows who he's aiming to, and it's primarily B2C. a
Speaker:campaign, this is what I want to be doing, and we can just go to the pub and
Speaker:chat. And you wouldn't get that within the construction industry really,
Speaker:because they go, that guy's from Milwaukee, and I'm not talking, yeah,
Speaker:yeah, yeah. We'll go sit over there, and they can sit there. And it's
Speaker:weird, because actually they could, there's probably things they could work together on. There's
Speaker:Yeah, it's which is it's weird, isn't it? When you go to these like, I'm
Speaker:going to an exhibition next this
Speaker:week. And it's literally like agencies, the
Speaker:only people that can just go to all Milwaukee, McKee,
Speaker:whoever, I'm just like going between all I'm just like, do you want to give us some money? Do you want to
Speaker:give some money? Like, content, content, content, like we'll just we'll work
Speaker:I think it's like print. I
Speaker:Which look great, by the way, don't they? It just looks a bit
Speaker:weird when you keep rubbing your chest. Check the back, Craig. Look at that. You know what
Speaker:Ambidextrousness going on there. We thought about putting in some like
Speaker:Easter eggs like on the sleeve or something, but we just went classic.
Speaker:No, with printers though, now there's people you'll use for, say,
Speaker:business cards, there's people you'll use for promotional merchandise. Even with promotional merchandise,
Speaker:you know, you get a mug done by one person, but they might not be
Speaker:very good at doing, and especially within promotional tape measures.
Speaker:Everything is different, but they're all in the same industry, and
Speaker:they are quite similar. They won't speak to each other like construction. I have found that
Speaker:before, and you think, but you could always refer to them and
Speaker:they can refer to you there's definitely work to be done there but everyone
Speaker:Yeah I think this is the thing I think it's always been
Speaker:that thing of like it's very price driven
Speaker:and it's very much what's better or that's what the
Speaker:perception has been but actually I think you know the
Speaker:higher ups in the c-suites and the sales directors are being
Speaker:better educated by the marketers to be like no actually there is brand loyalty and
Speaker:there's um there's there's more clever stuff there's positioning it's
Speaker:not necessarily about whether your product or
Speaker:service is the cheapest and the best it's actually
Speaker:just like there's a lot more factors that are involved and that makes the
Speaker:process of marketing it a lot more interesting a lot more nuanced
Speaker:because you can have you know notoriously, like we
Speaker:get stuff, you know, we buy stuff all the time that we know isn't as good as
Speaker:a competitor, but we we prefer it because we like the brand. Yeah. And
Speaker:that's, you know, cool. It's like,
Speaker:you know, it's, it makes our job a little bit more fun, because we
Speaker:can be like, okay, we know our product isn't anywhere near as
Speaker:good as our competitors. And we also know that it's actually a little bit more expensive.
Speaker:So let's do some creative stuff to work
Speaker:around that. Because now we know it's not just built on
Speaker:industry, it's the educational piece sticking out.
Speaker:People will only normally call you out when something's broken. And
Speaker:it's like, oh, it's broken now, so I need someone to come out. But actually,
Speaker:if the educational piece that we're marketing is
Speaker:that it's preventative maintenance. So it's regular maintenance, so yeah,
Speaker:you will be... So say you're paying, you know, £50 a
Speaker:year for maintenance on something, or £100, £200, whatever, you're
Speaker:paying that. But if that thing breaks down, one, you've got the
Speaker:company shut down, and then two you've got then the extra fee
Speaker:of it coming out and being because if it's broken then you'll come
Speaker:out inspect it find out what's broken with it and when it's broken you then got
Speaker:to get the parts and it's still going to be a bit and then you get the parts and then you got to fix it if
Speaker:it's being regularly maintained you'll find out that actually if
Speaker:something is you go right that that hasn't got long left it'll
Speaker:probably last this long but we'll get the part in ready for it
Speaker:yeah or shall we just do it now and then you let the client decide you always let the client decide but
Speaker:It's it's that sort of regular maintenance that people don't want to pay for
Speaker:but then when you're educating them Yeah, but think it's because people won't
Speaker:think about the production cost of like when the company stops
Speaker:Yeah They think about they think about their monthly billing.
