“If you’re trying to market to everyone, you’re marketing to no one.”

—A marketing maxim

 

Have you ever heard someone say something like: “Oh, I love this; I have to have this in my home,” or, “We fell in love with a product or company and never looked back”? Statements such as these are emblematic of brands with a loyal customer base.

Branding aims to build an emotional connection with consumers by showcasing company values and distinguishing that company from its competitors. Successful brands make a positive emotional connection with their audience and achieve their goals:

• Building customer trust and loyalty
• Increasing brand awareness
• Buttressing marketing efforts for increased efficiency
• Expanding and attracting the target audience
• Enriching the value of the company

 

When homeowners remodel and redecorate their homes, they tend to discover products they love. Once a homeowner decides to remodel, a kitchen and bath remodeling firm is a method for reaching their goal. The homeowner’s perspective develops from their remodeling needs:

• Our kitchen is dated
• The space is cramped and dark
• The design limits the functionality

 

In broad strokes, the model process for a homeowner who decides to remodel their kitchen looks like this: they read about remodeling, learn about products, and talk to their friends to get a good idea of what’s out there. Then they’re shopping for someone to design their new kitchen and audition several design firms for the job. After they have connected with a firm that demonstrates skill, ideas, and confidence and offers a good price and timeline for the project, the homeowner chooses a firm to design and remodel their kitchen. The chosen firm offered the homeowner the most attractive consultation.

 

The homeowner becomes a customer of a kitchen and bath design firm because they identify with the ideas and values expressed by the firm. Branding is a company’s identity. In it, you’ll find the personality of their staff, the owner’s origin story, and stories from the team members discussing past jobs. A company’s brand is equivalent to the consistent feeling that its image evokes in a viewer. Branding communicates the company’s message to consumers, and its healthy trajectory is marked by client satisfaction.

This article is an in-depth examination of branding from seven perspectives:

1. The what and the why of making your brand known
2. Defining and maturing brand identities locally and digitally
3. Strategies for brand building
4. Leveraging partnerships and networking
5. Tracking and measuring brand success
6. Strengthening customer relationships

The what and the why of making your brand known

While branding and advertising may initially seem indistinguishable, they have distinct focuses and goals. Brand development and advertising are conduits for earning customer loyalty by delivering products and services. Both efforts aim to build relationships with consumers and turn prospects into clients.

 

Advertising

Advertising seeks to promote a product or service in advertising campaigns on specific channels to specific audiences. It’s designed to incite immediate and near-future purchases.

 

Branding

Branding has a long-term focus concerned with creating emotional connections with its audience.

 

Reasons for brand building

A good example of successful long-term brand campaigning is the Coca-Cola stripe. The Coca-Cola stripe emits a sense of community and happiness and has long been an iconic brand. Coca-Cola is also a testament to the need for continual branding. Branding matures, but the need for it does not expire. By continuing to promote its brand, Coca-Cola stays at the front of its audience’s minds while promoting a sense of loyalty and strength, which leads it to continue to enjoy dominant market influence.

Branding is the foundation of advertising because it solidifies a business’s image before it is presented to an audience. A strong brand can help a company identify and utilize its unique value propositions to strengthen its relationships with clients and homeowners looking to remodel a room in their homes.

Why are we in business? What emotions are we trying to evoke in our prospects and clients? The answers to these questions are in the brand:

• Aim for identity seen through the brand
• Recognition and trust from customers and even prospects
• Demonstrate consistency
• Make an emotional connection with homeowners
• Differentiate from your competitors

A vivid narrative showing the people behind the company builds a strong brand and communicates values, mission, and company vision.

Defining and maturing brand identities locally and digitally

Brands are among the most valuable assets many companies possess. But no one agrees on how much they are worth or why.

—The Economist

 

Understanding backend marketing

Referrals are the Holy Grail of the kitchen and bath remodeling business. Backend marketing is the advertising effect created in the relationship between the client and a sales designer during a project. It is concerned with concepts that generate repeat business from happy customers.

