Ultraframe Marketing Director, Alex Hewitt, speaks to GGP about how the company continually invests in digital assets to assist its customers at every stage of the conservatory and extension process.
“The world is moving evermore online, and so we and our customers have to do the same. In the not too distant past, every stage of the conservatory buying process would have been carried out or recorded using paper tools - from a surveyor’s pad, to a salesman’s brochures, right through to the fitting guides for installing the products – but increasingly, much of this is now carried out online or using digital tools.
Consumers are becoming more and more savvy online and expect that the brands they buy from will provide all of the information they are looking for at the click of button, night or day. This means that not only do we need to ensure that the Ultraframe brand provides the online experience that today’s consumer’s demand – but also that the brands of our retailers do the same.
This means that for our marketing team, an important and ongoing focus is the creation of digital assets to support our customers in selling Ultraframe products. These can be used to support anyone in the conservatory and extension buying process from surveyors, to salesmen and fitters.
Following the recent launch of the 2nd generation Ultraroof, many of the newest additions to our increasing number of digital assets are tailored to supporting our customers with selling this popular tiled roof system, which has been declared the consumer’s favourite in independent research. These include a trade video with a member of the Ultraframe technical team explaining the key features and benefits and a soon-to-be-launched consumer video which helps to advise and inspire homeowners and explain why Ultraroof is the best choice of tiled roof for their home.
While assets such as these are fantastic additions to the Ultraframe website and social channels, we also share them with our customers to help them boost the performance of their own websites and also enhance their sales process.
As the number of digital assets we have is steadily increasing all the time, we needed a central resource where Ultraframe customers could access everything they need all in one place. For salespeople, the Ultraframe Sales App is their go-to place for all things Ultraframe and can be accessed without the need for WiFi. During a sales visit or demonstration in their showroom, it is the ideal resource to access retail brochures, images, case studies and more, to help inform and inspire potential customers.
On the hands-on side of the process, our Ultraframe Installer App contains a huge amount of information for surveyors and installers, including surveyor’s guides, installation guides, technical manuals, video and animation how-to guides, and more. While fitters can of course ring or WhatsApp the Ultraframe Technical Support Team, the App is hugely popular as most queries can be answered in a matter of seconds, with the video guides being especially popular for solving on-site queries.
Other digital tools include Virtual Reality tours which can be added to retailer’s websites to allow a potential customer to look around every aspect of various styles of conservatory and extension – from the floor right up to the roof. This experience can even be further enhanced by wearing VR goggles.
We’re also just about to launch our new Cuckoo online marketing centre. This is a fantastic resource which houses thousands of digital assets including imagery and a wide range of templates for brochures, flyers, campaigns and more, all of which can be fully personalised at the click of a button.
Since launching our new consumer-facing website we’ve seen a marked increase in the number of visitors coming to our site to research their conservatory and extension projects. Digital tools such as the VR tours really help to improve engagement so we know that they will have this same impact when used by our retailers on their own sites, and any learnings from our own website are always used when we help customers to create their own sites.
When we pass homeowner leads to our retailers, or when they generate their own through various marketing activities, our aim is to have equipped them with the best possible information and assets to convert these leads into profitable sales. While we will always provide printed brochures and materials, our focus for now and the foreseeable future lies with creating the industry’s strongest range of digital tools and assets to ensure the ongoing develop and success of our loyal network of customers.”
