Developing a Marketing Plan For Your Business in 2026

Developing a Marketing Plan For Your Business in 2026

Hello everyone and welcome to today’s webinar, developing a Marketing Plan for Your Business in 2026.

As we continue our theme of smart home technology for the month of November, I want to thank DUR it for generously sponsoring this month’s design and business webinar series today of the pleasure of introducing Jason Lockhart, CEO of kitchen and Bath Marketing Solutions.

Jason, please take it away.

Hello everyone. This is, I’ll be presenting today about developing a plan for 2026 as we are in the last few months of this year of 2025. I’m helping you to plan how you need to do your marketing for next year.

So we’re gonna be, we’re gonna talk about developing a marketing plan for 2026 and what needs to be there.

This is the booklet that I have. You can scan in the QR code. I’ll have this code up a little later so you’ll have a chance to scan it. D but I have the booklet so you do not have to worry about taking notes.

Okay. So everything I’m gonna talk about is in the book. You’ll get access to that, have all of that in there. I have some exercises in here to help prepare for next year and also a worksheet that I’m gonna share that link at the end of the webinar.

Okay, so what we’re gonna talk about today, we’re gonna set goals for 2026. We’re gonna talk about the three fundamentals of marketing success, the latest trends that will be happening in 2026, why you need to have tracking a part of your marketing. And then we’re gonna develop plan from there. Okay?

So just a little on who I’m, if you do not know, so my name is Jason Lockhart. I actually have a architecture firearm and I have a marketing. So a lot of people ask me how did I get into marketing with architecture?

So I used to teach architecture at LSU in the school of architecture. And what happened, I taught marketing class. It was actually a professional practice class and then within that class we had a lot of work.

So I had to learn a lot of the terminology, SEO, social media and all of this to teach it. I started to apply to our architecture firm and what happened is I actually had one of the designers here within the Dallas area where I’m now, she reached out to me and said she needs help on the marketing side.

Helped her out, this was around 20 10, 20 11, had success. Then one of her colleagues reached out to her, said, what do you do? Referred her to me, had success at then right around 2016, that’s when I opened up the marketing agency.

So that’s how I got into marketing from architecture. Alright? And also I have a podcast designer discussions. We talk a lot about marketing for the design, remodel, instruction industry.

So it’s actually from a basic beginners level. So we try to help to educate you on what you need to do to have success in marketing because I know I’m a designer as well, so I know we were not taught a lot about marketing.

And so that’s the impetus of, alright, so as I said earlier, this is the workbook, like I said, here’s the scan for QR code or the link.

Like I said, do not worry about having to take notes, just listen and you’ll be able to have all of this information, all the slides and all that will be okay.

So what I often like to ask when I talk about this topic is, what is the hardest part about marketing?

And we actually do a lot of research on our side and we, we talk to a lot of designers, remodelers about what they find.

And here are the answers I used to keep, okay?

Not sure where to start and where to put, where to put the money, not having success with whatever they are doing. And most of the jobs that they already receive are formal first.

And so that’s what I hear the most often that may apply to you, may not, but this is what I normally hear where we do our own research or our own online questionnaires from designers over knowledge about what they are having a hard time with in the marketing realm.

So where we’re gonna start, we’re gonna set goals for next year because we’re only two months away where we’re only about a month and a half away.

And so we’re gonna set what are your 2026 goals, okay?

So this is a quote that I heard from Greg Reed that I like to say when I always talk about, you know, planning for the next year is, or when I talk about planning in general, where a dream is written down with an eight becomes a cold, a cold broken down in the steps, becomes a plan, a plan back by action makes your dreams a reality.

So in essence, you can have ideas or you can have the goals you want to achieve, but you have to write them down and you have to actually execute them to achieve.

So I actually have an example here. So Harvard, about 10 years ago, it was about 15 years ago that they did research. They interviewed graduates just before they graduate.

And what they find out, what they, so they interviewed them right before they graduated and then about 10 years late.

And so here’s what happened. So 84 of the graduates didn’t have any specific goals at all.

13% had goals, but they didn’t write it down and 3% had clear written, uh, goals and plans to achieve or accomplish.

