Top Marketing Trends That Will Dominate in 2025

Marketing Trends Video Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to today’s business webinar continuing our theme of business trends for the month of January. Today I have the pleasure of introducing Jason Lockheart, CEO of Kitchen and Bath Marketing Solutions as he leads us into top marketing trends that will dominate in 2025. Jason, take it away.

Hello everyone. Happy to be here today and happy new year to everyone as well. Today I’ll be talking about digital marketing trends for 2025. Okay. To help you stay ahead of the curve. So this is a NKBA CEU webinar as you already know.

So, some of the things that we’re going to talk about today are how to really get ahead in some of the trends that are making their mark and that have shown that is going to be really needed in this year. And so, if you scan this QR code here, it will actually take you to the booklet that I have. And then it’s everything I talk about will be in the book. And you’ll also have access to these slides as well. So no need to really take notes.

You could just listen as I go over all this information. Okay. So what we’re going to talk about, we’re going to get into what are the trends that we see for this year. We’re going to see how uh the trends are reshaping customer interaction and engagement. And we’re going to understand how the audience are looking at these solutions.

uh we’re going to gain knowledge into the trends that are highly creative of the funds that are really highly creative for this industry and how you can take advantage of that and we’re going to understand what is the hood in terms of the marketing trends and I’m going to talk about all this throughout.

So uh let me have your you know attention for the next 60 minutes. I’mma go over a lot of information. Like I said, you’ll have access to the booklet, so there’s going to be a lot of information, so you don’t have to worry about taking notes. And just so you know who I am, my name is Jason Lockard. I actually have a marketing agency called a kitchen and path marketing solutions, but I’m also an architect by trade and I have architecture firm uh that’s named Senetics. So, I’ve been in the industry for over 20 years, worked on projects large and small, mainly in the educational space, do a lot of NKBA webinars. I’m very active on at my local chapter here here within the Dallas area, and I’ve also taught at Southern University, LSU, and I have a book. So, uh, this is just a little about me and I like to show this to have you understand that I’m not just talking from a marketing perspective. I’m also talking from an industry perspective because I’m in the industry as well.

So again, if you didn’t have a chance earlier on, this is the QR code and the link to get access to the book. Like I said, a lot of the slides and all that will be in here. So, you don’t have to worry about taking those. just listen and you’ll be able to look at the booklet and understand how to apply all this because even though I’m going to talk about a lot of information really what I want you to get out of this is start to apply some of this information to help you in the long run. Okay.

So journey starts here. So, we’re going to take a deep dive into what what has happened last year and where we see uh the marketing trends headed for the next for this year right here. And so, there’s a lot that has happened last year that I’m going to go over and how that has helped shape what’s happening in this new year here. And what I want to talk about is how we came up with the trends. So, on the marketing side, we do marketing research every year. So we look at what has happened in the past, what has happened last year and what is projected to happen in the future. We do this on our own with our own clients. We do it with ourselves and we also talk to a lot of other agencies in the space, outside the space, and we do a lot of research. So I’m saying all that to say I just didn’t head online and say what are the market trends for this year and then have lists. This is something we do every year where we do market research, look at what the trends are and then actually look at what they are and then and we anticipate how they will apply to uh the design and remodeling industry.

Okay, so this is the top 10 list right here.

Okay, I won’t touch on everything in this list, but uh if you have any questions at the end, feel free to ask me about any of these things. One of the things uh I’m gonna touch on four areas. One, AI obviously because that’s where everything starts. We’re gonna also talk about uh SEO and SGE and what that is. We’re going to talk about website optimization as well. So th those are just some of the things we’re going to talk about here. But like I said, if you have any questions on any of the other topics or any of the other trends, let me know and I’ll be happy to answer. And like I said, you’ll have access to all of this within the booklet as well. All right.

So to start is AI. I don’t know how you can start any any type of trends now and it not starts with AI because this was the trend last year and it’s only growing. AI is becoming more and more of a intricral part of the business. What we like to say if you’re not using it your competition is and you will get behind if you’re not utilizing. Okay. So what I find a lot of the times is a lot of designers and remoders don’t use it because they don’t really understand it or they don’t really know how to use it. And so what I want to talk briefly about today is just some simple prompts that you can use and how to talk to it the right way because once you know how to talk to AI now it’s easier for you to get out of it what you put into it. And a lot of times when I actually when I actually talk to designers or model they don’t use it because they don’t understand or they try to use it in the past and it didn’t output what they were after and they were they were confused like what is this and it’s it it didn’t really speak their voice. And what you need to understand about AI is that the more you use it the more it learns you. And the more you talk to it and you understand how to talk to it the right way. Now it’s able to understand what you’re asking for. So over time it becomes more of an asset because it’s helping you do a lot of the things you were going to have to do anyway, but speeds that time uh speeds up the time uh to do a lot of the task you would have had to do anyway. Okay. So I’m gonna talk about chat GPT.

