Digital Marketing Trends in 2024: Staying Ahead of the Curve

Digital Marketing Trends in 2024: Staying Ahead of the Curve

Hello everyone.
Good afternoon and good morning to our West Coast viewers. It is great to see you all here again today.
I am super excited to round off the first month of the year
focusing on marketing trends with this next speaker.
You’ve seen them before.
You’ll see again, I am most pleased to introduce
Jason Lockhart, CEO, and founder of Kitchen
and Bath Marketing Solutions as he leads us
through digital marketing trends in 2024.
Staying ahead of the curve, Jason, please take it away.

Hello everyone and happy New Year.
I know it’s the end of the month and, but it is still the new year, so happy New Year.
And welcome to our webinar for today.

We’re gonna be talking about the digital marketing trends
for 2024, helping you stay ahead of the curve.

So this is the workbook here that you can download.
You can either use your phone to get the QR code
or you can type in that link.
I’ll also have this on another slide.

If you don’t have a chance to,
or if you’re hopping in late,
you’ll be able to catch it at that time.

And I’m gonna show this slide once again,
and well also have it in chat for anybody that needs to have it as well.

But the workbook is gonna have all of the exercises
and all we have in here
and all of the information
that I go over will be in the workbook.

Okay, so the topics that I’m going to go over today are the top digital marketing
trends for 2020.
For 2024.

We’re gonna find out which trend is reshaping customer
interactions and engagement.
You’ll understand how audience are looking for solutions you offer by using this one specific trend that can also have long term results on your marketing efforts.

And you’re gonna also gain knowledge on how this trend is
creating highly personalized marketing strategies
that are setting the, design
and remodel businesses apart.

So we’re gonna talk about those trends just a minute. Okay?
So what I’ll ask is that you mute
and silence all your mobile devices, uh, your computer,
your phone, social media,
because we’re, I’m gonna talk about a lot over the next
50 minutes or so.

And I just wanna make sure
that you’re actually paying attention
because even though we have the booklet, there may be things that I go over that will be new to some not as familiar to others.

So I just wanna make sure that you’re understanding
what I’m actually talking about.
And, uh, if you actually internalize a lot
of this stuff is gonna help you save time
and money in the law.
Okay, so just, uh, a little on who I’m,
my name is Jason Lockhart.
I’m the owner of Kitchen and Bath Marketing Solutions.
We’re a digital marketing agency that helps out design
and remodeling businesses.

I’m actually an architect by trade, so I have an architecture firm in the Dallas area
and also in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