Sales designers can increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) by indulging the homeowner’s interest in bringing more light and space to their emerging kitchen by cross-selling a terrace with connecting French doors to their remodel. A successful client-firm relationship encourages referrals and repeat business from clients and reduces their Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC).

Key practices of backend marketing:

• Personalized marketing – Personalize your communication to prospects and clients to serve them the way that they want to be served
• Cross-selling and upselling – When customers are looking for answers, opportunities for cross-selling arise. Suggest additional remodeling projects or upgrades to customers who have begun or completed a renovation
• Post-project communication – Contacting the client after the completed job to see how they like their remodel
• Earning referrals – Referrals stem from a client receiving excellent service they are ecstatic about and telling someone else about your firm
• Gathering feedback – Collect feedback from the areas in which it is given, analyze it, and learn from the critical experiences of your clients, then filter this learning into your continued approach to branding

 

Understanding brand positioning

It may sound like a stretch, but thinking of your company as a living being can give you insight into seeing how its individuality can appeal to a growing audience over time.

1. Identify and fully understand your core values, mission, and unique value proposition. This should be embedded in the DNA of the team.
2. Prioritize customer experience – channel value to both backend development and deliver it through your brand.
3. Streamline backend operations with tech. Automate repetitive tasks with a CRM, and structure your selling system to increase gross profit margins and create a smoother, faster experience for clients. Streamlining frees up your valuable time.
4. Scale operations without compromising quality consistent in every step at every aspect.
5. Visualize how your firm’s scale will look as you scale, and check this vision with your past numbers and projections.
6. Audit your brand and backend.

 

Identifying unique value propositions

A Unique Value Proposition (UVP) can differentiate your design firm in the market. It answers the question: Why should a homeowner remodel their kitchen with your firm instead of your competition?

A UVP is similar to a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The difference lies in a subtle point of scope. While a UVP identifies the complete package of value a company offers its audience, a USP highlights a single distinct feature or benefit that makes a firm a selling point to a homeowner.

To find your UVP:

1. Have a company logo in place
2. Research your target audience
3. Have a seasoned niche offering in the market
4. Apply your brand strategy
5. Audit your strategy quarterly and modify it as needed

While following some essential guidelines:

• Prioritize customer experience and let it guide your focus
• Define your brand activity
• Develop a clear brand message
• Continuously create content that speaks to your niche market
• Form strategic partnerships with cabinet vendors and peers

 

Developing a brand story

Putting your origin story out there humanizes your brand. It’s an emblem of what we want to give our prospects and customers and what they get from other efforts we make. It presents an opportunity to offer humor and emotional depth, strengthen credibility, differentiate services, and reinforce a brand’s values. Putting a face before the logo is a powerful way to make a connection by placing a person-to-person experience at the core of the relationship.

 

Develop an origin story

What moments in your life catalyzed the start of your firm? Develop a story inventory that includes anecdotes about the struggles your founder and firm have seen and how those struggles were surmounted by recognizing, striving for, and reaching the solution. The purpose of an origin story is to show the triumph that emerged from having reached your solution.

An origin story usually contains several elements that contribute to making it a dynamic and memorable read:

• The spark moment – That pivotal moment in your life where you realized the need or deep-set desire to start the effort that became your business
• Link – The connection between your personal story and your company’s purpose
• Involve – Bring everyone into your strategy. The founder leads from the front by letting consumers know whose vision the company stems from, and the team, including subcontractors, stands behind them
• Use humor – Origin stories are a good place to show a sense of humor
• The Mission – Your personal and company values, working philosophy, and client focus express your firm’s beginnings and what drives it today
• The Impact – How has your work transformed your clients’ lives or spaces?
• Call to Action – The CTA is the final part of a story inventory. The consumer has come through this journey with you; their interest is building in your firm, and they are on the verge of being a prospect. Let your audience know you’re interested in learning about them and provide them a way to connect with you. Your story gives an audience a reason to take action on their remodeling plans and contact your firm

 

Relating brand identity to consumer trends

The sense of “timelessness” is present in brands that remain relevant throughout rising and falling trends. Recent kitchen and bath industry design trends show that homeowners have moved away from the sterile look of whites and silver and moved to sustainable builds filled with earthy tones and greens. Homeowners want more from their space. Some of these wants will give way to new wants, while others will stand the test of time.

