Talking to Architects: How Social Media Can Help - RIBA CPD Providers Network October 2014
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Getting specified by architects is a pretty thankless task. It is difficult enough to get in the door, and since the recession fragmented many practices, finding the door can be a challenge too! Drawing on her experience of both running architectural practices and working with manufacturers in construction, Su Butcher will explain the challenge of building relationships with architect specifiers, how practice is changing, and why getting your people on social media might be the key that opens the door. Su illustrates her talk with both horror stories and success stories from her three years consulting with product manufactures, and will set out her10 step guide to an effective social media strategy.
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Talking to Architects: How Social Media Can Help - RIBA CPD Providers Network October 2014
- 1. Su Butcher JustPractising.com Talking to Architects Image: FaceMePls
- 2. Architects?
- 4. Architects? When? Ten Steps
- 5. View these slides: View these slides with notes here: bit.ly/RIBACPDSM eelsej_
- 6. Architects: What are they like?
- 7. Micro (1-5) 60% Large (50+) 3% Small (6-10) 19% Medium (11- 49) 18% Small Source: RIBA 2009 Chartered Practice Members
- 9. No more work Graph: brickonomics
- 10. Cycles of boom and bust 1979 1991 2008 http://bit.ly/1nFtSvl
- 11. Aspirational Are you Aspirational? St Georges Hall by andymarshal.co
- 13. Design is…
- 14. We can design anything
- 15. …but we can’t do it alone http://ind.pn/1nFsQPZ
- 16. People are looking for Expert Advice from a Trusted Source marcelometal
- 20. turn it off. jemasmith
- 23. We pretend we’re good at it
- 24. …but we aren’t
- 25. Don’t think When… JamesCridland
- 26. Don’t think When… think HOW? JamesCridland
- 27. Architects don’t care about your product. They want to solve their problem.” “ Richard Gay
- 28. WWhhaatt ddoo SSppeecciiffiieerrss WWaanntt?? • Quick Answers • Trusted Advice • The Right Products • Free Information
- 29. A culture of Referral Kent Bye
- 31. Your advocates speak well of you when you're not there. Nicole Bachmann Golf by Robert Scoble
- 32. Andy Wells SIG
- 34. Your Public Home Online
- 35. The Social Cycle
- 36. The Social Cycle
- 37. The Social Cycle
- 39. © Su Butcher Ten Step Process
- 41. 44% of architects use Twitter for work. http://bit.ly/ArchitectsInternetResearc h
- 44. Cannot ‘Control’
- 45. Celotex
- 47. People make Social Media work SpeedOfLife
- 49. Who? smi23le
- 50. 4. Training mattimattila 1. Awareness 2. Safe & Sensible 3. Proactive 3. Policy 1. Boundaries 2. Enabling
- 51. 5. Company Home http://singleply.co.uk/blog
- 52. Outposts
- 53. 6: Social Objects Vincent Des Jardins http://gapingvoid.com/so/
- 55. 7. Profiles
- 56. 8. Network
- 57. 9. Go Hunting and Farming
- 58. 10. Measure and Review
- 59. Engagement
- 60. Actions
- 61. Completions
- 63. © Su Butcher Ten Step Process
- 64. Be Useful
- 65. Thank You. View these slides with notes: bit.ly/RIBACPDSM @SuButcher www.justpractising.com Images: Creative Commons
Notes de l'éditeur
- Lets start with a question. In the last 1-2 months, privately or professionally, in order to research a product or service you might want to buy, raise your hand if you have answered a direct mail advertisement? (3% of this room) Consulted mainstream media – radio, television, magazines or newspapers?(22%) Looked in the print yellow pages? (3%) Gone on Google or another search engine (100% - except for 3 tweeting) Have you tapped your peer-to-peer network, (Friends colleagues family members) through some kind of electronic network – facebook, email, twitter, linkedin, IM, where the answer that came back from a friend colleague or family member was a URL to a website you visited (80%) I’m indebted to David Meerman Scott for these questions. David tells the story that it doesn’t matter where he presents around the world, he gets exact same ratios. It doesn’t seem to matter what age, job function of his audience, it doesn’t matter who the people are, the responses are the same. He then says to his audience, “Oh my god! Why are we continuing to market using those same old traditional methods?”