So I got into marketing, ’cause I used to teach at LSU
and I taught a digital marketing class
back in 2009, 2010.
So I had to teach it. So I applied a lot of that
to our own architecture firm.
And one of the designers in the area that I’m in, uh,
that works a lot with us, asked what, uh, we did.
And so I helped her out with SEO and some other stuff
and she started to get traction.
A year later, one of her colleagues reached out
to her, said, what did you do?
She reached out to me, helped her out, and then
after a while we started to get a lot of referrals.
And so in 2016, that’s when we created the agency.
But not until really the coronavirus then we really put
emphasis on the agency because we
saw there was a lot of help.
So that’s when we, uh, created that, uh,
really put some emphasis on it.
So that’s a little on me
that I actually know a lot about this industry.
I’m not just talking because I’m a market.
I’m actually a designer as well.
So, uh, we have a podcast, uh, designer discussions.
Uh, I, I actually have two co-hosts, Miriam, who’s, uh,
she’s a PR professional, used to work with Kohler.
And then Maria, she’s an interior
designer in the Austin area.
So we do this podcast here
where we teach a lot about
marketing, pr, business development.
So, and then that’s just a little on who I am.
Okay, so this is that link once again.
So anyone that may have chimed in late, uh, this is it.
Like I said, you could either use your phone
with the QR code or you can use the link to get to the book.
A lot of this information that I I go over is in the book,
have some exercises so you could take home and implement,
because I’m gonna talk about a lot of information
and a lot of times when I present it is good information,
but you’re gonna only retain about 20, 30%.
So we, I like to have take home
so you can actually implement a lot of what I talked about.
’cause it’s good to get the information,
but it is really beneficial when you apply.
And so that’s why we have the booklet that you’ll be able
to use to implement a lot of this information, the trends
and the strategies that I talk about today.
Alright, so the journey starts here.
This is a deep dive into the digital world
and trends that are happening.
And I’m not gonna read all this, but, uh, emphasis
or, uh, overview of all
of this is basically there’s a lot happening.
And if you’ve been under a rock for the last year
and a half, you know that the digital marketing world has
been changing, uh, dramatically.
And it was, it, it was sped up by the Coronavirus 2020
that had a lot of us working from home, that had a lot
of us, uh, having to do a lot
of more digital marketing than we had in the past
because we didn’t have the foot traffic we used to have.
I hear from a lot of prospects that used
to rely on referrals that that’s not happening as much
because of the digital world.
So I’m gonna be talking today about the
digital marketing trends that will be impacting us this year
and beyond, and how you could take advantage of
that in your design and remodeling business.
Okay, so how did we come up with the trends?
So it’s just not, we did a
internet search and these are trends.
No, since we’re in the industry, we did a lot of stuff.
So we did research on current and past trends.
We reviewed a lot of digital marketing sources that
actually published this annually, monthly,
quarterly, whatever.
So we researched a lot of that.
We talked with a lot of other agencies in this industry
and in in other industries as well that deal with
trends, cutting edge technology and all of that.
So we talk to all of them and we also analyze industry data.
’cause I’m also a member, you know, the NABA, the NARI.
So we get access to a lot of the reports that, you know, are
put out here annually, monthly, or whatever.
So we have access to all of that information.
So with all of that information in our own research,
we were able to devise
and come up with the top digital marketing trends,
which I’m gonna share
with you at the end of the presentation.
What are the top we found?
But I’m gonna talk about the top three
because even though we found the top 10,
we really looked at it as what are the ones
that will really impact design
and remodeling businesses this year?
And so those are the ones I’m gonna actually talk about now.
Then at the end, I’ll share the list where we, uh,
showed all, where we devised all 10
of the trends for this year.
Okay? So the number one trend, which is by no surprise
to anybody, is ai.
So if you’ve been under a rock, like I’m saying again
for the last year and a half
or two years, you may not know that AI has infiltrated
honestly every aspect of our lives.
So AI is, is, is impacting us in ways
that a lot of us have not seen
and we’ll see in the coming years.
So AI marketing, you may have also heard of, you know,
automated marketing or marketing automation
or anything like that, but a lot of that is tied into ai,
artificial intelligence
where it is impacting the technology in all industries,
but it’s really having a significant impact in the design
and robotic industry as well.
And I’m gonna, you know, talk a little bit about
that in a minute.
But AI helps because it collects a lot of the information.
It’s, and it’s able to take all that information
and then help us make informed decisions
faster than a human can.
So a lot of this AI technology is helping us do things
a lot faster and more efficiently than we have in the past.
So the shift has been massive
and it’s been a lot of analysis that has been done
that can help us and all.
And I’m gonna talk a little bit about that today,
but it’s only becoming more prominent in the
design and modeling industry.
So one of the tools that is, there’s a lot
of tools out there, but one of the ones
that has really taken
off really since last year is chat, GPT.
And honestly, Maria, who is, uh, one
of the co-hosts on our podcast designer discussion,
she talks a lot about this.
She’s been on chat GPT since 2022 when it came out.
So when it came out, she was on top of it
and she was letting me know about it
and saying, Jason, you need to get on this.
And honestly, not until I, I saw it on 60 minutes in January
of 2023.
This time last year when I saw 60 minutes
talk about chat GPTI went back to Maria
and I was like, is this the, is this the software
or the program that you were talking about?
And she was like, yes, I’ve been
telling you about this for months.
It’s going to change the way we do business.
And so that’s when I have really started to understand
and learn about it and see what it is.
And honestly, over months, honestly,
what happened in January of last year,
January now is completely different.
They’ve updated a lot of what’s in there
and honestly, every few months
or every quarter, there’s a new enhancement.
So what I teach now
and what I talk about now about four
or five months from now may not be as imperative,
but the overall concept of
what I’m talking about should still be relevant.
But what I’m saying is AI has really changed the
way we do business in, in the de in in the design
and remodeling industry
and chat GPT is,
if you have not used this software, get used
to it, try it out.
They have a free version
that gives you a lot of information.
What I’m gonna talk about is the free version.
They have a paid version as well.
But I would say start off on the free version, learn how
to actually use the system
and see how it could really impact your day-to-day
activities and help save you time and money in the long run.
So this right here, if you can see here at the bottom
of the screen, this is just the interface,
the the chat gt I, when you go into it,
and it actually is
how chat GPT works is you ask a question,
it’s like a chat bot, uh, ultimately, but you ask a question
and it, it gives you an answer.