Speaker:Yeah, it's it's all you know, especially like the blue chip ones It's just financial
Speaker:side of things. Well actually if you think about the
Speaker:financial side of things of once we've fixed, you know, once you've got to fix it
Speaker:and your production stops, the costs are a lot higher than
Speaker:just paying that regular fee to get the guy to come out. And actually the regular
Speaker:fee includes someone coming out, checking it. So
Speaker:if it's checked, then we'll know what's wrong with it and you'll get a report on
Speaker:actually, well, this is well, this is fine. And that person then will also
Speaker:know your bit of kit. And that's all,
Speaker:you know, with night finding the, you
Speaker:know, say someone like Churchills, they know the kit that's in there,
Speaker:and if something is going to go wrong, they'll have been told. And if something, you know, you get
Speaker:the one-off, how's that happened? Oh well, it could be
Speaker:this, it could be that. Right, we'll come in, have the parts ready, know
Speaker:what they need to order, and it's done then. So you're not having that downtime.
Speaker:And it's that educational piece, like you were saying,
Speaker:it's educating people about that. And I think that's where
Speaker:sort of Apple Jobs is marketing. You've got to educate people about
Speaker:things that they probably don't care about, but should care about.
Speaker:Yes. And it's not just the obvious stuff like, it's,
Speaker:you know, we've got this special offer on or we're great
Speaker:at doing this, you know what I mean? It's the little things that
Speaker:can make a huge difference. In terms of facilities management then, like,
Speaker:We love marketing less sexy stuff.
Speaker:And I think when it comes to facilities management, it doesn't get much
Speaker:less sexy than that as an idea, as a concept.
Speaker:It's maintenance, right? But at the same time, that's a
Speaker:great challenge. Because I'm like, OK, it's a maintenance contract. If
Speaker:you took it back to its bare bones, how do you market that? And it's
Speaker:like, oh, no, I've got some special ideas for this. But on
Speaker:that thought, though, like, What have you found since working in
Speaker:that industry has been the the biggest challenge in general? For
Speaker:let's say so we can relate to the other facilities management marketers
Speaker:It will be probably people stuck, people stuck with
Speaker:the one person so there's a company out there and they'll
Speaker:go right well we've always used someone who's the
Speaker:electrician, someone who's the plumber and someone who does the heating, yeah
Speaker:we've always used him. you have an issue, you ring them, oh we're busy, you can't come
Speaker:out straight away, and it could be a one-man band because, you know, it could be a
Speaker:lot cheaper, but then they've always used them and they're slightly
Speaker:more willing to wait. So the C-suite level will be going, right,
Speaker:we need it fixed, come down and they go, right, it's coming
Speaker:to get fixed next week. it might not happen next week, it just gets pushed on,
Speaker:but it kind of still works in a way for them. Whereas actually,
Speaker:once you get in there and you go, right, well, we can come out and get it fixed, and it's,
Speaker:again, educating them with, you're using that, it's the detrimental
Speaker:effect of continuing to use what you've been doing. looking
Speaker:at sort of like the insurance side of things, you know, if you're stuck with a car insurer and
Speaker:you keep using them, it ends up being a bit detrimental to you in the long run.
Speaker:And everyone shops around. Why don't people shop around for facilities management? Why don't people
Speaker:shop around and go, well, who should I be using? There's always that worry
Speaker:of, oh, well, who am I going to use? And that's, you know, are they
Speaker:going to be any good? Which is why I want to be putting the testimonials out there and
Speaker:getting the videography content that shows how good they are. But
Speaker:then anyone can do that. It's once you're getting in front of them, getting your people
Speaker:out there, and I think facilities management, especially the facilities marketing out there, it's
Speaker:the same issues you have. It's just getting yourself in them because people have
Speaker:been using the same company for so many years and they stick with them. And
Speaker:they just get stuck in that sort of like, well, we've always done
Speaker:It's one of those tricky sort of situations, isn't it? It's like, We're
Speaker:going to take this back to really nerdy stuff now when it comes to creativity, but
Speaker:we were speaking about switching over to DaVinci Resolve from
Speaker:Premiere Pro for the videography nerds. Have you
Speaker:done that? No, because I'm just like, it's almost like
Speaker:the cost of trying to learn a new
Speaker:piece of software. There's a special name for those kinds of video
Speaker:software, isn't it? I've completely forgot what it's called now. It's a three-letter acronym.
Speaker:So you've been using Premiere Pro for ages, and you're thinking, DaVinci
Speaker:Resolve technically works a lot better, runs a lot better, and the color
Speaker:gradient's better. I'm like, cool. But the faff of
Speaker:changing is enough to stop you.
Speaker:Even though you know you can technically perform better
Speaker:if you do make that decision, it's the effort of making that decision. And
Speaker:so that, as marketers, is kind of a very similar thing for you guys.
