 It's no secret that your building material products are being compared online, but what most building material manufacturers don't know is the massive shift that's happening in reference to how their audiences are reviewing and comparing them online. What we're seeing is that there are publications, bloggers, YouTube channels, and even entire websites dedicated to comparing products within the building material space. That means brand to brand as well as category against category. So what's happening is your audience is going online and they're searching for comparisons between you and your competitors. But the problem is that most manufacturers don't even know this is happening and if they do, they don't feel like they can win this battle. So today what I'm going to show you how to do is not only how to get ahead of this curve and this trend, but how to win the battle and take advantage of it to help you out position and out market your competition. I am Zach Williams with Venvio where we help building material manufacturers outperform their competition by dominating their digital and online presence. So we're talking about this trend that's happening online with your audience or they're comparing your products against your competitors. The trend that we're seeing is that your audience, regardless if it's a builder, contractor, architect, or end homeowner, regardless who it is, the way that they are researching products online is changing. What is happening is that your audience is going on to, let's say, Google and they're searching for your product versus your competitor. Oftentimes they'll even be searching for your category versus another category. But when they're searching that, what we're seeing is that most manufacturers aren't showing up. They're not even a part of this conversation that's happening online. So the shift that's happening is your audience, what they used to do was go to your website, do some research there, go to a competitor's website, do research there, and try to figure it out on their own. Instead, they've gotten smarter. They are literally asking these search engines, whether it's Google or whoever, to give them the information, give them what they're looking for in reference to a comparison. That's why they're saying your product versus somebody else. So if you go online and you search for that, chances are your website is not going to rank or even talk about that information. So let's take Kohler, for example, they're one of the biggest building material manufacturers out there. If you go to Google and you search for Kohler versus and you wait a second, you just don't type anything. What you're going to see is that Google is actually going to give you some examples of other searches that other people like you have searched for. So you're going to see Kohler versus and they're going to suggest Moen or Kohler versus Delta or Kohler versus another brand. The reason why Google is doing that is because they know that other people like you are searching for that. There are literally tens of thousands of people searching for those terms. They're expecting Google to give them information on how Kohler stacks up against these other competitors. Let's say you type in Kohler versus Moen. You'd expect to see Kohler or Moen show up on Google's search results. But when you look through that page, what you're going to see is that Kohler and Moen don't show up at all. I'm going to remind you, people are searching for the comparison. That means they are thinking, should I do Kohler or Moen? And they're not finding anything from either of these manufacturers. Instead, they're seeing third party websites talking about them. They're seeing videos come up that are talking about them. And the problem with this is that Kohler and Moen are a step behind already. They're leading up to these third party websites to sell their products to their audiences. And this is happening across the industry. This is probably happening to you and you don't even know it. Let's say the first thing that comes up of your product versus your competitor is a negative review about you. You're already behind an eight ball having to overcome that argument on why your competitor's product is better. The reason why most manufacturers don't want to talk about their competition is one of two reasons. The first is they are either too scared to even mention their competition or they don't want to go down the route of negative advertising and negative marketing. The problem with this is that your audience is looking for a comparison and is expecting you to give it to them. But what they're expecting is an unbiased review of when your product is right and when your competitors might be a better fit. If you can do this effectively, you're going to gain trust and be seen as an authoritative figure in the eyes of your potential customers as well as your audience as a whole. Let me give you an example of someone that's doing this right. Let's take DuPont's Tyvek product. It's a house wrap product. They oftentimes get compared to Zip, which is owned by Hooper. Instead of shining away from the comparison, what Tyvek is doing is they produced a great PDF and content around how their Tyvek product compares to Zip. If you go into Google and you search for Tyvek versus Zip, it's the first thing that shows up. Why? Because they are Tyvek. They are seen as the authority and Google is rewarding them for that. And you can do this as well. You can literally lead the conversation in how your products are being compared to your competitors and three quick easy steps I'm going to show you. The first thing you need to do is go to Google and search for your product versus every single competitor that you have. And also search for your product category versus another competing category. So again, if it's insulation, so fiberglass insulation versus spray foam, for example. Search for those if that applies to you. And then what you're going to do is catalog every page that comes up for those terms. And your goal is to literally create better content than what you see that Google is serving up to. You want to create the most authoritative resource about your product category or product in comparison to a competitor that's out there online. So you're going to see what they're doing and you're literally going to do it better. You're going to include stats, data, images, videos, whatever it takes. Create the best piece of comparative content about your products versus every single one of your competitors. I want to be clear. This content you're creating needs to be factual. It needs to be truth. It doesn't need to be a sales pitch. Your audience will smell a sales pitch a mile away. Your content needs to come across as an unbiased resource on why your product is best. But at the same time, it's not bad to say your competitor might be a better fit in a certain scenario. If you can do that in an authoritative way and not be scared to talk about it, it will only help your positioning and saying when you're right and when you're not right. People want to work with people they trust. And by saying that your competitors might be a better fit in certain scenarios really helps your positioning at that point. And oftentimes will help push somebody over the edge to work with you, even if you're not the complete right fit, because they want to work with people they trust. So the second step once you create that piece of content is to go and promote it online. And one of my promotion is you want to get other websites and authoritative figures in your space to literally link to you, to broadcast it to their audience. If you can do that, that's going to not only help your ranking in Google, but it's also going to get new eyeballs on that content from new potential customers that don't even know you yet. The way you do that is by literally just reaching out to people. Reach out to those websites that you know your audience reads, reach out to publications and YouTube channels or people compare products and just establish a relationship with them and get them to link to your content. The third step, the final thing that you need to do is to close the door by getting another authoritative resource or publication online to write a similar piece of content to what you've written. You essentially want them to back up the piece of content you've written online by themselves and put it on their website. If you can do this, if they can create a piece of content that says, hey, here's some information on how your product compares to a competitor. And by the way, here's another great resource that links to your website. This really closes the gap and goes full circle in reference to being the de facto resource for your product versus your competitors online and will help you outrank them in the process. If you follow these steps, I know it will work. I know you're going to get a ton of traffic. We've done the same exact thing for a few of our other clients and two things are happening. The first thing is that they're getting a flood of traffic because people are actually searching for these terms. And the second thing that's happening is it's actually helping them in their sales process because people are going online to research products in reference to competitors. Hope you found this helpful. Again, I'm Zach Williams with Venvio. If you want more information on how you can outperform your competition, go to our website at venvio.com and subscribe to our newsletter or like us on Facebook. Thanks.