July 20th, 2011
Contractor Rewards is a unique industry initiative that brings together the best branded manufacturers in the building products space – all working together to add value and differentiate their products from the competition.
It rewards remodelers, builders and trade contractors in the residential, commercial and industrial construction markets in the U.S. and Canada.
Launched in February of 2010, the program engages tens of thousands of end-user tradesmen, keeps sponsor costs low and gives them opportunities to acquire new customers with the same marketing platform.
If data-driven marketing is a goal of yours, let’s schedule a short demo. Call me at 952-841-2895 or email me at: tony.thomas@biworldwide.com to schedule a webcast. I look forward to meeting you.
Want to learn more? Watch these short videos about Contractor Rewards, how it works and why you should consider sponsoring this trade initiative.
What is Contractor Rewards?
How the Program Works
What’s the Value of Sponsorship to Manufacturers
Tags: building products, coalition marketing, loyalty marketing, marketing in a downturn, reaching contractors
Posted in Marketing, Program Description, Program Design, Strategy | 4 Comments »
January 16th, 2012
Our team at CR met with an exec from Hanley Wood last week. Among the items discussed were their compiled estimates on Y-over-Y change in housing starts for this year. I don’t think this is proprietary so I’ll share them here:
- NAHB +15%
- Freddie Mac +19%
- Wells Fargo +5%
- Moody’s +51%
- IHS Global Insight +11%
All positive. Hope Moody’s wins the “most accurate prediction” prize. 
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January 10th, 2012
By Tony Thomas
I love sales executives. There no BS about them. They tell you straight and they expect the same.
I presented to a head of sales today and he challenged several things I had to say about Contractor Rewards. I kept thinking about a favorite quote from the author Robert Heinlein. He said;
“I never learned from a man who agreed with me.”
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January 6th, 2012
By Tony Thomas
I see these ”Quick-Response” codes everywhere. It started on my boarding pass, now I’ve seen 20 ft. high versions on billboards.
These two-dimensional bar codes are fast, reliable and contain a large amount of information. Companies are using them in advertising to drive consumers to their website.
Contractor Rewards uses them to capture purchase information from our contractor members.
All a participant has to do is download our app, scan a label with his smart phone and points are automatically deposited into his bank account. What could be easier!
Another reason why ten’s of thousands of construction pros are turning to Contractor Rewards as their program of choice.
If you’re a building product manufacturer still using the old “claim-form and invoice copy” method in your loyalty program, let us help you automate and take advantage of this new technology.
Tags: contractor data, loyalty marketing, reaching contractors, transaction tracking
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January 3rd, 2012
Peter Miller, of Restore Media, LLC wrote an excellent piece in his blog about the future in our business. It’s worth a read: click here.
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January 3rd, 2012
By Tony Thomas
My wife and I spent a couple days over the holidays shopping for a new mattress set. We’ve been sleeping on the old one for 18 years. I didn’t recall how frustrating and difficult it was, buying a new mattress. I had an easier time buying a new car.
First, I found it impossible to comparison shop. The manufacturers and retailers do their best to hide the specific features: coil counts/gauges, memory foam or latex, plush, firm, pillow tops, etc.
We’d find a brand and model we liked in one store, go to another store only to find they don’t carry the “Crap-O-Pedic, Nordic Supreme, Ultra-Plush model 66000.” They have entirely different named models. They may be exactly the same – but you can’t tell by the name.
When I asked one sales person if they had this particular model she said “Oh, BrandX makes our beds specifically for us. You can’t find this bed any other place.” Yeah right.
Speaking of sales people. As a salesman myself, I respect and appreciate those who take the time to educate me on the products they sell. In one store, the sales rep clearly didn’t know much about beds and made things up as he went along. At one point he said “I hate pillow tops. I’d never sell a pillow top bed… unless of course you want one.” At one major retailer, we found no sales person in the bedding section. I asked a woman in another area to page someone to help us. She did so, we waited 30 minutes and finally a manager came and said “Sorry, the person who works in bedding had to leave. I don’t know anything about beds.”
Come on people. We were willing to plunk down $2,000 that day. Of the 5 reps I spoke with, only one took the time to explain the features of the different mattresses we looked at and why they were important. Guess which store got our business.
What’s my take-away? Sales professionalism is important. Brand name, quality, price – they’re all important. But who represents your product and how they treat the customer means more than anything.
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December 6th, 2011
If you’re not familiar with Drew McLellan and his Marketing Minute newsletters you should be. He’s a terrific marketing strategist and writer.
Today’s topic really hits home for those considering Contractor Rewards.
Read this article: Marketing insights question: Who is your ideal customer?
Tags: contractor data, database marketing
Posted in Marketing, Uncategorized | No Comments »
December 6th, 2011
By Dick Dunn
Remember a year ago when many of the “experts” were predicting that we were finally going to see some decent growth in residential and light commercial/industrial construction in 2011? And many of those same experts were predicting the same for remodeling? I talk to building product manufacturers every day….and very, very few saw any meaningful growth in 2011. While the decline in sales may have stopped, many expect 2012 will still be “bumping along the bottom” at best.