The wants homeowners will continue to have as design trends come and go remain important to consumers because they strike a nerve with a fundamental purpose that satisfies a pain point rather than appeals to preferring an aesthetic. Some points remain endearing to consumers:

• Value
• Sustainability
• Product quality
• Speed of service
• Smoothness of process

A brand rooted in personal values and vision will be strong enough to resonate an emotional connection with your audience and versatile enough to stand the test of trends.

Strategies for brand building

Half of my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.

—John Wanamaker

 

Brand building, like customer service, should be customer-focused for lasting success. Today’s customers want value for their investment, convenience, and excellent service from their shopping experience.

Brand-building strategies enter one of two broad groups – interactions with consumers occurring in person and those occurring remotely.

In-person interactions are buttressed by operational characteristics such as transparent interaction with the homeowner, Good-Better-Best selling, centralized service, and other vital areas of service that contribute to excellent customer experiences.

Online brand-building strategies begin by identifying your target audience and having your company’s front-end marketing in place. Brand building is an effort in a process that has no end if a company is successful. Before launching a campaign, solidify your company’s logo, voice, tone, and approach to consumers.

Brand building as an effort to publicly gain recognition for your company stems from the minutia of local effort to widespread reach.

 

Local and personal reach

In its basic form, brand building is a person-to-person promotion of a company or service.

• Company pitch
• Business cards
• Open houses (client or showroom)
• Galas
• Seminars

At a brand’s core are the ideal expressions of why a company exists. The captivating reasons why someone would be persuaded to invest their time and money to remodel a room in their home begin with what attracts them to the company.

When teams have an attractive, concise way to represent their company in response to the question, what do you do? they’re representing their brand on the organic level. What is said about a company and how it’s represented in writing and in person should be consistent with what draws people to the company online.

The company remains the same – the medium expressing what it stands for should be versatile, while what it does for the consumers who do business with its services remains consistent.

 

Media reach

Your firm’s media reach, commonly online efforts, perhaps billboards, and television, should provide your audience with a message consistent with the firm’s values. Typically, this message is an expression found elsewhere where the consumer sees or interacts with your firm. A firm’s “personality” is transferred from the showroom through the sales designer to prospects and clients.

• Social media campaigns
• Email campaigns
• Blogging and vlogging
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

The SEN Design Group has extensively covered social media reach in another article.

 

Visibility

Branding can achieve wide-reach success online by earning Domain Authority. Domain Authority is earned by posting high-quality content that fits a business’s niche consistently and often.

When homeowners search for a kitchen and bath remodeling firm to consult on their project type, “the ten best kitchen and bath dealers near me,” the first three results on the landing page equal those websites with the highest domain authority.

Google is the standard by which most online outreach is measured. Being familiar with Google Analytics and search SEO tools such as Semrush, MOZ, or Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest is essential in devising a plan to boost brand visibility. Achieving domain authority is a substantial effort that commonly takes months to accomplish.

When the niche components and high-quality content are there, online marketing is arguably the second most valuable branding measure a business can take behind its reputation.

 

Analyzing target audiences

Being great at kitchen and bath design doesn’t equal reaching your target market. To build brand interaction with homeowners, first get to know your target market by categorically analyzing the elements of your marketing. Based on careful analysis, it’s easier to reach prospective clients and build your ROI.

 

Customer base

Make a thorough investigation of your current customers. Choose ten or more clients and analyze their projects to glean the specifics.

• What they bought from you
• What their needs were
• The products and services you supply them
• The outcome of their project
• The time the job took from consultation to job completion

Your customer base will show you what’s worked in the past and what hasn’t. It’ll show the work your firm excels at and can help firms determine if they have made their niche or if a niche is lacking or neglected.

 

The competition

Similar to the investigation for your customers, look at a healthy variety of your competitors and determine what they are doing to differentiate themselves from their competition.

