HVAC Marketing Strategy: Nurturing relationships with your installer audiences
In plumbing and heating, simply establishing initial connections with installers isn’t enough to drive sustainable growth. As Ben Baker-Hollyhead discusses, marketers need to continually nurture their relationships with installers to ensure dependable success. When developed strategically, these business-to-installer (B2i) relationships can span years, creating a valuable and loyal customer base.
A word about installers
Every B2i brand will be familiar with the nuances of the P&H installer audience. Their typically busy and unpredictable schedules create communication challenges for brands, making every touchpoint critically important.
In our experience, having worked with installer-focused brands for decades, we’ve learnt that every communication needs a clear purpose. Installers simply don’t have time for daily information overload. For meaningful connections, there needs to be real, tangible value on offer – that’s easy to digest.
By employing strategic communications, creative approaches, and genuine immersion into the installer’s world, B2i brands can differentiate themselves, transform purchasing behaviours, and elevate business performance in a way that captures C-suite attention.
Before launching any marketing initiative, ask yourself:
- Do you truly understand your installer customers?
- What specific challenges do they face daily?
- What are their professional and business goals?
- What motivates their decision-making process?
Use these insights to craft communications and campaigns that speak directly to your target audience and create long-lasting, meaningful connections.
Three proven strategies for nurturing successful B2i relationships
Establishing relationships is one challenge, but maintaining them for years – even decades – requires commitment. Brands must journey alongside their installers, providing timely, relevant communications and consistent support.
While many approaches can nurture installer relationships, three strategies consistently deliver superior results by prioritising the human element—focusing on personal connections, knowledge sharing, and authenticity.
Make Face-To-Face Interaction Your Priority
All relationships are based on trust, and while digital communication has its place, it needs to be combined with a human touch. Nothing builds trust faster than a direct human connection.
For HVAC marketers, industry events provide unparalleled opportunities to connect with installers. Major annual gatherings, such as InstallerSHOW, attract repeat attendance year after year, creating perfect venues for sustained in-person relationship building.
For more targeted, consistent relationship building, leverage your merchant networks to host regional roadshows, hands-on training sessions, and product demonstrations. Strategically select locations where your data shows the greatest sales growth potential.
Competition for a share of installer attention is fierce, and with so much to see, brands must develop creative approaches that capture interest and encourage engagement.
This requires pairing innovative strategic concepts with multi-channel activation to capture attention, drive footfall, and extend impact beyond the in-person interaction.
For example: With Navien, we’ve integrated events as a cornerstone of our relationship-building strategy, bringing installers progressively closer to the brand while launching new products and value propositions.
Share Valuable Expertise Through Strategic Content
Content naturally forms the backbone of any nurture campaign, but effectiveness requires understanding installers’ time constraints.
By creating content that delivers maximum value in minimum time, brands give busy professionals the freedom and flexibility to engage on their own schedules.
However, proceed with caution. Content overload leads to channel saturation, and your installer audience begins to switch off. Campaign activity needs to be carefully curated to resonate with installers without overwhelming them.
Don’t hesitate to create dedicated spaces for your brand advocates – private Facebook groups and specialised forums typically generate substantially more engagement than public channels.
Our work with numerous installer-focused brands involves developing comprehensive communication strategies that incorporate diverse touchpoints— from targeted emails and influencer partnerships to thought leadership articles, whitepapers and interactive digital guides.
Be Open and Authentic
Most importantly, when planning nurture activity that cuts through the complexity of installer outreach, brands need to be authentic. Any relationship that lasts is based on honesty, but before connecting with others, brands must clearly understand their own identity.
We guide brands through a process of self-discovery to uncover their authentic value proposition. Through collaborative workshops and in-depth research, we uncover what makes each brand unique and meaningful, providing the foundation for everything that follows.
Every value proposition created, every creative campaign drawn up, every show that’s attended, and every piece of advice shared comes from the same place— a place where your brand’s goals and objectives are clearly understood.
Ready to Transform Your Installer Relationships?
Implementing these strategies can dramatically improve your connection with the installer community, driving both immediate sales and long-term loyalty.