How To Plan Your Reopening
Reopening your kitchen and bath showroom is going to be a little different than your grand opening, however, you still have to be really excited about it. You have to convey that excitement to your customers, to your future customers. You will see that if you can lay that excitement, it will give you a better sales process, and it will make your close rates better when you’re talking to your customers.
Safety versus cash flow: You have to stand with safety during this time, so you have to consider making it as safe as possible especially if you have a showroom. You will see most retail stores will also publish new safety guidelines soon. We believe that they like the legal policies that they will publish soon. Because this is going to be around for a while, we have to follow some guidelines for sure. When you’re opening your store, you have to open your virtual store. What I mean by that is: You have to be prepared for (and make available) virtual design appointments.
What is Changing in Kitchen and Bath Industry?
What is changing here? At first, we were in a temporary state. The first phase we saw was panic, people in panic mode: buying bulk, long-tall papers, and that kind of thing. Right now, we are switching to something a little more permanent. People are at home, they are ready to put themselves in front of the camera because they were working in front of the computer at the office, but right now all we have is a Zoom-type meeting.
They don’t have any hesitation to put themselves in front of a camera, and that’s going to affect our business when they are looking for a remodeler. Or you can use that feature to your advantage. You can invite people to use their computers or phones and open their houses to you remotely in order to have a meeting — virtually. That’s what is really important right now because people out there at home: they’re not going to go into your stores or offices for a while. If you give them some sort of nice, easy way to meet with you virtually, instead of leaving their homes, you will find that you have already booked your round table meeting in this phase and that’s going to give you a real strong start.
Your Messaging Strategy for Homeowners
You have to announce that you’re open and your team is trained to keep your customers and their families safe. You can announce that you’re sanitizing everything and taking extra precautions. Whatever steps you are taking. This is something that you need to prepare in a messaging kit to reach your customers. It’s a white-label type of document, you can post it on your website or you can put it on your Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media platform.
How To Prepare Your Online Marketing
Your kitchen and bath website is in the middle of everything. During this period, your website is twice as important, maybe even three times more important, simply because people are online now more than ever. If you can bring more visitors to your website, there will be a lot of online traffic. People are just making discovery searches, then they will decide to work with a remodeler. We do not offer emergency service, they’re not going to call the first number that they see on the top of their pages, they need some sort of time and they have to look at your website, your portfolio, what you have done, your reviews and everything else you want to promote about you. In that step, our reviews and our portfolio is more important than any other home service in the industry. For example: if you have a plumbing need and you are calling a plumber, you’re just going to Google it then click on the first thing and give those people a call. In our industry, it is a little different; they have to go and see your website, do a bit more research.
There are some important things that you need to consider when you’re looking at your website. For starters: is your website optimized to convert visitors to callers? Is it optimized to convert visitors to form submissions? They have to submit something to you at least. They have to show some sort of excitement and some sort of interest. Another thing: you have to play some call-to-action buttons on your website and you have to do that strategically. That call-to-action you put on your website will bring you to sales, and you’re not going to waste any leads that visited your website. Once you have this phone call, or once you have that form filled out (which is more valuable than a phone call because you will be getting email information name, and phone number at the same time) you have leads and activity there. When someone goes to your website and fills out the form, you definitely need to have an autoresponder to these people. We will cover more about this later.
In addition, your website has to be mobile-friendly. Most Facebook and Instagram users are using their cell phones and when they’re landing on your page through your social media channels, it is highly likely a mobile user. That’s why your website has to be mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendly means: it’s a responsive design, you cannot show a fraction of your website when they click on your links you have to show specifically mobile design for those people as well.
Having an appointment system is another important point. This is a tool that you need to implement into your business, because you need to know who is coming, or at least you need a kind of tractability of those leads. It will help classify your leads, think about in both virtual and physical showroom visits, that you have the ability to track those people. You will have a better way to communicate with those people, as well. Since you have this website right now, with the appointment system and everything, the question is: how are you going to promote this website? We are going to talk about the promotion, but you know you need some lead generators. For example Google Ads. Google Ads is a way to reach people at the time that they need the service. They need their cabinets or bathroom remodeling. Let’s say when they land on your page, it will be more important to have your website really well prepared with your appointment system and everything. Second, your SEO – this is pretty basic. You need to have some sort of page for each of your core products, and there are some technical things related to that. Such as any title tags and h1 tags, these have to be optimized. It’s like going to a Barnes and Noble, looking at the signs in order to find the book you’re looking for. Google works the same way.
Facebook and Instagram Implementation
Facebook and Instagram is a big question in our industry. We don’t know how to use it properly. We tested all our clients and we spent thousands of dollars on our client’s marketing dollars to bring them the return of investment. Then finally we found the best practice: you shouldn’t boost anything on Facebook or you shouldn’t just go there and promote my page on Instagram. You should use Retarget. You have to implement retargeting pixels on your website. What that means is: for example, it’s easy when you go to Amazon and search for Nike shoes. When you start to search you will see Nike ads everywhere in different pages and also even some of the apps that you are using. You will start seeing ads. That’s called Retargeting. Once people land on your website, you don’t need to invest anything like boost my post type of thing because we asked Facebook to populate, look for an audience and you tell Facebook: “Okay Facebook, bring us people that are looking like John. He’s looking for kitchen cabinets, he visited a couple of kitchen cabinets websites, and he is clicking that kind of thing.” So Facebook knows that this is how they built Facebook.
