Venveo: Building Materials Marketing in a Nutshell

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This week, Tim and Caroline speak with Zach and Beth from the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast about their company, Venveo, the building materials space, marketing and more.

More About the Show

The Build Perspectives podcast shares insider knowledge to build connections and community in the building materials industry. Tim and Carolina are friends, colleagues and former coworkers who love the construction industry and their clients, and want to share their passion and insights to attract future talent to the industry.

In this episode, Zach and Beth talk about where the building material industry is going, the importance of your digital presence, how to connect more with customers and more. 

The Podcast

Tim really appreciates Zach and Beth’s podcast, as it really isn’t egotistical and truly helps the industry better. It inspired Tim and Carolina to start their own podcast, and he appreciates the help that Zach and Beth put in to help put the podcast together.

Zach encourages manufacturers to start a podcast all the time. He believes that their interesting perspectives could have an impact on the industry. 

What Does Venveo Do?

When Zach tries to explain his job to his parents, he tells them: “If you go to a Lowe’s or Home Depot and walk down an aisle, there’s a pretty good chance that we help at least one or two brands on each aisle sell more effectively using their website and online presence.”

Venveo helps manufacturers in the building product space. We help them more effectively market to their audience using their online presence. That includes architects, builders, contractors, homeowners, whoever might be.

Beth and Zach’s Roles at Venveo

Beth is the Director of Strategy. She helps ensure that the strategy that Venveo has for clients and the plans that they’re running actually achieve the goals and metrics that clients are looking to accomplish. She has a pretty large team underneath her, which includes content, analytics, ads, traffic and even conversion. There’s not a part of the business that she doesn’t touch.

When Beth designs for the design team or sketches something up for a client, the design team feels really good because it is like job security for them. All roads lead to strategy because everything Venveo does is very strategic data-backed and data-based, so it’s actually difficult to draw lines of who belongs in what department. It all ends up being very cyclical in a lot of ways. 

Zach is like the headlights of the organization. The rest of the team is like, “We’ve got this work to do. We have this information, we know the strategy, we know the results and how to get those results.” Zach doesn’t have his flashlight shined at their feet, but rather shines his light three miles out. He is like, “This is what’s coming, this is how we have to be prepared to service our industry and this is where our industry is going not in six months, but in 24 or 36 months.” He creates the ways the company will need to respond so that they can continue to help make their manufacturer clients successful. 

Zach really gets to talk to people a lot and get a pulse on what’s happening in the industry, as well as making sure that they protect the integrity of the culture built at Venveo. Zach likes to say that working at Venveo is invite-only, which isn’t necessarily true, but they are pretty picky. Zach enjoys building culture and finds it really cool. 

When Carolina moved from technical to sales, she was terrified. Although she was talking to architects for many years, she didn’t know how to sell to them. One of the first things she turned to was Zach and Beth’s podcast. In their podcast, they talk to people, take that information and make inferences and predictions. They normally turn out to be right.

The helpful thing for the industry, too, is that there are a lot of closed loops in the space where people develop content or whatever for their customers, but nothing really for the broader audience. So you’re doing these things for your clients, which are awesome, but then you’re taking those insights and sharing what you can that isn’t proprietary with the rest of the audience. That’s where folks go, “Okay, this is super useful and this keeps being useful.” Then, when the opportunity comes to get together to work together, that relationship from a business standpoint is more organic than a sales call and all those things like that.

An entire industry can learn from that because instead of making those cold calls and making those appointments so forth, you can develop content. If you’re developing useful content for folks, that’s now your kind of your sales personnel there, then people see over time that it’s useful, helpful and interesting. When they need that advice, then they have somewhere to go. That’s what more people are needing, wanting and utilizing right now. 

Zach likes to give more than he likes to take. He doesn’t actually like sales, even though he does sales a lot. He just wants to give so much that people that they know they can build trust. They go, “Okay. We feel like you’re the right fit.” That feels like a much more natural way to start a partnership. 

Zach and Beth use the term content a lot, but it’s really about building rapport and building value. Then, you can walk through all of those questions like, “Do I trust you? Well, of course I trust you. I’ve read your content, I listened to you and I watched you.” 