There’s a lot of other AI tools out there, but chat GPT is one of the most used and well-known AI tools out there. So, I’m I’m gonna spend some time on the prompts and all that for the AI tool of chat GPT free tool. You you can get access to it as of today. If you do not already have an account, I I suggest you sign up for one and just try it and practice with you don’t have to utilize it or implement it into your business wholesale right now. But just give it a try with simple tasks. And that’s uh some of the prompts I have here are going to be simple tasks for you to try out and just to start to understand how to do so. Okay. So, if you haven’t ever logged into chat GPT, this is just the uh interface as you get into it and how it looks. But we’re going to talk about 11 prompt components that you should have in any type of chat that you’re in any type of information you’re trying to get out of chat. If you understand these 11 prompts, it that gets to the heart of what you’re looking for and you’re able to get out of it what you’re putting. Okay. So, what the 11 props are is the task, the audience, tone, the style in terms of the writing style, what it is that you do, the service, the location where you are, well, what what you do and then what what is it? Okay, so what is it and then what do you do? Who is your ideal client? and then the style in terms of the design style and then why clients need you. So if you’re able to create a prompt around these 11 components, now the AI is starting to understand you.

What I like to use as a simple example where if you were to talk to a child and ask them to uh you know just a simple thing cook some eggs the child if if you’re talking to a four or five year old and you said to cook some eggs they’ll look at you like okay what is it I’m not supposed to do okay I I know where the eggs are I know I got to get a pot I got to turn on the heat and all this and all this stuff that they’re going to look at you and they may not know exact exactly what the steps are.

So when you think about AI and chat GPT midjourney or any of them out there, look at it as a child that does not all the way understand what you’re trying to ask it to do. So you’re going to have to give it step by step to have it understand what you’re trying to do and then then it will spit back out the answers that you’re looking for. So if you look at it as a child that that does not know who you are and you got to really explain then over time as it grows just like as a child grows it will understand and it’s able to do a lot of the things that you’re asking. Okay. So one of the prompts we have here is just for a blog. Okay. A lot of the times you’re you want to create content that may be on your website. Oftent times that’s a blog. So this is a simple prompt for you to create blog posts for your website. Okay. So the prompts, the prompt components like we had talked about the task obviously you want to do a blog post. Audience whoever your clients are writing style that could be informative that could be whatever that is for you. What an interior design business. It could be a remodeling business. It could be a construction firm. Whatever that is for you. the service, what it is that you’re providing, where you’re located, what it is that you you’re that what it is that you want to do, describing your ideal client, whoever that is for you, the style, whatever type of style that is, whether that be abstract, modern, contemporary, whatever that is for you, and why the clients need you. Okay, from that, this is what I put directly into chat GPT, and this what came out. Okay.

So that’s what I wrote in about you know these creatives off topic yada yada yada. I’m not going to read all that. Like I said this is also in in the booklet as well. But from that it came a blog came out. It was right around 600 words or so and and it laid out that topic based on the 11 prompts that I gave it. Now, what I would advise you for SEO purposes, don’t just copy and paste that in because that will not look the best for search engines because one of the things I’mma talk about a little later on is what AI has produces a lot of things. And so, you never want to just if you’re going to use the information for if you’re going to use that information for public consumption, you never just want to put this from chat GPT to your website. You want to use what chat generates as an outline and then from that outline you can edit it and then make it your own and you can personalize it because that’s really where this stands out. So where this has helped us out a lot of times and a lot of clients is when they write blogs or social media posts or whatever they now have the outline. And so now it’s not about what do I create, it’s about now I have what to create. Now I just need to edit it and make it my own. Okay,

next promptier. Like we just talked about social media calendar. Oftent times I’m asked by a lot of designers and remodelers that do their own social media, what do I post about? So you can easily put into chat a prompt around social media posts. Okay, this is just the example here that we did here and we got six weeks worth of posts uh just on the topics and ideas that we could post about. This helps out because like I said, a lot of times I’m asked about what do I post about. So now you have an outline of of what happens for the next few weeks. And now all you got to do is take the actual post, you can personalize it, edit it, add your images, add your video onto that. And now you have social media content. And so in the past you would have had to create all this which may have which may have taken hours. Now you could create this in minutes. And now just as you want to post, add add your own flare onto it. Like I said, edit it and actually personalize. Add your images, add your video, add your own touch, and now you have social media post for uh however long and you’re not having to spend a lot of time creating. And so this what I’m talking about using AI to help you do a lot of the mundane tasks or a lot of the tasks you don’t want to do because we all look at social media as a necessary evil. I don’t know any designer or Raal I’ve met that loves social uh they they know they have to do it. Even the designers that are on it constant if you talk to them a lot of them know that it’s a necessary evil. But if you have this uh checklist and you have the prompts to help you create that content now it’s not so much of a of a hassle. It’s something that you can incorporate into what you do and not spend as much time. All right,