Social media channels are a good way to reach homeowners however, organic posts don’t give you enough impression or views if you do not promote your posts. Moreover, they are not going to give you any sales. It’s just going to give you some likes, but what we are looking for is the people who are in the market and looking for services, right? In addition to paid social media advertising, Google Ads is a good way to funnel in serious customers because when they type something to reach “remodelers near me”, or “kitchen cabinets near me” shows that they are in the market and looking for something. There is no way for Facebook or Instagram to reach the people on social media, you cannot reach those people via social media. You can track down elites for like a year or two years on Facebook, but when you get a lead on Google, these guys are going to land a remodeler in the next 15 days for sure.
5 Virtual Meeting Practices for Kitchen Design Appointments
Reopening strategies come with virtual meetings. The last couple of weeks, we spent hours in virtual meetings with our clients, designers, and feature customers. We were there to take some notes and we worked to create the best practices for these virtual meetings because we have to train our own clients. There are 5 basic and important steps you need to follow:
First: You must be simple. You have to ask simple, you have to talk simply. Do not ask any complicated questions, even ceiling height. Think about it this way: it’s important to give them an estimate right? Ceiling height is an important measure, but do not ask this because they are opening their homes to you with their webcams, and you will see that you can tell the difference between a 30-inch cabinet and a 42-inch cabinet. Then you can understand and estimate since the countertop height and backsplash area is the standard height, and you can see the ceiling height from there. You don’t need to ask this, just take some notes and apply it the same as stainless appliances: if they have a 30-inch refrigerator or a 36-inch refrigerator you can see. When you treat them like they are at a kindergarten level, you will see that those processes will be hassle-free, and these people will be more open to work with you.
Second: Renovation is key for pricing, right? Before the meeting, you should know what cabinetry that you are going to use for your pricing. Are you going to use a kind of economical product line or high end? How to get that information beforehand is with your autoresponder –when they click and book a virtual meeting, you will send an autoresponder to these people and you’re going to ask their address information in order to complete their request. When they get back to you with their address information, it means that you have valuable information. You have to ask for the job site information. Naturally, there will be a difference between a $2 million home and a $500,000 home project. You can adjust the cabinetry and decide on the cabinetry that you are going to use for the price. Also, you have to try to keep your court amount as low as possible. Because it’s not like your showroom visit, people may have like 10 virtual meetings in one day with 10 different people, if they can find it. You should be competing with those guys at some level. Do not use fancy stuff, do not use core bells, or drawer pantries, or designs. You don’t need to share any kind of measurements, you just share the renders and what it looks like.
Third: You have to position yourself as a person that is easy to work with. You shouldn’t ask complicated questions to these people, be simple.
Fourth: Try to schedule your in-person appointment to proceed. That’s critical. Because we tried around 20-25 times to try to sell something, and we couldn’t sell because they’re not going to buy anything virtually since they are spending thousands of dollars. You still need some sort of a round table meeting.
Fifth: Do not open the virtual sessions on your computer, open them on your cell phone so you can take your customers through your showroom. You can show your cabinetry and samples. Also, it’s really practical to show what you have in your showroom –that you can give them a virtual showroom tour.
Reopening Checklist for Your Kitchen and Bath Business
First and foremost: You need to sanitize your store. Refresh your storefront windows, your signs, and everything that shows you were there.
Your website upgrades should be saying that you’re back. If you have an additional policy that you have put there (you have to put their traditional policies), like virtual meetings, create another responder for when your leads send a contact form or anything like an information gathering form. You have to create another responder to these people and if they’re booking a virtual appointment or even a showroom appointment, your autoresponder needs to include that question: What’s your address? What’s the job site address? These questions will give you valuable information about your customer.
Right now, it’s a really hot topic: Social media. If you are not promoting anything with your marketing dollars on social media, try to go live. Do not record the video and upload it. Go live because Facebook likes those live sessions, and they are going to distribute those more. Another thing: if you have a live session that you talked for 30 minutes (or even 15 minutes), chop those videos into pieces then upload those videos as follow-up content on your social media feeds. That’s what we do, you will get great results with that. You’re going to position yourself as the remodeling expert. While we’re talking about those videos: you have to give people some tips. When you’re talking about how to remodel your bathroom or kitchen, people will see your face, and they’re not going to forget your face. If they’re really serious about your marketing, they’re not going to forget about your face. When they see your emails in their inbox, it will stand out far more than in other types of generalist agencies. That will be different. They’re going to trust you. They’re going to see you on the screen, they put you some sort of a celebrity-type of model. Then when you try to promote something to these people, you will get a better closing rate.