Listen to this before setting your 2026 Marketing Goals

Hello and welcome to Designer Discussions with Jason and Miriam. Today's episode is what we want you to listen to before you set your 2026 marketing goals. Welcome to the Designer Discussions podcast with Jason, Maria, and Miriam. Tune in each week where we talk about marketing PR and business advice for design professionals.

Hello, everybody. Now I know you're hearing this in the month of March, and you may have already had your goals in place, but I actually talked to a designer the other day, and they had not done anything as of yet. So even if you have your goals in place, you want to listen to this. And what I actually uh what I actually talked to that designer about, I asked them to listen to the presentation I had did for the NKBA.

It was a webinar on developing your marketing plan for the year. And it was an hour-long CEU and it was a lot of information in there. So if you haven't listened to that, I'll have the link to the show notes. But I'm a give a high-level overview of what I went over in that.

So to help you prepare. So if you do not have a plan, you could get one in place. And if you have a plan, you can audit it and see if you need to adjust going in to the rest of the year. Because even though we're almost at the end of the first quarter, if you haven't had effective marketing yet, now is the time to change it up, see what other strategies are out there so you can have the rest of 2026 a success.

Okay. So what I had talked about, really, we do a lot of market research to see what are the hot marketing topics and strategies that are happening for the designers for the year. And there were over about 15, but I talked about the top 10 of them, which was, you know, like SEO, social media, you had AI in there, uh, video marketing and some others. So I had talked about what those top 10 were and the pluses and minuses of each one.

So I'm gonna highlight about two or three here, but where I want to start, where I begin with almost all of those talk is to first make sure that you're that you understand who your ideal client is. And if you've heard me talk before, you'll hear that over and over again. And it's important because you have to know who that client is, who you're marketing to, so you could create content that will resonate with them. Because oftentimes what happens when we work with a designer or remodeler will often audit their marketing that they've done in the past.

And when we look at their ideal client, oftentimes what they're who their ideal client is is not matching up with what the content they're putting out there to target them. And so when you have that disconnect, it's hard for your ideal client to have whatever your content is resonate with them. So that's why I always emphasize knowing who your ideal client is because that helps you target them effectively. If you haven't watched this podcast before, we have a number of episodes on the client avatar, the workbook, and all that.

And I'll have that in the show notes as well. So you could do that. But if you haven't done that, I will say start there. Then after that, uh before I get into the marketing tactics and actually what I did on the presentation as well, is I went over website optimization.

Because the two main things you have to do, A, like I said, knowing your ideal client, and then you have to optimize your website. Because when you start to do marketing, once you attract people, they're gonna look at your website, look at your social media channels. And if that's not up to date or if it's not effectively communicating what you want to communicate, you're gonna turn people off. You're gonna lose people.

So that's why I always start with the ideal client and then the website. So making sure it's optimized. You have up-to-date projects because oftentimes I find when we work with designer remodeling professionals, when I look at their website, projects are old. They're over six months to a year old, which if you're actively working in in the profession, you should not have year-old projects.

You should have a website that has a project that is no less than six months old because it actually represents the type of design you were doing today. So make sure that your all of the content up there is up to date, that the wording is actually speaking to your ideal client. The images are relevant, up to date. And then once you start to market and draw people to your website, that's when you are able to attract people that way.

And I had did uh an exercise where I showed the difference between not having an apps uh optimized website and having one and how much more money you can make. So, in terms of the marketing channels, like I said, we looked at the top 10, which was SEO, Google Business Profile, Social Media, email marketing, paid ads, pay per lead, video marketing, PR, influencer marketing, and then offline marketing. Now, one of the questions I was asked about was CTV. That is, that's actually, and I had mentioned this in the QA because I was asked about this, is that is actually one of the top 10, is actually number nine of the top 10 channels.

The reason I didn't talk about it, and I also mentioned this in the QA, is because the barrier to entry is high. So usually when you're doing CTV commercials or whatever, you're having to spend 5A plus. And you're also having to create that video asset. So not only are you having to pay for that, but you're having to create the video asset.

So oftentimes the barrier to entry is high. So that's why I really didn't talk about it. But that is an avenue that if you are willing to create the video and put the money into it, it can help you. And that's something if you're interested, I could talk about that in the future, but that's not one of the things I talked about.

You know, two of the things that I'm gonna talk about, one social media, because like I said, when you do marketing, they're gonna look at two avenues, your website and they're gonna look at social media. And then I'm also talking about the Google Business Profile because that's as you'll hear me say, at the basic level of SEO, Google Business Profile is where you should start. Okay, so I'm gonna actually start there. So with the Google Business Profile, A, make sure that you have one.