this is one just for on the again here with the chat with ideal keywords. So this is more you know along the lines of SEO. So if you’re doing SEO on your own and you’re wanting to understand what the keywords are for your specific area in your industry that help you stand out, you can have a prompt here. And like I said, all of this is within the book as well. Okay. And then the last one we have here is our hashtags. This ties into social media as well. So to to help you with the hashtags are if you’re doing anything on Instagram, Tik Tok or anything like that, uh interest, this is uh to help you in here. Like I said, this is in the booklet as well. Okay. So your exercise here in the overview here is just to just if you do not already have a chat GPT account, create one. Easy to create. It’s free. So, it’s not anything you have to pay for, but using the simple props, like I said, use the the prompt uh the prompt components that I talked about, the 11. And as you add those in and you explain what it is that you’re looking for, it’s easier for chat to understand what you’re trying to get out of it so it can produce what you need. And like I said, don’t just copy and paste. Use what it what use what chat GPT generated for you to use as an outline and then you can edit that personalize it and then next trend is SEO. Okay, on the SEO side SEO is a trend and you you may say SEO has been around forever. How is that a trend in 2025? It’s a trend. One of the reasons why is because of trend number one AI.

AI has created so much it’s it’s easier for anybody out there to create content. So it’s made so much noise on the internet. Now SEO and SGE search generative experience. It’s all about how search is for your ideal client and how is it personalized for your ideal client. So it’s not just about creating content. is it’s about creating content that is personalized for your ideal client and then having the and having search understand that you are the one that best represents uh the the client that you’re going after. So you so the content you have is not generic in nature. It’s actually personalized for your ideal client. So, one of the things I had talked about in when I when I said about AI, don’t just copy and paste what chat GPT midjourney or any of the other AI tools out there generated for you. Use that as an outline to then edit and personalize it for your audience. And now the search engine is looking for that personalized content.

That’s why SEO is a trend this year because there’s so much AI content out there that is so generic in nature that if you take what AI generates, edit it and personalize it. Now you have a better chance of standing out over the competition that just takes what AI generates and just have it posted. So this is why SEO is is vital this year.

So for all of you all that don’t know what SEO is, which I mean you should know, but SEO stands for search engine optimization. So if you look at the graphic I have here, whenever you do a search, nine times out of 10, especially if you do a local search, this is how it will look. What you see here on the left hand side, usually you have the ads at the top. Okay? On average, only about 20% of the people click on the ads and that’s because they know individuals businesses pay to be in that area in that top area because that’s PPC pay per click. So they already know that’s an ad. Okay. The maps area and the organic area that’s all SEO. So that’s all. So you can only get in these two areas, the maps and organic where over 80% of individuals click in the maps and in the organic area because they know that this is actually relevant for me. You didn’t pay to be here like you did with the PPC ads. You earned your way into the maps or the organic area. Okay. So SEO is around how do you get into the maps area and organic area. Okay. So, this is a SEO checklist I have here.

Like I said, it’s in the booklet. It just goes over high level what you need to do on SEO. I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time here because I know a lot of the people listening may not have the time to do full-blown SEO. Okay? What I’mma talk about more so is Google business profile. Okay? And I’m gonna talk about that in just a minute. But just overall just if you are going to do SEO on your own, how do you improve SEO? You know, looking at the keywords, like I said, tie back into trend one with AI. You can you can have you can use AI to help you develop the keywords in your area that help you stand out. You know, content, you can use AI to help you create the content for what you need to produce. Like I said, don’t just take what AI produces, use that, edit it, personalize it, then post it. Okay? speed is one of the other things that is SEO and then like I said what I’mma talk about now is Google business profile. Okay.

So on the Google business profile if you do not have a Google business profile make sure that is one of the things you set up immediately. You can get calls without even having a website. So we I I have actually worked with uh designers and remodelers that didn’t have a website at the time. They actually had a Google business profile and they got calls just from the Google business profile. So one of the exercises I have here is to set that up. And if you already have set it up, go through this exercise anyway because oftent times you may not have done everything you needed to do. So, make sure you sign up for a profile. You completely fill out the profile. Everything in there from name, business name, address, the services you provide, any of products you provide, you completely fill it out. Don’t just have a sentence. if you can have up to 500 characters completed because the more you write, the more chance you have for somebody to type in a keyword that’ll pull up your business over your competition. Okay? So, make sure you completely fill out your profile, all of your services. If you do any type of design, a kitchen model, bathroom, don’t just write a sentence on it. Completely fill out that profile and add paragraphs to it. However, however much you could oftent times you could do up to 500 characters, 1500 characters, whatever it is. Try to fill it up because you’re adding in content that may trigger a search from somebody that typed in. Okay? So, completely explain it. Make sure your your profile has all information in it that is customized to your ideal client and then consistently posts. So, this is one of the areas where a lot of design and remodeling businesses drop the ball. Once they create the profile, they set it and forget. Don’t do that. Treat your Google business profile like a social media profile. And what I mean by that is that you can post to your social media profile. You should do that at least once a month at a minimum. If you could do more, great. But at a minimum, post to your Google business profile once a month. And you could post about a project that you’ve done. You could do about any of the products that you you have, anything you have done in in the community, any type of community service you’ve done. If you have an event that’s happening, anything that’s actually pertinent to your ideal client that you’re doing in your business that you may post on social media, post here as well because the Google algorithm is checking to see how active you are here. And that’s this is how you end up at maps. This is just one of the areas. Obviously, if you have reviews, that helps you as well, but consistent posting helps you end up at maps. And I actually have a link here for a Google business profile tutorial. It it shows you how to set everything up and what you need to have in it. But also it it it just talks about the aspect of posting.