The more you ask questions, the better it understands you
and what you’re after and is more able to answer you, uh,
what you’re looking for.
So where I hear from a lot of designers that have used chat,
GPT, they say they don’t really know how to talk to.
And that’s what I’m gonna talk about today is really
give you some information
and some props to help you talk to it
to get the answers that you want.
Now, what I’m gonna talk about
and what I’m gonna share, this is from a free account
that I created ahead of this presentation.
So a lot of the information,
if you already been using chat GPT, it already knows
who you are and already know what you have to.
So the same prompts may not work the exact same way for you,
but the overall concept is still there.
And if you haven’t ever used chat
before, this will really help you get into it.
How to ask the right questions
to get the answers at you’re asking.
All right, so there are 11 props
that you really need to understand to help you
ask the right questions.
So the task, the audience, the tone, the style,
what service location, what you do, your ideal client,
your style, and why your clients need.
So I’m gonna get a little bit into all of this,
but if you’re asking these type of questions
in the right way to chat,
you’re gonna get the answers that you’re asking.
So if we look a little deeper into that,
this is the first exercise
that we actually have in the booklet.
So again, look at the booklet
and this is on page,
this exercise is actually on page seven of the book.
Okay? So this is asking about a blog.
So with the blog, I would say with,
don’t just use when we create this prompt
or when you create the blog, don’t just use the blogs as is.
And I’m gonna talk a little bit about why not in a minute.
But you wanna use this to help as a outline,
to help save you time
because we have a lot of writers that write
for our own clients and we’ve been using chat ever since
early last year.
And our own writers have found that it saves them
over an hour per blog of work easily, if not more,
because now it’s creating the outline
and then it is giving them the information.
So now they can rewrite it
and it’s giving them the ideas they need
to write it the way they need to write.
So in the past we used to have writer’s block,
this actually helps you
because it provides you with the information
and a lot of the research
and analysis ahead of time outlined in the way
that now you can now learn this stuff
and write it in your words for you
personalizing it for your audience.
But now you don’t have to do all of the due diligence
and the research that’s provided for you.
So it’s cutting a lot of that, uh, research time and hat.
And so this is really where chat GPT helps.
So this, uh, first exercise, like I said,
which is in the book is all around the blog.
So like I talked about with, uh, the 11 props, for example,
the task is a blog topic, okay?
Audience, ask your clients
or potential clients the tone,
you can have it, whatever it is.
But here, for example, I have a friendly tone style,
you can have it whatever you want, but I have it here.
Formative what?
In interior design business, you could say remodeling
business, you could say a architecture firm, whatever it is
for you, uh, uh, what the service is, full service,
interior design experience, you could change that up.
Location. I’m applying it
’cause I’m actually here in the Dallas area.
But you can apply it to if you are in Los Angeles, Chicago.
But you wanna do that
’cause it helps narrow down the research that chat is going
to have to provide back to you to make it more specific
to your area and your audience, what you do, transforming
indoor paces.
You could change that however you like.
Describe your ideal client.
This is where you want to peel that information out,
the style, why your clients need you.
So this is all information
that you’re providing in your telling check.
So that’s why I said when if, if you remember,
I said at the start, I created a whole new account
because my account has over the,
over the last year has really learned what I asked.
And so the same type
of information I would tell chat now will not be
what you would get because it, it knows what I’m
after, what I’m trying to do.
And over time chat will learn you, your business,
what you’re trying to do.
So now it’s going to give you information that’s relevant
to you and not your competition.
All right? So for example here, this is what our, uh,
this is, you know, the typical question based on all
of the props, you know, please create a blog
topic for my clients.
It needs to be friendly told just those same prompts
that we talked about with the area.
We transform indoor spaces for open-minded family friendly
and collaborative clients with an aspect, abstract
and modern design style with we have fantastic
customer service and we create imaginative
yet functional design layout.
So this is just an example, okay, based on the 11 prompts,
this is what you ask.
And this is an example of this is exactly what chat gave me.
Now, like I said, if you’ve been using chat for a while,
you may not get this same exact answer
because it’s learned you
and it will be based on what you’ve been asking it.
But if you’re new and you’re creating a new account,
you’re gonna have an answer similar to this
and it’s going to give you ideas for the type
of blogs that you could write.
Okay? So the next exercise we have here is for
around social media.
So this is one of the other topics I hear from,
or one of the other issues I hear from a lot
of designer modeling business owners is when they say social
media could be time consuming.
And one of the reasons why they don’t know what’s a blog
about and oftentimes is that they get stuck
not doing anything at all, not posting at all.
Because social media oftentimes is about brand awareness.
Because what happens is when you talk
to a end user or to a prospect,
they’re gonna do research on you, on who you’re,
they’re gonna go to your website,
they’re gonna go to your social media.
If your social media is empty, then they’re,
they may have a reaction like, okay, how active are they?
What we doing? But if you’re posting consistently what,
whatever consistent is for you, even if
that is just once a week, that’s still consistent.
As long as you’re putting your work out there, your
best work out there.
Now your end user
or your prospect can understand your style,
why they should work with you, your processes, how you work.
They can understand how it is to work with you.
And so by having the consistent posts out there,
that helps you with your brand awareness for your end user
and your audit client.
So this prompt here, this exercise helps you to create
social media blog posts
or gives you the ideas on what to post about.
So we don’t have the excuse I’m not posting
’cause I don’t know what to post about.
Okay? So this here is just from the prompt,
from the tones, like I said on the last slide,
this is also in your workbook asking you
certain types of questions.
And there are certain questions you have in the workbook
that’ll help you ask, check those questions to get the type
of answers out of it that you need to get the blog.
So these are just some weekly blog post that chat gave
to us and this continued all the way to week six.
I just didn’t have enough room to have it all on here.
But you can see here, it gives you options, ideas.
So now I’m not saying oh this directly
because you may have others that may have the same thing,
but it’s prompting you ideas, okay,
this is what I can post about.
So now like I said, I don’t have the excuse
or you won’t, you won’t have the excuse.
I don’t know what to post about
because now you have ideas for the whole month.
You could do this every month.
