Marketers of Technology
00:17:12 · Julie Maeker
[00:17:12] S0: Yeah, crazy, especially in Europe. Like you have quite some, I mean in The US as well, quite some large influences that are also quite cost intense I would say. And the construction side, is a bit like couple of years back, I would say. So they are just building up and it's still super much on eye level. You can still really build real connections to the influencers. They are really identifying themselves also with the brand they are working for best case, which is in our case, luckily the case. And it's really interesting because you approach this whole sector super differently and they have then also of course a followership that is really trusting those influencers. So they are of course having like a lot less followers. So around, I think our largest influencer now has around 150 ks followers, but for Germany it's quite okay and for the construction work as well, but it's still affordable to invest in creators. And that's what we also put in the very early days to really invest in relationship with creators to kind of spread out the word because especially in construction, people don't trust performance marketing ads too much what they see on Instagram or Meta in general, but they rather trust people if they are recommending something. So this is definitely one of the biggest learnings. Word-of-mouth is like the biggest multiplicator you can have when it comes to brand perspective and brand positioning in the construction world. And this is also where we then shifted our focus. So of course you need like a very good baseline from a performance marketing perspective and the marketing mix need to be very sharp and you need to invest your budget, of course, with the ROI on the channel level. But on the other hand, we really focused on building up the community and investing money into trust building. And especially within this year, we placed two very big branding bets in Germany because it's our biggest and most mature market. And yeah, apparently that pays off. I'm very happy about that.
00:19:33 · Andres Figuera
[00:19:33] S1: Now, and I love how you noticed that within the industry then you really had to take a more traditional approach and the fact that they prefer to hear the marketing and the recommendation to use Plancraft from a real person rather than seeing an ad or just seeing a random image that's suggesting that Plancraft is a great product or whatever. But because I do understand that with all of the AI content that's being created, all the AI slob, everybody has some meta ads or or posting anything on Instagram, and it turn... It becomes a lot. So I feel there's a lot of static on the Internet right now that people are just scrolling through, and they'll just go pass by it because they've seen so many already that they won't pay any attention to it. But if they hear it from somebody that they respect or that they are looking forward to seeing what they do, I think that's the sweet spot that I believe Plancraft, due to your strategy, has then been able to enter. And that's amazing, Julie.
00:20:26 · Julie Maeker
[00:20:26] S0: Maybe just to add on that, sorry, but I think I have something to tell, like just an anecdote from like very recent days actually, because I think that's really, really good keyword of all this AI slob, because you won't believe it, but until now we don't really do AI content. And I know now you say we are inefficient. I know. No, basically we are using AI in almost all the processes we are doing internally and like really automating a lot of stuff. But when it comes to content creation, I'm actually very convinced that especially within the construction world, people want to follow people who are talking to them on eye level and who are talking their language kind of. So what we try to avoid is just creating AI slop or like AI based content based on scale. Because in the end we believe that we have a lot of salespeople at Plancraft, right? And the salespeople are talking to our traits or like to potential customers each and every day. And each and every day they are talking to them on eye level, they are speaking their language. And what we actually leverage a lot is filming with our salespeople who are able to talk the tradespeople language and in a very, very native style. So kind of they are sometimes filming in selfie perspective or they are just talking to the camera very natively. And in the end, this is what actually performs. So a recent example, we just launched an AI feature. So tradespeople can now talk device to kind of an iPad or the desktop or whatever, and just talk into their device what they like to do as a quotation. And back in the days quotations for potential customers took them at least thirty minutes. Now with a new AI quotation feature, it just takes a couple of seconds. So within our ads, we actually showed additional like added value from exactly this feature. So our salespeople were talking to their device and then really within thirty seconds a quotation was actually built and the user could directly see the added values. We had a new feature and we have a salesperson recording themselves just showing how this new feature works. So they are actually showing direct value to the potential customer within a thirty seconds ad kind of. So you have what's working here is like a bit multiple leverage because you have a native person speaking to the phone on the level.
00:23:17 · Julie Maeker, Andres Figuera
You have a new feature like really product led marketing. You have AI which also works nowadays. I couldn't believe, but even construction workers are really into AI. And yeah, basically we tested it first and foremost within Italy because there we got the signal from a sales call and then we rolled it out to all our other four countries. And actually it is currently our best performing at throughout all countries. And I think this also shows like sometimes you can't tell the same story or like most of the times you can't tell the same story throughout countries because you always, of course, we stick true to our brand and values. But overall, we try to localise like specific tweaks to really make sure we meet the language of the different markets. But here we actually saw it's really performing amazingly in Italy. So why not testing it in the other countries? And the story angle worked in all countries, of course, translated and not AI generated. But it was really, really cool example, actually. [00:24:32] S1: And Julie, when when marketing in different countries, just for my curiosity here, do you have to really change the tone of the ad or whatever you're making? Not the message, but the way it's said because then it doesn't hit properly within the different markets?
00:24:32 · Andres Figuera, Julie Maeker
[00:24:32] S1: And Julie, when when marketing in different countries, just for my curiosity here, do you have to really change the tone of the ad or whatever you're making? Not the message, but the way it's said because then it doesn't hit properly within the different markets? [00:24:48] S0: Fully agree. Like, it's crazy because... And you wouldn't believe because Germany and Austria are speaking actually the same language, you would say from an outside perspective, but we are taking so differently. And I always think like we Germans are a bit lacking behind when it comes to innovation and are a bit slower when it comes to adoption. And this is of course the case in an international comparison probably. However, when it comes to the Austrians, they are even a little bit more, how do you say conservative when it comes to marketing. So they are a bit more suspicious. And especially if you're a German company, you really need to make sure to build up this trust level. So just performance marketing or just lower funnel marketing doesn't work in Austria. So you really need to hit a different tone. You really need to build up this trust and you really, really, and this is super important. You can't put German ads in Austria. You really need this native dialect, which is different.
00:24:48 · Julie Maeker, Andres Figuera
[00:24:48] S0: Fully agree. Like, it's crazy because... And you wouldn't believe because Germany and Austria are speaking actually the same language, you would say from an outside perspective, but we are taking so differently. And I always think like we Germans are a bit lacking behind when it comes to innovation and are a bit slower when it comes to adoption. And this is of course the case in an international comparison probably. However, when it comes to the Austrians, they are even a little bit more, how do you say conservative when it comes to marketing. So they are a bit more suspicious. And especially if you're a German company, you really need to make sure to build up this trust level. So just performance marketing or just lower funnel marketing doesn't work in Austria. So you really need to hit a different tone. You really need to build up this trust and you really, really, and this is super important. You can't put German ads in Austria. You really need this native dialect, which is different. [00:25:56] S1: Yeah. I can only imagine, and I understand then, that if it's not same as Germany and they're a bit more skeptical when looking at ads and everything like that, then you really... And do you have a specialist or somebody from Austria that helps you out with creating that tone for the specific country? Okay. I believe that's the best way. But somebody that's local from there is how they best understand.