There can be a circular relationship between your CPD and other content such as blogs, case studies, and technical documents. Each feeding into the other. Chris Ashworth of Competitive Advantage explains how this can work.
The CPD seminar is a great way to engage with specifiers. It presents your organisation as experts in your field, provides an opportunity to explain why key product features are important and should lead to a conversation about using your product on projects.
The challenge is starting the dialogue in the first place. This is the role of other communications which can raise awareness and direct the architect or engineer to details of your technical seminars. These may be live web events, recorded webcasts or face-to-face presentations.
Having written the CPD seminar, break the content into a series of small packages of information. Then write blogs around each of these topic with the Call To Action being to request the CPD seminar. These articles can also be broken into yet smaller items for posting on social media. Maximising your exposure and the communications value from your efforts. See the recent webinar presented by the Barbour ABI marketing team for suggestions about how you can get maximum value from this pillar content.
The CPD seminar itself can also be reworked into a series of short video clips explaining key issues. By linking them back to your blog articles it provides further clarity and acts as a taster for the full CPD. They will also be a useful tool for the sales or technical teams when they are explaining specific issues.
There is also the opportunity to develop material to support the CPD seminar. In your seminar you should reference case studies. Provide these online in greater detail for those who want to know more about your products and applications. And remember that as well as using the CPD to refer people to the case studies, you should also use the case studies to refer people to the CPD.
It can be difficult to pitch the content of a CPD at a level which is suitable for your entire audience. Some people will need additional material to explain issues and lift their understanding to a level which makes sense of the seminar. Others will already have experience of the subject and want to go into topics in greater details. All of this can be posted online, providing useful references and continuing to enhance your reputation as experts as well as helping maximise SEO.
Of course, getting specifiers to view your CPD is not an end in itself. Having demonstrated your credibility and expertise the aim should be to encourage them to adopt your product specifications. These need to be available as performance and proprietary specifications as well as BIM content.
Producing a good quality CPD seminar is hard work, so make sure that you get the maximum benefit from it. Use it to inspire other content, raise your social media profile and increase SEO. And most important, to generate product specifications and hence sales.
Further Information
Chris Ashworth is founder of Competitive Advantage Consultancy which specialises in helping building product manufacturers to be more effective at getting their products selected. Services include bespoke market research, learning and development programmes, a range of sales and marketing tools and consultancy to help implement change.
Competitive Advantage work with clients to help them develop effective CPD programmes. Sign up to the Competitive Advantage newsletter for an overview of construction market activity as well as construction sales and marketing advice.