That’s why Zach really like what Tim and Carolina are doing with their podcast. They don’t really have an end game necessarily in doing this, other than they want to bring great insights to the industry. That’s why Venveo started a podcast — because there’s nowhere out there where people can hear from other manufacturers on what they’re doing and what’s working. 

Why the Building Materials Industry?

Growing up, Zach grew up in a bit of a construction background. His friends’ parents owned construction businesses. He was around that and got into that space, just working over the summer or working over breaks. And then in college, Zach got his degree in Architecture and Art, which is a really interesting little background, as well as marketing. He fell in love with this really unique space. 

As he was starting the business, he looked at who he enjoys doing work with, who needs the most help, and where’s the most opportunity. It was the building product space. He selfishly really likes it because you get to work with great people.

People will ask him, “Oh, do you want to work with companies on HDTV?” His answer is no, not really. He just wants to work with great people. He cares more about the quality individual as well as the quality of the work. 

The work they get to do and the opportunity to help people sell and grow their business is really unique, as well as there’s a huge pain point. He really feels passionate about the building products arena. They get to help solve problems and see that they help people actually grow their business. 

Zach has friends who will work on a Nike account at an agency and asks if did it grow sales and they don’t know the answer. That would kill Zach, wondering if the work he’s doing is actually producing ROI or not. 

Beth really likes the opportunity to deliver results. Not the opportunity for Venveo, but the opportunity for the industry and their clients. They say that building materials is a small world, and it’s hard to escape. There is a reason for that. Why would you want to work for another industry?

They really love the challenge. Plus, the people are incredible. Nobody’s in this industry that isn’t passionate about it. They’ve talked to hundreds, maybe even thousands, of manufacturers by this time and at no point, have they met somebody who feels neutral about their product, their product category, their audience or their company. That’s not something you could find anywhere else. People don’t stumble into this industry. Just being with people every day that are excited about what they do and are so sure about their company and products is great. 

Beth sometimes feels bad for people in other industries. She has friends who are marketers for the food and beverage space or the health space, and she thinks it sounds terrible and boring. Zach mentions marketers in the lawyer/legal space and the egos that people have to deal with. He questions what that is like. 

Tim guesses that everyone needs marketing, but the one thing that stands out to him is the ability to stand out in the building materials space because so much is broken. If the building products have an ethos, it’s that everything’s broken, but please stay because you can really stand out and make a difference. 

Tim remembers starting out as an outside salesperson, and he was the only outside salesperson in the whole county. It was a brand new innovation and he’d read about it in pro sales that people do this in other parts of the world. His boss let him go out and do it. Just because Tim was out there trying to understand people and what he could do for them, he stood out and made a huge difference. 

It isn’t hard to get into the industry, but it is hard to leave because you can actually solve problems. Every personality type and skill has a place in the industry. There is a huge need. 

You can get a sales job and go into box stores or straight from another industry. You could get a job at a counter at a lumber company straight out from another industry. You could walk up to a job site today and if you’re a hard worker, you could get a good-paying job. Not a lot of industries are exactly like that. The reason is that there’s such a need at every level for good people in the business — from marketing to pounding nails.

Ideas to Make the Industry More Interesting

Beth finds it interesting how much homeowners have penetrated the industry in the sense that so many manufacturers say, “Listen, we don’t want homeowner leads. We can’t talk to homeowners. They don’t know enough.” But, they’re also like “Homeowners won’t be denied.” 

The way that homeowners were positioned when Beth started with Venveo about seven years ago versus now basically flipped. Now, they are getting so many homeowner inquiries that manufacturers ask, “Can you just help us figure out how to talk to homeowners?” 

She remembers talking back in 2013 about how everybody needs to be positioning as if they were B2C: websites need to be accessible, understandable, relatable, interesting and engaging as though they were a B2C. 

Beth was just talking to a steel siding manufacturer saying how they’re probably never going to sell directly, that just isn’t their deal. However, they recognize that they don’t want to turn away homeowners because of the chain of communication, so they wanted to be able to talk to them directly.

Relate-ability and lack of friction are important because the homeowner is talking to a contractor, or they’re talking to a builder. You want that contractor or builder to land on your website, your brochure or in your trade booth with their head just nodding as you’re talking to them. 