- Before I set up my consultancy I spent 15 years managing architects practices, and I’m going to set David’s question in the context of the specifying architect What are architects LIKE? When should you approach an architect about your products and services? And my Ten Steps for talking to them better
- Before I set up my consultancy I spent 15 years managing architects practices, and I’m going to set David’s question in the context of the specifying architect What are architects LIKE? When should you approach an architect about your products and services? And my Ten Steps for talking to them better
- Before I set up my consultancy I spent 15 years managing architects practices, and I’m going to set David’s question in the context of the specifying architect What are architects LIKE? When should you approach an architect about your products and services? And my Ten Steps for talking to them better
- Before we begin, just to let you know these slides are available for viewing online. Follow this link, which I’ll share again at the end, or google RIBA CPD Providers Network Su Butcher and you’ll find them. Thanks.
- Defining characteristic of most architects practices is small – v small
- RIBA surveys chartered practices for staff numbers. 80% fewer than 10 staff 60% fewer than 5 staff. Most very small, few will grow bigger.
- Flat structure Little delegation (owners take all responsibility) Time poor and profit poor Frequently not strategists Don’t budget strategically (eg for marketing) Aim for low capital expenditure (most on salaries) Few well paid (less than QS PM Eng) Don’t run businesses very efficiently Prof staff do most admin tendency to be insular, isolated from business knowledge and suspicious of sales and marketing.
- Pressures? Lack of work – recession – flatlining of income in the sector Trim down (lose layer of staff – v young or v senior) Other staff more responsibility, little money Leaving staff set up new practices (no business training, go online for help and advice)
- Of course we know that times like those are part of our bread and butter, we’ve had a series of lean periods and booms throughout the latter part of the last century. Recessions, just as booms, are part of an architects life, and mould the type of business they run. Practices often evolve in the wealthy times and dissolve in the hard times, people move on and set up new ones.
- Architects stay small – want to be hands on. Training makes them good designers, Aspire to heights of creative success Want to design great buildings no doubt about it Understand what they want to achieve can help us work with them better (Photograph of St Georges Hall Liverpool by Andy Marshall)
- Who can’t have been inspired by the buildings of the 2012 olympics to realise the high quality of British Architecture today.
- Whatever they do whether stadia or housing – architects use design skills to deliver value to clients Design is hub of what they do I describe – creating the boundary between outside and inside space (and thereby defining both) Struggle conflicting constraints of internal space standards and external environment – GAP where building fabric goes. Housing – last 5 years gap has been squeezed Good buildings make the whole work
- Unfortunately the education of architects (which I underwent myself) tends to make us think we can design anything. And I’ve sat on a few architect designed chairs that disprove that theory.
- As buildings get more complicated, executing a perfect building gets more challenging, and architects have to work together with other professionals to make sure nothing gets left out.
- And that’s where you come in. Like all professionals, architects need to access the expertise of others. Your expertise on building systems, products and regulations, is essential for architects to do their job. And that expertise, is what they are looking for. Give them that expertise in a way they value, and you’ll build up a relationship with them for life.
- I’m often asked, when is a good time to contact an architect?
- Value Engineering But Hits your radar at Planning – public domain Call when planning registered Contact when determined Send literature, try and meet named agent Try and find out who is to tender, when going to tender Offer to reduce value after tender Not to mention other procurement methods you need to be talking to architects all the time. So you contact them. All the time.
- The problem is, if you do this, this is what it feels like. Aim for target but scattergun (especially when intelligence out of date and innacurate) Collateral damage. Of course we want to turn off the tap. 45-65 projects on books, 20 active at any one time.
- Lets face it – do you turn the TV over during the ad breaks? I do. Small practices have more tools to turn off the tap today than ever before. Unsolicited phone calls can be stopped by a good gatekeeper and the telephone preference service. Offers to deliver product literature get met with ‘we don’t have a librarian any more’ or ‘we don’t keep a hard copy library’, or they end up in the bin. CPD offers can end up in the bin or the spam email box with all the other unread messages. Banner ads on websites are not read any more because the readers use adblocking plugins or get their news via ad-free RSS feeds. Some of these new practices don’t have business addresses. If you wanted to go there you’d be out of luck. You definitely won’t fin dhtem in the phone book.
- But of course we know that the construction procurement process is not linear. It is cyclical. Iterative. Everyone is talking in circles. You never know when is ‘The Right Time’.
- Incidentally, this idea that there is a constant process of engagement between professionals has now been enshrined in the branding of the new RIBA Plan of Work and appears all over the RIBA materials and on professional websites.
