By Steve Paddock, Paddock Communications
For thirty years or more I've specialised in providing specialist PR services for the heating and plumbing sectors, and the building products and housing sectors – private and social. They all have a similar issue to address even now - that the people in those sectors who make buying decisions are, by and large, in the 45+ age group. They aren't bright young things. They aren’t in the main hugely knowledgeable about marketing – they rely on advisers to point them in the right direction. And I’ve been one of them.
In all those sectors we see a shortage of bright young things coming through to lead the sectors - in fact despite the efforts to attract new apprentices to the sectors over the past couple of decades, there is a shortage of young people leaving school and deciding to head into those sectors at all, at any level. Some are of course, but not in huge numbers and there are fears for where the leaders in those sectors are going to come from.
Whilst we are all becoming attuned to the modern marketing approach – at the heart of it all is the ability to understand and provide information to the target audiences we want to reach – using the right messages, via the right media, in a way that the target audiences will understand, at the right time and in a way that is easily assimilated by the audience and retained for future use and decision making. And I’d be the first person to accept that social media has a role, that web sites have a role, that online marketing methods have a role but, so do traditional marketing methodologies for a large proportion of the sectors we work in. And for all those ways of communicating we need to develop content that is easily understood and easy to share. And whilst over 45s – including me - have smart phones they don’t tend to use those phones as their sole source of information – just one of them….
Whilst we are all becoming attuned to the modern marketing approach – at the heart of it all is the ability to understand and provide information to the target audiences we want to reach – using the right messages, via the right media, in a way that the target audiences will understand, at the right time and in a way that is easily assimilated by the audience and retained for future use and decision making. And I’d be the first person to accept that social media has a role, that web sites have a role, that online marketing methods have a role but, so do traditional marketing methodologies for a large proportion of the sectors we work in. And for all those ways of communicating we need to develop content that is easily understood and easy to share. And whilst over 45s – including me - have smart phones they don’t tend to use those phones as their sole source of information – just one of them….
In some sectors of the economy – arguably the IT sector for example, decision makers are younger and likely to respond predominantly to IT based communication methods. But in traditional sectors, there is still a major role to play for traditional marketing and PR - its all about achieving that elusive balance. If you subscribe to the fact that the heating, plumbing and building sectors are in transition – with a sizable per centage of the target audience still open to traditional marketing practices and a sizeable proportion switching to the more modern ways of communicating - it makes sense to allocate budgets in a similar proportion.
I’ve spoken to a number of companies and their senior management in the past four or five years who have told me “we don’t need to do PR or advertise any more. We’re switching to 100% social media……” or they say “why should we pay people to write stuff for us we can get that done by AI now….” and even “times have changed, we can only move ahead by using video or moving pictures now”. They need to stand back and take a look at their sectors – are there still successful businesses out there appearing regularly in the print media? Why one asks? Would they continue to spend money to appear in the print media if it was a waste of time and didn’t reach their target audiences – or a sizeable proportion of their target audiences? Of course they wouldn’t.
It’s often the less successful businesses that have their budgets cut by the finance team that go for what they see as ‘free’ marketing on social media and talk themselves into believing that they are taking the modern way, the best way to get to more people, inexpensively. But are they getting to people who make the decisions? The buying decisions? Sometimes, but by going full bore for one type of marketing they are waving goodbye to a sizeable proportion of their target market.
Am I standing up for the dinosaurs? Maybe to a degree but not really. Unlike the dinosaurs who it appears had very little option but to switch from being a successful group of animals to an extinct one in a very short period of time this is a growing but gradual trend and requires a sensible approach to continue communicating with as many people in your sector as possible – using the methods available, the communication skills of professionals to achieve as much positive coverage as you can through all the communication methods there are out there, making the effort to get your messages in front of all the right people – not just a few of them.
Especially in the current climate when things are tough and sales are hard won, you can’t afford to ditch a large chunk of your target audience because some young chap or young lady says social media is the only answer. Yes, it’s part of the solution but achieving a balanced marketing and PR programme is far more important than that. Take a decision to talk your marketing needs through with experienced, qualified marketeers – who can offer you a well thought through strategy that gets you, your business and your products and services in front of as many key people as possible. You have to make every pound of your budget deliver opportunities for the business to be a success.
Steve Paddock has been a PR consultant for more than thirty years, working for and running a number of PR agencies before launching Paddock Communications in 2013. He was Chairman of the CIPR in the Midlands in 1986 - the first non-Birmingham based PR consultant to hold that role and served on National Council. He now runs his own specialist PR consultancy in deepest Worcestershire.