Professional Builders Merchant

Over the past 170 years, Howarth Timber’s reputation for reliable expertise, friendly service and a widening range of products has helped the company grow from its humble Yorkshire roots into quite possibly the largest privately owned timber group in the UK. Throughout its history, clever marketing and brand awareness have driven the company’s reputation in the minds of customers and competitors alike.

Now boasting four divisions — the 28 branches of Howarth Timber and Building Supplies, Howarth Timber Engineering, Howarth Windows and Doors and Howarth Self-Build — the company is keen to maintain its brand image. Howarth Timber’s Neale Brewster explains: “A strong brand and a positive first impression are vital to us, so we use the services of a number of creative marketing platforms to help us communicate with our customers.”

One of those marketing platforms is audio branding from Manchester-based specialist, PH Media Group. The company has supplied Howarth Timber with bespoke on-hold marketing messages — those messages callers hear when placed on hold or transferred. On-hold marketing allows Howarth to promote its product range, expertise and opening hours to callers as they wait for their enquiry to be dealt with — and it has also been using the service to promote its new website.

The site — www.howarth-timber.co.uk — showcases comprehensive information about Howarth’s four operating businesses, alongside an expanding online store packed with tools and products aimed at construction industry professionals. It also links to www.howarth-inspire.co.uk — a single source of inspiration aimed at helping homeowners transform their properties, inside and out.

Neale says: “We’ve invested a lot of time and resources in a great new website, which we’ve designed to improve our customers’ experience of dealing with us. On-hold marketing allows us to promote these services and facilities, no matter how the customer contacts us.”

Using professional voiceover artists and a script written by industry-leading copywriters, it is fair to say Howarth’s messages are not your average hold missive — beeps or a tinny version of Greensleeves are firmly off the menu. “We wanted something a little different to keep our callers entertained,” revealed Neale. “We’re a relaxed, friendly business and we wanted our On-Hold Marketing to reflect that.”

What starts off as a rather ‘formal’ message quickly evolves into something rather more playful and tongue-in-cheek. There are plenty of jokes about planks and not being wooden in Howarth’s message, but the device remains entirely appropriate for the ears of a trade audience without ever descending into trite and tacky clichés.

An on-hold marketing campaign has to be unique to every client, with each message tailored to reflect what a business has to say, as Mark Williamson, Sales and Marketing Director for PHMG, explains: “We work closely with our clients to ensure each message reflects their brand and current marketing campaign. If you invest in a brochure with your telephone number on it, it makes sense to market your business to your customers once they make that call.”

PHMG asserts that on-hold marketing isn’t just a branding tool, either. It states that the service helps retain up to 70% more calls by ‘psychologically reducing’ hold time. Up to 20% of consumers also claim to have made a purchasing decision based on the information they have heard while on hold.

Neale Brewster concludes: “Our on-hold marketing is a great extension of our brand. Our company ethos is apparent throughout our organisation; on printed collateral, in store and on our new website. By branding our telephone line we’ve ensured that all of our customer touchpoints are covered.”