Kitchen Marketing

I just returned from the NKBA Annual Planning Meeting.  As a marketer in a sea of kitchen and bath professionals, I found myself “on call” answering a broad array of marketing questions – don’t get me wrong, I loved every minute of it!  Not just because I love being “on”, but because the kitchen and bath industry has finally realized that to be successful, you must embrace marketing.  This is a far cry from just a few years ago when “yellow pages and referrals” supplanted the need to market.   I was further encouraged by the industry’s acceptance and curiosity surrounding the newest technologies, and ways to include them in their integrated marketing plans.

I got questions about social networking.  What?  Why? And a few …huhs?  But what surprised me was the number of questions about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how much misinformation is floating out there.  So this week – here are some SEO “rules of thumb”.

1. If you are approached by a firm guaranteeing top placement on Google or other search engines; run.  Run far and run fast.  No one can honestly make those claims.  SEO is too complicated, too subjective and too fluid.
2. There are no specific number of pages nor are there optimum numbers of words on a page that will make your site “search engine friendly”.   That having been said – do keep in mind that the text within your website is very important to SEO – therefore logic dictates that the better your text encompasses your keywords (explaining your business in the way your clients will be looking for you), the better off you’ll be.  If that means more pages and enhanced descriptions, so be it.
3. Google, Yahoo! and Bing offer webmaster tools to help optimize your site to their specifications – use them.
4. Add Google analytics or a similar free tracking tool in order to measure your visits, your keywords, etc.

I encourage any member of the Kitchen and Bath Industry (showroom owner, designer, manufacturer or association staff member) to contact me BEFORE you take the plunge into SEO or even social networking.  I am happy to spend some time with you discussing your specific needs – and whether you chose to work with Z promotion & design or not, as a member of the Kitchen and Bath Industry, I know your business, I know marketing and I know the internet and can, at the very least, provide you with the questions to ask the vendors who approach you.  Email me phil@kitchenmarketing.com.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Integrated Marketing, kitchen and bath dealer, kitchen and bath integrated marketing, Kitchen and Bath Professionals, Kitchen and Bath Web Marketing, kitchen design marketing, Marketing. 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.