There's an interesting and opportunistic shift taking place in the way large and small businesses go to market. BKBG members may view their role as creating new kitchens and baths for their clients. Their tasks may include designing the space, specifying and selling products, installation and performing quality control. Showrooms sell both products and services, and retail gurus are advising showrooms and other brick-and-mortar retailers to sell experiences and solve the needs and aspirations of their customers. When a showroom creates a new space in the customer's home, they can focus on experiences by relating how warm and fuzzy their clients will feel with the ability to create restaurant-quality meals in their home.
There are 4.8 million people in the U.S. who are 26 years old. They are the largest group of the Millennial generation, which is the largest generation in U.S. history. They are on the verge of dramatic lifestyle change that may involve marriage, buying a home or having a child. Millennials represent 42 percent of all homebuyers and 71 percent of all first-time homebuyers, according to Zillow Group, and 86 percent of Millennial homebuyers reported making at least one home improvement in the last year.
Do you know someone who believes they are right 100% of the time? These people are difficult to deal with, especially if they are your clients. They believe because they may have been successful in life, or achieved a certain financial or societal status, that they have the right to tell others what to do and how to do anything and everything. How do you deal with a know-it-all? According to Priscilla Claman, president of Career Strategies, the first step is to pick your battles wisely. If the advice, guidance, directive or request is not going to make a difference in the outcome of the project or compromise the integrity of your design, let it go.
Did you know that the average person receives 121 emails a day? Do you know anyone who wants to receive more than 121 emails daily? Probably not. How do you stand out? How do you make sure your emails are read? Look at email through a different lens. What message do you convey when you end your email, “sent from my mobile phone, please overlook typos? Simply because you use a mobile device to communicate does that give you a pass for shoddy communication?
Social media is one of the best ways to promote your showroom, but it isn’t enough to just post content to social whenever the mood strikes. The following tips regarding timing will help you make the most of your social media marketing.
Social media advertising budgets have doubled worldwide over the past two years. Hootsuite, a platform for managing social media, estimates that $31 billion was spent on social media in the U.S. in 2016, and approximately 86% of those funds went to Facebook. Are businesses seeing a return on their investment in social media advertising? Not likely, finds two recent studies. Splashlight, a visual content creation company, found that social media influences less than 33% of U.S. consumers when making purchasing decisions. Those findings mirror another study by Lithium Technologies that found most consumers object to being targeted by brands on their social media feeds.
Brandsource founder and best-selling author Don Miller explained why kitchen and bath showrooms need to tell compelling brand stories where the hero is not your company, but the client. Noted marketing author and blogger Bernadette Jiwa points out that most businesses think of story as a way to create and communicate value. However, story needs to move beyond a medium for becoming better known, increasing sales or making more profits. Jiwa notes, “the story, not of what is, but what’s at stake and what could be is what drives our desire to succeed.”
Harley Davidson’s brand is one of the most valued and recognized in the world. Why else would many of its customers tattoo the company’s logo to their bodies? Harley Davidson customers’ brand affinity has little to do with horsepower, handle bar configuration or time it takes to go 0 to 60 miles an hour. Sam Hill and Glenn Rifkin brilliantly summarized the appeal of Harley Davidson’s brand in their book Radical Marketing. They wrote that Harley Davidson represents, “a lifestyle, a work of art and an emotional connection to a widespread and unique community.” If you ever speak to a Harley owner and ask them why they chose the brand, they will most likely reference the feeling they get when they ride their bike.
Five years ago, no one would bet on Best Buy. The poster child for showrooming, Best Buy appeared destined for the same graveyard that housed vanquished competitors Circuit City and Radio Shack. Best Buy appointed Hubert Joly as its new CEO in 2012, and he developed a plan dubbed Renew Blue that featured:
50 percent of customers are interested in purchasing custom products and 48% of those customers are willing to wait for a product that they can call "all their own," found a 2016 Deloitte consumer survey. Those findings certainly spell good news for BKBG member showrooms. The ability to produce unique products whether they are split finishes, unique combinations of handles and spouts on faucets, custom system showers or individualized pieces of cabinet and door hardware for kitchens provide showrooms with competitive advantages that can't be replicated by online retailers, big box national chains or order takers down the street.
