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.
Two professors from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business found that speaking positively of fellow team members gives more meaning to one's work and provides a greater sense of purpose. They also claim that there are numerous opportunities to highlight your team's contributions and talent that often are not taken advantage of.
Our world is changing so rapidly that you may not believe you have the capacity to keep pace. Wouldn't we all be more productive if we could assess applications that are best suited for our businesses and careers more quickly? Everyone knows someone who is technologically illiterate, but does that mean they can't learn or it's too complicated to even try?
Hiring the right match for you business culture is one of the greatest challenges facing kitchen and bath showroom owners. There are a few red flags that you should watch for when interviewing candidates.
Excellent customer service is the key to holding on to customers, which, in turn, is the key to sustaining long-term profitability. Customer service guru Dennis Snow (Snow & Associates) has developed a hierarchy of customer service expectations derived from research by the Gallup organization.
Word of mouth is responsible for 93% of messages passing from one person to another. Everyday, Americans engage in 16 word of mouth conversations where they say something positive or negative about a showroom, product, service or person. We recommend restaurants and movies we’ve watched to coworkers, tell family members about a great sale and recommend babysitters to our neighbors. American consumers mention brands 3 billion times a day. Our mentioning of brands is about as involuntary as is our breathing. We do it so often, we don’t even thing about it.
