One of the most significant decisions a facility can make in building the future of its business is who to outsource and entrust various facility maintenance services to. After all, selecting the right vendors can be the difference between employees and customers having a positive or negative experience at the facility. But as the industry becomes more saturated and the competition even more substantial, your facilities services business has much to prove.
Facilities services aren’t going anywhere any time soon. On the contrary, the facilities services industry has steadily grown over the last two decades. It’s projected to continue its growth from $1,291.6 billion in 2023 to $2,031.4 billion by 2030.[1] So, while there’s no doubt that this sector is expanding, how much of the pie a facility management company can take depends largely on its marketing.
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- Facilities Management Market Trends
- Facilities Management Marketing Tactics
- Develop a Comprehensive Marketing Plan
- Attract Qualified Leads with Effective Facilities Services Marketing
Facilities Management Market Trends
In recent years, facility management customers have become quite sophisticated, with a better understanding of the market, a higher understanding of relevant topics, and an increased awareness of cost. They hold the cards now more than ever before. Facilities services businesses must cater to each customer’s distinctive needs.
With a growing market of sophisticated customers, understanding how to market to them is critical to the success of your facilities services business. How you choose to reach your target audience is very important.
Facilities Management Marketing Tactics
To best market to your target customers, you must first understand who they are. This understanding includes learning about how these individuals make purchasing decisions. It’s helpful to address a few pain points and how your facility service business successfully combats them. You must prove your value before your would-be customer signs on the dotted line.
As we roll into 2024, it’s crucial to identify which marketing tactics are most effective for the facilities services industry.
1. Using LinkedIn to Reach Target Audiences
Once you have a clear picture of your target audience, you will likely find that LinkedIn is an effective way to generate leads. Relative to other social networks, LinkedIn users tend to be older, more educated, and wealthier. Furthermore, LinkedIn allows you to target ads to particular variables, such as job title, company size, and industry.
2. Leverage Trade Shows
Another source of marketing that tends to be effective for facilities services businesses is trade shows. In fact, according to Sagefrog’s 2024 Marketing Mix Report, 33% of B2B marketers listed in-person tradeshows & events as a top source of marketing leads in 2023. That’s because networking at trade shows allows you to interact directly with buyers, publications, and influential business leaders. It’s a good idea to discern who will be in attendance that you wish to speak to the most.
Exhibiting at a trade show further increases your visibility among attendees. Trade show packages sometimes offer ad buys, including handouts or guides, enabling attendees to recall your business long after the day has ended. If you’re thinking about exhibiting, check out our Complete Trade Show Checklist for tips, tricks, and tactics.
While networking and exhibiting can be highly effective, the best way to obtain visibility at a trade show is by becoming a guest speaker discussing an engaging and relevant industry topic.
3. Utilize Newsletters
Newsletters as a marketing tool have been around for quite some time. They’ve proven to be an effective way of notifying prospective and current customers when you have something you want to share. Yet, newsletters perform best when focusing on leadership, employees, and other team members because people buy into people more than brands. Brands that develop an emotional connection with customers are three times more likely to receive word-of-mouth recommendations than those that don’t.[2] According to the Harvard Business Review, “On a lifetime value basis, emotionally connected customers are twice as valuable as highly satisfied customers.”[3]
4. Engage in Remarketing
Another helpful marketing tactic for facilities services companies is remarketing. Remarketing is a strategy wherein, if a user has visited a website but left without taking any action, they may subsequently come across the company’s advertisements on a different website later. This approach aims to reach potential customers and maintain brand awareness. Remarketing can result in:
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- Higher click-through rates
- Increased consumer trust
- Increased brand recognition
- Higher connectivity
Implementing such a campaign allows your business to enhance conversions and efficiently use its advertising budget since consumers have already shown interest in your services by being on your website.
Develop a Comprehensive Marketing Plan
With so many options, deciding how to market your facility services business can feel overwhelming. That’s where a marketing plan can help immensely. A marketing plan plays a vital role in offering guidance, maximizing resource utilization, comprehending the market, ensuring consistency, establishing measurable objectives, handling risks, prioritizing customer focus, and adjusting to shifts in the business environment.
To develop an industrial marketing plan, you must identify the marketing elements you already have in place. You can organize a marketing plan by fulfilling the following steps:
- Conduct market research: You must understand your customers’ characteristics and pain points. It’s also vital that you learn about the offerings of your competitors.
- Promote services: You want to ensure you are marketing each of your services to the right customers. You can leverage brochures or other handouts tailored to the specific lead you are targeting.
- Keep customers informed: Developing a relationship with your customers and prospective customers is in your best interest. Speaking with them directly, you can share crucial information, such as new regulations. Through this dialogue, you can create additional opportunities.
- Evaluate service delivery: Understanding what your business does is excellent, but understanding where you can improve might be even more helpful. Find areas where your customers aren’t happy to help alleviate misunderstandings and solve potentially damaging issues.
- Update your website: You should consider your website an extension of your business and brand. Regularly updating your website can allow users access to forms, surveys, questionnaires, and schedules, which can all be beneficial.
Attract Qualified Leads with Effective Facilities Services Marketing
Marketing your business in the facilities services industry is a vital part of attracting qualified leads and remaining competitive. But with so many other responsibilities, finding the time to do it right can be difficult.
At Sagefrog, our team brings business acumen, fast quality, and years of results to industrial and manufacturing companies with complex sales cycles. We’ve worked with hundreds of companies, from world-leading manufacturers and transportation companies to essential facility management companies. We’ll handle your marketing needs so that you can focus on your top priorities. Contact us today to learn more.