You could do this for the month of January.
Now that we’re ending January, you could do this, uh,
for the month of, of next month, February, you could do this
for March heading out of k, BS next, uh, at the end,
end of February heading into March.
You could do it all around what happened at kbs.
All of those type of prompts, you could put
that in the chat GPT
and it could give you ideas on what to post about.
Now there’s no excuses about, I don’t know what
to post about because now you have an idea
and exercises in the workbook with the exact type
of questions you need to ask chat
to get the answers you need.
Alright, so the next exercise we have out there
is about keywords.
Okay? And this helps around not only SEO,
but it helps around what you should have on website,
what you should have on blog posts,
what we talked about in the first exercise with blogs.
Now you can look around and we have some,
and if you look in the workbook,
this is actually on page nine of the workbook.
It has questions to ask, chat to get the answers,
to get the type of keywords that are relevant to you, not
to your competition, not to anybody if you’re in Chicago,
that are relevant to people in Chicago, not to people in,
uh, Miami or the people in Houston
or the people in Los Angeles,
but the people that are in Chicago.
So that’s why I said as you learn chat
and as chat learns you, it becomes more
and more relevant to you and your business
because now it understands what you’re looking for.
So these keywords will be specific to you
to use in your marketing efforts, whether that be
for blog posts, whether that be for, uh,
website information, whether that be for social posts,
whatever that is for the marketing content that you need
to get out there, these chat prompts will help.
Okay? And then the last one,
or the last prompt we have here is for hashtag.
So this is another one about
tie into the second prompt exercise on social.
Now you have a prompt to help you out on the type of tags
that will be relevant for you in your area, in the industry
for the people that you are looking
for your ideal client that’d be relevant to them
to have them find you
because it’s all about the brand awareness
to have them find you and click on your information.
Okay? Again, this, we actually have all of the questions.
This is on page 10 in the workbook that you should add
to get the type of props, props that you’re after.
Okay? So this is a overview of the exercise
that we want you to do.
Like I said, we don’t have time to do all
of this in PEP right now,
but with the workbook, you now have the information
and the questions that you need to ask chat
to get the answers out.
Because like I said, a, a lot of times when I talk
to designer remote professionals that have used chat, one
of their issues is that they don’t know what to ask
or they ask certain questions
that they’re not getting the answers
that they’re looking for.
And that’s because chat doesn’t know you is trying to learn.
You use the 11 prompts
that we had talked about at the beginning
where we talked about the tone, we talked about what you’re
after, your services, who you are, so Jack can learn you.
And then as you start asking these questions,
now the information becomes more relevant
and now you can find it, save more time.
Every PO that I’ve seen use this exercise
after about a few weeks.
If I hear from ’em, they say, wow, I just did not realize
how much time it saved me with whatever it is.
X, Y, Z. We actually had one
of our own clients they were looking to hire.
So they used chat to uh, develop a description
for the exact person they were looking for.
And it did a whole outline of what they’re looking for,
the description, how the applicant needs to, um, apply
for the position, uh, what the requirements are.
It had everything out.
And she said it saved her over an hour and a half of work.
’cause she’s had to do this in the past
and she said it saved her over an hour and a half weeks.
So that’s what I’m talking about is as you learn
or as chat learns, you now it’s able to help you with a lot
of the remedial tasks
or a lot of just the mundane tasks
that you e either don’t like to do
or you have some of your staff members doing
that can save them time
by getting these answers from chat the right one.
Okay? So that’s the first one.
And I wanted to start with AI
because honestly AI underlines a lot
of the stuff as you can see.
Okay, so trend number two is SEO.
Now you may say SEO search
and optimization wise is this even trend has been, you know,
the same for decades.
Well, yes, that may be true, but
because I started with ai, SEO has changed.
So for anybody that does not know what SEO is,
SEO is search engine optimization.
So that’s roughly how the search engine view you relative
to whatever the term is searched
and to the competition and whatever.
Okay? So it’s how you get the free
or organic traffic in the search results.
So if you were to type in, you know,
interior designer near me, the search results
that you have in the organic side is through the SEO efforts
that you’ve done to get in that spot.
Okay? So why is SEO important?
SEO is how Google, I say Google
but it’s all of the search engine.
Yahoo, Bing, but Google is the most dominant
’cause they control over 85% of search traffic.
So that’s why everybody assumes Google is number one,
which it is obviously,
but it’s how Google recommends your website
to audiences looking for the solutions
or the services that you offer, okay?
It is one of the only website traffic strategies
that can help you long term.
So one of the only strategies that we, if you put a lot
of work into it now long term is still paying off.
We’ve had clients we’ve helped out with years ago
that we may have stopped SEO
that are still getting the benefits of it today.
So if you look at the left hand side of the screen, you see
how I have the uh, search window ironed out,
where at the top you have the PPC where you have the ads,
that’s PPC paper per click.
So you have the ads at the top map listings in the middle,
which we’re gonna talk uh,
a little bit about that in a minute.
And then below that you have organic.
So that’s SE so that’s the search engine optimization.
So that’s how you end up in that area.
Okay, so how do you improve your SEO?
There are a number of ways, but there are a few keywords
that, that have stayed the same for decades.
Now how you implement this may change,
but in terms of the foundation
and the strategy, it’s almost in the same sense.
The advent of SE and that’s about keyword research.
That’s about blogging and or content of some sorts. Okay?
Site speed and Google business profile total,
that’s the one I’m gonna spend a little bit of time.
Google business profile.
If I go back one
and you see where I talk about here in the maps area,
right over here in maps right here, okay?
Over in maps. So how you end up in the maps area, a lot
of time it’s through Google Business profile, okay?
So I wanna spend some time on that
because for a lot of the
designer remodeling professionals
that are on this webinar right now,
they may not have the time to do full blown SEO either.
And honestly, I would not suggest it
unless you either hire an outside agency to do that
or you have somebody in-house to do that.
SEO is what I like to call a lot of the, a lot
of digital ditch digging.
It’s a lot of manual labor, it’s a lot of work.
It’s not hard work if you learning, it’s not hard work,
but it’s a lot of work that as a designer, and I know
because I’m a designer as well,
we don’t wanna do a lot of that work.
So unless you’re hiring an outside agency
or have, uh, help in-house to handle your SEO,
I would say don’t spend a lot of time on fundamental SEO
because that will not be a good use of your time.
But what is a good use of your time?
Google business profile.
