Yes marketing is about the identification of a customer’s “needs and wants” and providing solutions to meet those requirements, but what is the point of marketing if it isn’t to increase profit?
Marketing or “market orientation” is the process of management at the heart of just about every well-known global business today because production, technical and sales orientation in history failed. The reason other types of business orientations failed is because the management teams didn’t focus on the needs or wants of the customer, they focused on their own needs.
For a builder’s merchant to become market orientated they need to put marketing as a process of management at the very heart of the business. Builder’s merchants often invest significant sums of money in sales and far too little in marketing. It’s fair to say most people understand what sales are, but ask do yourself do you really understand marketing?
The question is, as a merchant is your business market orientated or indeed something else? A simple way to find this out is to assess the process of who decides on business strategy, tactics, budgets etc. and whether the customers’ needs and wants are really being met? Also ask yourself do you carry out independent market research and do you have market audits and marketing plans? If the answer is no to most of these requirement’s, then you’re probably not as market orientated as you could be.
Many builders’ merchants think they know the needs and wants of their customers but these opinions are built upon a dangerous way of obtaining information! These are people like owners and managers who work in the business on a daily basis and therefore assume they know what the requirements of their customers are. As an owner or manager of a builder’s merchant your opinion on say bricks for example maybe “we supply top quality branded bricks” but when you ask a large group of customer’s in research they may say your business supplies poor quality branded bricks. It’s dangerous to use your own opinion as a manager or owner as you’re not the one who is buying them.
The success of builder’s merchant in today’s market is often measured by retaining customer’s rather than growth strategies. The best way to do this is by putting marketing at the heart of your business because through a greater understanding of the needs and wants of your customer’s operational strategies can then be put in place to meet or exceed your customers’ expectations and as a result sales will increase.
A builder’s merchant in Reading sent out research forms to over 400 trades’ people and was returned 72 completed. 14 of the 72 who returned the research commented that they had problems with slow turnaround times when making collections at their yard, but despite two of the shareholders running the business daily they had little idea that customer’s felt this way.
Being a progressive merchant they changed the situation quickly and through social media, PR newsletters and online marketing we communicated the improvement. The same merchant was rated 12% better than their competitors which gave them confidence in knowing that overall, they were performing very well.
Marketing in the construction industry is not costly! We recently built a website for a builder’s merchant and because this particular merchant committed to PR and social media we were able to take their online monthly website traffic from 380 to 1650 unique visitors. In doing so the shareholders later told us they are now getting sales growth even though they are still not yet internet trading.
So with online trading paying for a merchant’s entire marketing function, remember marketing is not a cost, it’s an investment and furthermore it doesn’t need to be expensive, but it does need to be done.
Tony Crutcher Ltd
OUR BUSINESS IS ABOUT GROWING YOURS
tony crutcher Ltd 