Okay? So what happened from that when they uh, followed up with them about 10 years later, the 13% of the class that actually had goals, they actually earn twice as much as the other 84%,

but then stagger the 3%, earn 10 times more than the other 97%.

’cause they actually wrote the goals down and they accomplished.

Okay? So I’m saying all that to say, you’re gonna hear a lot about what I talk about today. I’m talk about a lot of stuff, like I said, that’s why I have the workbook.

Like I said, don’t worry about taking notes, just listen.

But the point is, once we set the plan and I help you set the plan for whatever your goals are for next year, write it down within the book and take action.

That is gonna help you in 2026 and beyond. Okay?

So what are your goals for 2026?

Okay, so we need to set, so how I like to have this plan from a lot of the clients that we work with is we set a target by the end of the year.

So now you need to set what, how much do you wanna make by the end of 2026?

Okay? Once we have that dollar amount, we’re gonna turn that into what that is monthly, how many calls you need to, to actually achieve that, and then what the average transactional value is.

And I’m gonna talk about that in just a minute. Okay?

So here’s an example. So this was a client we had a couple years ago in, in the Houston area.

Their revenue target at the end of that year was to hit five milk.

So when you divide that by 12, that’s right around 416 k per month, okay?

And their average transactional value. So what that means is your average, your average ticket price.

So if you do, if you do kitchen remodel, what is it? Is it in between 60 K to a hundred K? Is it 15 K?

Whatever it is for you, you need to know what that number is on average.

So for him, it, he, he did on, on average, right around 60 K for the kitchen remodels that he did.

So when you divide that, that actually tells you you need to have seven new clients every month to actually achieve the monthly code.

So if you wanna hit at the end of the year 5 million and, and this is what he wanted to do, that’s 416 k per year, I mean per month.

And so, and with an average transactional value of 60 K, now he knows he needs seven new clients every month to hit the go.

So now you know your numbers and now you can start to achieve it.

Okay? And I actually have a workbook, uh, that I’ll share that at the end of the webinar that you’ll get access to.

Okay? So now once you know how many clients you need per month, we need to determine how many people you need to talk to.

And so that’s what your average conversion rate.

So if you talk to in co uh, in co prospects, how many do you convert on average in our industry is anywhere between 18 and 25%. That’s the average. Okay?

That’s, that’s, so if you talk with 10 people who did not know who you are, what the services you offer, you’ll convert on average around around two to two and half to to three.

So that’s, that’s right around 18 to 25%. Okay?

And so once you have that percent, you divide that by the conversion rate.

And so that’ll tell you, so we use here, ’cause his rate was right around 26, so we used 25% for him.

So we knew, and then, like I said, the average is is in between 18 to 25.

So we knew once we did that, he needed to talk to 28 people every month.

So that’s how many leads he needed to attract every month.

So once you have have the 28, if you have the 25% closure closure rate, you’ll convert Evan of them into action clients.

Okay? So now you know your number.

Now how do you get to the 28?

And so that’s what we’re gonna talk about, uh, forbearing out.

So this is a, like I said, I’ll share this at the end, but it actually has the goal in here, the average, uh, transactional value, how many clients you need to have the conversion rate, and then it, and then that lets you know how many leads you need.

And so with the average cost per lead, I, I’ll talk about that at, at the about share, uh, the spreadsheet.

This is an, this is actually another way, uh, one of the designers we work with, Pam shared this and she has it by project time.

So if you do not wanna do average transactional value, you could do by if you had large, medium, small or if you do consultation or anything like that.

So that’s also in the spreadsheet that I share at the, okay, but of all of this, it just helps to have you know your numbers because that helps you plan for where you want to go, where you wanna be at the end of 2026.

Alright, so for you, how many leads do you need a month to get where you need to go?

Okay, that was the point of that exercise. Hopefully that math was not too hard.

If it is, ask me at the end, I’ll be happy to head back over it.

But it’s just helping you understand what the dollar amount is that you wanna earn at the end of the year, what that turns into monthly, how many leads you need and how, oh, how many clients you need.

And then from that, how many leads you need to talk to to get the number.

Alright, so now that we have the numbers down, now we need to talk about how do we get to the 28 leads.

Okay? So that is all about the three fundamentals of marketing success.

And what is that? It’s the market, the message and the media.