Okay, so the exercise we have here, which is in the workbook
and that’s on page 14 of the workbook.
It’s a SEO exercise for you to create a Google
business profile.
Now, you may already have it if you do already have it,
do this exercise and go back
and make sure everything is completely filled out
because this is how you end up in the maps section.
If you look on the left hand side of the screen here,
you’ll see uh, example of the maps,
how it shows up in search,
and how you end up in what we call the map pack
or the three pack or whatever, how you end up there.
So it’s a lot about the information on the Google business
profile and also on reviews.
Okay? But this, if you spend a lot of time on this,
which you do not have to spend a lot of time, what I say,
if you do not have a profile at all,
it’ll take you roughly about three to four hours
to completely set up the profile.
Three to four hours to set up all of the information.
’cause you wanna completely fill everything out,
who you are, where you are, what services you are,
and you wanna list out every service
and explain, uh,
you wanna have your projects on your best projects
that showcase your firm the right way.
Have those images on there and explain it.
Don’t just have the image actually write about
or have a small description about the images as well,
because the search bots find you, uh,
or find your images by the text, not by the, not
by the pixels, but by what’s in the alt tags and, and, and,
and the descriptions that you have on the image.
So make sure to fill out all this information completely.
So even if you have a profile, make sure you go back
and ensure that all
of this information is in there accurately
and filled out complete.
If you do not have a profile, like I said,
it’s gonna take you about four hours roughly
to completely fill this out once you filled it out
completely after that, I would say spend one hour a month.
That’s it. One hour every month is really all you need.
And here’s what’s gonna happen with that one hour,
you’re gonna do posts to your Google business profile.
So what I see a lot of design
and remodeling businesses do not do, you need
to treat your Google business profile,
like your social media profile,
like we talked about on the social media profile just a few
minutes ago about being consistent on the posting.
If you’re consistent in Google business profile over
time, this won’t happen overnight.
So don’t come back to me next week
and say, this didn’t work, come back
to me in about three months.
If you’re consistent and I wanna hear from you, then okay,
but if you’re consistent,
if you’re doing at least one blog post
or one post a month,
I would say if you could get in the habit
of doing one a week, if you could do one a week
and spend one hour a month setting up
what you wanna post about
and what you can easily,
what you can easily post about is the new projects
that you have or any of the services you could highlight,
your team members, you could talk about any
of the community service work that you’ve done, any of
that stuff that you could post about that’s
business related, that will, will relate
to your ideal client will resonate with them.
And also the search engines will understand
that you’re relevant
’cause you’re keeping this Google Business profile active.
So along with the posting, also, the one other thing,
get consistent reviews.
So whenever you’re talking with a client, once you’re done,
now I know this is not like HGTV with the big reveal,
I know, like we don’t have the HGTV home, uh,
all those home shows we’re at the end, everybody’s all happy
’cause they see it for the first time.
This is real life. That doesn’t happen in real life.
We all know as deciders, they’re oftentimes,
they’ve seen the process all the way through.
They’ve seen the demolition, they’ve seen all of this.
So when it’s at the end, they know how it’s gonna look,
but at the end they’re usually happy
because you’re out of their house.
And I know, ’cause I’ve been in that position.
So when you’re done with the project,
that’s the best time and they’re happy.
Just make sure they’re happy. Just make sure they’re happy.
And when you’re done with the project
and they’re happy, get a review from them.
Get a review from them, okay?
Because the more reviews you stack, if you can aim
to get one post a month minimal, like I said,
ideally one a week.
But if you could get one post minimum a month
and get one review every other month,
so six re six reviews a year, that’s all you gotta do.
One post a month, six reviews a year.
If you do that consistently in about two to three months,
you will see yourself start
to be in the backpack in this maps area.
And now you will start to get calls
and emails just from that.
And that’s the type of SEOI want you to do.
And that’s time, like I said,
four hours on, on the front end.
If you, if you do not already have a profile,
if you already have a profile, I would say about an hour
and a half to two hours just to make sure everything is, uh,
is up there relevant and correct.
And then one hour a month.
And what you should also do is
once you have a profile, Google will email you ahead
of a holiday.
We just got out of a holiday about a month ago, Christmas,
new Year’s, Google will email you
and say, are your hours changing for the holidays?
Don’t ignore that email, even if your hours are gonna be the
exact same, even if you’re not going to change the hours
for the holidays, I would say change it by a a half hour
or an hour just to make the change.
So if you’re open from eight to five every day,
and the next holiday that’ll be up will be, uh,
will be President’s Day or one of the days, or Memorial Day
or whatever, whatever the next holiday is, okay?
And they send out the email
and they say, are you changing your hours for Memorial Day?
Even if you’re gonna be open from eight to five,
I would say change it from 8 45 to 5 45
or from 8 0 5 to 5 0 5.
Just make that small little change
because now that sends an alert
to Google that you’re relevant.
Because the more consistency they see, the more active,
the more they’ll wanna send information
and send people to you
because now they see that you’re active.
So don’t ignore those emails when you get
them over the holidays.
Okay? So even if, like I say, even if you have to change it
by a few minutes, a half hour, an hour, just change it.
Okay? And then afterwards you could
change it, act or whatever.
Okay? So just that exercise alone, I’m telling you,
anybody hold me to this, anyone that wants to take me up
and contact me in about three months,
if they do this exercise, reach out to me
and let me know how it’s, I’m telling you,
if you’re consistent, it will work.
’cause we have clients that have only done
Google Business Profile.
That’s it. Get reviews, consistent posting,
make sure everything is up to date.
Uh, reply to emails to make sure your office hours, they did
that for about three months,
and over time they start
to see the call value go up the email value just by
that simple two.
And that’s not full-blown.
SEO Google Business Profile’s, really all you need to do.
All right, so the next one,
short form video.
So this,
if this is almost a little bit like AI in a sense,
like if you’ve been under a rock, you will not know
that video ever since the coronavirus has blown up.
Okay? So over 80, 87%
of consumers want
to see more videos with brands.
So what they’re saying is that they wanna see
you either in a video to see you, uh,
because what what is happening is that in 2020, uh,
the coronavirus changed a lot.
So a lot of content is is out there.
And then this also, so there’s a lot of content out there
because of what happened with Coronavirus, also
because of ai, there’s just a lot
of noise in the marketplace.
