Michelle Wright, our Head of Marketing, shares how fabricator support can help installers stand out from competitors and win new customers.
The current climate might be challenging but it isn’t putting the brakes on home renovations for every homeowner, with more than a third considering making enhancements this year.
For those with the money to spend, key drivers are eco-improvements; changes made to achieve environmental or energy efficient benefits. According to recent statistics, nine out of ten homeowners plan to carry out work that will make their houses more thermally efficient, with purchases including solar panels and thermal insulation.
Marketing the benefits of today’s uPVC windows and doors will therefore appeal to today’s environmentally conscious homeowners, as well as their wallets - cutting down energy usage reduces the impact on the environment and drives down utility bills. What’s more, uPVC is more environmentally friendly, with products from the likes of VEKA containing recycled uPVC - a material that can be recycled again and again up to 10 times. That’s the equivalent of a 350-year lifespan.
It's these kinds of key messages that we encourage our installers to promote and share with their customers in a range of different ways. Thinking about who the end customer is and what appeals to them enables the message to be tailored to meet their needs, whether that’s saving them money on their bills, reducing carbon emissions, adding value to their home or simply living in a draught-free environment when the nights draw in.
Talking of instant gratification, millennials are a key audience to target and to do that, you need to be where they are – online. Today and tomorrow’s homeowners like to research online and search for reviews before choosing an installer. As a key audience to target it’s also worth considering what else drives them. As millennials are more likely to seek out innovations, then smart technology is an excellent lever to pull.
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Winning awards and showcasing them is another great way to market your business, via your local press and your social media channels and website, especially if it is for customer service. Two of our installer partners, Qualplas and Thistle, recently won National Customer Satisfaction awards in this year’s Independent Network Awards, which can be used as proof points of their successful installs and wraparound service.
When it comes to building a great online presence, we support our installer partners heavily, whether that’s with content and images to enhance their existing web presence or building a dynamic website and supplying social media content to support brand awareness and give homeowners a great first impression.
Hundreds of our customers already take advantage of the various marketing support options we offer, particularly our branded website which can be fully tailored to suit their business and offering, including other home improvement areas, whilst using local messaging to ensure it is relevant for potential customers. The site is user-friendly and underpinned by SEO; creating the perfect showcase for their company and portfolio, with flip technology brochures embedded ready for customers to browse.
Where an installer already has a website, we can add value with pointers using our digital audit, where we do a deep dive on the site’s performance, recommending changes to maximise opportunities and rank higher in local Google searches. The digital audit also looks at social media channels to show which areas are working well or where they can be improved.
Investment in an active social presence reaps rewards, with homeowners turning to Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest for inspiration and customer reviews when it comes to renovations. Our social media toolkit equips installers with assets and content to engage audiences and win over new customers. Through powerful photography, engaging blog articles and video content, we can help you pique the interest of even the most cautious of consumers.
Our marketing support is utilised by more than one third of our customer base. It’s a varied offering, which we’ve calculated is worth more than £5000 to those installers currently utilising it. Alongside digital marketing it also includes traditional marketing in the form of rebranding, product brochures, point of sale material and drop cards, which can be branded with your own company details.
Whatever an installer’s goals or end market, we tailor our marketing packages to take the burden away and enable them to focus on their core activities. Working with Glazerite can really bolster an installer’s brand image, putting them on a par with the nationals.