So why are you trying to keep them from your product? Let’s just open the doors wide for any and all channels to come in and just figure it out. If the worst problem you have is how do we deal with all of these leads then you can figure that part out. 

Zach mentions that just showcasing how you care as a person can make an impact, too. Most manufacturers are so concerned about what their competition is doing and it kills them. They are like, “Oh, well so-and-so is at this trade show. I need to go.” It’s a total “us too” approach to marketing. That’s completely wrong. Same is lame. What makes you unique?

For instance, Fire Clay is super unique. They have the greatest and one of the coolest products out there — they are not trying to be the same as everyone else. They are trying to take this very artistic approach to mass scaling. 

Too many manufactures try to be like everybody else, and that becomes white noise. If you’re in the space, this is true as a person too, don’t try to be someone else — be what’s unique to you. As a person and as a brand, you’re going to succeed; you may turn off some people, but you’re definitely going to bring people to the table, too. It’s like a fine wine. Some like it, some don’t. If you can create a kind of approach to yourself as well as the brand you work for, you’ll do very well. 

If you’re unique and you can keep people longer, you can do more for the industry and it’s more attractive. Just to show how much of a need there is in the building material space for good people, look at construction monitors. They have this category for owner-builder permits. That’s the fastest-growing category for building permits because it’s hard to find people. 

Homeowners are entering the job place and the building materials space because of the lack of people. There’s this kind of hearkening back to wanting to do more and build more ourselves. Generally, around 18 to 19% of all permits are owner-builders or owner-contractors. People should be thinking about that: If it’s easy for a homeowner to get into the business, if it’s easy for anyone to get into the business, it shows there’s a need. Hopefully, more people do that. 

In 2007 and 2008, DIY-ers rose in popularity because of money. Now, it isn’t due to a lack of money but a lack of labor. They can’t find people to do the labor, so they YouTube it instead. And they turned to the manufacturer for assistance and training. 

To Beth’s point, it is harder to build a website and make tools for the end-user, even if they’re not going to be your purchasing customer, but it’s so important because there’s more of the B2C folks that are wanting to make those choices and have the information. It’s so easy to build a website for an architect, but not so easy to build a website that covers architect, contractor and homeowner, then have all the tools and support to back it up. 

Will Digital Marketing Wipe Out the Sales Rep in the Future?

Zach doesn’t think so. What it will do is it will further align marketing and sales because people want to buy from people and digital marketing. If it does its job, sets up more relationships, more effectively with the right people. 

You’re going to see some e-commerce play. Zach is seeing quite a bit of growth from his end, from manufacturers that are wanting to push in that area. But that’s a small portion of the industry, and it will be for a long time. People want to buy from people. If digital marketers do their job, it will make the sales rep more effective in their role because they are positioning themselves as a helpful resource.

However, it’s only helpful if the salespeople in the field are reading that content, listening to it, watching it on YouTube or LinkedIn or whatever it is so that they can then share these insights with their customers. How much would an outside salesperson stand out if they, if they did that? 

One thing seen in the last couple of years is the sales perspective of marketing has really changed from taking pretty pictures and helping with booths at trade shows to helping create quality information, data, content and support. It’s forcing this because people are, whether they know it or not, are seeing the shift in how people want to research and buy. 

Beth and Zach talked to an architect and they were like, “I don’t want a cold-call. I don’t want you to call me. I don’t want to talk to you unless I want to talk to you.” We’re like that about everything these days. Digital marketing can solve that problem. 

Beth thinks it speaks to how people still see things a little too fragmented. It also can relate to, “Oh, is e-commerce going to do away with the dealer?” It’s really about making a stronger whole. If that was going to happen, it would have happened already. 

When Beth was in college, she wanted to go into publishing. She was in college in the early 2000s. Her mom told her to not do publishing because the internet was becoming popular. Everybody said, “What’s going to happen to books? Newspapers are going to be obsolete. What are you even going to do with your life?” 

Well, it’s 2020, and the  New York Times is still alive. People still subscribe. People still get the printed version delivered to their doorstep. Books are huge. One isn’t going to do away with the other. It’s simply supply and demand. Now, you’re able to give more supply because there’s more demand for more places. It’s just an opportunity to grow. One shouldn’t have to replace the other: They should be able to work together.

