Kitchen Marketing

Kitchen and Bath Professionals are being told to get on the social networking band-wagon… and why not? Growth is way up in the right demographics, it’s easy enough to do yourself and it builds relationships – which we all know is how you actually sell your services.

OK, I convinced you, you’re going to begin Tweeting, Friending and Linking-In. That’s great! Now, what’s your primary objective (for each social media site)? What do you hope to accomplish? Ultimately, you want to pick up new clients.

Traditionally, how has that been done? In many cases, your business was founded on referrals – happy customers tell their friends. The friends come to see you and they like you – your designs, your personality, your knowledge, your quality, your expertise, your… whatever else they value in a kitchen and bath professional.

So, your social media objective is the same – use the power of online relationships to build your client base. Here are some steps for Facebook (your best first stop):

• Create your Facebook Business Page – http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/pages/create.php – you must first have a personal Facebook account in order to create a business page.
• Invite your past clients to become Fans – your goal is a minimum of 100 fans in order to get an easily marketable URL (http://www.facebook.com/Zpromotion) – prior to 100 fans your URL is a series of numbers and letters making it difficult (nearly impossible) to promote outside the web
• Add your Facebook URL to your existing marketing materials, ads, TV spots, business cards, website, email signature, etc.
• Develop and offer “Fans Only” incentives.
• Post happenings and events at your showroom – Seminars, Manufacturers’ Incentives, etc.
• Post new project photographs.
• Post testimonials – ask your fans to talk about the project you did for them.
• Add Videos – snippets of your seminars, time-lapse of a project, a tour of a finished project, etc.
• Engage in discussions to help your fans understand you, the business, the project or the industry better.
• Add posts that personify the business – give your showroom a personality and a face.

Do you have a Facebook page? How are you using it? Post your ideas here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 at 1:05 pm and is filed under kitchen and bath integrated marketing, Kitchen and Bath Professionals, Kitchen and Bath Web Marketing, kitchen design marketing, Marketing, Social Media for the Kitchen & Bath Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.