Posting just helps you in the long run. Okay. Short form video. This is one of the trends that has grown over the years ever since uh the corona virus in 2020. video has become uh intricral to almost everything we do in in the designer robotic industry. Okay. So you can see short form video really is dominated on IG Instagram and also Tik Tok. That’s where a lot of this shows up. But if you’re not afraid to either be on camera, I would suggest you do. But even if you don’t want to be on camera, there are ways you can showcase a project, which I have some examples in here, where you can showcase that and do a short form. And when I say short form, that is around 60 seconds or less. I obviously that’s long. I would say honestly anything half of that. 30 seconds or less is really all you need to do. In between 10, 15, 30 seconds is really all you need to do. And if you c and and if you could create this type of content consistently, it will help you stand out. This is where you can also use AI in terms of topics. In terms of what type of topics do you want to create content on, do you want to create these short form video on in terms of who your audience is, where you’re located, what the product is, what the style is. Like I said, those 11 prompts, use that to help you with the ideas to create the content that you need. All right.

So, this here is just some of the ingredients that you should have within the short form video. Like I said, all of this is within the booklet. I’m not going to head over this uh uh in detail because it’s all in the booklet. You can read through it at your time at at your leisure. We actually have a podcast. Uh that’s one of the things I did not mention at the start. I also have a also have a podcast called Designer Discussions. In episode 29 of our podcast, we did an episode just on short form video reals and Tik Tok. Listen to that. We uh get into a lot of information that I have here, but it’s more detailed on if this is one of the avenues that you want to use in 2025. It it’ll help you to create short form video and and the tactics that you can use. So now this is shot list on the next slide that I’m going show you on what what you can do in terms of short form video but this is an example here too that I want to that I’m I’m going show you in just a minute. So this here’s a hot list uh and we have three simple examples. These are examples of individuals in in in the design community, whether they be in interior designers, home remodelers, kitchen and bathroom moders are on the are on the construction side. And so they were not in front of the camera, but it it showed the progress of the project. Okay? And so these three examples here, you’ll be able to see how they look. But on the left hand side, you’ll see we have a shot list. typical types of videos, short form videos that you can create that are really popular. Okay? And as you can see, they’re not very long. 7 seconds, four to six seconds, you know, one uh minute or less in terms of, you know, doing a simple pan of a after of, you know, a kitchen or a bath that you’ve done or before and after. You can do that with video. You can also do a slideshow. So you can create even in Canva you could create a lot of you can have the before and after images add video animate that add some music behind that and you just creating a video doesn’t take that long and a lot of you on here I know have used Canva and it’s not that hard to to use okay and then for like I said with the Instagram Facebook and uh Tik Tok or YouTube having a tour of the after of whatever project you’ve got. Okay, this right here is what I want to show. So, this is a simple pan of a after.

Okay, as you can see, this simple video is less than 10 seconds and it has over 370 likes. Okay, that’s all they did. A simple paint of a after. Okay. So, even like I said, even if you do not want to be in front of the camera, there are simple things you could do with video in your social media to help you to help you stand out because a lot of designers or modelers are not doing even this simple uh video right here. Okay. Next trend here I want to talk about is website optimization.

Okay.

Now, why website? Now, you may ask why website optimization and why is it’s a trend? Like I said, with all of the trends, one of them that has altered a lot of every other trend was AI. So, like I said, AI has created a lot of noise. So, with optimizing your website, it helps you because a you’re you’re keeping up to date with what’s happening in industry. Oftent times when I talk to designers or models, they haven’t optimized their site in years. So the last time I know for certain a lot of individuals optimized their site was uh the corona virus in 2020. That was because they had to because they uh there there was not a lot of good traffic. There was not a lot of h not a lot happening during that time. So they had more time to analyze and look what was happening on their website and do up and do updates. A lot of designers anders I talk to now haven’t done a lot of up updating of their website since the Corona virus of 2020.

That should you should at least at a minimum once a year look at your website and make sure everything is up to date because if you if you’re active in this industry you’ve done at least four or five projects within the last year if not more. And so you want to ensure that the enduser or a homeowner or anybody or your ideal prospect looking at your website is looking at your most up-to-date projects. Because oftent times you’re going to create work that is that is that is more representative of you within the last year than if you have old projects that were on your site four or five years ago. You may have stuff on there that was good at that time, but is not really representative of you and who you want to promote to now. So, by making sure your site is up to date, is okay, I’mma have a an example here of why optimizing your site is important. This here is a client that we had in Houston. Okay, that that we have in Houston. Okay, this is before this is not talking about any SEO. This is just optimizing the site. what I’m what I’m gonna talk about next. So, before they used us, we they have 500 visitors on average a month. They had a 3% conversion rate, which was right around 15 calls off that traffic. And they had they had a 20% conver conversion rate on on that on those 15 calls, which which mean on average they had around three book jobs a month. and their average transactional value or their average product size right around 7500. Okay, so that was revenues they were making at the time right around 22,500 bucks on average. Okay,

