 When architect has a reputation, and if they find something that works, it's much harder to get them off the spot. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my co-host, Beth Poptiklov. And today we're talking about building products, marketing, sales, strategies, how to get in front of your customer, even a little bit about, should you integrate Spanish into your marketing? There's some really interesting insights there. We've got an awesome guest lined up for you today. Beth, you want to introduce him? Yeah, absolutely. We are really excited to welcome Jerry Messina to the show. He is a building products marketing executive. He has a ton of experience in social, digital. He is a guru when it comes to building materials and has done and seen it all from a marketing and sales perspective. So Jerry, thank you so much for your time. We are excited to have you with us. Wow, great. Thanks for the introduction, Zach. It's great to be here. Jerry, you and I have got a chance to know each other over the years through different conferences and events. But for our listeners, why don't you just kick us off and share a little about yourself, a little about your insight in the industry. And then I'd love to dive in and hear from you about who you've marketed and sold to, because I think that that's always really helpful for our listeners. It's like, hey, what's your context here? So there's a couple of questions there. But why don't you just dive in and guess a little bit of your background? Way back when I started as a mechanical engineer studying engineering. And my first role was installing manufacturing equipment for a big consumer products company. And then I got my MBA along the way and I kind of just morphed into marketing for grocery, club stores, mass merches like Walmart. And then slowly I went to the dark side to building products, you know, hitting up big box and the contractor and the distributor. And they say, once you're here, you never leave, right? There you go. You mentioned you started in CPG, but you've got a pretty good understanding of architects, contractors, et cetera. Talk to me a little bit about what you see that's working for building product manufacturers from a marketing and sales perspective. It's funny. CPG, you know, we say it's fast moving. You know, you buy a $3 kitchen cleaner every six months. There's no risk involved. You know, you don't like the smell or the fragrance, you know, big deal, no loss. And as a marketer, you have so many tools, you know, TV, print, couponing, a lot of point of sale data. But as you move into the building products world and start trying to reach the architect or the contractor, you know, these lead times expand, you know, we're talking years. You may do a roof every 15 years. You may put a new bathroom in every 10 years or paint your walls every few years. So the lead time is much longer and the risk is much higher to the owner. So it really takes a different mindset and a big part of marketing is branding, right? I've seen that in the building products world, the brand, I sometimes call it, it's hidden. So you look at your wall, right? Like I'm looking at the wall behind his back and it's, you know, nice blue. But you know, the brand that that it was, you know, you forget that. Oh, very quickly. Yeah. And we hear about that from other manufacturers too. They're like, how do I market a product that frankly nobody wants to know the name of, right? You can see that wall. But like, what about the plumbing inside of it? Yeah. You know, like, or the electrical inside of it. And that's hard, right? The owner isn't going to say, I want ACME plumbing in that wall. So you really have to go after the distributor and contractor and be top of mind because the brand isn't in front of you, like, you know, on a TV watching a Sony TV, say, oh, this is a great picture. Oh, it's a Sony. You know, it's kind of reinforced every time you use it, but every time you walk out on your deck, you know, it's a nice color. It's comfortable. It's, you know, it's built well. But you're like, oh, I don't remember the brand. I might not even know the brand because the contractor was the one who said, hey, this is the brand you're going to use no matter what. You know, so it's tough for a manufacturer to kind of overcome some of those objections. Is there anything you've seen that works really well to help reinforce the brand, to help bring the brand top of mind? Because to your point, so much of building materials, if it's doing its job, it disappears. If you're thinking about it, it's probably because it's broken or is it working the way that you want. So you kind of don't want people to think about it, but anything you've seen that works to help bring or be more memorable. Your podcast does a good job of talking about all these tools that try to keep in front of the distributor and in front of the contractors when they're talking to the facility manager saying, this is the product I like because it goes in quickly. It's going to perform. You're not going to get a call back. You know, it's got a great warranty. And so it's it's really about how to convince the influencer and it runs in both sides. I mean, when you're talking about a commercial construction, there's so many influencers, right? And you all know architect, designer, consultants, whereas maybe on the home side, it's maybe just the homeowner listening to the contractor and what they say. So getting in front of them is really is really pretty key and keeping in front of them. Are you seeing contractors more willing to try new products, Jerry, like today versus, let's say even 10 years ago with the changing climate of contractors in the space? Because I know that like, if you look at all different audiences, building product manufacturers, target architects, builders, homeowners, you know, GCs, facility managers, I mean, the list goes on, but like contractors, the ones that are probably for the most part, the most reluctant to change, you could argue that, you know, pro against, but for the most part, and I'd be curious to get your perspective on, are you seeing people more likely to try new products? And if so, what's working to get them to try new products? Yeah, I think they are more willing than, say, an architect, you know, an architect has a reputation. And if they find something that works, it's much harder to get them off the spot. A contractor, especially now with labor shortages and the challenge to get folks who really understand how to install a product properly. Are a little more open if you can come and say, hey, I can install this X percent faster and here's proof, you know, I did a study, a third party study even would be better. But if I did a study, I got other contractors who've used it and they're validating that this product went in well, it performs, because it's so hard now for contractors to find qualified people to do the more technical aspects of a window installation, say that if you can have the product install quicker, maybe pre install some stuff to the factory so that when it gets to the job site, there's two less steps they have to do and they can get off the job quicker and get on to their next job. So they are a little more open than I would say an architect might be. That's interesting. You're probably like one of the first people, Jerry, that I've heard say that hearing your perspective on architects, it makes sense because artists, they are scared because their name is on the line. They don't want callbacks. They like using what they know. But at times they also want to like they want to create a feeling or they want to do something new. They want to not get pigeonholed. And I've seen that to be the case too, that supply chain is maybe accelerating the gap