off the mat
Picture-Perfect Trucks Shine on Social Media Throughout its area of operation in Connecticut and New York, American Pavement Specialists has established a reputation for its clean, shiny, bright red trucks. The family-owned asphalt paving company offers paving, milling, reclamation and grading services, mostly for commercial and DOT clients, as well as area municipalities. Based in Danbury, Connecticut, American Pavement Specialists was founded in 1993 by Bill Jr. and Colleen Stanley. “Even when my father had one truck, he made sure it was kept clean,” said Matthew Stanley, the youngest of the couple’s four sons, all of whom are now foreman on American Pavement’s crews. “The type of care we take in our fleet is hard to ignore,” Matthew said. “Paving trucks aren’t supposed to be cleaner than sports cars going down the road or have tire shine dripping off them at the asphalt plant. It’s that wow factor.” A few years ago, Matthew and his brothers began expanding the company’s picture-perfect image by effectively leveraging the power of social media. Here, he shares the company’s strategy and lessons learned in the process of growing a global online following.
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American Pavements lays an average of 80,000 tons of asphalt per year. Can you give us a brief bit of background on American Pavements? Asphalt paving is in our blood. When my father made the tough decision to go on his own, he had a set of hand tools, a small truck and a roller my grandfather gave him. He didn’t have any employees. His first job was a small driveway. Using a pick to pull the old driveway out, he threw the old asphalt on the truck hauled it away. Picked up the asphalt, dumped it, shoveled it, raked it and rolled it, all by himself. Then picked up his check.
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Even before establishing a successful social media strategy, American Pavement Specialists has always taken pride in its picture-perfect fleet. Fast forward 26 years later, through years of happy repeat customers, constant reinvested growth and an eager desire to be the best, American has distinguished itself as an industry leader. What is your marketing strategy in a nutshell? In a nutshell, our marketing strategy has always been our image backed by our performance. This may not sound like a marketing strategy to many people, but the way we maintain our trucks and equipment is hard to ignore. Each one of our trucks is waxed/polished weekly, tires shined, you name it. Along with our trucks, our equipment is maintained at the highest level. Our goal is when a potential customer sees us on the road or a contractor sees us in the field their first thought is either, “Who are those guys?” or “Those guys must be good!” It’s our mission to deliver on those expectations and gain referrals. Our quality fleet reflects our quality work. When you do that, you create a reputation that sticks out from others. One that’s worth keeping an eye out for on the road, one that’s worth supporting, worth following on social media, and worth being a customer one day.
How has social media expanded your ability to illustrate this message to a broader audience? Social media has been fuel to that fire. Our reach started with contractors across the country and now spans the world. We receive messages from people from Australia, Brazil, UK, Germany, France and Russia to name a few letting us know they love what we do and the way we do things. It’s very gratifying and awesome motivation to constantly improve and push the envelope in an industry we love. Many asphalt paving companies have embraced the ability to market on social media. For those that haven’t...how might they be missing out by not engaging on social media? Once our social media following started to grow, not only were we able to showcase our work and build on our word-of-mouth reputation, but we were also able to create some leverage within our market. Not only against competition, but also with the manufacturers of the machines we run daily, equipment dealers and the asphalt plants we buy mix from (even when working with plants we don’t normally buy from). Oftentimes, the plant operators are familiar with us already because of our presence on social media.