- What does this mean for product manufacturer’s sales teams? What you hoped would be like this
- Ends up more like this. Instead of feeling like you a helping hand your marketing messages, you can feel like a gatecrasher trying to break into an opening night, unable to get past the bouncer lurking in the shadows. Frankly, I’d give up now trying to work out when to approach an architect like this, because you are just part of the noise, and today making noise is easier than ever. What is more an entire army of people are employed by architects to stop people like the Marley Rep from talking to them. There was more than one reason why they called me the Rottweiler in one firm I worked in as PM. One of my jobs was to keep people away from the fee earners.
- Turn off the noise and think more intelligently about what architects are comfortable with.
- Don’t think When can I talk to an architect, think How can I make it easier for architects to talk to me. Pushing doesn’t work. We need to use Pull Marketing – that is, Push marketing is when the customer doesn’t want your product or service. Pull marketing is when the customer does want your product or service. Instead of pushing our stuff on people, we’re going to use the culture that the prospect is most comfortable with, a culture of referral.
- This is Richard Gay. I always knew him as the Insulation Man. It wasn’t until long afterwards I found out he worked for Warren Insulation. Richard meets all the requirements of a useful person. Whilst he is in fact a salesman, he doesn’t behave like one. He is useful.
- What do specifiers want from you? They want Quick answers to urgent questions Trusted advice so they don’t have to worry The right products for the job (not yours because that’s all you are selling – help them make an informed choice) and Free information. They don’t have any money. They aren’t allowed to call premium phone lines. How do they get this information? They get it from the people they know.
- Think back to David Meerman Scott. We naturally ask the people we know and trust when we have a problem. Everyone loves to be asked to help. Everyone hates being sold to. And we know that relationships are important. They are especially important to B2B professional services, especially when the companies are small. Today there are more ways than ever to build on your existing relationships and create new relationships without pushing your stuff onto people. Today the internet plays a huge part in how we create new relationships and maintain existing ones. Those of us in business know that the hardest thing is to find people you can trust. Who better to go to for trust than the people you know?
- Which is where Social Media comes in What is Social Media? People having Conversations Online The Conversation makes it different from traditional media Process of discussing and sharing is what amplifies your message. It is a communications tool. It is also a much more efficient way of having conversations than meetings and phone calls. Also it is Digital Media = Publishing Not just talking about other peoples stuff, we have to make our own. Publishing is what makes good social media work Social and Digital Media has changed the way Specifiers find your products “Social, be prepared to have the conversation; Media, make it something worth sharing.” So how does this relate to our real world activities? More than you might think.
- An example of How social media works in the real world the world we inhabit, the world of construction. Golfer/Architect A says to Golfer B, we’re having trouble with our single ply roofing spec, we need to do some value engineering and its incredibly time consuming. Golfer B says, we have all our flat roof designs done by Andy Wells, he’s saved us thousands on some recent jobs and the client was very happy with the full system guarantee. He works for SIG, I’ll give you his phone number. So you ring up Andy Wells, but before you do,
- Notice that we’re talking about an individual here If they have a properly prepared profile on Linkedin, this is what happens next.
- Because Linkedin is so big and public profiles are indexed by google, its the best way to be found by google, which is where everyone looks. There are 525 people on Linkedin called Andy Wells, but Andy’s Linkedin profile has been edited to make it visible for a search like this. The architect (or anyone else) who doesn’t know Andy, has enough information to click through from google and he arrives here:
- This is what you see if you click through. His Public Linkedin profile (not the same as the one you see if you are a Linkedin User – you don’t even have to know what Linkedin is) Designed to tell a target visitor everything they want to know about Andy. Is this the right Andy Wells? What does he do? Do I recognise him? How do I get in touch or find out more? Linkedin becomes a professional person’s public home online.
- The Social Cycle So social media relates to the work of construction professionals by plugging in to their existing mechanisms. Traditional communications – face to face etc continue People talk about you when you aren’t there
- Search takes the prospect online Finds website? Possibly But conversations are often between individuals and about individuals. So people looking online will find the places where the individuals are having those conversations. The conversation platforms. They become the stepping stones to your website. You’ll notice there are now many more places for people to find you and get in touch with you. The ones they use will be up to them. We need to make sure the messages are consistent, and that we are there to participate.
- What turns this process into a virtuous cycle is the publishing and correct sharing of social objects – useful resources people can share. These may be video, pdfs, photography, white papers, product literature. Your people and your advocates share social objects driving conversation to the website, Social Objects promote more offline conversations and referrals, and the conversations drive the cycle of search, find, conversation and sharing.
- So that’s what we want to happen, but how do we implement it? And if we’re already using social media, why isn’t it working? Here’s my 10 step process for integrating social media effectively into business processes.