between architects and contractors. That's really, really interesting. And maybe I know we always try to create evergreen content here, but like depending upon what supply chain changes, that may or may not be the case anymore. Well, often it's easier to get in front of a contractor than an architect, right? Because as an architect, they're working on a project and unless you're coming in with technical data that they can charge their time to that project, you know, they don't want to BS over doughnuts and stuff like that. But a contractor, you can meet them on the job site, usually can steal a half hour or hour, show them some new, you know, products, new methods that you've got and really, you know, have a good conversation. They're just they're more accessible. We're going to a distributor. You do a training show at a distributor. They're just more accessible in many ways. So that's why I say I think it's a little bit easier to get them to quit. So this kind of leads perfectly into my next question. You know, Jerry's, we were just chatting before the show. We were joking about how 2021 felt a lot like 2020 2.0. So. I'm whatever your conversation that's pretty everybody just turned it off. Everybody just turned off this episode. They're like, I can't deal. But what opportunities are you seeing in building materials as we go into 2022 fingers crossed? It's some type of actual new year. Well, I mean, I think the tools continue to be available. And you've done a great job on the podcast talking about like TikTok videos. I've seen that becoming much more prevalent. And I think the caution there is make sure they're realistic. You know, you don't need it really overly produced. You need the real world people doing it. And as Zach mentioned at the top, you know, you really have to think about Spanish because many installers, their primary language is Spanish. And if your product is one of those that, you know, most products are like this. If it's installed correctly, there could be a real, you know, challenge and issue, maybe a warranty claim or what have you. So I mean, taking that extra step and putting it in Spanish, I think is a real benefit for the contract. Oh, yeah. I mean, we talk to manufacturers all the time about, hey, I need a website redesign and like, we're always encouraging them to think about Spanish. Absolutely. Especially if they're very contractor focused because if their labor force is that's their primary language, you could be alienating them and they might not want to choose and they might, you know, quote unquote, wreck your spec because they aren't familiar with it. And so I've seen some really interesting things done, not only with written translation, but also videos too. Like I've seen a couple manufacturers also lean into doing video production just for Spanish speaking or Spanish native speaking contractors too, which is really smart to wrap things up to have the talent. You don't have to have the talent speaking Spanish on screen. I mean, you can just have no words and then just do subtitles in English. 100% Spanish the other time. That's a great idea. That takes the friction out of it from the manufacturer side of having to source the talent and have an understanding of that. That's a great recommendation. And there certainly is the translation issues. You got to make sure you're translating it correctly for the vernacular that a lot of these contractors speak. And videos, we talked about this before, is that it's beyond just TikTok. I mean, there's basic install videos. And you mentioned how to reach architects and one video concept that I had done was a 360 video. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but it literally is, you know, you can put it on your your phone because an architect or a contractor want to see how you make your product, right? And especially now, no one's traveling, but so you can't get them into your factory. So could you bring your factory to them? So one thing that was successful for me was we actually filmed the 360 all immersive video of our factory. And you're literally just standing there and you could look up and see the tanks and look down and literally see the forklifts driving by you. You can turn around and see the people walking by. It's literally you're standing in the factory and everything is moving in a bubble all around you and you control what you see. And then we took it once that furthers put it on the job site. So you're literally standing, in this case, on a roof with a contractor installing a product. And you can turn around and see the other workers. You can look up in the sky and see a plane flying over it. So it's you're literally there. And behind the curtain, as we sometimes call it, is a real plus for for architects, especially who want to know a little bit more about your product and how it's made contractors. You know, they want to see what's going on and, you know, know that they're getting quality products. That's a really smart idea. I've seen that done with like Matterport with like I'm going to see the inside of a house or something like that. I can go and look at everything. But job site and facility I think is a really great idea, especially as people are leading into the fact that we're looking at not only people don't want to travel, they don't want to go in places, but also just the efficiency component. Like we talked about that in relationship to trade shows, like are people going to go to trade shows and work as they see like, well, I can do just about as much work as I can without going to a trade show. But we still want people to see our facilities. So that's really, really smart. It's a great idea. Jerry, I love to hear your perspective. You know, we always like to ask people, hey, like, what's the one piece of advice you would give a building product manufacturer in the space if they want to succeed, if they want to win? We talked a lot of a lot of different tactics and ideas, which I think are awesome. But if you're just sitting in front of any manufacturer, you're looking at the next year, three, five years, even 10 years. What do you see as the biggest opportunity for manufacturers in our industry? No pressure. You know, I'm going to hop out and say, I go back to something I call block and tackling, which is, yeah, there's a lot of great tools out there. But but unless you have a product that's well researched, that hits, you know, the needs and wants of your ultimate target, that data sheets, product samples, Revit models are all easily accessible on your website. Your sales, your customer service folks are all trained properly on the products and the solutions that you offer. Your warranty and installation support is top notch. You know, you have case studies to prove while you're product. I mean, all that kind of foundational, fundamental stuff is really key. And I think many companies kind of want to go off to these, you know, fancy things. It's cool. That's great. But they kind of forget kind of the basics. You know, an architect wants a data sheet. They want it easily accessible. They want it updated. So before you start doing some kind of Instagrams, whatever, let's just make sure that your your basis is done correctly. And I think we all have plenty of room to fix it and make it better. That's great. Jerry, for listeners that they want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, sure. It's Jerry with a G LinkedIn. Just send me a note and I'll be happy to get back to them. It's great. Well, make sure we link to that in our show notes, too. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this content, make sure you go to vanvio.com slash podcast to subscribe. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams alongside Beth Poppeglav. Thanks, everybody.