The FMB is the largest building trade association in the UK, protecting builders against bureaucratic action and promoting them as specialist trades people. It also provides support to help its members manage business aspects such as preparing quotations and sourcing materials.
Challenge
Bad press about ‘cowboy’ builders, coupled with the fact many new or emerging contractors were struggling to make a mark, meant that the FMB seemed to have hit a customer acquisition threshold at 13,000 members. Research also revealed members found some of its services hard to pinpoint, and felt that the FMB is too easy to join.
As its target audience is typically on-site and therefore hard to reach, IAS decided that a fully integrated campaign was the solution.
Solution
A campaign was devised to target jobbing builders – particularly those working in commercial and residential sectors with a turnover of less than £10 million. Sixteen key regions were focussed on, clustered into five main regions for communication purposes. Data profiling, sourcing, matching and merging exercises resulted in a prospect database of 15,000 contacts.
Messaging was devised around a main strap line of ‘when it comes to the crunch’, and clustered around four key issues: profit loss, red tape, slow trade and workforce issues, and the campaign underpinned by a sales promotion offering a third membership on a two year deal, aimed at helping builders in tough economic times.
Road shows were staged at key national and independent building merchants and distributors, which key players including Travis Perkins signed up to attend. In store point-of-sale and ‘invoice mailings’ were also produced to directly target branch customers.
In addition, trade advertising in Professional Builder was staged over a series of months, providing easier to digest bite sized information. A Google Adwords campaign was launched, and a direct mail pack produced – each pack including one card for each of the four service clusters and designed to provide builders with simple random access to services of interest to them. Multiple calls to action included web and SMS, and packs were segmented geographically with bespoke calls to action to enable tracking capability. Additional cards were inserted in areas where road shows were taking place to generate interest. On a dedicated microsite, a road show calendar was also regularly updated to build awareness.
Results
The campaign attracted interest from a host of distributors, with over 50 displaying campaign material. In total 900 leads were generated, with a conversion rate of 50 per cent – 20 per cent more than was currently being achieved. As a result, the total number of new members was 450 – 120 more than predicted. The campaign was deemed to be worth £351,000 to the FMB and delivered a 3:1 ROI.
Says Robin Hood-Leeder, the FMB’s director of membership services, “For the first time we have implemented a campaign that has taken the strategic high-ground and provided the creative standout we need.”