It, it just, I mean, I’m being honest, it’s a lot of noise.
Video is one of the things
that could set you apart from your competition, okay?
There’s, even if you do not wanna be on video,
there are ways you can still do video marketing
and a add video into your business,
which we’re gonna talk about where you can incorporate that
and not having to be on camera.
Now, if you are, if you’re not shy
and you’re okay with being on camera, that’s even better
because now you could really differentiate yourself from the
competition and now your end user
can see and hear who you are.
Because a lot of the times what we like to say is, uh,
individual or a homeowner or a end user
or prospect will not buy from you
until they know, like, and trust you.
The best way they can get to know, like,
and trust you is through video.
And if they could see you, hear your tone, see interactions
with you, now they get to know and feel like they know.
I’ve been, I’ve had a podcast for over two years now.
Oftentimes when I’m at an event, whether it’s a NKB,
a local event, national event, I speak, you know,
across the country, oftentimes when I talk
to designers, they’ll often say, I know you,
you have the designer discussions podcast.
I, and they, and I never met the person in my life,
but it’s like they know me
because they hear me all the time.
Or they may see me on video
and it’s like, they know that’s the same relationship
you wanna have with your end user.
If you are okay with being on video,
that’s the same relationship you wanna have
with the people in your community, with your end user,
with your ideal clients.
Because now they can relate to you.
And now you can differentiate yourselves from others
’cause they see and hear you and they think they know you
and they get to know who you are a little better.
And so now that it just goes over easier, okay?
So this is just,
and this, all of this information is in the workbook.
And like I said, uh, a lot of this,
this actually starts from age, uh, 15 on
where we talk about short form video.
And so we have some, uh, some easy examples here.
Oh, and before I leave that slide,
we actually did a podcast episode 29.
Now that was over a year ago,
but it was on short form video, TikTok and Res.
Some of the tactics
that we talked about are not relevant
now because that was over here.
But the concept and strategy of what we talked about in 20,
in in episode 29 still applies today.
So, like I said, uh, we actually talk about tactics in
that podcast.
You don’t have to listen to a lot of that.
’cause like I said, it’s not relevant,
but the strategy of how we, uh, talked about how
to approach it applies.
So a lot of this information, like I said,
is in the workbook.
You can listen to our, to our podcast
for some, uh, for some others.
So the exercise we have here is for you to create videos,
short form videos, 15 to 30 seconds,
some eight to 10 seconds.
This is a, a video here. We even have examples to show you.
So we looked at other des other designers Instagram
accounts, TikTok accounts, to show you what we’re asking you
to do and how simple it is to do with your mobile device.
We’re not asking you to buy high-end video, um,
video equipment or high end camera equipment.
We’re asking you to use your mobile device.
Hopefully you have a up to date.
Well, within the last hopefully, if you have a phone,
sinces about 2020 since about the coronavirus.
If you have a phone sits around that time
and up, you should be okay If you have one older than that,
um, I don’t know.
But around 2020
and up in terms of the video quality is still there.
You got, you know, it helps out a lot.
So a lot of this, it’ll apply.
So this shot list here,
which is in your workbook on page 20,
this, uh, shot list here shows you three,
three different videos we want you to create.
Okay? And the example videos we have here, uh,
in the workbook, if you’re looking on your mobile device,
you could probably click on the link.
If not, you could just copy
and paste that URL and open it up.
Okay? So like for the first one on your project, you wanna,
and the camera right to left slowly.
We have an example of that,
which I’m gonna show in just a minute.
Um, we have, and that’s more to engage the audience.
We have one to entertain and we have one also for visuals.
Okay? And as you can see, uh, the first one is only
around eight seconds, seven, eight seconds.
The other was four to six.
The other one is less than a minute.
So it’s not a lot of time. Okay?
So this one here is, uh,
the example that I want to show.
This is one of the, uh, one of the three examples
as you can show a sh a slow pan,
slow pan about a project that you have.
That’s it. Now that, that there is no excuse,
you should not be able to do this.
And so this should be a aspect of what you have in your
social media profiles, um, media.
You can have it on your site.
You can incorporate this into your marketing.
You can tie this into the AI and get prompts
and get social media prompts to break this up
and what you need to write about it to get it out to the,
there’s a lot that you can do with this.
These simple videos to help you out. Okay?
So those are the three major ones we saw.
One bonus, one is multi-channel.
This one is about being omnipresent, being everywhere
that the end user is.
So like I said,
and like I had like,
like I had talked about a little earlier, there’s a lot
of noise in the marketplace just with what happened in 20,
what happened in 2020 with the coronavirus,
it changed a lot, it changed, it moved a lot of, uh,
of designers or remodeling business that were not on digital
platforms or did not have a lot of the stuff.
They moved into the digital world.
And then the advent
of video exploded, AI and all of this stuff.
So now there’s a lot more competition in the digital
world because of that.
But with that, now you gotta be omnipresent.
If you’ve heard me talk at any of my, any
of the presentations I’ve done in the past,
it’s all about doing your ideal client.
If you will be at KBIs,
I will be doing a two hour presentation.
And one of the exercises we’re gonna do is
to find your ideal client.
’cause you have to know who your ideal client
that helps you in, in immense amount of ways.
Once you know who your ideal client is,
now you could create content that resonates with them.
And knowing that is imperative.
The one thing that we say in marketing, if you’re marketing
to everyone, you’re actually marketing to no one.
So by knowing your ideal client,
now you could reverse engineer
and understand what platform they’re on,
and then be on that platform
and create content that will resonate with them.
But you gotta know your ideal.
But with the omnipresent approach,
it’s about being on a platform where your ideal client is.
So it’s not about being on every platform.
So I’m not saying be on every social media, uh,
platform out there, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
LinkedIn, hows, whatever.
I’m not saying being on all I’m saying
know your ideal client.
Find out what platforms they are on
and get on that platform.
Make sure you’re there, and then create content
that will resonate with them.
And this omnipresent approach helps you with that. Okay?
In of the booklet, as you can see, and this is on page 23
and 24 of the booklet,
we have here outlined a number
of different marketing methods that go over SEO,
social media, PPC, pay per click,
like I talked about, email marketing.
It’s a number of different marketing methods
and questions to help you say, okay,
if I’m using this method, am I doing X, y, z?
Am I doing this? And so it’s helping you to prepare
what you wanna do and how you wanna be omnipresent
with your particular end user or your client.
Okay? So like I said at the start of the presentation,
I said I was gonna share the top end trends we found.