Speaker:You're trying to get these guys to switch provider, which
Speaker:is effort and risk, but actually
Speaker:But Adobe are the behemoth, and I know we're going, but Adobe are
Speaker:the behemoth, they own it, don't they? And I always say this, and if
Speaker:Adobe's listening, don't. If they just put their prices up massively, you might
Speaker:want to charge it five times as much. We
Speaker:just kind of go, oh, right, okay. I don't know
Speaker:what to do. I'd be panicking over that, because Adobe have just got
Speaker:the market covered. There's so much
Speaker:of the software out there, but the Adobe one does work well with
Speaker:each other. You can go from Premiere Pro to After Effects, and then you
Speaker:can import stuff from Illustrator. It just works well. Whereas
Speaker:actually, if you then go to DaVinci, it's not
Speaker:It's only mildly different, but for a team of the
Speaker:six of us, but really there's only four that would ever use Premiere Pro or
Speaker:DaVinci Resolve, that's a one-time cost.
Speaker:So DaVinci Resolve is a one-time cost, you are not paying
Speaker:a monthly subscription. I think, I
Speaker:can't remember what our Adobe bill is, but it's probably around
Speaker:three, four hundred pounds a month, something like that. It's a lot of money for
Speaker:our team, for a small business. So you
Speaker:could take a chunk out of that for, you know, just a good switch to DaVinci
Speaker:But you can't, because if you're still going to be using Illustrator
Speaker:and Photoshop, to edit, you know, stills, and you want to
Speaker:be creating thumbnails. How then do you do that
Speaker:if you spent all your money on DaVinci and you're going, I'm going to stop using Adobe? You've then got
Speaker:to find other software. And it's the same, like, oh
Speaker:no, the hidden gems. You'll be used to keyboard shortcuts. Everybody
Speaker:has to do that. Like, well, have you just done that? Oh, you know, just command it. You
Speaker:know your shortcuts. If you then swap to a different piece of software, your shortcuts
Speaker:have changed. Right, what do I do for that? And you've got to learn it.
Speaker:Is that time taken to learn it going to be worth it? It's really hard to put
Speaker:But it's essentially the same problem that the
Speaker:facilities management companies have of just like we've always used
Speaker:this guy or this company. It's probably costing us
Speaker:at the moment more than if we went with you guys. but
Speaker:the faff of it kind of puts me off and so it's the same marketing problem.
Speaker:And if you think about the way that Da Vinci have got
Speaker:around this solution is they've used ambassadors and influencers
Speaker:so I never get a piece of content
Speaker:that comes directly from DaVinci to say, hey, you should use our software.
Speaker:I see influencers switching, and making a
Speaker:lot of content around switching. And I'm like, okay, I trust this
Speaker:person's opinion. Let's have a little look at this. And we do a lot in influencer marketing.
Speaker:So we kind of understand the value of someone's opinion
Speaker:that's trusted in the industry. And you sort of
Speaker:think, okay, that's interesting. How do we then switch that onto, let's
Speaker:say, if we were in this, having this discussion properly, like,
Speaker:okay, so we can market it, we can put some great stuff out
Speaker:there, we need to make sure that DaVinci is, or, you know, let's say, in
Speaker:this instance, a facilities management company, is
Speaker:turning up in the right places and looking right, you
Speaker:know what I mean? But actually, you can have these kind of other
Speaker:strategies of, you know, essentially a testimonial, a case study, Maybe
Speaker:someone else in the industry that's, you know, quite well respected. You
Speaker:can start to kind of get those messages out there because, you
Speaker:know, the influencers on LinkedIn are essentially the sales directors, CEOs
Speaker:Yeah, because that's it. There's not going to be an influencer on
Speaker:That's, it's not, yeah, that's the... We have to scale these things down,
Speaker:but it still works because you only need what, like 20? If
Speaker:you did like 20 new big contracts, that's a
Speaker:I think a lot of people will go for influencers and go for the huge ones.
Speaker:There's the micro-influencers that you can work with, but also you
Speaker:can find influencers that are, say they're doing
Speaker:something, it could be like the paint and decorate or the, because I know that there's
Speaker:a plasterer and he's got
Speaker:massive following. Obviously he's on a job doing it, but then he can
Speaker:be talking with Ignite and talking about what they're doing.
Speaker:It's trying to find that partnership and that can work really
Speaker:well. But we have found that, yeah, testimonials, and
Speaker:someone going, well, I know you might be thinking it's a risk, but it will save.