now once we started to optimize a site, like I said, this is not SEO. I’m not talking about SEO. I’m just talking about optimizing the site, making sure the site is up to date. Okay, this is what we do usually the first month just to make sure everything is right. I’m explain what those elements are. But right after optimizing the same amount of traffic, not any additional traffic, the same amount of traffic turned into 9% conversions just by doing simple optimizations that I’mma talk about. So that turned into as opposed to 15 calls, 45 calls with the same conversion rate as as opposed to three jobs, they got nine jobs with the same transactional value. 67,500 a month. So that was almost tripling their revenue just by optimizing the website. Okay. And you may ask what are the optimizations that you talk? Okay. So this is what I talk about at the basic level at the basic level. So make sure when you go onto your website that you have all these elements that you have your contact information your logo main navigation at the top wherever it is you have authentic images of what you do. You have a clear description. It does not have to be long. It could be a sentence or it could be a statement. Does not have to be long. But you want to have that in there because anybody that comes onto your website, you want them to know that they’re right where they’re supposed to be. So for instance, if they came in and they want to do a kitchen remodel and you’re a kitchen remod specialist, you want to have that place on there, best kitchen remoding specialist in South Dakota or where wherever that is. But you want them to know that they’re they’ve landed in the right place that they’re this is where I’m supposed to be. some type of call to action. Whether that is to whether that is to give you a call, fill out form, join my newsletter, whatever that call to action is for you, that needs to be right smack there in the above the fold area. So the above the fold area is when you go onto a website, what you see immediately before you have to scroll.

And oftent times when uh a individual, a homeowner or your ideal client goes to your website, they’re going to immediately look at what you have. That’s where you want to have a lot of this information and the call to action because if they find what they’re looking for, they may immediately reach out to you. Now, what I what I showed uh from the client in Houston, they didn’t have a call to action on. So, they had all these beautiful images, but they didn’t tell the end user what they wanted them to do. You got to tell your enduser, your ideal prospect, homeowner, whoever it is, what it is you want them to do. Now that they’re looking at your site, they’re looking at all this information, what do you want them to do? So, by having a contact form or by having a call to action where join your newsletter, give us a call, you know, request a free consultation, whatever that is for you, whatever that call to action is for you, by having it there immediately now, they have something to do if they found exactly what they’re looking. And so that just by having this information here will help with conversions. by having a number at the top that is clickable because remember one of the things I have on on here too is making sure it’s mobile optimized because over 80% of search starts on a mobile device. So if you know that make sure your site is optimized for a mobile device. So when you uh optimize your site, when you edit the site, when you create the site, don’t only look at it at a desktop. Look at how your website looks on the on your mobile device. Is it easy to understand? Is it easy to navigate? What is the user experience like? Do you have all this information there? Do you have a call action? Do you have your number where they can click and call you? So, we have an example where here in the Dallas area, we work with a designer that wanted to have beautiful images at the top of the site and they did not want to have their phone number at the top. They wanted to have it in the footer at the bottom of the site and and I said, “Okay, give us a chance. Give us a month. So, try this out.” So, for one month, we had it just like she wanted, all the beautiful images or whatever. The next month we had the number at the top where it was clickable. She had a jump in calls by over I think it was right around it’s right around 25 to 30% jumping calls just for that one month by having number at the top. So she un she understood by that simple action of having a clickable number at the top it it helps in the conversion because now you you have told people what you want them to do they it’s easier for them to contact. So that’s why I said these simple these simple steps here without SEO, I’m not talking about SEO, just simple optimizations and edit to your website will help you convert more. So these here are just some simple optimizations. You don’t have to do all of these. You don’t have to do all of these. But I would say honestly if you do about four or five of these optimiz honestly if you only do three of these optimizations if you make sure that this is uh a aspect of your site I’m telling you you will be ahead of the competition because a lot of designers modelers are not doing a lot of these things because they set and forget their website. They may look at it every now and then, but if, like I said, at least once a year, look at your site, make sure it’s up to date, you have up-to-date projects and and everything is optimized on that side so you can be ahead of the competition. So, what I have in blue are what what I’mma highlight what I’m talk about, but like I said, if you have any questions on any of these other ones, I’m happy to answer afterwards. Okay? So, like I said, to start, get the basics in order. That’s what I had talked about at the start when you saw the the graphic where I said the phone number uh the navigation make sure it’s mobile optimized the authority symbols or anything like that. Okay. Just at the basic level make sure you have the basics of your site in there. Okay. Next, like I said, some type of call action, whether it’s contact us, like, share, watch a video, subscribe to news better, download your ebook, or any anything that you may have as a as a lead magnet, whatever that is for you. But having some type of call to action will help with conversions. Like I said, the example of the Houston Desire didn’t have a call to action. Once they put a call to action and and did some of the other optimizations I talked about, once they did that, the conversion jumped from 3% to 9% which actually tripled their income. That I mean, seriously, just the simple steps. That’s all you need to do. Okay. Next, site speed matters. How fast your website loads is important. You all know if you was to type in shoes in your area and you was to head to a website and it took forever for it to load, you would jump to another website. You would get off of that website, go to another website.

