Julie Maeker of Plancraft says word-of-mouth beats performance ads on Instagram and Meta because construction buyers trust recommendations from people.
Plancraft, founded in 2020, is rebuilding its cloud software as AI native, aiming for European trades businesses to run on autopilot within a couple of years.
Plancraft grew its marketing team from seven to 26 people and lifted brand awareness from single digits to more than triple, according to a brand lift study.
Selling software to tradespeople runs on trust, not ads
Plancraft sells cloud software to European tradespeople, a traditional audience that distrusts ads and trusts peers. With many competing products, its marketing bets on brand built through people. Word of mouth, creators and real salespeople on camera carry more weight than polished or AI-made content, and each market needs local voices.
Takeaways
Construction buyers trust people, not ads. Julie Maeker says tradespeople put little faith in performance ads on Instagram or Meta and rely on recommendations from peers. That makes word of mouth the biggest multiplier for brand positioning in construction, and it shapes every channel Plancraft uses.
Brand is Plancraft's main differentiator. Plancraft faces many product competitors in Europe, so Maeker treats brand as the edge. Awareness measured in single digits before her strategy work. A brand lift study about a year and a half after brand work began showed it had more than tripled.
A huge, barely digitized market. Europe has around 4m trades businesses, such as roofers and painters, and only about 7 to 10% are digitized. The sector is short 2.1m workers. Plancraft's cloud software syncs quotes, invoices and reports in one place to free up time.
Real salespeople outperform AI-generated content. Plancraft avoids AI-generated material and films its salespeople speaking natively to tradespeople. A thirty-second ad showing the new AI quotation feature, which cuts quote preparation from at least thirty minutes to seconds, was tested in Italy and became the best performer across four more countries.
Product is being rebuilt as AI native. Founded in 2020, Plancraft built its product before the AI wave. It now ships AI features and is rebuilding toward a goal of European trades businesses running on autopilot within a couple of years. Maeker says construction workers are really into AI.
Austria needs its own marketing. Maeker says Austrians are more conservative and suspicious than Germans, so performance marketing alone fails there and German ads need the native dialect. Local marketers in each market check translations and tone, since AI misses jokes, while experts sit at Hamburg headquarters.
Creators are cheap in construction. Creator marketing costs less in construction than in fashion, where Maeker began at About You. Plancraft's largest influencer has around 150,000 followers. The team grew from seven people in March 2025 to 26, with a dedicated community sub team, across five markets.
Tap a name to go there · tap a line to see why they are linked