Rich Newsome
Here’s a fun fact: Millennials are described as individuals born between 1981-1996. That means that the oldest millennials will be turning forty this year!
That’s right; us young whippersnappers make up for more than a third of the global workforce, and this is set to rise to 75% by 2025.
So, what does this mean for your building product business?
It doesn’t take a mathematician to realise that a large proportion of specifiers within the construction industry will be millennials: the first generation to live alongside the digital world, sharing an affinity with technology that helps shape their lives.
There’s much to learn about the behaviours of millennials, and in this post, we’ll show you how to make those necessary changes to accommodate the new way that these young specifiers and buyers research and select their products.
Read on to find out more…
Communication is the key to success for your building products brand
The way in which millennials consume information is vastly different to how it was before. Daniel Newman from Forbes Magazine explains it perfectly,
“Millennials communicate with each other far more than any advertising campaign can. When trying to figure out whether something is worth buying, millennials will go to their friends and social networks to see what people think. They use this collective filter to sort out research and other word-of-mouth style information when making decisions.”
The supply chain within the construction industry needs to respond to this, by providing systems that serve specifiers “the right information at the right time”.
As a building product manufacturer, this means:
- Having a website that’s optimised for search
- Serving up helpful and useful content that allows specifiers to research easily and efficiently
…And using platforms correctly to ensure people engage with your content. Consider:
- Social Media
- Email marketing
- Digital CPDs
The Millennial Specifier Wants to be Self-Sufficient
When a millennial specifier or buyer needs a product or service, where do you think they turn?
Google, of course.
They’d rather conduct their own research than pick up a phone and talk to a sales rep. They’re not used to the hard-sell; it’s alien to them.
In the construction industry, contacting a salesperson usually happens later in the specification process, if at all.
We recently carried out some Buyer Persona research for a client of ours – who was having a website re-design. When interviewing one of our client’s key buyer personas – he stated,
“I just want to go on [their] website, find out the information I need and put it into the specification.”
This may be a little simplistic, but the message is clear:
Your website needs to allow for the millennial specifier to be as self-sufficient as possible.
Who is Your Number 1 Salesperson?
Millennials have brought their consumer habits into the B2B world, and more ‘seasoned’ specifiers are beginning to change their ways, too. Take Amazon, for example. Amazon allows consumers to search, read reviews and carry out thorough research before making a purchasing decision.
This shift in behaviour has many implications for sales and marketing within the construction industry.
Before a salesperson gets involved, your millennial specifier will have likely formed a strong opinion about various elements of your product, service and price they expect.
Does your website facilitate this behaviour? Does it have a wealth of information on your product’s value, where they’ve been successful, and so on.
In 2021, your website should be your #1 salesperson.
Conclusion
For many of you, 2021 will mean reassessing your Buyer Persona. If you’ve been operating in the space for some time, you will need to revisit your target audience to align your business aims with these modern search habits.
A clearly defined perception of millennial search habits is crucial to success with your building product business.
If you’d like any support on how you can reach millennial specifiers in 2021, don’t hesitate to talk to an expert today.
ABOUT INSYNTH
Insynth Marketing is a leading UK construction marketing agency based in Shifnal in the West Midlands.
They use the latest inbound marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to support building product companies to grow their business by proactively driving sales lead generation activity.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major on construction marketing, we bring together construction marketing strategy, digital strategy, website design, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation and HubSpot CRM implementation to produce successful campaigns and great results for our clients.