Think about that same analogy on your own website. How fast do the images and the video and the text load on your site? Does it take longer than five seconds? If so, you need to optimize. What I have here is some links here.

GT metrics. All of these links here are free. So, you can add your website into uh any of these sites and understand what the site speed is. Like I said, we have one from Google. We have the developers. We have a site checker. I like to use and I like to have uh the designers and models I talk to use GT metrics because it gives you a lot of information beyond site speed. It gives you a lot of information in terms of if if you’re going to do SEO helps you out there. But at a minimum just put your website in there see what happens because if you have it in GTMetric it’s going to hand you a score from A to F.

Obviously A is good F is bad but it’s not going to only hand you the score is going to hand you why you got the score that you received and is going to hand you suggestions on how to improve it. So by understanding where you need to make enhancements now you know uh from the enduser side or from a user experience side what they’re looking at and what their issues may be with your website and what you need to do to improve. Okay.

Next, update old content, the EAT, which is uh experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

So, this is what I talk about at least looking at your site once a year at a minimum because you want to ensure that your content is up to date because like I said, if you haven’t looked at your site since the Corona virus or years ago, a lot of the information may not be up to date. You may have added on new services is you may have a a new project that that needs to be promoted.You may have hired new individuals to your company. You may have had recognition either at the NKBA at Kiz or in NRI or any of the, you know, organizations out there that you promote anything like that that needs to be uh promoted to show that you’re an authority in your industry in your local helps you over the competition. So, and also by creating content that is authentic to you, it helps you stand out from all the noise. Like I said, trend number one is AI. AI has created a lot of noise throughout this industry and not only our industry, every industry because it’s easy to create content. It’s easy. Hear me when I say it’s easy to create content now. Everybody can create content. What helps you stand out is personalizing your content for your ideal audience and making content that’s authoritative that makes you look like an expert. That type of content is not easy to clear. So, like I said, use trend number one, use AI to help you create the outline, but then put your expertise into that content, edit it, optimize it. So, now it’s made for your ideal audience. It makes you look like an expert. And now the search engines will view your content more favorably over your competition because it’s not noise. It’s not generic. It’s personalized for your ideal client it’s easier for you to get fat. Okay.

All right. Now, one other things I wanted to add on, this was one of the other trends, being omniresent. And this really is about being everywhere your enduser is. And so this is about using a lot of different marketing methods to have them find you because you may do offline marketing. You may do SEO.

You may do social media. You may do paid ads. You may do, I don’t know, postcards. You may do TV commercials. But if you only do one of those uh one of those tactics or one of those marketing methods, all of your audience may not be on that on that site or or or may not see what you have to offer. So by being out and present, you’re in essence being everywhere that your end user is. Now I’m not saying do everything.

What I’m saying is first understand who your ideal client is. Once you understand who he or she is, now you can reverse engineer and find out where they are. Oftentimes I’m asked, well, how do you find out where they are? You’ll be surprised how much you can find out on social media. If you understand, if you do the exercise to understand your ideal client and you look at typically your top five clients, not your highest paying clients, but top five. If if you if you analyze and do exercise where you can overlap some of the things they have in common, that’ll help you generate who the ideal client is. And if you look at some of their social media feeds, they’re going to tell you a lot about their life, where they hang out, what they do, where they are, what they eat, and all this stuff. And you’re going to start to understand where what type of channels, what type of marketing channels I need to market to them. Are they do they have

A lot of video on their social media feed? So is that something I need to try to incorporate?

Are they looking at certain TV shows? So is that if do I need to uh try to create short form videos or incorporate TV advertising into what I do? Are they on social media a lot? Do I need to be on the social media channels they are? Or are they only on their sporadic? Do they read magazines? Do I need to try to up my uh up the PR game so I can be in these certain type of magazines? But once you understand your ideal client, now you reverse engineer, find out where they are. And now it helps to tell you the type of marketing channels you need to be on. So when you’re omniscient, you’re not omniscient on everything.

You’re only omniscient on channels where your ideal client is. Okay. Okay. So this here is just an example.

This is just an outline of some of the different type of marketing channels that are out there and some of the elements you need to have. All of this is within the booklet. So, I’m not going to go over this in detail, but like I said, feel free to ask me about any of this at the Q&A. All right.

So, again, these are the top 10 trends that we just talked about. really only went over number one, number four, number five at the end, number six, and number eight, which there is not a number eight, but yes, so those are the those are the marketing trends we went over. And like I said, uh if you have any questions on any of these, feel free to ask me at the end.

So, what you want to do, I do a lot of talks, but what I really want to emphasize to all of you is just don’t just listen to this information.