So we start with the who.

You have to know who your ideal client is.

If you do not know your ideal client, it is hard for you to market to them.

We like to say in the marketing world, if you’re trying to market to everyone, you’re actually marketing to know.

So what you need to do is know who your ideal client is.

I don’t care how long you’ve been in the industry, you need to know who your client is.

This is an exercise I have here, this is also in the booklet.

Uh, but it’s an exercise that will take you maybe a few hours to complete.

And it’s to help you understand who your ideal client is.

So, because once you understand who he or she’s now, it’s easier for you to market to them.

It’s easier for you to create content that resonates with them.

Okay? So I would advise you to do this exercise and if you have anybody within your organization, have them help you out because we actually had a client that did this exercise on their own with the owners,

but then when they went to their team, when they went to their team members, they had no, no idea who their clientele was.

So they were not marketing effective.

So if you, all of your team now, everybody understands who you’re marketing to, how to talk to them and communicate to them the right way, okay?

So like I said, that’s an exercise I eyes for, for anyone. I don’t care how long in the industry. Okay?

And then messaging is the what.

So once you know your ideal client of who, that’s where you start.

Now you head to the messaging because once you know who you’re marketing to, now you can create content, whether that be, uh, ads, website, copy, images, video, whatever it is for you.

Now you are actually creating content that will resonate with your end user or with your ideal client.

But you do not know that unless you know who your ideal client is.

And so on this aspect, you can actually use ai.

And we’re gonna talk about AI too, but AI can help you with the messaging, okay?

So once you know who your ideal client is, you could use props within the AI to say, okay, here’s your ideal client.

Now create messaging for me in my area.

This is what I, this is what I do, this is the area where I live.

This is my ideal client.

Create messaging for either my website, for my ads, for my video, whatever it is or around that.

And AI will help you with, like I said, we’ll talk a little bit about that, uh, a little later on.

But AI can help you with this aspect of the messages.

But before you get to this part, you have to know your who, who your client is, okay?

Once you know then who and then, once you know the message, the what, now you head to the hot is the meeting, Okay? And so how will you reach the client? So this is where we’re gonna spend the majority of the rest of the time on the type of media and the type of marketing strategies you should use to get to the 28.

 

Because, or remember, this is the, uh, idea that we wanna use that information to get to the amount of leads we need. Now for, like I said, for the client in the example here I used in Houston, he, he needed 28. You may need only eight, you may need a hundred, however many it is for you. But that’s what the media and the house that we would talk.

 

So we’re gonna start first with website. I know you may say, no, I wanna talk about social media and all this other stuff, but first you need to start with website. Website is the hub where you should drive all of your traffic. And it’s, and the example I like to always use, we had a client, this was around 2018, that they did everything on Facebook. They drove all, they drove all of their traffic to that platform. And what happened, if you’ve ever used any of the social media platforms, you know, they’re always changing their pro their policies and procedures. So when this individual or this designer ran ads on their Facebook, on their Facebook business profile,they didn’t look at the up to date, up to datewhat the policies were for running those ads.

So they actually had wording in there and, and they had targeting in there that was not acceptable anywhere. So they got their account shut down for six months. Yes, six months. So remember they were driving traffic to their social media platform ’cause they didn’t have a website, so they were in a panic.

So they came to us, we designed them a website, and now they understood that all of the traffic needs to be driven to your website. So that’s why I like to always start here. No matter what, what platform you use, your website needs to be your hub cause that’s the only platform that you want. You don’t own Instagram, you own Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok,

Twitter name, what whatever the other platforms are. You don’t own those platforms, you own your website. So that’s where you need to drive the traffic and have the hub where all of the information hits. Okay? So this is an example of a client that we had used, and I just have this example on here to show you how, how vital it is to actually optimize.

So this was a client we worked with a couple years ago before we did any SEO or anything else, there were issues with their website.

And so we optimized the site and saw immediate, uh, enhancements in convergence.

Okay? So before we did anything at all, this is where they were at, you know, a baseline level.

So they had on average right around 500 visitors a month on that, okay?

They had a, they had a 3% conversion. So of the 500, right around 3% of those turned into, they either called them, look at at what they had to offer, emailed them, build out whatever they had to offer, whatever it is, what, whatever a conversion is for you.

