Rich Newsome
Maybe you’ve decided to digitise your building product CPD; or maybe you want to create a fresh, new CPD from scratch.
Whatever your aims, you need to ensure that your end-result helps to develop your relationships, establishes thought leadership, and perhaps even leads to specification.
To increase your chances of the above happening, there are some key rules you can follow.
Read on to find out more.
1. Your Subject Matter is Crucial
With over 500 CPD providers, it can be difficult to develop something that stands out above the crowd.
If your competitor is offering something very similar, what value will you be delivering?
Carefully consider what the specifier wants, what their pain points are and what topics/issues you receive the most technical enquiries from.
Alternatively, you may consider new issues around Building Regulations, and whether your solutions can help professionals deliver better outcomes for their clients or projects.
Whatever you decide, always ensure that you’re providing something new and innovative.
2. An Attention-Grabbing Title
Remember: your title will be used throughout all your marketing activities, from social ads to email marketing. You need to ensure that whether someone is scrolling through their LinkedIn feed or glancing at their emails, your title stands out.
Using thought-provoking words within your title will turn heads and prompt a response.
According to buffer.com, here are some of the words most likely to convert:
- New
- Secret
- Inspires
- Take
- You
- Improvement
- Free
- Promote
- Increase
- Create
- Discover
- Instantly
3. Establish a Strong Technical Message
This is an area that cannot be overlooked. It’s crucial that whoever takes part in your CPD comes away with new and/or improved technical knowledge. It will establish you as a trusted thought-leader.
When it comes to technical resources, ensure that participants come away with appropriate materials, such as technical handouts (that can be accessed online), CAD and BIM models, if applicable.
4. Strike the Right Balance
Yes, you want to ensure that you are totally unbiased, but you also want people to specify your product.
So, how do we strike the right balance between impartial and sales pitch?
Identify the pros and cons of other solutions; clearly outline what your product can (and can’t!) do; and let your case studies do the selling.
That’s right – include case studies within your CPD. That way, specifiers will see your product in action.
That’s much more powerful than saying, “Our product is better than theirs”
5. Format is Key
If you read last week’s blog post, you will have a good idea of all the different formats you can adopt for your building product CPD.
It’s crucial that your participants are kept engaged throughout.
45 minutes is a long time if all they are doing is sat in front of a computer screen.
So, incorporate video, images, animation and even quizzes to ensure no one leaves feeling… bored.
6. Get Your Follow-Up Tasks in Place
You’ve created your CPD. You’ve taken necessary steps to promote it. You receive a number of sign-ups…
Now what?
This is where your technical sales rep needs a set of follow-up actions. Keeping the conversation going is vitally important to increase your chances of specification.
You could offer further CPDs, provide further product information or even offer a discount (if applicable).
Whatever you decide, your interactions shouldn’t stop once the CPD is over.
Conclusion
Digital CPDs within building products and construction are growing in popularity. Reaching out to a wider audience is key if you want to increase your chances of specification in today’s socially distanced world.
If you’d like any support on CPD conversion – or even CPD creation – check out our CPD services page. There you’ll see a variety of prices and plans to meet your unique requirements.
Alternatively, you can schedule a call with our Business Development Manager, Will, who will be happy to discuss your aims and objectives further.
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.