Every building product you put on the market offers a unique set of features and benefits.
Once you’ve identified the key attributes against your business goals and the market, you further define where the product should be specified and, ultimately, in what kinds of spaces it should be installed—homes, hotels, schools, healthcare facilities, etc.
So when developing a strategic marketing plan for promoting your home and building products, it’s important to identify the key verticals that are applicable to the product and who your target audience is. That helps to refine your key messaging and selling points.
Below is a general list of verticals within home and building products marketing to consider:
Residential
The residential market includes private single- and multi-family homes. When marketing product for specification in this vertical, you can target both B2B and B2C audiences—architects, designers, specifiers, distributors, builders, contractors, developers or even homeowners themselves. What’s important about a building product to an installer is vastly different from what’s important to a designer or homeowner. When marketing to different audiences, it’s imperative to adapt specific messaging that resonates with each target and its needs and wants.
Commercial
Commercial markets mainly consist of business-owned environments, including—but not limited to—offices, restaurants and retail. There are several branches to commercial design (as shown below). Your target audiences will mainly consist of B2B contacts within the space, including—and again, not limited to—facility managers, developers, contractors and the A&D community within the home and building industry.
Hospitality
A notable branch of commercial design is hospitality spaces. These spaces consist of service-driven environments such as hotels, theme parks and transportation. Your primary target audience will also consist largely of commercial contacts within the B2B realm.
Healthcare
Healthcare spaces are another branch of commercial environments that include medical offices/building and hospitals. Yet again, your key audience for marketing purposes would consist of those in the B2B/trade arena.
Resimercial
In more recent years, we have seen a rise in resimercial design within the modern workplace. Resimercial is a combination of “residential” and “commercial”—bringing aspects of a home into commercial environments. This provides a more relaxed, comfortable feel while still tapping into commercial-like products that continue to withstand heavy traffic and use. While you’re incorporating aspects that homeowners would integrate into their home (such as furnishings, etc.), your key target audience will continue to consist of the trade.
Hospidential
These spaces are also rising in popularity as they consist of a unique blend of hospitality and residential spaces. As with resimercial, the unique ability to combine the residential aspects into hospitality spaces allow for more of an “at-home” feel – giving way to the home away from home mentality. Similar to resimercial, your primary audience for promotion is the trade.
The are a variety of building categories and sub-categories, and as architecture and design push the boundaries of what people do inside those buildings, those categories continue to morph and even blend together. The challenge for you, as a product manufacturer, is to accurately define which categories and subcategories are best suited for your business goals and, in turn, which advertising and content verticals can best help you meet those goals.
Ready to see how Stoner Bunting can help promote your brand, product or service? Contact Dana Gulick at dgulick@stonerbunting.com or fill out an inquiry.