Any timber importer and distributor will know that the biggest challenge to their business is finding a unique selling point (USP). If you are a manufacturer then your marketing platform is easy – you let your products do the talking. But when you are simply supplying goods in an intensely competitive market place you need to be very smart about your corporate positioning and marketing activity.
During Premier Forest Products‘ formative years we concentrated on establishing these USPs and client delivery, rather than marketing. Now, we are at a stage where we feel confident about promoting our strengths – which include delivering bespoke technical solutions – and have revisited our approach to marketing.
Four stage marketing
As relative marketing novices we approached our first major foray into marketing in four stages.
Firstly, research. When you live and breathe your own product, brand and company it’s difficult to see objectively how others, from customers to competitors, view you. The starting point for us was research – conducting media audits, talking to customers and finding out from staff what they really think Premier is about. The great news for us was that our original vision and values – quality, integrity and value – stand up today as much as they did 11 years ago. And from speaking to these different groups we also discovered a few more accolades that we could add to the list – innovation, service excellence and technical creativity to name a few.
Secondly, branding. We then revisited our corporate image – logo, livery, website, to see how these things reflected the intelligence gathered in our research. The answer was that there was definitely room for improvement, so we set about creating a new logo and corporate identity that would reflect where we are as a company today. We felt it was important that we didn’t completely move away from our old logo (after all it had served us very well) but that we allowed it to evolve. So, we’ve changed and modernised the colours and lettering to position us as a quality, forward-thinking timber importer, while visually representing what we do best in a clear succinct way. The result, as revealed in the picture, forms the basis for our new website (which is under construction) and all other marketing materials. We’re also confident that the new look Premier will reinvigorate and refresh the brand and give us the platform we need to be more proactive in our marketing.
Reaching people
Thirdly, find new ways to reach people. As our company has diversified, so has our client base and, as a result, we need to expand our communications channels. In addition to continuing to focus on our existing client relationships we’ll be raising our profile through a combination of participating in events, making the most of awards and more varied use of business media, increased community work, direct mail, and public and media relations. This strategy has already started to pay dividends: in December we were voted one of Wales’ Top 300 businesses in the Welsh national newspaper The Western Mail.
Finally, evaluation. We will try to measure the effectiveness of our activity through feedback from existing clients and any increase in new client leads. We have also prioritised those markets that we feel have the biggest growth potential for us (and where we currently have less of a profile) and, by focusing our efforts in these sectors, we should be able to measure the value of our marketing drive effectively.
However, no matter how slick or focused your marketing drive there’s still no better marketing tool than word of mouth. Genuine endorsement of your company, goods or services is never so effective as when it comes from a trusted source and this is usually the result of a positive personal experience. So, while we refocus our marketing efforts in the strategic sense, we will, of course, be very careful to continue to deliver on the things that have got us to where we are today: an in-depth understanding of our clients and their business, a commitment to finding innovative solutions and, of course, through employing staff who are undoubtedly among the best in their field.
