The Construction Marketing Awards, presented on 29th November 2011, gave the construction industry the opportunity to recognise its very best marketing campaigns. Winners are invited to contribute a summary of their entry to this blog: today it is SitexOrbis, winner of the Best Product Launch category for the second year in succession.
SitexOrbis as a brand is associated with steel shutters on vacant properties, but this was a limited market and would not fuel growth.
As the recession hit the UK, levels of theft amongst vacant housing association and council properties under development rose substantially. As burglars became more sophisticated, housing associations and construction firms needed to stay one step ahead.
With this in mind, and armed with feedback from customers asking for help, SitexOrbis developed and launched an innovative proposition that would help the company diversify its offering.
SitexOrbis took an existing battery-powered, video-triggered alarm device (Videofied Alarms) and made it meet the demanding needs of the housing sector by including a 24/7 remote monitoring service, online reporting (using the “Aura” workflow management tool), site wardens and flexible pricing.
To launch this new proposition, SitexOrbis had to educate an extraordinarily demanding target audience who were change-resistant, price sensitive and technophobic.
The theme for the launch was ‘delivering more for less through innovation’ which reassured housing professionals that their shared fears about crime could be tackled in a manner that would actually save time, money and even carbon emission – therefore hitting three key hot buttons at once.
The most important feature across all the marketing activities was the building of trust: the housing sector is extremely sceptical of any new product, let alone one that is technologically advanced. For this reason the marketing used case studies, industry experts, articles in trusted publications and even industry awards to reassure housing professionals that they had nothing to fear from this innovation.
While building trust with the target audience, a parallel internal marketing campaign built trust with client-facing staff – whether site operatives of sales consultants.
Once trust was established then lead-generating modes of communication including exhibitions, seminars, email marketing and even social media, converted this trust into sales enquiries and ultimately sales.
The success of the campaign is best evidenced by 80 customer wins (a substantial proportion of the housing sector).
Furthermore, this new proposition is clearly differentiating SitexOrbis from competitors when tending for large contracts, helping SitexOrbis land major contract wins. 44 of the new clients are from these big ticket wins.
The success and creativity of this marketing has helped SitexOrbis clinch their second successive win in this category.