Sales reps should be able to sell more because of a strong online presence. The online presence should help sell more through e-commerce and digital. Distributors should be able to sell more because reps are visiting the markets. All of them should work together to help grow. They’re all connected. It’s almost like they all work for the same company with the same goal.

Get involved in LinkedIn, get involved in social media, have the reps, the marketing — everyone in the company can be an influencer.

The Role of an Influencer

Every indicator Zach sees from an influencer perspective is it’s growing. The reality is, and the reason why, is that people want to hear what other people think. They want to hear other people’s experiences. They want to see what they like about it because brand does matter. The research we see and we collect shows that, as a manufacturer, your content and your brand does matter, and it does have a voice. 

But when you have someone else advocating for you or talking about your brand or your product in a positive way, it just goes exponential. It’s immeasurably effective because they are seen as that helpful resource, and there’s somebody that wants to not only assimilate, but they look up to and they aspire to be like. 

Matt Risinger is a great example. He gives really great content about how you build homes effectively. It is surprising that not more people out there are focusing on that niche. He’s not overly gregarious or super captivating, but his content is killer. It gets really good. If he delivers it, you watch it. 

Venveo had a manufacturer partner with him a couple of years ago, and they saw month over month return from that because people follow and like information. It was helpful and useful. It doesn’t necessarily have to be super polished.

Beth thinks that it’s important to put the influencers for building materials in the right category. We’re not talking about people that have a couple of million followers; what you should leverage are the communities that already exist online that are already using your products. 

Carolina thinks it’s validation, and we’re all looking for validation too. The validation of what you want is relevant and what you want is going to make me feel good. 

Venveo had a client whose products got used on Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s house, and they were wondering if they should even talk about it because it would create so much demand and create too much groundswell. 

They don’t necessarily have to be a big celebrity or anything like that. One of Nichiha’s reps in Florida created an Olivia-Nichiha account on Instagram, and she started getting business. She doesn’t have a ton of followers or anything like that. But people were interested and saying, “Oh wow, she’s right in my territory, I’m going to reach out.” 

That was kind of how the conversation got going, and she wouldn’t consider herself an influencer, but she is using digital media, that’s available inexpensively or free, to express herself. Because she’s doing that organically, in an interesting way and locally, it’s helpful, even though she’s not Kanye West or Chip and Joanna Gaines. 

Zach and Beth both have done webinars and seminars free and open to anyone on topics such as using digital media and social media to connect with clients — especially now in the pandemic and even post-pandemic because we all agree that things are never going to be the same. We’ll go back to offices and things are going to go back to some sort of normal, but it’s just not going to be the same.

The efficiency with digital is undeniable. Everybody’s been forced online and you’re, “Oh, I can meet with 10 customers in a single day instead of two or three.” It’s hard to go back to the inefficiencies and the cost. 

When Tim first started at Nichiha, his manager rode with him and he said, “Wow, you can do five sales calls in a day. Holy cow. None of the other reps are doing that.” He didn’t think he was doing anything special; however, he was scheduling things more than the other people. 

When you don’t have to drive or fly somewhere, you can double or triple that efficiency. If you can combine that with a digital footprint that lets people connect with you easily, it makes a world of difference. Using things like Calendly has really helped Tim. LinkedIn is also a great source for people to easily reach out on.

Connecting With Zach and Beth

Venveo worked with the Farnsworth Group to survey almost 2000 people from DIY-ers to contractors to builders to commercial and residential architects to installers — the whole channel — about how purchase habits changed because of COVID. The report was released last Friday and they are holding a webinar on October 28th. The report is full of great information about what shifts have happened and how it impacts marketing. 

You can check that out at venveo.com/covid-report. It’s a report, workshop and a Q&A dedicated to help people plan for 2021 and understand what changes and shifts have occurred. Hopefully, with this information, people can go into next year with some confidence and knowledge on how to take advantage of moments. 

Besides the webinar, you can contact Zach and Beth through:

• Venveo.com
• Venveo Podcast
  • Check out Tim’s favorite Smarter Building Materials Marketing podcast episode here!
• LinkedIn
• Email:
  • zach@venveo.com 
  • beth@venveo.com

Join the Conversation

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this week’s episode! Shoot us an email at buildperspectives@gmail.com.