What was your journey until taking on this role in the company?
I graduated as a surveyor and then I joined a competing, smaller company, also located here in the area. After about six years I decided to change and moved to South Africa, where I attended an English course and where I met people from all over the world, from Brazil to Arabia. I subsequently joined IALC, working alongside the previous Marketing Manager, to begin a path of growth in communication: I learned many aspects of social media management and I followed the entire design and content part of the website, relying on an external agency. I tried to support this work with research and studies of our competitors, understanding what could work and how to make it ours. I also coordinate the entire corporate image aspect, from business cards to Christmas creations. In short, I deal with marketing both online and offline.
What do you think about the use of social media in the B2B market segment?
I noticed that IALC's competitors, especially the more structured ones, use social platforms quite a bit. Nowadays the use of social media has increased compared to a few years ago, even in the B2B market segment. Maybe not all brands are present on all platforms, opting for those closest to the soul of the company, but I have noticed an increase in institutional pages.
Which social network is more in line with your business model and which is less?
The social network most in line with IALC is certainly LinkedIn, where we concentrate our resources and energy to create a strategy and a studied presence. More dynamic and lighter tone of voice platforms, such as Pinterest and TikTok, are not very analogous to our reality. I believe that presence on social media must be accompanied by a supporting strategy: for example, the Instagram feed allows you to give life to many creative structures, where aesthetics come first. I find that in marketing, as in all sectors, quality must be more important than quantity.
The data shows that having a low number of followers damages the brand image, what do you think?
As I was saying, for me the quality of the content matters much more than the number of followers. At IALC we prefer to have a smaller fan base but post catchier visuals rather than focusing on the number of followers. It's about finding content that is in line with both the brand and the target social network in such a way as to create a complete and effective strategy that aims not just at the growth of the fan base. Among other aspects, I believe that consistency is a winning weapon in this sector: setting goals and continuing towards that path certainly leads to positive results.
How important are online reviews, are they important?
In the B2B market I believe that reviews are still given little consideration due to a whole series of factors, such as the very important component of word of mouth. At IALC, for example, we don't monitor progress much: it's more of a help to understand where we can improve. Personally, however, I write few but I consult them quite a bit, using both Google and TripAdvisor, where I mainly look for food places.
Have you ever collaborated with professionals regarding the social sphere?
IALC has collaborated with external entities only as regards the website and the creation of some catalogues. For the social sphere we have never turned to external professionals and, at the moment, we manage everything internally. This is mainly due to the fact that right now we have not had the need to create conversion on social media but we are carrying out a strategy with a view to brand presence.
What are the future corporate communication projects?
From the beginning of next year we would like to communicate the collaboration between IALC and Schüco: this will be content intended for social pages but also for architecture magazines and a wider range of the sector. This partnership concerns a project that lasted approximately two years, from the first study to the last stage of implementation. This year we have acquired many projects to work on so we will focus a lot on the achievements and their communication.