Are builders and contractors influenced by brands?
As consumers, we all know that certain brands appeal to us. Whether it’s buying food, clothes or cars we can’t get away from the values that are imprinted in our mind.
When it comes to brands in the building and construction sector, their influence is more subtle, but still as far reaching. For instance, we can all think of time-served builders and contractors that refuse to use any other branded product than the one they have always used! These ‘generic trademarks’ include Stanley knife (not all knives are made by Stanley), Yale lock, JCB or Bulldozer for any tracked site vehicle. The brand name has become the product name – success!
For marketing people, the options are limited when up against strong trade acceptance of a brand name especially with a directly competing product. In most cases they accept the fact, reluctantly, that builders and contractors may buy their product but call it by a competitor’s name! However, from a PR and digital media point of view, there is a lot that you can do to highlight the USP’s of your product and try and get it clear in the mind of customers that they are choosing a specific product, even though they may call it something else!
When up against these construction sector ‘superbrands’ (which is what many of them have developed into over the years), there are tremendous opportunities for using PR to get these messages across. So, even if a builder may flatly refuse to use any other product than the one they always have, this loyalty usually only applies to a select few items – for everything else, a well-planned PR campaign can ensure that your brand is constantly in front of the target audience.
We can see, therefore, that builders and contractors are influenced by strong, clear brand messages. That’s where we are able to use our skills in understanding the construction sector, with an ability to create persuasive PR campaigns that clearly differentiate your product or service from other brands in the same category.
Over the years we’ve worked with some really amazing products that are now firmly established as brands that influence builders and contractors in their own right. We help them to become the brand name for their product group in their own right.
The conclusion is that builders and contractors are definitely influenced by brands, and partnering with a PR and digital media agency that understands the construction sector is the best way of ensuring that your product or service punches above its weight.
If you are looking for help in making your brand stand out from the crowd, call us on 01709 300130 or email hello@dragonflypr.co.uk.