Shooting Stars: 12 Brands to Watch in 2014
Brand: James Hardie Building Products
Idea to Steal: Integrate social across all channels.
When the housing market took a spill in 2008, James Hardie had to change course. “New construction was slowing, and with that our audience shifted from builders and developers to contractors and homeowners,” said Bridget Kulla, digital marketing manager.
This led the company to create a direct-to-consumer, door-to-door lead-generation program called the Hardie Ambassador Program, utilizing telemarketing, a new email nurture program and social media.
“We had to really rework our brand, because the look and feel that was working for our trade audience wasn’t going to resonate with our new consumer audience,” Kulla said at DMA13, noting that a “softer approach” was needed.
This required a new infrastructure to manage leads the company attracted—technology systems integration, a new measurement and management process, and a lead-collection mobile app, which was built based on political canvassing maps.
The company also debuted a number of other efforts, including a traveling experiential showroom to interact with homeowners, microsites to support lead-collection efforts, a sweepstakes promotion, new sales tools (e.g., brochures), a revamped referral program, a refreshed lead-nurturing program and social media.
Kulla noted that the company has kept contractors in mind in social media, especially since many are small mom-and-pop shops that don’t have much marketing manpower on staff. Content was designed for partners to repost on their social channels, and James Hardie would also post content that these partners produced on their own Facebook page. Referral traffic from Facebook has increased 80% year over year, and referral traffic from Twitter has increased 800% year over year.
Some of the most popular types of content on these social channels were contests, before-and-after stories and answers to consumer questions. The former two helped James Hardie build advocacy post-purchase, something it had struggled to do before; the latter fostered the one-to-one relationships James Hardie was after, according to Kulla.—JH