And like I said, we did a lot of this through research of,
uh, past trends.
We looked at, uh, a lot of reputable media, uh,
digital media resources that are out there that always do,
you know, a lot of publications on
what’s the trends for the year.
We did like our own research, we looked at a lot
of information, industry information
or own client information.
What we do, talk to other agencies in this industry
and in other industries to see like what they’re seeing.
So this list was compiled
over a number of hours a week.
I mean a number, honestly, weeks of work, to be honest.
A number of weeks of work than we could compile this list.
So this information is relevant mainly to design
and remodeling companies
because we look at it only from the
design and remodeling realm.
So if you’re a plumber, this may or may not apply,
but if you’re in the design
and remodeling industry, this, all
of this information here applies.
And like I said, we had talked about, uh, what we saw
as a top three, which is ai, short form
and SEO, which is one, four and six.
And we also talked about multi-channel number five.
But some of the other things that I can
briefly touch on here, influencer marketing, we’ve seen that
that’s gonna grow over time.
Social media listening, that’s about understanding
what others are saying about you
and having a way to hear that so you can respond and
or change accordingly.
Okay? SMS marketing, obviously, you know what that is.
One thing I wanted to touch on, actually.
Two, well, I I, it’s a, a few things I wanna touch on here.
One number eight, ethical market.
This is about, with the amount of the amount of content
that’s out in the marketplace now, it’s imperative
that you are authentic with your audience, that you’re real,
that you have your real projects.
I often hear from a lot of designers that say they see work
of other designers on, on their website,
or they may see their own work on other people’s, uh,
site, which is not good.
But with your own marketing efforts, your own website,
your own social media channel, everywhere you market,
you wanna be authentic with your audience, okay?
So ethical marketing is an aspect that of
that personalization.
Like I said, there’s a lot
of noise out there in the marketplace.
What is gonna be huge this year
to stand out from the crowd is how you personalize
your messaging, your marketing messaging to your audience.
And that’s about a, knowing your ideal audience,
who your ideal client is,
and then reverse engineering, seeing where they’re,
and then creating messaging that applies to them.
And now it feels like you are personalizing
and uh, it to them.
And so they’ll relate more
to you than the remodeler down the street
or the designer down the street
because they feel like the messaging is aimed at them
and not at everybody.
Like I said, if you’re trying market to everybody,
you’re marketing to, no one.
Alright, and then diversity.
So this is about this, this is honestly about,
you know, accessibility.
One of the things that we do
for our own client’s websites is we put an accessibility app
for anybody that’s hearing impaired, visually impaired,
that may have seizures or whatever,
where it could change the aspect of their site for
that individual person, but not for everybody else.
And so this is growing
and there are incentives to have this on your website.
If you haven’t heard about this, feel free to reach out, uh,
to me afterwards, I’ll be happy to talk this.
But this is just the top trends that we found, uh,
through research that will hit this year.
Okay, so now action items.
So from what I’ve talked about over the last 40 minutes
or so, what are the digital marketing trends you plan
to implement in 2024 this year?
Now, I talked about three of the major ones we believe,
but like I said, you have access to 10
and you have that worksheet
where we go over others like email marketing,
which we didn’t talk about, but whatever it is,
what are you going to implement this year?
One of the things I hear from a lot of designers is that,
oh, email doesn’t work,
or PPC doesn’t work or whatever.
You fill in the blank for your marketing method
and then say it doesn’t work.
What I found is that if you
do it consistently enough, whatever
that marketing method is, over time it will work.
If you do it only for a couple months, then it, it,
honestly, it may not work
because whatever marketing method it is, you’re gonna have
to optimize because whatever it is, whatever you do,
whether it be email, SEO, social media, PPC paper, click,
whatever it is, there are, you have your competition out
there doing the exact same thing.
So what you have to do is when you implement the method,
whatever method it is, you’re gonna have to optimize it
for you and your ideal client.
And then as you optimize it
and you carve your niche in your area,
now you’re gonna start to resonate with your ideal client.
Then now that’s what it’s gonna work.
But oftentimes what I see is that designers,
and they’ll try this for a little while
and stop, try this for a little while
and stop, try this for a little while.
Stop, no, what I would import is this year,
take a stand, look at the marketing methods
that you wanna work with
and that you wanna implement for this year
and put some time into it, whether you outsource it,
whether you have somebody in-house, do it,
whether you do it yourself,
whatever the marketing method is, give it to
so you can optimize and work with it and really learn it.
And then over time,
I can almost guarantee you’ll see results.
Okay? So which are the digital marketing trends
that you are gonna implement this year?
Okay, so what did we come, we had talked about the,
the top digital marketing trends for 2024.
We’ve found out what is the, what is the trend
that’s reshaping customer interaction engagement.
That’s ai, ai, chat bots, marketing automation, all of
that is reshaping a lot of this stuff.
We, we understood how audience are looking for solutions
that we offer and, and a long term solution, SEO,
and we gain knowledge on the trends
that are highlighting personalized marketing strategies,
that setting you apart from your competition.
Sure. For video,
so we talked about the top three, but you have the 10.
And so like I said, uh, I went over a lot
of information today,
but ultimately it’s about action and implementation.
So I wanna see you do a lot of this stuff now. Okay?
So that’s what I wanted to talk about today
and I will open it up to any questions.
Uh, and if you are gonna be at kds, make sure
to visit us
because we are gonna have a booth in the west hall,
1, 1, 6, 8, we’re gonna have a booth.
So I, and visit us.
And I’m also going
to be doing a two hour presentation on Tuesday,
February 27th at 2 45
I’ll be doing a presentation.
It’s gonna be on, um, uh, developing a plan for the year
and outlining a lot of this information in more depth.
And I’m gonna also talk about, like I said, uh,
defining your client avatar
so you can reverse engineer, do a lot.
So again, I’m a I’m talking, I’m gonna open it up
to any questions you have.
Thank you for, you know, allowing me to present today.
I hope all of you all have an amazing 2024
and we’re here to help if you have any questions.
And uh, I’m opening it up.
Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today.
This was amazing, Jason, thank you for taking the time
to join us for a live q and a.
Thank you. Thank you. So we’re gonna dive right in, um,
so we can get some questions in
before 1:00 PM Our first question is coming from Bob.
How does one approach, um, ge like a Google business profile
for multiple showroom locations?
So what he needs to do,
or what I would suggest to anybody that has
multiple locations is that you have to set up
multiple Google Business profiles
