Social media audit

I sampled 45 posts across six months. Every one is on-message, aimed at installers and scheduled to a plan; the team is doing the job properly. Four weeks of that posting drew 9 reactions on LinkedIn and not one installer comment, across live channels reaching a combined 5,700 followers.

Worcester Bosch runs the biggest trade page in the category, 19,000 followers with every practice done right, and a typical product post earns 4 to 8 reactions; their best post in my sample earned 17. Baxi has kept a named weekly training slot running for 469 videos. That is the ceiling for a boiler brand posting to its own feed, and ATAG executing perfectly would earn a version of those numbers on a fraction of the audience.

Sloppy work under a high ceiling would call for better execution. This is careful work under a low ceiling, so I am recommending something bolder. Keep the brand’s own channels alive with basic scheduled content, and move the real effort to the three places attention around ATAG already exists: the trade’s own accounts, which get far more back than any brand page, search, where ATAG’s nine help videos from 2019 remain its most-watched content anywhere, and the roughly 140 live ads installers pay for that name ATAG.

Every figure below was read live on 25 August, with a screenshot behind it. The biggest audience sits on a dead account, the dead accounts together hold more followers than the live ones, and the accounts posted to every week get almost nothing back.

For a fair bar I read five businesses closely: Worcester Bosch and Baxi from the boiler category, and three from outside it whose product also reaches the customer through a professional. Milwaukee sells tools through tradespeople’s influence, Park Tool taught an entire trade to fix bikes, and Invisalign builds consumer demand and routes it through dentists. Two patterns run through all five.

Pattern one: a brand’s own feed stays near zero however well it is run

Pattern two: the attention lives off the brand’s feed

The rota below keeps the brand visibly alive at almost no cost; the freed effort goes to the three places attention already exists.

The always-on rota

Anyone sizing ATAG up, an installer offered the brand by a rep or a homeowner quoted one, will find the accounts, and a dead or messy feed reads as a dead company. Passing that check is the whole job of the brand’s own channels now, and basic scheduled content passes it: a Trustpilot review each week, an #ATAGInstall photo, a product shot from a template. Nothing in the rota needs to chase engagement, because section 2 shows what chasing it earns.

The three places the audience is

The trade’s own accounts. A creator’s post beats the same brand’s own post four to one, and the installers with real audiences barely know ATAG exists. Reaching them is decision one.

Search, when a boiler breaks down. The 2019 help videos sit at 22,000 to 66,000 views with nobody touching the channel in three years. People find ATAG when they need help, in numbers no feed post has ever approached. Building on that demand properly is decision two.

The ads installers already pay for. Around 140 live Facebook and Instagram ads name ATAG, several leading on the 18-year warranty, every one built without ATAG’s input. These ads reach more homeowners today than every ATAG account combined; what they say about ATAG is decision three.

Decision one: sponsor the trade creators who already hold the audience

A working gas engineer with 64,800 TikTok followers said publicly of ATAG: “I don’t think I’ll be fitting them anytime soon. I’ll stick with the main players I know and trust”, believing ATAG is new to a market it has served for twenty-one years. The second-most-watched ATAG video on YouTube, 39,930 views, was made by an installer with no relationship to the brand, and exactly two videos about ATAG appeared in the last year on any channel above 10,000 subscribers. The creators who hold the trade’s attention on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube either don’t know ATAG or don’t rate it.

My advice is to pay for a place in their content: sponsored collaborations on the creator’s own account, on the Milwaukee model, with written guidelines so the claims stay accurate and the content stays theirs. Start small, with one established creator paid to film a real ATAG install or a first look at the boiler, and one installer who already fits ATAG equipped to make content over a longer run. If either works it becomes its own programme, and nothing else in this audit depends on it.

Decision two: build the YouTube teaching library, and choose who it serves

Help and how-to content fronted by one named ATAG engineer, on the Park Tool model. The audience is small and deeply engaged: 66,000 views on an error-code video is a homeowner or installer at the exact moment ATAG can help them, which no feed post ever reaches. The content needs decent production, a proper camera, good sound and a considered script, though nothing lavish.

One public channel would serve two audiences, separated by signposting, playlists and titles rather than access. Two questions inside this decision are yours: whether installer-facing videos show how an ATAG install compares with fitting the brands they already know, which is a strong claim to put on camera, and where the line sits between help content signposted to homeowners and content that stays installer-facing. My advice is to build it, and to treat the free first step, retitling the 2019 videos and correcting the channel description, as this week’s work either way.

Decision three: an advertising kit for the installers already running ATAG ads

The Meta Ad Library is public, so I checked everyone. Worcester Bosch runs about 36 live ads, a homeowner cashback campaign feeding its own booking funnel. Milwaukee runs about 33. ATAG has never run one, while installers pay for around 140 live UK ads naming ATAG: “NEW ATAG BOILER FROM JUST £2,995 INSTALLED”, “FREE 18 YEAR WARRANTY”, “This boiler has an incredible 18 year guarantee”.

Most of these ads are an installer advertising their own business, with boiler brands attached the way a mortgage broker lists lenders; the Gas Tech creative carries Vaillant’s badge beside ATAG’s for exactly that reason. That is also how homeowners buy. When a boiler breaks, nobody searches for a boiler brand; they search for an installer they can trust, and the installer says which boiler.

The kit would be approved creative for these installers to use: the warranty claim worded the way ATAG wants it, a correct logo, a before-and-after template, free to any partner installer. Making it is a small job I can do myself. I rank it last of the three because I expect modest take-up: most installers will keep building their own ads, and the ones who do use the kit were advertising ATAG anyway. At this cost it is still worth having on the shelf.

I also looked at whether ATAG should buy homeowner demand itself, as Worcester does today with £100 cashback into its own booking funnel, and I recommend against it entirely. Demand for a brand only converts through an installer who fits that brand: Worcester, fittable by almost anyone, can spend on homeowners and collect, while ATAG would be paying to educate people into whichever installer turns up, most of whom fit something else. If ATAG ever sells direct, the question reopens.

You asked whether the dedicated social media person is effective. Judged on output, the work is competent, consistent and on-message, and no amount of extra effort on the feed will lift what the feed can earn; the ceiling in section 2 applies to everyone in the category.

The always-on rota needs a few hours a week. My advice is to move the rest of the role’s week to wherever you land on the three decisions: running the creator relationship, producing the teaching library, and getting the advertising kit to the installers who want it. Doubling down on the current calendar, working smarter within it, or putting budget behind it are all versions of the same bet, and Worcester and Baxi have already run that bet to its ceiling with more people and more money.

Measured by people actually seeing posts, these channels reach a few hundred today, so the launch cannot rely on social for its audience. The email list, the reps, the website and the installer base itself will carry it, and the always-on rota simply carries OPERA as its content through launch month.