Can You Mix Business-to-Business and Branding?

Yes! Creating a “cool factor” matters in B2B, too.

Winter, 2023 (Dallas, TX) Anyone skimming the help-wanted ads will find thousands of openings for workers with skills such as carpentry, plumbing, HVAC, and other trades in the construction industry. But while the jobs are there, people with the skills to fill them are not. According to J. Craig McAtee, executive director of the National Coalition of Advanced Technology Centers, “the drop in students enrolled in training programs is both real and terrible for the economy.”* And as the pace of building continues to increase in Texas, the pipeline of workers needed to complete projects shrinks daily. The impact of the nationwide talent shortage in “the trades” resonates most strongly among smaller businesses, who often don’t have the splashy profiles that give them “first pick” of graduating students. But there is a solution: A handful of forward-thinking small businesses are doing something almost unheard of in the industry: spending money on “branding” and marketing to make their company appeal to millennials.

Valerie Jimenez, Founder and CEO of Bold Entity, a Dallas-based marketing firm that focuses on B2B, listened to a friend discuss how difficult it was for mid-size construction companies to attract great talent. She did some research and immediately understood why: As a millennial herself, Jimenez found it hard to spot – on the surface, at least – anything special about these companies. Their websites and social media presences were either non-existant or were so dry and dull that the only impression they made was of hard work, with no chance of recognition or career growth. It wasn’t until she started working with Philips May, a mid-sized general contractor, that she saw first-hand just how many opportunities there are for anyone that has a problem-solving attitude. “The first time I visited the shop floor I was stunned,” recalls Jimenez. “They solve difficult challenges and it’s fast-paced, but it’s so rewarding because they enjoy authentic friendships with their coworkers. You just don’t see that in most workplaces.”

According to Jimenez, millennials are conditioned to seeing everything as a brand and expect to feel emotionally connected to a company’s image, so she used consumer marketing techniques to create a narrative that showed the unique attributes of the company. Bold Entity spent days shooting footage and interviews to understand the company culture. Now the firm’s website, https://phillipsmay.com/about-us/
, is easy to navigate and features video clips, testimonials, and photos of all staff members — not just senior management — so potential employees can visualize themselves working there. The effort proved extremely effective in recruiting because now when candidates come to the company, they know what it stands for. Jimenez explains, “Branding initiatives like this make it much easier for companies to find employees, and perhaps more importantly, to find the right ones.”

Bold Entity used the same strategy for NTD Mechanical. According to NTD’s CEO Carmen Autry, “We’ve always been fortunate to have ample business in the pipeline, so when our biggest challenge was finding talented tradespeople and construction professionals, we knew we had to think out of the box.” Autry believed that NTD offered a “fun culture” that couldn’t be matched by some of her larger competitors, so she doubled-down and made it the focus of https://ntdmechanical.com/about-ntd-mechanical/
. “It worked,” she asserts. “Now that we have a visible and compelling profile, we’ve become one of the companies recent graduates want to meet with.”

All Tech Electric, https://alltechllc.com/
, which is currently led by Kelly Smith — a second-generation owner — found that using “consumer” marketing techniques was a game-changer. “When we met Bold Entity, our marketing was lacking that “cool factor”,” Smith explains. “By using appealing visuals, language and music that appeal to younger people, who expect to be associated with a ‘brand,’ we are starting to see a difference in our ability to add truly outstanding tradespeople to our workforce, and continue to meet our customer requirements.”

While these companies share similarities, their “brands” are unique. For example, when Bold Entity’s crew went to film at All Tech’s facilities in Texas and Ohio, they found a “roll-up-our-sleeves-and-lets-get-it-done” vibe. “The attitude on the floor was a palpable confidence and pride,” recalls Jimenez. This inspired Bold Entity to use hard rock music throughout their company video and a gravely, hard-hitting voice for the narration. NTD Mechanical prides itself on being “a family” so that became a focus of their text and visuals. Jimenez adds that it takes a special kind of CEO to open their wallet for branding and marketing. “But once they get their head around it, it always succeeds, both on measurables like employee attraction and engagement, and the quality and quantity of new-hires, and on things that are hard to quantify but still important, like overall ideal customer perception.“

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For more information contact: Valerie Krieger, valeriek@boldentity.com;561 229 7222

* https://hechingerreport.org/students-enrolled-in-job-focused-degree-programs-dropping/