Defining Marketing Success for Home Renovation and Design Pros
Use this worksheet to define your business objectives, create a roadmap for your goals and identify the best ways to use your time, energy and money. By following these steps, you’ll be able to focus your marketing efforts and ensure you’re taking the right steps to achieve your business objectives.
DEFINE BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
What is important to your business?
Take some time to define what is most important for your business, both long term and short term. Do you want to grow your bottom line? Is increasing the size of your staff important? Maybe you’d like projects that are larger in scope or more projects in a particular area?
Benchmark Competitors
One of the first things you can do is some competitive analysis by going on Houzz and finding other local pros in your area. What are they doing really well that you also want to do? Do they have more photos or reviews? Are they doing a better job addressing the needs of customers? How can you learn from their strategies and success?
Talk to Peers
Reach out to fellow professionals who are not competitors and ask them what kind of business objectives they have set in the past. Attend an industry luncheon or association conference to meet others who have already walked down a similar road.
Pro-to-Pro
Take advantage of the Pro-to-Pro forums in the advice section of Houzz. Pros around the country are happy to share their wisdom and experience. Ask for advice and ideas about setting objectives or the challenges you may be facing with growing your business.
CREATE A ROADMAP
1. Where are you now?
Think about the business objectives you want to work on and determine where your business currently is. If you want to increase your revenue, you should know how much you currently are generating.
2. Where do you want to be?
Identify where you want to be and, if achieved, what that would do for your business. Set a goal that’s both ambitious and attainable. It’s great to dream, but be realistic about what’s feasible for you and your team.
3. What are your key metrics?
Now that you know where you are and where you want to go, what will it take to get you from point A to point B? What metrics should you be tracking along the way? For example, if you want name recognition, measure how many people in your local area are seeing or saving your photos.
4. How will you get there?
Understand the steps you need to take to move those key metrics in a positive way. If you want more people in your local area to see or save your photos, what are the best tools to make that happen? What marketing initiatives will be most helpful?
ASSESS YOUR OPTIONS
Will it positively affect your metrics?
As you consider marketing initiatives to achieve your goal, make sure they will positively affect the metrics that matter. If you’re trying to win an award, you may want to spend time upgrading your photography, not printing business cards.
How many people will it reach?
Consider the effort and resources needed to do this marketing initiative well. How many people can you realistically reach through this channel? Posting fresh content is a great way to attract homeowners, but will enough people see it to make it worth your time?
How much time/energy will it take?
You don’t have unlimited resources, so consider if the marketing initiative is an efficient use of your time. Flyering your neighbourhood with brochures can give you great exposure, but do you have time to walk door to door?
Does the audience match your target?
If you want more local business, buying a billboard ad will allow you to reach a lot of people in your area, but are they homeowners who are ready to start a major renovation? Make sure your marketing initiatives are reaching your target audience.
You can download these useful tips as a PDF document by clicking here.
