GUEST ARTICLE: Manufacturing expertise doesn’t count if nobody can find it
Nowadays, specifiers researching products for a new building don’t have manufacturers at the top of their list to contact. Instead, they head to Google to compare similar products and increasingly, they ask AI tools to act as their source of expertise and work out the differences between two specs before they’ve even spoken to a sales rep. By the time they call, the buyer has usually narrowed down their choices to two or three products.
That should be great news for manufacturers of building products and materials because the answers buyers are looking for already exist. Not many industries have this much genuine technical depth to draw on: fire ratings, thermal performance, compliance data, installation instructions, years of engineering expertise sitting in the heads of the people who design and test these items.
The problem is, hardly any of it is built to be found. In a market where the decision is nearly made before a manufacturer even knows someone’s out there looking, having a proper digital presence isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s the thing that decides whether you’re even in the running. Julaine Speight, co-owner and marketing director of First Internet, has written the following guest article…