- Here’s the ten step process. Notice that it has two strands, the company, and the individual. Both are essential to the process. We need the right people, we need to be publishing the right content, and we need to be having the right conversations.
- We begin with the audit. Where are your customers online? You will be surprised which platforms they are using and what they are doing there.
- Do you really know what platforms your audience is on? This statistic might be surprising, as twitter is commonly thought of as a ‘socialising’ platform. In the 2013 Construction Marketing Index survey of architects by Competitive Advantage, 44% of architects said they use Twitter to help them in their work. Three years previously 38% of architects said twitter was banned at work, three years later it had shrunk to just 8%
- Many construction product companies I know have presences on Facebook, but many are not getting the traction they hoped for. This is not because there aren’t loads of architects on facebook (nearly 30 million active users in the UK) but often because their target audience doesn’t use facebook for the right purposes to make interacting with a product company something they want to do. Why tell your mum or your mates from school that you like metal roofing?
- It is really important to listen to what is going on on the platforms. Many companies in our industry either aren’t there or aren’t listening.
- You can’t ‘Control’ what people say on social media, they will say what they want. But listening will help you hear these conversations and act on them
- Here’s a positive example. What are architects saying about your products, right now?
- Next we need a strategy. We need to identify what we want to happen, what success looks like. Key to that strategy is people, because if people are talking online, they want to talk to people. They’ll always gravitate towards a person they trust, in preference to a faceless company. You can’t do Social Media on your own.
- Here’s Andy Knight, the manager of Hargreaves Foundry in Halifax. They made the cast iron columns for David Chipperfield’s Gridiron Building which completed recently in Kings Cross.Andy has much more success on social media than the corporate account, because he is a human being. He is the person people know and trust.
- Who in your organisation normally talks to your customers? These are the people who need to be on social media.
- If you’re going to have people involved you need tow things. a social media policy that sets boundaries, but enables rather than restricts employee use of social media. If it is too restrictive they won’t use their networks to help you. Implement three levels of training. Firstly awareness, so that everyone in the organisation knows what you are doing, whether they will participate or not. Secondly teaching people how to be safe and sensible online (this takes about an hour – I use a 12 word social media policy for this) Thirdly provide specific training for those who are client facing, to help them use the platforms you are advocating proactively, helping them use their initiative. We can’t control what our employees say on social media, but we can provide them with guidance and boundaries so they know what is expected of them and want to participate.
- Next we need a company home – a place where people will come when they want to know more. This place needs to be social, conversational, helpful and informative. Architects don’t care about your products remember.
- And because they aren’t on your website, but on the social media platforms, we need outposts there too, and they need to be set up properly.
- Next we need to make useful content, things that people will talk about. Digital marketers call these ‘social objects’. The weather is a social object, but so is a useful guide.
- Here is Elrond Burrell, architect at Archetype, sharing one of my clients social objects. This single message was shared on 16 times and the pdf has been downloaded over 250 times from their website.
- If we’ve got people online representing our company, then they need their individual profiles as well. Here’s Rob Warren of Celotex. Expect to be ribbed once in a while if you talk to him.
- And each of our people has their own network of people who know them. We need to help them grow it correctly, so the people they network with are the ones they talk to as part of their job.
- When all this is in place, then we can get out and use it. If you want to know how to do this, get in touch. Its about teamwork.
- And lastly, we have to measure – measure what matters.
- One thing you can measure is the amount of engagement that occurs on social media. For example you can measure how many people retweet your tweets, or comment on or like your status updates on Linkedin. The most popular updates will be shared with a vastly bigger audience, something that can inform your later activities.
- When people click through to yourwebsite, their arrival from social media platforms will be measured, so that these groups of visitors can be monitored, and you can demonstrate the value of your activity on these platforms.
- And Finally, we will be able to measure the outcomes of those click throughs, the downloads, enquiries and other actions resulting from them. These can be compared with the results from other marketing activities, over time, to see what is working. For example, one of my clients has found that Google searching results in the most downloads from their website, but the most contact form completions come from Twitter.
- Zinc Roofing installer enquiry (from an architect who had started to follow us and picked his moment) You know what success looks like. Use these situations to understand more about your customers and learn how to help them more.
- Here’s the ten step process again. Audit and Strategy, Policy and Training, Company Homes and Social Objects, Individual Profiles and Networks, Hunting and Farming, and Measure and Review.
- When I was a student of architecture, in the days before CAD, we all coveted a good scale ruler. If you can make something as useful as a scale ruler than I can find online via google, you’ve cracked it.
- Thank You.