Get some nuggets or some tips or something out of whether it’s me or anybody else that speaks and see how can

I implement this into my business. So, of the trends that I talked about, which ones actually resonate with you? Which ones do you plan to implement this year?

Don’t just look at this as, oh, this is a great talk, whatever. I understand what the trends are, but which ones actually resonate with you. Which ones do you want to implement in your business this year to take you to the next level? Okay? And like I said, you don’t have to do three of them. Just pick one and really dive deep into that one. Oftentimes what happens with a lot of these marketing methods that we find is that designers and remodelers that do marketing themselves, they’ll do a method for about two to three months and stop. What I would implore you is to do it for do anything that you decide to do for at least six months. whatever, whether that be SEO, whether that be paid ads, whether that be um PR, influencer marketing, social media, whatever it is, whatever marketing method you choose to do, give it at least six months and really put effort into it. Whether you do it in-house, whether you hire somebody from the outside, whether you have somebody in-house that can do it, have them put emphasis on it for six months and see what happens. Like I said, oftentimes you I I see a lot of designers and remodelers stop too early before it’s actually turned into what it can turn into because they stop. They say,

“Oh, well, I tried this for a few months and it didn’t work.” Give it at least six months. I would say a year, but at a minimum six months, and if you do not see anything within that time frame, then you may want to try something.

Okay.

So what we talked about today, we had talked about what the trends are for this year. Like I said, this is not didn’t just head to the internet just say these what the trends is. We did research on all of this, talked to other agencies, looked at other avenues to create all of this for you and to show how it applied to the design and and remodeling industry. AI is obviously the number one trend that has reshaped a lot of this industry to be honest. uh SEO was the next one we talked about and that’s that is not so much in terms of what you may think about traditional SEO but because of AI all of the noise that has been created having you really look at what does SEO mean for your website and mean for conversions that can help you get more jobs in okay short form video was the next thing we talked about that if this is one of marketing channels that you want to do this year. Looking at it does not have to be long. We saw an example where it was a pan of a kitchen remodel that was less than 10 seconds. That was it. And it had over it had over 300 likes. Okay? So, you don’t have to do a video that’s a professional grade. That’s all that. But if you’re consistent at it, if you’re consistent at the video, short form to your audience over time, you will have traction. Like I said, whatever it is that you do, give it some time. Okay?

And then website optimization. Like I said, look at your site at least once a year at a minimum. And then look at uh at the tips I had in terms of what you should have on there in terms of the number at the top that’s actually clickable, having a call to action, making sure your site is mobile optimized and on and on. Like I choose you to do, give it some time and you will see results. Okay.

So, now this is uh I’ll be presenting at ABS and I’ll be talking about which marketing channels are right for you.

I’m going to expand a lot on what I talked about today, but it it’ll be an hour and a half workshop. So, if you are going to be at KBS, make sure to drop by. This is all the information here, but what I’mma touch on is all the different marketing methods, whether it be SEO, social media, paid ads, uh PR.

I’mma touch on all that and what what’s uh how you can implement these into what you do. Like I said, not to have you implement all of them because you do not want to do all. You want to find out which ones resonate most with you and also will relate to who your ideal client is and then how to use it effectively to help you grow your business. Okay, so that is what I wanted to talk about today. So now I’m going to open it up for questions.

Hi Jason. Uh thank you for highlighting the top 2025 marketing trends that will help business owners stay competitive in this evolving digital market. I’ve certainly learned a lot and I know our audience has too. Now we do have some attendee questions. Let’s dive right in.

Okay, so our first question is earlier in your presentation you mentioned that 87% of consumers are seeking more videos from brands for someone who isn’t very tech-savvy. Can you suggest any video editing platforms that are user friendly?

Honestly, Canon is an easy one that you can use and really um you can do a lot of you can add in a lot of imagery. You can add in video in there and create a simple one. And that’s one that I usually recommend because most people already know how to use Canva. They may not know how to use the video aspect of it, but you can YouTube that and that’s easy. Another one uh I like to use Camtasia. That’s another one that’s not too expensive. Roughly aroundundred I think around 120 or so. But uh it’s it’s not hard to learn. There’s a there’s about a 20 minute YouTube video on how to use that one, but I would say start with Canva because that’s more of the simple simplistic one where uh you can get that for free. If you’re going to do more video, I’ll say headed to Camtation. Awesome. Thank you.

Um our next question from Lee is, “Do you recommend the paid version of Chat GBT or should I continue to use the free version?” uh if you’re going to use it a lot, I I would say you can use the paid, but for what I had talked about today, everything I I I did was all on the free version. So, you don’t have to worry about paid to start.

Once you get used to it, using all of the prompts and all that that I talked about, then you’re going to use it a lot, then I would say, thank you.

Um, our question from Jacqueline is, “Any recommendations for businesses that are home-based and are trying to get verified as a Google business profile? Google is requiring a video of a brick and mortar.” I actually hear that a lot. Uh, we’ve actually helped a lot of interior designers that are based out of their home get verified. What I would say is, uh, you’re going to probably need to talk to a Google rep. If you don’t know how, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll share, you know, the contact information so you can actually get in touch with them because often times if you just do it online, they’re going to do the normal requirements. You have to be, you know, in the shop or showroom or anything like that. But if you talk to a Google rep and explain your situation off the top, they’ll help you out.