Speaker:Yeah, it worked for us. It worked for my business. And I'm the CEO of
Speaker:a really well respected company, or I'm the managing director, whatever.
Speaker:And they've got a load of mates who are also managing directors and CEOs. And
Speaker:they go, Oh, fair enough. And, you know, it's being able
Speaker:to leverage those kinds of things. It's like I'm running
Speaker:some ads at the moment on Instagram and LinkedIn. Just
Speaker:playing, really, just having some fun. And I think I've given myself like
Speaker:700 quid's worth of budget just to play for the next couple of weeks. And
Speaker:the cost per click was ridiculous. So
Speaker:I don't know, let's say on one of my ads, let's
Speaker:see if I can get the stats up. So I
Speaker:had one ad. turn my
Speaker:There we go. So you go to Instagram, add insights. Okay.
Speaker:And then it buffers for ages. So
Speaker:I've got, let's say, I got on this particular, so
Speaker:basically the same scenario, I'm going to turn my phone off. I basically ran the same ad
Speaker:on LinkedIn and on Instagram just to test them.
Speaker:Even though I knew Instagram was actually a really bad platform for
Speaker:It's not great. So like reach was 28,000 people. It had 88 interactions. This
Speaker:Yeah, this is literally just our, it was our, what do you call it? showreel.
Speaker:I just throw it through. Oh for you, for you guys. Oh yeah,
Speaker:I didn't know if you got like a client in mind that they'd give you that amazing,
Speaker:because you do get that. You get that client that says right, I know you
Speaker:trust what we're doing. I've had it in the past where I said right, you're going to an exhibition, you
Speaker:need a brochure doing, I've got the reasoning behind it,
Speaker:this is what I'm thinking, what you think, and they go Yeah, right. No,
Speaker:no, have a look and make sure you agree. No, that's exactly
Speaker:what we need. And that level of trust, once you
Speaker:get that, that is when you know that you've proved your
Speaker:worth and then you can go and obviously like doing what you're doing, you
Speaker:do it for yourself first, don't you? Then you make sure you proved it and then you go,
Speaker:right, this one could be a bit risky, but it's going to
Speaker:pay off. It will pay off here, but we're going to try that bit as well. Put a little bit
Speaker:of pot of money to that side, you know, for your Instagram there, but LinkedIn
Speaker:is where it's at. And then sometimes it randomly happens where
Speaker:I'm going to have to spend some time researching into what
Speaker:has gone, what's changed here. It could be an algorithm change, which is
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, so this gives you like an idea. So I had 152 interactions
Speaker:with this ad, which cost me 25p in
Speaker:interaction. So that's not too bad. But that's kind of
Speaker:untargeted, it's kind of targeted to the right people, but I couldn't
Speaker:be that granular. And there is a point to this is that kind of like the
Speaker:idea of this, the influencers of your industry
Speaker:don't need to necessarily be influencers, they just need to be the right kinds
Speaker:of people in the right places. So there's 2525 p
Speaker:per interaction 152 interactions. I've been
Speaker:running a LinkedIn ad and I've had 11 interactions so far
Speaker:and they've cost me a 10 or a piece. So
Speaker:I've had 11 people interact with
Speaker:my ad properly. Lots of people have seen it but only 11 people
Speaker:have actually interacted. I've had zero leads and it's cost me £110 to get those 11 people to click on my ad. Have you
Speaker:had leads on Instagram? Yeah,
Speaker:they're going through to a landing page. But yeah,
Speaker:no one's actually interacted properly with that. They're not taking it
Speaker:to the next step, which is fine, because it's just a test. But
Speaker:yeah, it shows the difference of If
Speaker:I got one lead on there, it's so targeted, that
Speaker:particular ad on LinkedIn, for it
Speaker:to cost £10 per click. I've gone
Speaker:so granular on that, that I'm only interacting with
Speaker:who could potentially be my target clients, as opposed to, Instagram,
Speaker:which had 152 interactions as opposed to 11. But
Speaker:it's just random random, they're kind of in the right industry, but
Speaker:maybe not really. And that and this is the thing with with
Speaker:marketing b2b is the numbers are
Speaker:less, but the people that the sort of demographics
Speaker:and the targeting is super, super specific.
