Inside Promat’s savvy campaign that drove 140x ROI on a tight budget

Promat’s product range and expertise in best practice passive fire protection design can be of tremendous value in these situations—but needed a marketing push to increase awareness and the number of enquiries from structural steel projects.

Lesniak Swann was tasked with developing a campaign that made effective use of a modest budget to ensure this was achieved.

Specific, time-bound objectives

The key commercial target was to generate additional revenue from structural steel projects in 2025. In terms of pipeline, a target of 50 spec packs (a bespoke response to an enquiry providing details on how Promat would help on a given project) was set.

Understanding the risk concerns of the audience

Our work began by ensuring we had strong, direct feedback from our target audience on their views and behavior regarding structural steel projects. This was split across three key groups—specifiers, fire consultants, and installers.

This confirmed that there was indeed uncertainty around the optimal way to design and fit structural steel fire protection. Whilst for some, such as fire consultants, this was generally a case of getting a second expert opinion to check some details of projects, for others such as architects this uncertainty represented a greater degree of risk given fire protection is only one of a multitude of considerations they must be across. Understandably, this was driven in large part by their increased legal accountability under the Building Safety Act and meant they would often seek advice from product manufacturers.

In addition, quantitative brand awareness research we ran for Promat around the same time told us that whilst awareness was relatively healthy with fire consultants and installers, it was lower than desired with specifiers.

Our audience conversations also gave us a useful insight on a tactical level—architects are bombarded with all manner of long-form or time-consuming marketing content; so whilst the issue of fire protection remained critical on their priority list, we would need to go beyond the usual content formula to ensure it reached as many of them as possible.

A content-focused strategy

With audience confirmation of uncertainty when it came to structural steel projects, we decided to focus on communicating how Promat helps to remove the guesswork. If the audience were to see Promat as the “go to” authority on this topic then we would need to demonstrate exactly how it helped to remove any doubt on the best fire protection option.

At this stage we also took the strategic decision to make “lead magnet” content a central part of our approach. But also that we would look at formats that were consciously shorter and less time-consuming than the likes of white papers and webinars without compromising the ability to attract the submission of contact details. This would be a tricky balance to strike.

The challenge was further complicated by operating in a market thick with communications around the Building Safety Act—it was critical that we helped Promat to stand out without compromising the integrity or accuracy of what was being communicated.

Striking creative concept

We knew that alongside a strong strategy, we would need to develop eye-catching creative that helped the campaign to stand out in a sea of marketing sameness.

The result was a typographically-led, creative visual that shared the messaging that tested solutions were required to prevent the uncontrolled spread of fire. With risk factors set in standout white against the wider message muted by ‘Promat blue’ colour blocks, the theme was ‘don’t settle for partial information’ ‘get the full picture.’ This was then used as the central concept across a comprehensive range of campaign content and materials.

Multi-channel roll out

Our key content was a guide to passive fire protection for structural steel, created around a problem/scenario format intended to serve as a high-quality, go-to reference. This directly addressed the need for scenario-specific information, proving a tangible asset to aid decision-making and specification. The relatively short, easy-to-read format was deliberate—aiming to make sure that specifiers would find it useful without providing information overload that may have put them off engaging further.

This was supported by the launch of a new CPD, an updated chapter in Promat’s passive fire protection handbook, a brochure, and sales presentation. A webinar and white paper are planned for launch later this year to ensure we give the campaign a further boost.

Communications for the campaign focused on PR and paid media in the form of trade media and social. PR activity was focused on educational content as well as a series of press releases to highlight new tested solutions, products, and to signpost educational assets—all linking back to the theme of competence, compliance, and best practice. This was supplemented by thought leadership articles on specifying passive fire protection, with placements secured in target media.

Results

The campaign has helped to deliver a sales pipeline that is 272% higher than the stated KPI—giving an ROI of 141.

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