And then a follow-up question to that is, is there a way to hide my home address if I am a home-based business for my Google business profile? Yes, that’s one of the options. when you set it up uh where it’s going to ask do you uh take uh do you I forgot the actual I forgot the actual terminology but it’s saying if you take people at your home and then you can check that off so and, so it won’t show your address.

That’s extremely helpful. Um, a question from Susie is, “I’ve been experiencing issues with my g uh Google business profile and I am unable to show my business in neighboring towns as it only shows my business in my town. Do you know how to fix this?” So, if it’s so if if you want to show because what’s going to happen with the Google business profile, it’s going to show in your immediate area and then roughly around a 15 20 mile radius outside of that. If you want to show it in a neighboring town outside of the radius, you’re going to have to register another for for that. Yeah.

Thank you. Um, our question from Grant is, “What are your thoughts on website popups as a call to action if it’s done?” That one is a little tricky because a lot of computers nowadays, you know, a lot of people have the popup blockers, so it may not even show. So you have to be strategic there into who the audience is. That’s why I talked about really knowing your audience. If it if your audience is is older, they may not have that uh in place on their computers any I would say more of the younger generation anywhere between uh I’ll say 18 to 35ish they may actually have popup blockers on their phone on their computers so if you

have a popup it may not even show for you so there uh so I I would say just know who your audience is because that may not even show for them but it’s not a bad ad CTA or call to action But I would say have another option in the event they have a popup locker that you have other CTA that can get in front of them if they have a pop.

Thank you. Um our next question from Lindsay is should we create a free account on GTMetrics or can we get the info we need on there without signing up? Yes, you you you don’t have to sign up. You just put your website in and it’ll show you all information. Now, uh, without signing up, uh, it won’t show everything, but for what I talked about, you don’t have to sign up. It’ll just show you what your score is and, you know, the basic information. Now, if you want the detailed information in terms of help you with SEO and what the uh um what the issues are and how to fix it, you may have to sign up, but you don’t have to. It’s it’s not a paid account.

You can do a free account. They just want your information so they can market to it. Just like putting your information in there so they can send you emails was there for me.

All right, that’s awesome. Um, our question from Jacqueline is, are there any tips you recommend for getting statistics or data on where customers are seeking out design services?

Google insights that that’s and that’s uh free tool uh you could get there. You you also have Facebook insights also. So if a lot of your audience is in Facebook and you have a business page, you can get a lot of insights there. But I would say start with the Google insights because uh that you can u have that look at your area, look at what’s happening with demographics and trends and all that. So I’ll say start there.

Our question from Gerilyn is, is there a social media post scheduling app that you would recommend?

There’s a lot out there that I mean that that’s that’s a loaded question. Uh I would say look I would say a determine which of the platforms that you’re going to be on because not all of the platform support everything. Obviously almost all of them have Facebook but not all of them have Instagram Tik Tok with we don’t know what’s happening with with Tik Tok right now anyway but a lot of the other platforms out there some are easier to work with than others.

So I would say first define what are the platforms you’re going to market on and then find the social media platform that actually works well with those platforms and then head from there. I would say start with the free option because usually all the platforms have a trial where you could do either four days, seven days or whatever. Try it out and also check with the customer service. Make sure whichever platform you go with, they have excellent customer service because whatever you use, nine times out of ten, you’re going to need you’re going to need some type of help or you’re going to have you’re going to have a question. So, make sure to try out the trial and they have good customer service.

Thank you. Um Sarah asks, “When posting content across a few platforms, do you recommend varying it or is it okay to post the same 10-second video on Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc.

That depends on the platform and what you’re trying to accomplish. So, I would say first, like I talked about, you know, know who your audience is and then identify them so you can see where they are. Find out the main platform that they’re on. If they’re mainly on one or two platforms, I would say put your emphasis on that platform. And if you’re on any others, just use that same content on that platform. But if they’re on multiple platforms and you’re trying to market them, you may have to vary it up. So, that honestly depends on who your audience is and where they are.

All right. Well, that wraps up today’s webinar. Um, if we didn’t get to your question, we will make sure to follow up through email. Jason, this has been great. Thank you again for joining and sharing your expertise with us all.

Before we close out today’s webinar, do you have any last remarks for our audience? I’ll just say uh if you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out to me. I know some people had asked about the Google business profile.

They’re having issues. Feel free to send me an email. I’ll be able to help you out with that because there there are some things where you may have to talk to the Google rep to get that result.

All right, awesome. And then in today’s um attendee thank you email, we will be including his workbook along with his website and presentation from today. So, thank you. Yeah, one last thing. If you’re going to be at KBS, be sure to come check me out. Uh come my voices for the industry talk and say hi.

All right, awesome. Thank you again, Jason. I also want to thank all of you for taking the time to join us today.

Until next time, have an amazing Tuesday, everyone. All right, bye-bye.