Speaker:So your marketing efforts, you know, can potentially only go
Speaker:out to 12 people. But if one of those 12 people and all those
Speaker:12 people are perfect avatar for your for
Speaker:your customer, you know, one of those one
Speaker:of those people actually converts, that's
Speaker:a huge thing for, you know, potentially, because it's, it's a year's contract
Speaker:It's like you've got your ideal customer persona you're going to aim at.
Speaker:There is always that, the secondary customer persona, of
Speaker:the customer persona that knows your ideal customer persona. So like for me,
Speaker:someone who you're marketing at going, do
Speaker:you always have an issue? with your, you know, is
Speaker:your heating never working in your office? That person who's watching you
Speaker:going, yeah, there is, there's always, my office is always freezing. They'll know
Speaker:the person who's in charge of the heating. And then that's who,
Speaker:so you're marketing through them, aren't you? But it's that secondary customer persona
Speaker:that you're, you know, indirectly getting your ideal customer persona. So
Speaker:Well, yeah, I mean, that's quite interesting as well, because I always assumed that you're kind
Speaker:of, it is B2B. What you do, but
Speaker:a lot of the way that we do is kind of like we our clients are
Speaker:operating B2B, but we're marketing as if they're a
Speaker:B2C client, because we're trying to get buy-in from
Speaker:the end user, which in your case is the people in the office,
Speaker:that are going, why is it so bloody cold in here, that need to go and speak to
Speaker:their facilities manager to say, can you sort this out, for them to then
Speaker:contact you. So it's actually a very similar kind of thing. You're actually almost technically
Speaker:marketing in those situations to your end user. It's just,
Speaker:again, weirdly, they're still in business. that
Speaker:gets a little bit confusing, but it's kind of the same thing. So you can, you know, there's always that
Speaker:kind of like the, the, you know, the double, the
Speaker:double whammy of, you know, marketing to both sides. And
Speaker:that's quite clever. Yeah, I didn't think that would be the case. But it
Speaker:always comes around to like, you end up, you think you're a B2B
Speaker:the creative industry. You end up talking and you go, oh no, that's quite similar
Speaker:to what I was doing. Even though completely different industry, completely different
Speaker:In those situations you go, okay, now I've got some great ideas, let's go, let's go. This
Speaker:So we've done quite a bit of a sponsorship for
Speaker:Luckily there's no Stoke fans in here today, so we're all
Speaker:but there was a big campaign that actually on the on the Vale scoreboard either
Speaker:side of it it said ignite with an eye. Okay. because the
Speaker:stokey way of pronouncing Ignite doesn't always sound like it starts with an
Speaker:I. And then the amount of people that would come
Speaker:to you and go, oh Ignite with an I. And actually it
Speaker:was a great campaign because it wasn't, all the services were advertised after
Speaker:and there was, because there's two scoreboards either side and then
Speaker:say the services one side but Ignite with an I. And then
Speaker:you've got the Port Vale podcast. and that someone referenced,
Speaker:oh Ignite With An Eye. And it just kind of gets out there, which
Speaker:then sort of does that earworm effect of knowing, oh, I've
Speaker:got an issue with that. What about Ignite With An Eye? And then people start
Speaker:saying it, you think, that's quite, and it's great when that works.
Speaker:And that's that secondary demographic that you just sort of, right, if we get in with them and
Speaker:they remember, they see you all the time, then
Speaker:it works. It's not the one where you want to spend your big budget on. No.
Speaker:your big budget, your ideal customer persona, but just getting that outer
Speaker:wire. For us, like sponsorships, it's always knowing who to sponsor, what
Speaker:you're going to get back from it. You've got to do a lot of research. I
Speaker:think at times people will think, all right, marketing, it's just some fancy
Speaker:fluffy stuff. There's a lot of research and you have to do some of that
Speaker:boring data stuff to get a marketing guy to go, it's
Speaker:going to work and this is why it's going to work, here's all the proof, here's the research we've done
Speaker:into it. That's taken quite a bit of time to do. And then here's
Speaker:even more time and it's gonna work. But yeah, you've got
Speaker:You got I think marketing is all about priorities, isn't
Speaker:it? I think, you know, one of the worst things you can do is give the
Speaker:owner of a small to medium, small to medium business,
Speaker:I don't think it's the right term. So I think technically small to medium is like anywhere between
Speaker:like zero and a hundred thousand people or something. It's
Speaker:really broad, but let's say you've got, you know, a local
Speaker:installers that have got like, I don't know, 15 people on the books or something like
Speaker:that. Worst thing you can do is give that business owner any
Speaker:marketing budget because they will really
Speaker:poorly, a lot of the time, um, prioritize
Speaker:that money. And I see it all the time. I see these
Speaker:back in the day when we were working with like, kind of smaller businesses like
Speaker:that, they would be like, scrimping and saving and kind
Speaker:of, you know, like sort of turning down proposals for stuff
Speaker:that they'd asked us to, you know, propose for. And then I'd see them
Speaker:advertising at the local cricket club. And I'm like, How
Speaker:much does that cost you? Surely, surely, you know, if you're, if
Speaker:you're doing silly things like that, on the regular, and
Speaker:not putting any money into like a website, let's say, or
Speaker:social media presence, or any kind of communication or even better paid ads.