So we actually find with designers and remodelers that they may have one, it hasn't been used in forever. They don't they don't even know how to get into the profile. So make sure you have access to the profile. And there's a link in the presentation that I show where you can find out if you have one, get into it, and then once you're in it, make sure it's completely filled out.

Because that's what I also see is with a lot of remodelers, is they only fill out a little bit of the information. You want to make sure that when they talk about the services you offer, when they talk about who you are, when you want to completely fill it out. So if you have, if you have 3,000 characters, don't write 150 words. So you want to completely fill out that profile because oftentimes when you talk about what you do with the services you offer, it can trigger, it can trigger a search.

So make sure you have all that information is completely filled out. And then once you have all that information, what you want to do is you want to use your Google Business profile as a social media profile. So you want to post to it at least two to three times a month. So whenever you do social media, whenever you add post on whatever that is, you want to also add that on your Google Business profile.

Because if you're active on it, after about 90 to 120 days, you should see activity in terms of a call or an email. The advantages of it, there's a lot. I'm gonna talk a little bit about those. But in terms of the disadvantages, there's really not any at all.

Honestly, is the verification process because now if you don't have one, it actually takes you a little longer to verify who you are because Google is actually tracking down on all of the non-usable fake profiles that are out there. So it's just a little harder to verify who you are. But other than that, there really are no disadvantages. It's a whole lot of advantages because that's how you end up in the map pack.

You can get calls and emails from this as an add-on to your website with the type of images you have on there, also an add-on to your social media profile. So it's a lot of advantages, not a lot of disadvantages. You should have that. I had also talked about social media, and if you heard me earlier, once you start marketing whatever avenues you you use, they're gonna head to your website, they're gonna head to your social media platforms.

If you haven't heard our master class, that link will be in the show notes as well. And I actually talk about, we actually go over the minimum you have to do, which is honestly four posts a month, at least once a week. And with a lot of the platforms now, you you can schedule all of all of your posts. So you can develop all of this if you spend about an hour a month just developing what you're gonna have for your social media for the month, because you only have to do four, and then schedule it out for each week.

And then also those same posts, like I said, have it in the Google Business profile so you can post it there. Now you start to get some influence on that side. But with the social media platforms, honestly, it's really about the brand awareness. And what happens is, like I said, when anybody does research on you, they're gonna look at your social media profile.

And if you have up-to-date posts that actually show what you do, talk about who you serve and all that stuff that'll help you as opposed to having posts that are a year plus old. Now they may assume that you're not very active or you're not up to date. So having that at a minimum, four posts a month, one every week, and you can schedule that out right at the beginning of the month or at the end of the month, whichever is easy for you. What I had talked about as a designer, we actually create a lot of the content that we can post.

We work on projects, remodeling, and all of that, where that process of meeting with the client, going over the design, getting into all of that aspect all the way up to the demolition, remodel, and then uh the final reveal, that whole process is content that we can document and have as post. Because one of the things that are highly sought after and that a lot of end users look at is Instagram and Pinterest, the before and after images. And we do a lot of that. So if you can highlight and document the process of the project that you do, you have a lot of content there for social media, for blogs, for videos, and all of that.

Making sure you create that kind of content helps you out. And then I had also talked about doing social media competition analysis, and that's uh something I recommend if you haven't done, it's very helpful to you because what happened, if you look at all of your competition in the area, look at their social media platforms, how often they post, what they post about, what the engagement looks like, that'd tell you if there's any gaps. Because we did this with a designer here in the Dallas area.

She found out one of the services that were not being offered in the area. She started to offer it. I'm not going to mention what it is, but she started to offer it and she made a lot of money because she found a gap in the industry here in the Dallas area because a lot of designers were not doing this. And she found that out by doing a social media analysis of the competition.

So I actually have some suggestions in there that you can look at in the presentation that'll help you out there. And then with social media, there are some negatives to that because it can be time consuming. But at the same time, like I said, you don't have to spend a lot of time. Because what you hear a lot about is that you should post every day.

You don't have to post every day. Unless you're wanting to become an influencer or something like that, that is the only way that you will have to post every day. But if you're just wanting to really have your profile as a brand awareness tactic, which most of us do, all you got to do is post four times a month, once a week. Okay.

So that's really all you have to do. Of the positive, it can help build trust because, like I said, when they research you, they're going to look at your social media platforms. And if it's up to date, that can help to build trust. And it can also cause some interaction on the platform as well.

And over time, it can help get leads. Those are just two of the topics I had talked about. Like I said, I'll have a link to the CEU presentation so you can view it and see all of them. But also, I'm going to have a link to a master client because we went over a lot of this too in there, heading into how we can actually help you out in the academy.

So that's all I want to talk about today. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. We'll we'll be happy to answer them. And we look forward to talking to you in two weeks on Designer Discussions.

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