LINIAR’S OUTDOOR RANGE

Customers want more choice - and with Liniar’s outdoor range you can offer more than ever before!

Liniar’s low maintenance PVCu decking and fencing ranges are designed, manufactured and stocked right here in the UK. Available in a range of styles, a variety of colours and a wide variety of accessories including foiled balustrades to match Liniar windows and doors, outdoor products are the idea opportunity to provide a fully matching finish with a single point of contact for guarantees.

As we progress through post-lockdown life, consumer enquiries for PVCu decking and fencing have skyrocketed – don’t miss out on the chance to provide homeowners with just what they want.

Find out more: https://www.liniar.co.uk/outdoor-range/.

‘Ne'er cast a clout 'til May be out’ and all that stuff, but here I am writing this in February and it is really feeling as if Spring is just around the corner. Everything is budding in the garden and bulbs are pushing their way into the fresh air – OK, there’s every chance that we’ll get hit with another variation on the ‘Beast from the East’ but let’s enjoy what we have and look forward to those days of walking around in shirt sleeves again!

These positive vibes may not be echoed by the Bank of England, nor the IMF, but at least it was encouraging that only around 20% of civil servants acknowledged the day for strikes by anyone who has a nicely protected final salary pension. Mind you if they have been on their normal WFH… walking the dog and picking up the kids from school (if it was open) perhaps they never heard that they were meant to be on strike, not that anyone would have noticed the difference anyway.

I’ve been on a bit of a mission this month, helping a well-known lady at a system house try and identify how many times poly vinyl chloride can be recycled. If anyone has a definitive answer to this conundrum I would be pleased to hear it. There are lots of claims even to as many as 10 times but it seems very difficult to find out the source from whence this pearl of wisdom came! I’ve been reading a fair selection of scientific papers and emailing off around the world, from Poland to the US of A, but I have yet to get confirmation of what may yet prove to be a myth. Watch this space and I shall share my findings!

With confirmation from our friends at the FIT Show that the Exhibitor Enhancement Day is being held at the NEC on 24th February, by the time you read this you will have had the opportunity to appear in FIT’s marketing campaign, both in person, and with your product. You will also have had a good refresher on Sales Training and know how best to get a return on investment out of your attendance at FIT. Before we know it, we’ll be traipsing off down to Birmingham for the exhibition proper and, I have to say, I’m thoroughly looking forward to it!

The trade really is livening up with a rash of product launches and visits, all booked into the diary. Interestingly, new build has caught the imagination of the trade and we attended a presentation of Pearl Window Systems’ New Build Installer Network, an initiative that makes life so much easier for the builder with a complete supply chain solution for the house builder through a network of approved installers with support from Pearl’s key partners adding up to a national installation solution that meets all the requirements for quality, compliance (through CORGI Fenestration) and sustainability. There’s a full article on Pearl’s initiative in this issue of Glass News and, as they say, I commend it to the house!

Liniar, too, has new build in mind particularly in view of the expected Future Homes Standard that comes into being in 2025. The launch of Zero|90 for new build and Zero|90R for replacement of 70mm systems was to Liniar customers as well as house builders, specifiers and architects, and the system with its Passivhaus accreditation was very impressive. Again, you can read all about Zero|90 in this issue of our paper.

It was with sadness that I read the release from the GGF that Anda Gregory was leaving the organisation. While I’m sure everyone wishes her well in whatever role she chooses next I can’t help feeling that her leadership, professionalism and enthusiasm will be greatly missed. As MD for the commercial arm of the GGF she was excellent and broke down many of the barriers that seemed to have formed between the organisation and other factions within the industry and, when she jointly led the whole organisation alongside John Agnew, many of us were delighted she was heading it up and that the GGF would benefit from her drive and clear thinking. All the very best for the future, Anda. I wonder how our industry is doing as far as filling the many vacancies that are available? Are we managing to attract the workforce that’s required? One thing that is evidently working is apprenticeships –the so called ‘earn and learn as you work’. Seeing a release from Glazerite about their apprenticeship scheme made me hopeful for the future. Their apprentices are aged from 16 through to 32 and cover a whole range of disciplines within the company from HR and Marketing to Purchasing and Technical. They are supported in gaining qualifications and, importantly, valued by the company. Good for Group Managing Director, Rob Brearley and his team.

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‘TIME OUT’ WINNERS – FEBRUARY!

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Second, how you market matters. Is it smarter to focus on short-term sales activation to generate leads and traffic, with offers to motivate people to buy now? Or better to focus on the long, building your brand and awareness? What’s the optimum balance between short and long?

The optimum varies by market and by B2C and B2B, but as a rule of thumb it pays to allocate around 60% of budget to brand building and awareness, and 40% to sales activation. But it turns out, long is better at both anyway: brand building builds brand and awareness and is more effective at sales activation.

The window and door market is a mass of individual markets, but it’s surprising how static brand line-ups are. There are new faces but, like trench warfare, in many markets 40 years can pass and the No 1, 2 and 3 brands are still the top three. Yet markets change, sometimes radically as we’ve seen in the last three years. Yesterday’s facts and insights can date and quickly become obsolete.

If, consciously or unconsciously, you are employing the same assumptions and insights as everyone else, using the same playbook as your competitors, and playing the market leader’s game, how will your marketing be significantly different or more effective? And without stepping outside your own bubble to ask the right questions, of the right people, in the right way, how will that change?

Bubble? We can thank the debates about social media for revealing the insidious and largely invisible effect of social bubbles. Whether we’re fully aware of them or not, we tend to cluster in bubbles of like minded people who share and reinforce our beliefs and values, so it becomes hard to see things as they really are.

But that’s what sales teams are for? So, people say, why do we need market research to tell us what the sales team already knows? They talk to customers and the market day in day out. They know our products, markets, customers and competitors better than anyone. True, the very best probably do. But our research consistently shows the effects of ‘the bubble.’ Confident your management team can beat the bubble? Put it to the test! Even the closest customers aren’t an open book, and your team see the world through a group lens. If they’re any good, they must do. The positive of that is the strength of the team, the negative, the blinker of groupthink. We see what we expect to see. Just as fish are unaware of the water they swim in, few people sense the bubbles they live and work in.

This could be your most valuable takeaway: Good research is the foundation of effective marketing. Research can provide fresh insights and facts, facts you know that your competitors don’t. Facts and insights to transform your marketing, competitive advantage and market share.

Are you doing enough research, of the right kind? Or just waiting for the tide to turn and carry you with it?

If you want help researching the insights and facts to build your brand and make your marketing more effective, talk to Yvette Kirk at yvette@mra-research.co.uk.

“Is it smarter to cut or stop spending on marketing until the economy recovers? Or should you maintain or increase your spend? It turns out that companies that ‘go dark’ and cut spending, get a short term lift from the savings they make, but pay dearly for it later. They do much worse in the medium to long term. Few recover the loss of share and momentum.”