Speaker:Yep. then you are going
Speaker:to be failing. And then you would see them a year later, they'd ask you
Speaker:the same questions again, and they'd be like, hey, can you give us a quote for this? And I'm like,
Speaker:I haven't got enough budget for that. I'm like, maybe stop putting stupid fucking ads
Speaker:Well, I think it's that thing where you see someone, they're doing
Speaker:something for that sake. So the marketing, it's going back
Speaker:to super basics. They've got a brochure for brochure's sake. Why have you got
Speaker:a brochure? Oh, well, my rival company's got a brochure. Yeah, but
Speaker:are you going out to exhibitions? No. What sites do
Speaker:with your brochure and what do you do with it? Oh, well, we've got 5,000 of them in
Speaker:the office. They're not getting anywhere. They're not getting your business. I
Speaker:think one of the things we both agree on, you only want to market as
Speaker:long as it's getting you something. You need a return on investment. I
Speaker:could design you the best brochure in the world. If it's going to sit on your shelf or it's a doorstop, that's
Speaker:Especially if it's a limited budget. If you've got money to
Speaker:burn and you kind of like, look, we've got We've
Speaker:got 70%, 80% of our budget
Speaker:is for priority, 20% is for play. Great.
Speaker:Sponsored art projects, Ryan Jones called it from SLG. 20% of
Speaker:That's the one way you can be really creative. You can go
Speaker:all out there and that's when you try your surreal route.
Speaker:Will this work? Will getting Barry Scott work?
Speaker:You know, will spending a load of money on something that's, it's a risk. If
Speaker:you can find a company who's got that 20% budget for the risk you want, they
Speaker:pay off sometimes. But you've still got the 80% to make sure this is working, this is
Speaker:working, this is working. Let's take the risk on this. Whereas
Speaker:that risk you're on is normally where you've had to do a lot of research for it,
Speaker:and you've got to make sure it works. And I think, but
Speaker:you can have the most fun with that. Yeah. Again, I don't think Surreal
Speaker:I think I might have found the takeaway from this
Speaker:podcast. We kind of went into this, just thought we'll have a laugh. We just
Speaker:said we'd have a chat. Yeah, we didn't prep for it at all.
Speaker:I think we've found the takeaway is, you know, prioritise your
Speaker:marketing. activities. Ideally
Speaker:have a strategy in place first. That's really helpful. But I also appreciate companies
Speaker:who can't afford or that aren't clever enough to create a
Speaker:strategy. There are some best practices that you can
Speaker:do that you sort of think that will probably work. Yeah. In
Speaker:an ideal world everyone would have a really great marketing strategy and it would be created
Speaker:by someone who's very clever. But I appreciate that it doesn't happen sometimes.
Speaker:Get your priorities right in your marketing. But if you can leave 20 percent aside of
Speaker:your marketing budget to have some fun. just be creative and
Speaker:if it doesn't you know understand that if it doesn't work that it was a great test.
Speaker:It's a great test that you can you've got in your arsenal because
Speaker:it could work in the future but I also think that the 80% you've
Speaker:got to make sure that it's being used wisely. So actually if you are
Speaker:doing adverts in the local rag or in a zine somewhere
Speaker:you've got the research of who is the readership of that, where is
Speaker:it coming from, who's going to be reading that, is that, is it your ideal client, customer,
Speaker:owner, is it the outer retail, get into it, or is
Speaker:it just people that aren't going to ever use your services, it's
Speaker:a waste, and then that budget would be better spent on ads. That
Speaker:would be way better spent, but a lot of the time people, I
Speaker:find companies probably won't want to speak because, you know, I haven't got a budget for that. This
Speaker:is our budget. So, well, have a chat. Let's see. Because if you're
Speaker:spending, you know, I spent two grand a year doing that advertising. but
Speaker:two grand on an actual successful social
Speaker:ad campaign or even PPC will be far more effective
Speaker:and get you your desired outcome than using just,
Speaker:you know, oh, I got offered to do an advert in a paper and it cost me
Speaker:this much, so I've done it. Where's the strategy behind
Speaker:it? And I think people can have the strategy, but yeah, 80% strategic.