They only had 3% of them convert. So roughly that was right around 15 calls on average of that.

Now here’s where, uh, we had talked about the, the conversion rate early, they had right around 20% conversion rate. Like I said, the average is anywhere between 18 to 25%. So they had about 20%. Okay? So that turned into roughly three jobs a month, roughly. And so at their average, uh, their average, their average transactional value at the time, 7,500.

So that turned into roughly 22 pod in revenue. Okay? That’s before we did any, before we optimize, okay? Once we optimize the site, and I’m gonna show you what we did to optimize the site in a minute, but once we optimize the site before we did any SE anything like that, the same amount of visitors had a 9% conversion rate over three just by the optimizing. So that turn, as opposed to 15 calls, they had 45, 45 calls as opposed to 15 at the same conversion rate.

That’s nine jobs as opposed to three. So at the same average transactional value, that’s right around 67 5 every month. So that jump there conversion, that jump, what they were earning, that almost tripled what they were earning just by optimizing site.

Okay? So you may ask, what did you do? Okay, let show it.

So when you went to their website,

they just had images on there.

That’s it. That’s when you first entered into the website.

All you all was images in the net.

What you should have on your website,

you should have some type of call to action.

What? Because you need to tell people

what you want them to do.

Once they’ve found your website, you need to tell them

what you want them to do.

Whether that’s to give you a call, whether that’s

to fill out a form, whether that’s to reach out

to you about a consultation, whatever it is for you,

you need to tell them what you want them to do.

And preferably you wanna have it in the above the fold area.

That is the area, right?

When you fold into a website

before you have to scroll, okay?

So you wanna have all this information in that area, okay?

You wanna have a brief, clear description about

who you’re, what you do.

It does not have to be law.

It could be a instance, it could be a state.

But you need to tell, let

individuals are let the prospects know

that they are in the right place.

Because oftentimes they may have,

they may have clicked on the wrong website or whatever,

but now if you say we’re X, y, z, uh, remodeling, we, uh,

we actually specialize in high end kitchen remodel.

That that’s really it.

But that’s letting the end user know they are in the right

place and this is what you do.

Okay? And so also making sure it’s your site is

mobile optimized.

Our client site was not mobile optimized.

So that was an issue. So like I said,

these are just some small optimized stations here

and I’m gonna talk about a little more,

and there’s some more actually in the booklet also.

But these small optimizations help to jump the con help

to jump the con the conversions from 3% to 9%, as I said,

that went from three jobs a month to about nine jump just

by optimizing site, okay?

Before I talk about anything else, alright, so

that’s Bible making sure that you optimize your site

and it’s up to date, okay?

This is one of the clients that, that we had.

Now this is a client in Chicago,

they had almost a similar situation, not as drastic

as the one in Houston that I showed,

but this is their site afterwards.

And you could see here where we have, we have a clear CTA

where we’re asking for their name, email address, whatever.

And then, uh, we actually have all of the information here,

social media, they, they have a phone number at the top

that they could click to call.

A lot of times designers I work

with wanna have their number at the five,

have your number at the top and make sure it’s clickable

because over 80% of search starts on a mobile device.

And if they find what they’re looking for, they could click

to call you and that’s immediate conversion, okay?

But if they, if they don’t see the number,

they may head to your competition.

Okay? So that’s small change just

by having the number at the top to them.

Okay? So now we’re gonna talk about the trends for 2026.

We do research every year in our industry

and in all industries also just to see what are the,

what are the top marketing trends that

that will hit the next year.

And there’s a few in there,

but there were three that were on that list

that I’m a talk, okay?

What those are ai, obviously artificial intelligence.

If you don’t, if you haven’t heard about ai, I don’t know

where, but we’re gonna also talk about GBP, that

that is on the uptick and I’m gonna explain why.

And then video mark, okay?

Okay, so let’s start with ai.

So on the AI front, we should all know what AI is

because it’s been impacting our industry

for the last few years

and it’s, it’s been making a lot of, of,

of the technology we’ve had in past almost obsolete, okay?

So certain aspects,

but if you use AI correctly,

it can really help enhance the operations in

your business, okay?