Marketing dollars are still very, very tight. Not many Marketing Departments are hiring, so most have to do as much, or even more work with fewer people and dollar resources. Marketing spend continues to come under intense scrutiny.
Is this really the time to be looking at spending marketing dollars on something your company has never done before? Something truly “out of the box”?
Most of the Sponsors in Contractor Rewards agree that this is EXACTLY THE TIME to try something different, something innovative, to grab market share while the industry is stagnant.
While the Contractor Rewards coalition marketing program may be fairly new, it is based on the sound fundamentals of successful loyalty programs, including other coalition marketing programs we run here at BI. One of our programs, Food Service Rewards, has been in the marketplace for nearly ten years, and has tracked over 100 million purchases. One hundred million !!
Is Contractor Rewards really working? Ask DuPont. Ask BASF. Ask A.O. Smith, or any of the other premier brands who are sponsors. They are all innovators who saw the potential in Contractor Rewards, who saw the value in having data for the first time on the people and companies who are specifying, paying for, and installing their product. Data that they can use to increase customer share, to cross sell and to upsell.
Is Contractor Rewards really working? Our Sponsors can measure every single promotion they run in Contractor Rewards. For one of our Sponsors, they are seeing incremental purchases of 14% year over year in one segment; and a staggering 24% incremental purchases year over year in another key segment. And this at a time when their over-all business is essentially flat.
Is it possible? 14%-24% sales gains? In this economy.
Yup.
Tags: building products, coalition marketing, customer data, loyalty marketing, reaching contractors
Posted in Marketing, Sales | No Comments »
November 16th, 2011
By Tony Thomas
My brother and I had discussion some time ago about who are the “rich” in America. He siad they were the wealthy bankers, stock brokers, actors and atheletes. Surely they can afford to pay “a little more” in taxes.
Economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley Heim have completed authoritative research on leading earners — some 1,400,000 taxpayers in 2010, each of whom earned more than $380,000.
Only 14 percent of these households were involved in finance, while the biggest portion—31 percent—run non-financial businesses. Among the rest, 16 percent are doctors, 8 percent lawyers, 4 percent engineers, and 2 percent are in sports or entertainment.
The Top 1% pay 38 percent of the total income taxes, but earn only 20 percent of the nation’s Adjusted Gross Income.
Almost a third of the “rich” are business people, they are welding contractors, auctioneers, rice farmers, owners of mobile-home parks, pest controllers, coin and stamp dealers, and paving contractors. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, egineers and accountants.
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November 15th, 2011
…. doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.
The branded manufacturers in the US make great products. But they go to market through a complicated, multi-step distribution system.
Historically, our industry’s relied on a Push Strategy – One where the manufacturers’ sales reps or their independent reps go out and
- First educate the distributor
- In turn, relying on the distributor sales manager to educate their DSR’s
- These reps then call on their assigned dealer and home center Principals
- Relying on them to educate their outside sales and counter reps
- And finally those tens of thousands of reps are expected to carry the manufacturers’ message to the hundreds of thousands of contractors
So it’s a push strategy that’s worked less and less well as larger and larger distributors have gobbled up the independents and as building products have become more sophisticated.
It’s almost humanly impossible for a counter rep to know all they should know about the 20,000 skus in a local pro-dealer’s inventory.
And it’s just plain difficult for them to present the manufacturers’ product and their brand value in the way they would like them to.
But what if… what if a manufacturer had the opportunity to understand who thier end-user customers are, how much they buy, how often they buy and how broadly they buy across their portfolio.
And then, what if they had a low-cost means of reaching not only their customers, but their prospects as well; not relying on what some counter rep thinks about their products and their value.
That’s why we invented Contractor Rewards.
Tags: contractor data, database marketing, distribution, pull through, reaching contractors
Posted in Channel, Marketing | No Comments »
October 28th, 2011
According to Jonathan Smoke, Executive Director of Research at Hanley Wood, healthy remodeling markets tend to have these 5 traits in common.
- Growing Job Market
- Favorable Demographic Trends, In Migration, and Elite HH Growth
- Diverse and Educated Workforce
- Subsiding Foreclosure Activity
- Positive Quality of Life Factors
At the recent NARI Conference in Newport Beach, Jonathan listed what he thinks are the top ten “Hottest Remodeling Markets” in the US:
Boston
Chicago
Dallas
Denver
Miami
Minneapolis
Portland
Raleigh
Seattle
Washington, DC
If you knew who the builders, remodelers and contractors were in these cities, and you knew what products they purchased from you (or whether they even were your customer,) and you had an inexpensive way to communicate with each one — would it change the way you marketed?
How about if you knew this information in 350 other markets in the US?
If you’re a sponsor in Contractor Rewards you already know this information and much more.
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