Speaker:It's got to be really thought-focused, no
Speaker:desired outcome, spend a bit of time thinking about it, even
Speaker:if you haven't got a big budget, still spend a bit of time, but if you can have that 20%, have
Speaker:some fun. But even, ask
Speaker:people within the company how they'd market it. How did they talk about it
Speaker:down the pub? Who do you work for? What do you do? And then they
Speaker:could say, there could be something that they all describe the company as that's actually
Speaker:quite a funny one, like the ignite with an I thing came from someone discussing
Speaker:it and say, ignite, all right with an I. It's obvious that,
Speaker:it's obvious, but actually it works successfully well because then it
Speaker:started becoming an e-worm. And also the sponsorship side of things, if
Speaker:you're going to sponsor something, well, could you get someone back from them? So
Speaker:if you're sponsoring something for us that needs facilities management, well,
Speaker:is there a contract there? What are you going to get? And that's always a question that
Speaker:throughout my career, that if I'm sponsoring something or there's some sponsorship available,
Speaker:is there a kickback? Is there something you can get back? it's
Speaker:not just sponsoring for sponsoring's sake. Because you'll notice that other people have
Speaker:sponsored them, and they've got contracts with them. You
Speaker:quite often find that, because if I see someone sponsored, I'm like, oh, I've got
Speaker:that. I want to ask every question under the sun. It's then when you
Speaker:go, oh right, that's why you sponsored him. That's clever, that
Speaker:makes sense. Because from the outlay, it might not make sense, but
Speaker:then when you start asking questions, you realize that they've got that, or there's a company
Speaker:It's a little golden handshake or whatever, you know, there's some stuff in the background that's,
Speaker:um, that's, you know, that's, that's led to that point. There's
Speaker:also some very strategic, um, you know, sponsorships that
Speaker:actually you're working quite a bit on, like, you know, tools for the motor trade or
Speaker:whatever, you know, tools for, sorry, motorsport. Um,
Speaker:there's certain things. I, I had this concept, this, this would be the 20 percenter. We
Speaker:had this client, we've got this client, sorry, and we had this kind
Speaker:of idea for like alternative influencer
Speaker:marketing. We didn't do it in the end because it was
Speaker:silly, but I'd like to do it where we sponsor events
Speaker:that are completely irrelevant to our target market.
Speaker:construction, so I was looking into show jumping, like
Speaker:having a tool brand like sponsor the show jumping, but
Speaker:also getting influencers that are so comically not trades
Speaker:people or DIYers to try and market our
Speaker:product just as like a laugh. The logistics of it were
Speaker:going to be a nightmare, but we were going to have a go. So we're going to go on like, you
Speaker:know, an agency, influencer agency website, go listen, we've
Speaker:got 10 grand to play with. Give us
Speaker:your most ridiculous but high number of
Speaker:influencers in unrelated fields that
Speaker:can talk about our particular glue or whatever. And
Speaker:they're like beauty influencers or something. Be
Speaker:like, I've also got this new glue. We
Speaker:knew that those obviously those campaigns would not be successful. But
Speaker:what we would do is we would like kind of like keep that footage back
Speaker:and actually create our own campaign based on the footage that we get from these influencers
Speaker:that aren't in relatable fields. We didn't do it in the end, but that was a really
Speaker:good example of like the extra 20% of just like, just be
Speaker:You could get, yeah, if you get a... I think, well, Sonny
Speaker:D did, I didn't get Mr. Motivator back or something that recently. Nolten
Speaker:Agency did all that kind of stuff. Dan and
Speaker:Lloyd Nolten. and all that clever people that work there. I'm pretty
Speaker:sure it's Mr. Motivator or something like
Speaker:that. They've done like a series of like, sort
Speaker:of 80s and 90s, like celebs that you've
Speaker:seen on like this morning or whatever. And they're bringing them back for
Speaker:these kind of like, like throwback treats like Sunny Delight,
Speaker:you know, I haven't drank a Sunny Delight since I was a kid. Because
Speaker:I think the last time I drank one, it made me sick. or something like that.