And this is an aspect of all types

of marketing that you should use.

And I’m explaining why in just a bit.

But, so AI can help you

automate a lot of the things that you already have to do,

a lot of the mundane tasks you have to do.

And it can speed a lot of that up in our own

for a lot of our clients.

We implement a lot of AI for our clients

and we help them save a lot of top on their operations side

with a lot of things.

And there a few examples I have here, okay?

But there’s a lot of AI tools out there.

I’m gonna talk specifically about chat GPT.

Now there’s others out there, Gemini, and,

and there’s a lot of ’em out there.

I’m gonna talk about chat GPT

because it’s the most popular one out there, okay?

So what I’m gonna talk about in terms of

how you educate the AI applies to all of them.

So just, uh, listen to where I’m gonna talk here.

So this is, if you haven’t ever used chat, GPT, this is the,

the interface that you go into once you’re into

that site, okay?

So there are 11 props that I want you to understand how

to use because no matter what AI platform you use,

these props will help you get the information

out that you have.

Okay? And the prompts are the tasks, the audience, the tone,

the style of writing, what you want, the uh,

what the services that you offer, where are you located,

what do you do, your ideal client, which which I head back

to what I talked about at at the start.

The who knowing your ideal client

because it’s, it’ll help you with your messaging,

it’ll help you with any of the output that you’re looking

for in the ai, okay?

Other than design style. And then why wise feed you.

So all these types of props here, no matter what AI

platform you’re using, this will work.

Okay? So this was just an exercise I did here just

to show a prop about blogs

because this is one of the areas

that can help you out in terms

of writing any type of writing.

This doesn’t have to be a blog.

It could be, you know, an executive summary for a project

that you working on.

It can be a job advertisement that you try to get out

to, like LinkedIn or anything, any type of writing exercise,

which I, I assume a lot of you all already know.

But for the one on here that don’t,

AI can really help you out a lot, especially with the out

and then, and then it just, ’cause oftentimes

’cause with our old content writers, since they’ve used ai,

they’ve saved hours on the amount of content

that they’ve had to prepare

because our content writers write a lot for our clients

where it used to take them about an hour to write a blog.

Now they can do that same blog in about 20 minutes.

’cause they use AI to help them with the outline,

and now they’re just having to optimize it and,

and put their own, uh, human input in there

to really make it their own

and to also tie it into who our, our client is,

what their style tokens.

Okay? So this here is just an example

with the 11 props.

Oh, and you know, just a blog topic

of the tone and all of that.

So this is just a, a, a quick example using the props

to show you the output that we could get from you.

So this is what, when, when I have the you, that’s when

I put in the information, uh, for the prompt

to get the blog information out.

And then chat GPT then came out

with all this information for the blog.

Now, like I said, you may not want

to use this information exactly how it comes out

because you, you, I would advise that you read over it,

make it your own,

but it just sped up a whole lot of the process of you having

to do all this on your own.

Okay? That’s the same thing. We have an exercise here.

All this is in the book. So we have an exercise here

with the social, uh, social media calendar

because I often hear a lot of times from remodelers

and designers on social media.

What do I post about how often do I post

AI can actually help you with this.

And this is, there’s an exercise in your on that.

Uh, we had used the props

and we got six weeks worth of social media content

and, and obviously we’ll just have to head in there

and then optimize it and make it our own.

But we just saved a lot of top

and hassle from having to create this all out.

Okay? This is another exercise we have in here on SEO

keywords, okay?

So this will help you out.

And honestly, you can actually use this one

with the first one where you create the blog

and then also have it let you know what,

what the keywords are.

So you can SEO optimize the blog in your website.

But these exercises even, oh, we have them for,

like I said, the blog or social media calendar in the SEO,

using the props

or using the 11 uh, aspects there will help you with

whatever task you’re trying to do

to help you speed up your time and opt

and operations on, on, on your operations side with using

AI to help you with all of that that you do.

So this is one of the top things that’s happening in 2026,

honestly has been a top thing this year.

It was the top thing last year

because AI is just infiltrating a lot of what we do

and in the design and remodeling and in market as well.

Okay? So like I said, all these

exercises are in the booklet, but mainly use the props

because that’ll help you, that’ll help you

with whatever task.