because each one is actually tagged to a location.
So just use that same, use, the same exercise
that we have in the book, but just tie that to each one.
So you need to set up one for each
of the different locations.
And then just like we had talked about, you want
to do a post on there, get reviews for each individual one
because how Google is gonna see it as an individual
location, not deal.
That’s a great point. And I know many people always refer
to SEO as a slow burn.
So really investing that time for each of those locations.
And I think you said around like four hours
to really put in that initial work.
Yeah, that, that’s what I was saying.
I was like, if, if you do not have one at all, you need
to spend about four hours to completely set it up.
Because yes, you, you can
honestly complete it in about an hour,
but it won’t be completely filled out.
’cause it’s gonna ask you questions about, you know,
who you are, what the services are,
you wanna actually explain all of that.
Who, like, what’s your mission statement, explain that out.
What are the, what are all the services you have?
Explain the s don’t just say, you know,
bathroom model kit model, have, have a little description
behind all of this.
Have images from your best project.
So that’s why it’s, I I said it’s gonna take a little time,
but after you in that four hours initial, all you have
to spend is about an hour a month
developing the post and all that.
Get that out there. And over time, like, like you said,
SEO is a slow term
after about three months,
if you are consistent, you should have results.
Beautiful. Thank you.
And a lot of people are mentioning,
and this is a, their first intro into AI chat,
GPT, which is great.
I’m happy that everybody is learning about it
because it’s taking over everything.
So regarding chat, GPT, do you suggest the paid version,
the 4.0 I believe, to get better results with the prompts
that you have shown us today?
Yes, but I say start on the free version first
so you can learn it and then you can upgrade.
Uh, if you are gonna be at kbs, we are gonna have some
shortcuts that I’m gonna share
that you can only use on the paid version, which, uh,
like we’re gonna talk about how to create a cl how
to create, you know, your own client avatar.
We’re gonna have a shortcut that I’ll, I’ll be able to share
with you that you could plug into chat GPT,
but you’re gonna have to have paid version for that.
But I say start on the free so you can learn how
to do the props.
You can do all the exercise we have for the tone
and all that you want to, to have it learn.
And then you can always upgrade,
but start on the free to learn it and then on.
That’s a great point. Absolutely.
We have a question from Sherry.
What is your opinion about the balance between a website
that is set up for search result optimization versus
something with a focus on that visual aesthetic, which is
so important to our industry?
I, I would say you need
to have a hybrid of the both of them.
So you, you need to have them intertwined
because this, this is something that happens a lot,
you know, with designers, they want to have this
great website and have imagery all over the place,
but you also need to think about SEO and the keywords and,
and all, and the content on the site as well.
Because oftentimes in s se in the SEO world,
if you only have the images
and you don’t have any content, it’s gonna be hard for them
to rank you because they don’t know
what your website is about.
’cause like I said, they can’t read the pixels in the image.
Uh, so you need the content so you can, the best way
that you could strike a balance
and have a hybrid of the imagery
and the SEO content is what you need to do.
And we’re gonna talk a little bit about that at, you know,
KBS, I’m, I’m gonna show you what you need to have
as a minimum as well.
So if you are at KBS drop by, I would love to explain that
and show you how, how you need to lay your list.
That’s great. And I know you spoke about the frequency
and posting for, um,
your Google Business profile at least once a month.
If we can get into the practice
of once a week, that’ll be perfect.
So you, can you speak to a little bit about the frequency
of maybe social media platforms
and what that frequency should look like, um, to gain,
you know, as money, eyeballs on our content as possible?
Okay. So that, that, that’s a little
broader of a question.
And, and, uh, so with social media, honestly,
it, it depends on the platform.
Some platforms, like with Facebook,
you could post constantly almost every day, every few days.
With Instagram, honestly, you only wanna post when you have
relevant information to share.
’cause what happens with Instagram, the more you post,
if you don’t have any like shares
or whatever, the algorithm moves you down
because you’re not, you’re not posting
relevant information to your audience.
Whereas on Facebook, the algorithm isn’t as bad.
So honestly, it depends on the, on, on the platform,
but I would say at minimum, I would say about two
to three times a week is, is is an ideal.
But if you use chat GPT to help you with the prompts
or you know, what you could put
for the social media descriptions, that helps you in terms
of what you can post about as well. So that helps you.
Yeah, that’s great perspective.
We have another question that came from Kayla that kind
of piggybacks off of that social media question.
What social media or digital applications do you feel work
best for designers to attract clients?
Some people don’t really use Instagram.
Are there any other social media places
that we may not even be thinking about?
Yeah, so one, one of the questions when,
when I’m asked a lot, where should I,
what social media platform should I be on?
Oftentimes I say, uh, who’s your ideal client?
Where are they? Because that’s often the answer to, to a lot
of this is, uh, you may have, you may have clients
that are not using Instagram, not using Pinterest, Facebook
or whatever, but what are they using?
Are they on hack? Are they on LinkedIn?
Wherever they are, that’s where you need to be generally.
But I would say what I see more often than not for a lot
of designers is, uh, Facebook as a, almost
as a foundation,
because that’s where you have the most
individuals worldwide.
Just almost everybody has a Facebook account.
Even if they don’t use it, they’ll probably have an account.
So I would say what I see more often than not is
where Facebook, Instagram, and what’s the other pictures?
Those are the three I see designers are on most often.
Mm-Hmm. But I would say, again, know your ideal,
who your ideal audience is,
and this is also a plug for KB.
And when we do the exercise on the on, when we define
who your ideal, uh, client is, we’re gonna,
I’m gonna also show you how to reverse engineer
and see what platforms there.
So you’ll know this is the platform I need to be.
That is great. I’m really looking
forward to your workshop.
I’m hoping I have time to stop by, um, that Tuesday.
It’s incredible. It’s the first day of the show.
I do wanna let everyone know that that workbook will be sent
to you all again after this presentation
with the thank you email
and your certificate of completion for your credit.
Um, Jason, do you have any last remarks that you wanna make?
I’ll just say another plug.
If, if, if you’re gonna be at K Baz, go to the workshop.
We’re gonna have a, it’s gonna be Tuesday, February 27th,
2 45 to 4 45 in room, in into six
in to 60.
And if you aren’t able to make the presentation,
we are gonna have a booth at the event.
So stop by, say hi to me and,
and our team will be in the West Hall booth number
1 1 6 8.
Beautiful. I wanna thank everyone
for joining us again today.
I look forward to seeing all
of you at C Biz if you’re there.
And until next time, have a great day everyone.