Speaker:I'm sure they've fixed all the chemicals that are in. Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah. But I'm like, great. That's that's amazing. It's not made me buy
Speaker:one yet. It's a bit like surreal, but I like the I like the marketing. Keep
Speaker:at it. Yeah. Is there anything that I should have
Speaker:asked you or you wanted to speak about that you feel like we haven't touched on yet at
Speaker:No, I think I'd come into it. I want, you know,
Speaker:I want to have a chat with you. Just to, you know,
Speaker:a catch-up chat and just to cover all the marketing aspects and
Speaker:actually the similarities in the industry. Because construction is
Speaker:construction and trades, but actually, you know, facilities management is trades. There's a massive
Speaker:correlation between the two, but they're marketed quite differently.
Speaker:because it's completely different people, but it's actually the same people that
Speaker:are using them. The end user is, you know, actually it's the person who's
Speaker:sitting in the office. It's again, it's not customer persona, it's the,
Speaker:you know, the secondary users that you can be targeting.
Speaker:It's the same. But then you'll find that within a lot of different industries
Speaker:That's another takeaway then, is in this industry of
Speaker:construction, be less competitive, make more friends. The
Speaker:marketers as a rule are pretty cool with each other anyway, aren't they? But, you know,
Speaker:it's nice to be able to have those kinds of like inroads into other
Speaker:industries that are perhaps what you would class as like complementary
Speaker:trades or businesses that are related to the brand that you
Speaker:work with. and figure out what those guys are doing and
Speaker:share the information and help marketing
Speaker:and construction build because again
Speaker:one of the issues that we found in construction is
Speaker:there's a lot of marketers that are
Speaker:woefully unproductive. experienced,
Speaker:like educated in this particular industry. It's not
Speaker:their fault. They've been hired
Speaker:by somebody who didn't take marketing that serious in the first place. A
Speaker:lot of the time what happens is when you get into the construction industry is you hire a
Speaker:junior because it was a tick box exercise. And
Speaker:they were like, right, we've got a marketer now. enjoy,
Speaker:go. And that market is probably fresh out of uni going, I
Speaker:could still do with some support. And
Speaker:they haven't got it. And we find it the same, the same with construction, sorry,
Speaker:the same with creativity in a lot of brands, is they'll
Speaker:get like an in house videographer, like almost fresh out of university. They haven't got
Speaker:a clue how to run a production. And some of those productions
Speaker:are really important. And then they get upset because
Speaker:the video production is not that great. And that's because
Speaker:a junior needs a senior and the senior needs a creative director and
Speaker:It's the stuff that isn't maybe in the forefront. So
Speaker:a junior might just focus on the subject, you doing what you're doing. Whereas
Speaker:we're all thinking, right, actually, that's most important, but what's going on in the
Speaker:background is just as important. Let's make sure there isn't anything
Speaker:going on, PPE. It's learning about
Speaker:what we know what actually is important within the industry. It's what you learn
Speaker:over the years. Whereas if you come straight out, you're a junior, you
Speaker:go, right, so the most important thing is the thing that's at the forefront of
Speaker:the video. Your video in there, that's it. This stuff doesn't matter.
Speaker:That's the most important. And I think it's paramount just
Speaker:as much all of it. You want to be making sure that everything's important,
Speaker:but then also conveying that importance to people.
Speaker:So actually wearing PPE, you might not want to, but it is very important.
Speaker:And knowing how to deal with people, because some junior might have just
Speaker:come out, want to be, you know, in the industry, might
Speaker:never have been speaking to people within all walks of life and
Speaker:just very shy. I mean, the modern age where people
Speaker:seem to just talk via messaging apps. Actually, you know, going
Speaker:Yeah, and yeah, again, if you've got if you've got someone
Speaker:to learn from, that's actually going to be these people and negotiating with them on once
Speaker:you know, again, PPE. Yeah, that's another that's that's perhaps another
Speaker:takeaway from the episode is where's where you PP when when you when
Speaker:you see a camera, make sure you've got PPE on. For our
Speaker:When we're not there, it's on you. But when we're here, when you see lenses
Speaker:and cameras and lights and stuff like that, put the PPE on.
Speaker:One helpful piece of PPE worn will make our
Speaker:There's no donating. You don't need to donate money to us. Just wear PPE and
Speaker:Craig, I've really enjoyed this, mate. Thank you so much for coming on. I've
Speaker:enjoyed geeking out with another creative about the wonderful world of
Speaker:construction marketing and creativity. And that's
Speaker:me signing off because I don't know how to sign off. Thank you. Thank you very much.
