How do you reach over 3 million potential customers in the bathroom industry?
Enter spottydog communications — a PR agency specialising in the home and property sector who recently scooped double gold at the prestigious CIPR PRide Awards for its work with the UK’s number one tap and shower brand, Bristan.
After winning awards in two categories — Corporate and Business Communications Campaign and Construction, Property or Infrastructure Campaign — Account Manager Zoe Gaffney, discusses her top tips for reaching business audiences in the bathroom sector.
- Get to know your audience
“Knowing your audience well is the building block of a good campaign and will help you stay smart in the face of competitors. For Bristan, we needed to reach its three core business audiences: installers, specifiers and merchants. To do this, we used a number of different tactics, including:
- Social media monitoring
- Reading relevant industry titles
- Building relationships with influencers and industry professionals
“Once you’ve done that research, it allows you to identify the needs of each audience, so you can tailor your communications to them. For example, we discovered that a sense of community spirit was important for installers, while brand reliability was a priority for specifiers. We also discovered that merchants appreciated face-to-face connection within the industry.”
- Keep your messaging simple and consistent
“For a bathroom manufacturer, your key brand messages shouldn’t be overly fluffy or complex; after all, customers — business or not — simply want a tap or shower they can count on. For our campaign, we made sure that we communicated Bristan’s ‘brilliantly simple’ messaging consistently, but in a way that would resonate with each individual audience.
“It’s also important to make sure that any technical information is communicated in a way that’s readable and enjoyable, to allow time-poor professionals to extract the key features of products.”
- Use the right channel for your audience
“Our award-winning campaign was actually three campaigns in one. Why? Because we chose a different channel per audience to make sure we were reaching them in the right places. This is why knowing your audience is so crucial. For example, we knew that installers sought community spirit, so we created an industry-first Facebook group dedicated to installers. This offered them an open space to connect with like-minded professionals and join in friendly conversation.
“It’s important to think beyond social, too. With the Covid-19 pandemic prohibiting face-to-face events, we found that merchants in particular were missing that sense of real-life connection between industry professionals and stakeholders. So, we set out to deliver a virtual roundtable debate, engaging influential industry figures and discussing hot topics in the sector. This helped to raise brand awareness of Bristan amongst the audience and position them as a trusted voice within the sector.”
To read more about spottydog communications’ award-winning campaign, visit here.