Many companies have huge opportunities right at the tips of their marketing budgets simply because they work within industries that have been slow to adopt online marketing technology and techniques as simple as websites.

Building with Technology

The professional building materials supplies industry is an excellent example of an industry comprised largely up of slow adopters – the base products and ways in which they are used change slowly and many of the people and companies change at about the same rates. I know of a few lumber companies who sell tens of millions of dollars of lumber every year whose salespeople do not even have computers. The customers are often slow adopters as well because they are highly mobile and see technology as something else to tote around a jobsite. It is a B2B industry in which both sides are slow adopters and tend to be ok with that.

Most of the larger companies have websites – good ones – but the building materials industry is really defined by the small and medium privately held “pro-dealers” selling products like lumber, plumbing, electrical supplies, or other building components and most of them have a specialty of some kind from the fastest service to the best selection to having niche products professionals cannot find anywhere else.

Building materials company’s marketing dollars go mostly to local ads in yellow pages (which are becoming highly segmented), magazines, bill boards, or radio. Many websites that do exist in the industry are near-cliché sites created by someone’s nephew just because the company wanted something on the web. Many still talk about their big move to the net in 1999 and have not updated the product listings since. “Yeah, we got a website.” Coincidentally, this article was written in 1999 and still reflects much of what I see about websites in the business today except there is probably less direct selling than was expected at the time of the article.

Dormant Opportunity

Part of the reason many building industry companies have not put their marketing dollars towards building effective online presences is many of their customers (professional contractors and builders) were not previously big users of the internet. The thing is that, well, now they are.

I have a few clients in the building materials business whose leads I often field to make sure we keep their sites growing and properly aimed at their target markets. Here are the main reasons building professionals (new customers) find their sites. They are searching for:

• Hard-to-find products
• Product specifications for a bid or design work
• Product that was specified or requested
• Alternate supplier because of a shortage or complaint
• Solutions (products and/or methods)

Each of these represents an online marketing opportunity for building materials suppliers and for any company in a slow-adoption industry because each represents a potential online marketing strategy on which a company could capitalize.

Two companies whose sites I like are American Pole And Timber, a small niche-oriented company selling poles, timbers, and custom structural components nationwide and 84 Lumber, a rapidly growing national supplier to commercial builders. Both sites are easy to navigate, use pictures effectively, and make contacting them simple. Although, I wish they would offer more product lists both are online marketing leaders in the building materials industry.

Going Where the Competition Isn’t

Companies in slow-adoption industries have the opportunity to take the top spot with a marketing method that is quickly becoming (and already became) the most important place to be in the future. With research and the help of an SEO expert or other online professional (probably not a nephew) these companies can inexpensively take a piece of market share right off the table.

Even if companies are the second, third, or even tenth entrants to online marketing in their particular segment they still have an excellent shot at first place because much of their online competition is still using such unsophisticated techniques.