It’s to get the answers out that you’re after,

but also knowing your ideal client is a big part of it

because it’s gonna help you tailor the messaging

to your ideal client.

Alright? So number two is Google business profile.

So this is an aspect of SEO,

but this is how you end up at maps, okay?

So if you do a search normally at the top

where you see number one is, is, is number two,

is the maps area, and the third one is the, OR organic.

That’s SEO aspect, that’s all everything units.

But the gp, GBP, Google Business Profile,

if, if I hope everybody on here actually has one,

but if not, I encourage you to create one.

’cause this is how you end up in maps for anybody searching

for the services you offer local within a 15,

20 mile race.

Okay? So if you do not have a GBP,

you need to get me

and I, I actually have a link in a few slides from here on,

on how to open that up and start that.

Okay? But with the GBP,

actually I had on the last slide, this is a free two,

so this is not something that you have to pay for.

This is a free two, okay? Just like chat, GPT is free.

So all of all of the, all of,

and like I had talked earlier over all of the marketing,

one of the reasons I had highlighted the three ideas

because all of the three are all free.

So there’s, there’s not any money you have to put into ends.

Now it will cost a little bit of time,

but if you put time in, usually you will, it’ll result at,

so on the GBP side, like I said, free two

for anyone that already has one,

make sure you fill out the pro your profile complete.

What I find a lot of times is that designers

and remodelers will have a profile,

but they haven’t completely filled out the profile.

What I mean by that is if they have,

what are the services you offer?

You may have 1500 characters to explain whatever that is.

They may write, you know, kitchen remodeling, bathroom modeling and that’s, or or whatever.

 

It’s, and just have that. If you have 1500 characters, make sure to fill that out. Get as close as you can to that. Because when you are writing about the services that you offer, you’re ultimately explaining information or you have keywords in there that may trigger search. So by explaining it, you’re actually having information that will help to trigger search.

I can’t emphasize that enough. So if you have 1500 characters, 500 characters, whatever it is, make sure you fill out your profile complete, okay?

Uh, you wanna have your operating hours in there. This is one thing that a lot of designers do not understand. Your GBP is like a social media profile and how the Google algorithm works is that the more active you’re on it, the more likely you’re to end up in maps. Okay? So when you have your hours, when a holiday comes, you know, whether it be like Labor Day Memorial today, where we’re almost at Thanksgiving, uh, whether it be, whether it be Christmas, new Year’s, whatever it is, alter your out that small change alerts the algorithm that you’re active on your profile, okay?

 

So just by changing that helps, okay?

Adding projects or adding in or adding images to your profile, remember, treat it like a social media platform, okay? If you actually add new images or, uh, onto your profile at least three to four times a buck add up page where you have a new, whether you have a new, new, uh, whether you have a new project that you’ve completed, whether you’ve just hired somebody, whether you’ve done anything in the community, whatever it is, highlight that on your Google business profile at least three to four times a month ’cause that’s showing the algorithm that you’re active on the profile, okay? Reviews, whenever you complete a project, let your client review you on Google and within your Google business profile it, it’ll hand you a link that you can send your clients to have them review you. I would encourage you, once you complete, once you complete the job, right?

When you’re there with them, have them have them do have them review you in your presence. Because that’s the easiest way because we all know we reviews and it takes, it’s almost like pulling teeth because it’s hard to get people to leave you a review, review it, it just is.

 

But when you complete a job, they’re usually half, it’s not like this is not like HGTD where you have the bid reveal nine times outta 10. They’ve been involved the whole time. So it’s, it’s the end. But they are happy because you’re outta the house. So they get to have their house.

And so when that time comes and you hand over the keys or, or, or you are exiting, make sure you get that review because they’re at their happiest at that point. More than likely they’re gonna give you a review at that time. So try to get a review, right? Okay. If you have any products, list those up there. And also FAQs have those as well.

So if you’re active with this profile, what I’ve seen is within usual, within 90 days, if you’re active, you, if you’re actually, uh, uh, adding on any new projects, like I said, anything if at least three to four times a month at least, and you’re updating your hours if you’re getting reviews, this is, this does not take a lot of time, honestly, if you spend about an hour a month on your profile, updating all of this information, getting refused hours and all of this, what I, what I have seen within 90 days, you will start to get calls and may not be a lot. We have one client that did this and over a year they had about 15 calls in the year. Now that may not sound like a lot, but for an hour a month, you, if you could get in between two and three calls from an hour of work a month, that’s really all, most people on here need.

