Most manufacturers have a customer they could call tomorrow who would tell a stranger the product is the best thing they have run in ten years. Very few have ever asked that person to say it where another contractor could hear it.
Usually nobody owns the job. Sales knows the contractor, marketing owns the camera, and the request falls in the gap between them.
A contractor advocate program closes that gap. You find the contractors who already prefer your product, record them saying so in their own words, and put that proof in front of the contractors who have not tried you yet. It works because of how contractors pick brands in the first place. The Home Improvement Research Institute’s contractor loyalty study (Q4 2023) found that only one in seven contractors strongly agree they would switch brands or suppliers to get a better price, and 53% named reliability as the top reason they would try a new one. Price rarely moves a contractor. Proof that the product holds up does, and the proof they believe comes from another contractor.
In the trades, loyalty is inherited. A contractor runs what his mentor and his first crew trained him on, and he changes when someone he already trusts shows him something equal or better.
A contractor who switched to one of our clients’ products told us what changed his mind: he tested a sample on his own home, and it held up. Nobody sold him. That is the standard an advocate’s clip has to meet. The viewer should feel he is hearing the result of somebody’s own test, and we tell that contractor’s story in our guide to manufacturing branding.
Advertising can buy a contractor’s attention for a second. Only a peer can spend his trust.
A good advocate is candid, and a good program picks a mix. When we choose who goes on camera, we want someone more senior in the role and someone more junior, and we like to put both in the same conversation. The senior one talks about what the junior one is learning, and the junior one says what the senior one taught him. That exchange produces more conversation than one person answering questions, and it mirrors how brand loyalty gets passed down on a crew.
The trait we screen for is plain: someone real who will give candid feedback on a product, good or bad. A contractor reading a polished script is worth nothing to you, because other contractors hear the polish immediately and discount everything said.
Candor pays twice. When an advocate says something critical on a call, you have a note for the product team, and that is worth having even if the clip never runs.
Start with the people already talking to you, cheapest first:
The contractors who ask for your product at the counter before anyone sells them on it are the demand your distributors are waiting for. They are also your first advocate list.
Then run the self-test: could you name five contractors who would talk about your product on camera without you writing the words for them? Build the list before you build anything else.
Ask for a conversation and keep the request small. The easiest yes is thirty minutes, on their schedule, at their location. In our experience a booked thirty minutes often turns into ten, so put the questions in order of how much you need them.
Where you record matters as much as what you ask. A job site, a shop or the crew cab of a truck gets better material than a conference room, because the contractor talks the way he talks when he is working. These are people with no filter, and the setting lets that show. Expect to hear all of it, including the parts you would not have approved.
Two questions open almost any conversation well. What is the best part of your day, and what is the worst part? They pull out stories rather than statements, and they feed the creative that works in paid social, which we cover in our piece on Meta ads for building products manufacturers.
Something a contractor values, which is rarely a gift card or more points. Points are already crowded: the same HIRI study found almost half of contractors belong to at least one loyalty program with a building products supplier, 63% at larger firms and 39% at smaller ones. An advocate program can offer what a points card cannot:
Whatever you offer, write it down and tell the contractor before the camera starts. Surprises on the compensation side are how an advocate becomes a former advocate. Check what your sales and compliance teams allow first, because some manufacturers have rules about gifts to customers that marketing will not know about.
Publish it with as little editing as you can stand. The value of the clip is that it sounds like a contractor, so the edit should remove dead air and keep the sentences that contain a specific job, a specific problem or a specific number.
Three habits keep it credible:
This is why we push for advocate creative on every paid engagement. Anybody can buy the same Meta inventory, so what decides a manufacturer’s cost per lead is the creative, and the creative that works on a contractor is another contractor. What that does to lead costs on real accounts is in our marketing for manufacturers guide.
An owner, a list and a calendar. One person holds the list of advocates, schedules the next conversations and tracks what each contractor was promised. Without that person, the program is one shoot and a folder of clips.
Start the way we start everything, crawl, walk, run:
If you want help finding your first five, talk to us. We start by asking your reps who the contractors are, and the answer usually exists before we arrive.
