5 PR and digital marketing trends to take note of in 2019
If you're a building product manufacturer, now is time to be thinking ahead and putting together your marketing and communications strategy for next year. So, in order to help you get the best results from your budget, we have put together some predictions for digital marketing trends in 2019 that might help you in the process.
Construction firms are favouring reputable content over ads.
This is one of the reasons why PR and digital marketing for construction companies is more relevant than ever. We’ve known for over a decade that traditional print advertising is not always the best use of a marketing budget. That’s why more building product manufacturers have switch to online advertising, however, according to Business Insider UK, 25-30% of internet users are now using ad blockers. So, all in all, not a great use of advertising spend.
The growing use of ad blockers presents a challenge to marketing managers trying to get their product in front of construction companies, developers and architects. For instance, ad blockers mean that around a third of all online advertising won’t even reach the potential target audience!
Our prediction for 2019 is that marketing managers will therefore put more emphasis on content creation, content marketing and influencer marketing as well as other methods that deliver actual value to audiences (as opposed to advertising) . In simple terms this will mean that marketing strategies should focus on PR and digital marketing, with blogs, articles and case studies. For maximum impact and value these ought to be written by PR and digital marketing agencies that specialise in the construction sector.
Creativity will continue to generate sales leads
It is tempting to write-off print media and certainly some of the leading construction magazines have suffered in recent years. However, they still have a strong and loyal readership, which, in a digital age, you can use to your advantage. So, writing a white paper or thought leadership article for Construction News or Building Products magazine can immediately set you apart from marketing strategies focused solely on digital content.
With circulation figures often in the tens of thousands, there’s still merit in getting your product featured in these relevant industry magazines. And, the great thing about printed trade magazines is that they are often available to read through their website, and they also tend to feature a selection of their articles on the news sections of their sites, meaning you benefit from both traditional and new media platforms.
Written content will retain customer relationships that could otherwise be lost through technology and automation
With an app for most things these days there is a danger that in 2019 building product manufacturers who have gone down the technology and automation route will lose their customer interfacing. That would be a shame as research shows that direct interaction between you and your customer builds loyalty.
A good way to retain customer relationships is through high quality written content in the form of blogs, personalised tweets, case studies and comment pieces. When these are written by a PR agency that specialises in the construction and manufacturing sectors it gives your business a more personal facing and one that can’t be achieved by an automated approach.
Our prediction for 2019 is that building product manufacturers that retain a personalised approach will stand out from the competition. We see future innovation in digital experience being in the area of personalisation and conversational user interfaces, led by a clear PR strategy – it will beat technology and automation in the long run.
Blogs will grow as a way of getting architects and contractors onto your website.
It’s tempting to put your marketing budget into PPC (Pay Per Click). However, in order to get beyond even scratching the surface you need to invest a huge amount – serious campaigns now use AI and machine learning to select which platforms will get their client’s the best results. That soon eats up a lot of budget and if you are in a competitive industry where huge marketing budgets are the norm you’d might be better putting your budget into high quality written content.
That leads on nicely to our fourth prediction for 2019 – that there will be a splitting of PPC. There will be the massive consumer brands that can invest in AI and machine learning
- PPC campaigns and then everyone else. The remaining companies, including building product manufacturers will begin to question the merits of PPC and conclude there are better ways to generate sales enquiries. Take just one simple example. When you partner with a PR agency that specialises in the construction sector and get high quality content placed on a digital platform you benefit from the rankings that achieves for years to come. Compare that with PPC and when you get to the end of that campaign you instantly lose any rankings it gave you.
Our prediction for 2019 is the PPC will lose out where a company takes a long term view and chooses to create online marketing content.
The online influencer is a powerful force
Within the building products and construction sector online influencers are now a mainstream trend that your PR and digital media strategy should be embracing.
Your PR agency should be able to identify the right influencers to secure your news story or blog on a digital platform. These influencers may even already have a following of many thousand and by recommending or commenting on a product can create a huge number of sales enquiries. These influencers range from building product magazine editors, bloggers through to architects and academics specialising in a certain area of building design. Above all else they should have credibility and trust.
So, our prediction for 2019, is that celebrity endorsement will fall out of favour and the real game changer will be identifying those influencers where your customers really value their opinion.
To find out more about our PR and digital marketing experience in the construction sector, visit our website www.dragonflypr.co.uk, email: hello@dragonflypr.co.uk or call 0114 349 5345.
Dragonfly PR is a dedicated agency with over 15 years’ experience in helping b2b companies across Yorkshire and the North West to generate results. We can put together an outline proposal that will help you meet your business objectives, through generating sales enquiries, increasing traffic to your website and positioning you as the experts in the field.