Kitchen and Bath Done-for-You Marketing
A step-by-step approach to building your brand and generating leads
As a kitchen and bath business owner, do you find yourself a little overwhelmed by all the marketing options that are available to you?
Do you find yourself jumping from one marketing to another looking and hoping to find the answer to your marketing problems?y
We can help. We’ve prepared a step-by-step, done-for-you marketing program that will help you find your way.
- Step 1 – Foundation
- Step 2 – Pipeline
- Step 3 – Campaigns & Projects
Let’s take a closer look.
Step 1 – The Foundation
Foundation is exactly what it sounds like. We want to provide you with all the essential tools, platforms and services you should have to help you market your business more effectively.
Below are the marketing activities we recommend to every Kitchen & Bath business.
Review and analyze website
Your website is the centerpiece of your marketing … the face of your business. It’s where everyone will meet you for the first time. First impressions count and you want to be sure you’re putting your best foot forward.
But a good website doesn’t necessarily mean you need to spend a fortune on your site. You want a professional looking site that conveys an accurate reflection of the work you do.
If you want or need a new website, we can help. But that’s not what this is about. We will be looking at your website to see what can be done to improve its functionality WITHOUT a complete overhaul.
Establish a Call-to-Action (CTA) plan
When you look at your website, what Calls to Action do you see? A CTA plan tells you what you are asking visitors to do when they get on your website. Most sites use some variation of Request-a-Quote or Book-an-Appointment. These are high value CTAs, but they don’t usually generate enough volume. What other CTAs can you use to convert more visitors into leads?
Add a chat box
Visitors come to your website looking for answers to their questions. A chat box on your website will allow visitors to ask those questions directly.
We use chat with live operators who can answer visitor questions, and, more importantly, can help generate more conversations and sales leads.
Set up/manage response tracking
When you run any type of marketing campaign, it’s important to be able to track your responses by source (where did the lead came from) and by ultimate resolution (did the lead convert into a sale? Response tracking will provide that information for phone calls, landing pages and chat conversations.
Set up/manage email services
When you generate leads, you need some way to easily and affordably stay in touch with leads over the long haul. Email is your best option. This is opt-in email meaning we are reaching people who have voluntarily joined your email list or in some other way engaged with you or your business.
Set up/manage Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to monitor activity on your website. It tells how many visitors you have to your website, how they found you, how long they stayed, how they traveled around your site and which pages on your site are most popular. It is useful planning tool.
Set up/manage Google My Business
Google My Business is a free listing provided by Google. Every business is allowed on listing per location (an actual physical location). If you look up your business on Google, you should see your listing as it exists right now. If you have not yet claimed your listing, you should do so immediately.
Once claimed, you can populate your listing with all sort of business details – product/services, history, hours, photos and more.
Set up review management services
Having a Google My Business listing is the first step in getting recognized by Google. But there are other steps you can take to improve your placement among your competition when searchers look for businesses in your industry. This is better known as Google Maps.
To get higher rankings on Google Maps, you will need to optimize your Google My Page page, add posts to your page, update your listings on multiple website directories and acquire more positive customer reviews.
Set up automated scheduling services
Your website visitors and other leads will at some point want to speak or meet with you. At that point, you want to make it as easy as possible to schedule a call or meeting. One way to do that is allow them to schedule you via an online platform.
Create new prospect intake questionnaire
When new prospects call you for the first time, how prepared are you? Do you have some type of script or questionnaire, or do you just wing it. Have a new prospect intake questionnaire to use as a reference will ensure you are getting all your questions answered before they hang up. It may seem like a small thing, but it’s helpful and professional.
Create introductory information kit
If a new prospect asks you to send them information about your company, what do you send them? Do you have a printed information kit, or a pdf version you can send by email? It doesn’t have to be fancy or comprehensive, but you do need to tell your story and provide prospects with a good overview of your business. Having information kit in place is much better than scrambling to find something to send them.
Create social media profiles
Every business owner has different views on social media. Some use it extensively. Some don’t use it all. We can debate how effective social media is to your business, but at minimum, we think it’s important to establish an account and create a profile. Each account gives you one more piece of web presence that connects back to your website – and that alone is a good thing.
Step 2 – Pipeline
Most sales leads don’t convert into customers right away. When you follow up your leads, many of your prospects will tell you they are just doing research, or kicking the tires, or need to take some time to think about it before they make a decision.
You don’t want to push people into making a quick decision prematurely, but you can stay top-of-mind … so when they are ready to decide, your business is among those they consider. Above all else, you don’t want to do is allow any lead to fall through the cracks.
The Pipeline refers to the short-term and long-term activities used to stay in touch with your leads.
Lead Capture/Conversion
When prospects are ready to respond, how easy do you make it for them to contact you? Do you just leave them a phone number and hope that they will call? Have you considered letting them ask you to call them? It’s a subtle difference, but it’s a difference.
Do you provide a contact form to fill out and submit – and if so, what form requirements or questions do you have.?
