How can building product manufacturers reach 5000 architects in one year? More importantly, how can you successfully engage with 5000 architects or design professionals and have a significant impact on their specification decisions? Let’s find out . . .

Challenges Of Reaching 5000 Design Professionals

Reaching 5000 design professionals in one year is no easy task. There are several challenges in reaching hundreds of people, especially thousands upon thousands of AEC professionals. Building product manufacturers have limited budgets, resources, employees, and time. Furthermore, many companies don’t have the infrastructure, technology, social networks, and experience to reach this goal.

What are the mechanisms and processes you would use to reach thousands of design professionals? Does your company already own or operate these services, or do they need to created? Unless you work for a large manufacturer that has multiple offices and factories, dozens upon dozens of product reps, and a hefty marketing budget, the challenges of reaching so many design professionals is daunting.

Engagement Versus Random Advertising

A building product manufacturer could use many methods to reach 5000 design professionals. It could be as easy as mailing out 20,000 products postcards and hoping at least 25% of the recipients read them. That’s an awfully expensive and ineffective way to reach the decision makers.

Or a manufacturer could advertise in a popular architectural magazine and pay several thousand dollars for a full-page ad. In a previous blog, Why Magazine Ads Are Worthless For Product Manufacturers, we discussed the low ROI of magazine articles and what a waste of precious marketing dollars they are. Magazine ads produce very low engagement, metrics, and specification opportunities.

A critical issue for manufacturers to consider is engagement versus random advertising. How do you know a postcard, a magazine ad, or product brochure mailed to a firm is not simply ending up in the trash? How many architects look at a half-page ad of a bucket of paint in a magazine and decide it’s imperative that they visit the manufacturer’s website?

Engagement and metrics to prove the efficacy of the engagement strategies are critical to determine ROI. Otherwise, you’re simply throwing your money away. So, how do we reach 5000 design professionals in one year and how can we create interaction with the decision makers to increase specification opportunities?

Successful Strategies To Reach 5000 Design Professionals

What would reaching 5000 design professionals mean to your company? How would this affect your sales and marketing campaigns? An easy way to reach hundreds if not potentially thousands of people is via tradeshows. They deserve an in-depth examination of the pros and cons for another time. Needless to say, nearly industry tradeshow was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic and the virtual tradeshows that replaced them have been disasters for manufacturers.

Social media such as LinkedIn, facebook, and Twitter is a great way to reach design professionals and build brand awareness. However, most design professionals don’t spend more than a few minutes glancing at product manufacturer posts, videos, and blogs. To captivate a design professional and ensure maximum engagement, other programs are needed to expand product specification opportunities.

There are two critical methods to reach as many design professionals as possible, live and automated. Both have their place in our goal to reach 5000 design professionals. Typically, live programs are more expensive, take more time to coordinate and manage, but often times produce higher engagement with AEC professionals.

Automated programs provide building product manufacturers an opportunity to promote their products and expand product specification opportunities while they tend to other duties. Automated programs save time, money, utilize less team members, and still produce excellent metrics and ROI.

By combining both live and automated programs, a building product manufacturer can effectively reach the decision makers. Here is our plan for reaching 5000 design professionals in one year. We’ll list a strategy and a conservative estimate of how many design professionals will engage with that program annually.

LEED Specific Hour Online Anytime Education Course = 3000 design professionals

One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to reach as many design professionals as possible is to create an education course that nearly no other manufacturer in the industry has. A free education course that is so rare that most 100,000 LEED professionals needing it have to pay $50 or more for them.

LEED APs and LEED Green Associates both need to obtain LEED Specific Hours and GBCI general ours for their credential. Free GBCI approved courses are a dime a dozen and easy to find. However, LEED Specific Hours are nearly impossible to find at no-cost and can be difficult for product manufacturers to produce.

3000 design professionals annually for an online anytime course is a significant lead generation tool. Monthly totals vary on GreenCE.com but overall average 250+ per month. Many LEED Specific Hour courses will generate 300-400 participants per month. The LEED Specific Hour course offers some of the highest ROI for manufacturers in the industry.

GBCI General Hour/AIA Online Anytime Course = 1500 design professionals

Until recently, most building product manufacturers only registered their course with AIA. Over the past few years, more design professionals have obtained their LEED credential and therefore need CE hours for their credential.

As of 2021, there are over 200,000 LEED professionals, and over 100,000 of them need continuing education. An online anytime course registered with the AIA and GBCI will offer manufacturers the highest ROI. A GBCI General Hour designation will typically boost a standard AIA online course by about 15% for the monthly participation rate. Monthly participation rates may vary, but an annual average of 125 design professionals is consistent with these courses. Participation rates are the highest October through December with many design professionals rounding out their mandatory CE requirements be end of the year.

Webinars = 600 design professionals

Webinars have become an essential tool for building product manufacturers to reach AEC firms during the pandemic. Manufacturers can educate hundreds of design professionals in 1 hour. Webinars provide manufacturers with brand awareness, lead generation, and market intel through comprehensive exit surveys. Three webinars with a LEED Specific Hour course during the year would yield a minimum of 200 participants per session or 600 total. This is a conservative estimate as many LEED Specific Hour webinars generate 300-400 per one-hour session.

Putting It All Together

With only three education programs, we’ve already reached a minimum of 5100 design professionals in a year. A LEED Specific Hour course, an AIA/GBCI general hour course, and a webinar program achieve our goal. If a manufacturer added AEC firm visits (virtual for now), a tradeshow presence, and other industry related events, the outreach can exceed 10,000 annually.

These are realistic metrics based on case studies from clients using these exact same programs. This successful program to reach 5000 design professionals in one year is repeatable by any product manufacturer. The numbers and metrics speak for themselves. Every program has data and engagement metrics to support the success and significant benefits of these programs.

How does your company reach thousands of design professionals annually? How do you determine ROI? What metrics do you use to determine ROI?