Okay? So if you are active with this, like I said, usually within about 90 days you’ll see some activity, whether it be emails or calls, which you have to be active. Alright? So there’s some advantages and disadvantage. There’s really not a lot of disadvantages to be honest. Really, the only one is that the verification if, if you have a due profile is a little harder.

And that’s because on the marketing side, they, a lot of marketers have created a lot of fake profiles. And so Google has been cracking down. So they, they made it, you know, a little harder. You got a junkie, a little hoop to show that you are a real business, do a video, whatever. But once you have the profile, you’re, you’re good to go. And honestly, you’re gonna spend the majority of your time setting it up.

You may spend, I’ll say about three or four hours to complete it, like explaining who you want, listing all of the information in each of the areas, like about your products and services. Like I said, once you do all that, about, about about four or five hours to a mission set after that, if you spend an hour a month, like I said, about an hour a month with updates, that’s really all you need in, in about 90 days. 90 days you should see some act. You should see real activity.

Now if you do, if you do not, let me know, but I’ve seen almost, almost a hundred. I’ve never had anyone that has been active on their profile for 90 days and not have any uptick in activities and okay,but you have to be active.

You have to be consistent. Alright?

So, uh, these are just some factors on how they, in the maps, how they rank you. Obviously it’s on the relevance. So if you’re, if what anybody types in what you offer is actually relevant to them, how close you are within that area to where they are. So often what I’m asked by a lot of designers that, that work from home is that it will show their address. You can actually hide your address. So from the end user side, your address is not at the show. Google has to know what your address is because that’s how they know where you are and where, uh, the radius is for anybody that types in, you know, the services they need, they’ll know who you are and where you are by the address, but you can hide your address.

Okay? And then the prominence, that’s just about like I had talked about, how active you’re on the profile, uh, with reviews, with up, if you update the times that you’re open, if you add in, like I said, add in projects, add in when you hire new, when you hire new people, add in when you’re active in the community, anything you’ve done, uh, if you’re active in your local

NKBA, that’s an event. If, if you showed up there, you, you can actually post that because that any type of activity, like I said, three to four times a month, that’s your, and then these are just some more tips and then some information here. So this is how you need to make sure you sign in, have all your information, everything is correct, okay? So that’s for everybody that already has a profile.

 

Anybody that does not have a profile, this is how you set it up. Head to business.google.com and then go from there. I actually have a link here. It’s also in the booklet that, that is a 16 minute tutorial. We didn’t do this, it’s one of the marketers we’ve worked with in the past. But he, he is a 16 minute tutorial on how to, how to completely fill out your profile. Profile, okay? And then video marketing.

So this is one of the hot topics.

It’s actually video marketing.

Ever since the co uh, ever since honestly the Corona virus in 2020 video has taken off and it’s, it’s huge now.

And we have a, at here, 87% of consumer want brands to do more videos. Now I know you may say video takes time, it’s a lot. But over the last year, action plus, there’s a lot of tools out there that’s made creating videos easier to do. And honestly, if you have a up to date mobile device within the last few years, usually you have a good video, you have a good camera and a video camera on your phone.

You can do a lot of stuff, okay?

And short form video really is all you need.

And I have some examples here to show you too.

We did a podcast on, this is episode 29 and we were talking about reels and big TikTok and how to create a lot of short form video rather quickly and have it enhance your social media profiles as well.

So, uh, like I said, that’s in the podcast.

I won’t get into all of that here, but what you want do when you have a new project or when you’re working on a project, create a shot.

What are the images or what are the shots you need to have to show off what you’re trying to communicate?

Okay? Oftentimes this does not take a lot of time

because you’re going to be within the client’s home anyway, working on whether it’s on a demolition, whether it’s in the model phase, whether you’re at the showroom, uh, you know, taking them over all of the and fixture equipment that’s gonna be in the room in the remodel.

That’s all a part of the process that you could show within video.