Lead capture is an important first step in the Pipeline. If visitors are your website, your goal is to convert those visitors into leads. If you are using a pay-per-click on Google or Facebook, you goal is convert clicks into leads.
Lead Magnet
Every week has a button to request-a-quote or book-an-appointment. When you get those responses, it’s time to celebrate. But they don’t happen very often.
To generate a higher volume of responses, you need some type of lead magnet. A lead magnet is an informational download – a free guide or tip sheet or catalog or checklist. You may have access to existing lead magnets or we can create one.
Drip Email
Once a lead comes to you, you will want to have some way to stay in touch immediately and over the long haul. We recommend creating and scheduling a series of emails that go out to each and every prospect automatically after their initial response.
The idea is to maintain contact with every prospect – with an introductory sequence emails and then with ongoing sequence of evergreen emails. In this way, you are always reaching these leads with emails and you don’t have to worry about it.
Triggered Direct Mail
From time to time, you may want to interrupt your email messaging with something more tangible, something that will have a greater impact.
Triggered direct mail will allow you to send out a physical mailer to your leads on a pre-arranged schedule or when triggered by some action on the part of the prospect (filling out a form, answering a survey, clicking through to a next-level page). Send a postcard, or a letter, or some other format.
Retargeting Ads
The vast majority of people who visit your website will take no action to contact you. They won’t call, or chat, or fill out a form. And when they leave, they are lost forever. One solution to that is retargeting (or remarketing) advertising.
Using the Google Ads platform, we can create a series of ads and ask Google to keep sending those ads to the people who have visited your site.
Referral Campaigns
After you complete a project, and you’re sure your customer is satisfied, why not ask for a referral. You can do this person or by phone, but people would prefer a less direct method – like email or direct mail.
We can set up and manage a referral campaign – targeting both your past customers and your professional network – using either email or direct mail, or both.
Step 3 – Campaigns & Projects
With your Foundation and Pipeline in place, you’re ready to start implementing the various lead generation activities. These are largely digital marketing campaigns – but not entirely. Some old-school marketing may still be a good option for you.
Google Ads
Google offers two advertising campaigns to reach out to new prospects for your business.
- Google Search reaches people who are actively searching for a business like yours – or searching for information related to your business or industry. With Google Search, your listing appears in the search engine’s pages based largely (but not entirely) on what you are willing to pay per click.
- Google Display reaches people who fit your customer profile – by age/income, profession, interests, online behavior, etc. Ads are created and uploaded to Google, then served up to your target audience as they travel around the web These people are not actively searching for you which is why your cost per click for Display is a fraction of what you pay in Search.
Facebook Ads
Everyone knows Facebook, the world’s largest social media company. Facebook Ads tap into that massive audience with precise demographic and behavioral targeting and the same pay-per-click model as Google.
Direct Mail
A little old-school but still effective. Pick any type of mailer – a postcard, a letter, a larger format – and decide who you want to reach. Direct mail has the flexibility to serve any market you choose:
- Saturation Direct Mail – if you want to target every household in your target location, Saturation Direct Mail can do that. But you may be hitting homes that are not really your target.
- Targeted Direct Mail – this allows you drill down to your best prospects – as indicated by age, income, age of home, size of home, etc. To spread out your mailings and your costs, we can set up a weekly mailing program.
- New Homeowner Direct Mail – these are your best prospects for a new kitchen or bath because every new homeowner want to put their own style into their home. Select all new homeowner from the year or two – or set up a month-to-month mailing program to new homeowners shortly after they move in.
Social Media
Social media provides a good opportunity to spread your message out to a large audience. A consistent effort to build followers and post often will provide you with yet another marketing channel.
But understand the social media platforms are in charge. They control everything – including who sees your posts. But if you structure to encourage more of your followers to visit your website and join your email list, you will get the full benefit social media without being at its mercy
Print Ads, Inserts and Coupon Mailers
These old-school methods of marketing are not as popular as before, but they still could work for you. Don’t dismiss them out of hand simply because they are not digital.
To be sure, local newspapers and magazines are losing readership, but advertising rates should reflect circulation – and print publications are still going into some homes. Coupon mailers are still being mailed into every home (and whatever targeted criteria is being used).
Website Projects
As part of work in Step 1 (Foundation), we will have identified potential problems with your website. This could mean minor modifications, new content or complete overhauls.
Here we will provide you with estimates for the work that needs to be done.
Video Projects
Video is playing an increasingly important role on websites in all industries. We can help you bring video to your site as well.
Effective website video doesn’t have to be a professionally developed sleek production. Sometimes, a home-grown video does a better job and has more credibility. Let’s discuss how video could improve you marketing.
Learn more about our Done-for-You program
To learn more or to find out how we might help you implement a Done-for-You program, contact Bob McCarthy at 508-473-8643 or bob@mccarthyandking.com.
Read Bob McCarthy’s article in
Kitchen + Bath Business (K+BB) Collective
Referral Marketing: Six Steps to Building a Referral Network