• What do they sell?
• How do they serve their clients?
• Are they successful?
• Do they show a noticeable lack in any areas of service or capability?
• How do they differentiate themselves?

 

Testimonials and case studies

Testimonials and case studies reveal the stamp of greatness you and your team leave with your clients. Testimonials can be used liberally. They should be present in your social media, from peppering your Facebook page to periodic X’s (fka Tweets), Instagram posts, and Houzz.

Other effective placement of testimonials are your website’s homepage, videos, and in your showroom.

Case studies can encourage prospects who already have an interest in your firm in your services to hire your firm by learning what your skills have done for clients of past projects.

Developing a digital presence

Encourage lead generation – Website optimization and user experience

Optimize user experience (UX) by formatting your website for every device. Whether users contact your business using a phone, tablet, desktop, or laptop; give users the same ease of navigating through your site. A poorly formatted website for a phone will be a turn-off to people who use their phone to search. It can be a dealbreaker when a menu is hard to access or certain features of your site aren’t available or convenient to navigate on phones.

 

Social media strategy

Posting should try to achieve the three-part goal of getting you new clients through a three-step process comprised of:

1. Lead generation
2. Lead nurturing
3. Lead conversion

Think of social media content as reverse engineering back to what you are trying to sell. Successful strategies make an emotional connection with their viewers. There are 10 to 20 home remodeling firms on average per mid-sized US town. How does your firm fit into a homeowner’s desire to remodel their kitchen or bath? By appealing to their need for a new kitchen or bath.

The brand identity doesn’t change, but the way that it reaches people does. Consider Nike’s 2020 switch to temporarily adopting the phrase “For once, don’t do it.”

• How is Nike demonstrating strength and understanding with this advertisement?
• Is it effective?
• How does the slogan make you feel?
• What is Nike doing to reach their audience?
• Is this ad generating leads, nurturing them, or converting leads to customers?

 

Demonstrate your expertise through blogging and posting

Presence is the master of persuasion. To bring people into your ideas and service, you have to be available to talk to them. Blogging builds authority in credibility, attracting clients and enhancing SEO. Blogging is the art of discussing trends, disclosing services and products, and discussing industry ideas and accomplishments. It elucidates the value of a kitchen and bathroom for its readers.

A well-written, informative blog doesn’t just help readers understand a situation. It brings them back to the site. Readers are looking for answers from sources they find valuable. Blogging is another way to get usable information from a trusted source.

 

Competitive blogging

• Post often – Once or twice a week. Sources of greater influence can publish less frequently and still be effective
• Be informative – Keep the quality of the posts high
• Link – Hyperlink your articles to pages on your website of complementary information
• Outlink – Outlink to quality brands with whom you want to be affiliated
• Update – Revise your blogs as needed to enhance the blog’s value

Keeping communication up with your readers reduces the transactional distance between your business and leads. To better understand the intricate process of investing in major remodeling work, firms can put their prospects and clients at ease by being an educative source via blogging and vlogging as the homeowner begins their remodeling journey.

Leveraging partnerships and networking

Remodeling kitchens and baths relies on the partnership of specialists. Like the personnel that make up kitchen staff, from dishwashers and prep cooks to the sous, pastry, and head chef overseeing the activity – everyone involved has their focus and area of influence.

Take part in all of the networking opportunities available. Join a buying group and attend trade shows, seminars, and classes. If the entire team can’t make an event, send one or two senior personnel to an event to make and strengthen contacts and take note of what was offered.

Peer networking offers plenteous returns:

• Communication is the currency of relationship-building and brand refinement
• Give and seek to receive feedback
• Be financially rewarded for supporting vendors’ success
• Make tech advances in your firm
• Help peers of ailing firms turn their fortunes around

 

Attending industry events

You have the design and sales talent and experienced personnel helping you run the front and back-end operations, you’ve integrated tech to streamline your operations and seen business come in through referrals. Whether it seems evident that benefits come from attending industry events or they seem not worth the effort since operations are going well, investing the time to attend a seminar, trade show, or educational course can be challenging.

Making such investments is a way to sharpen the saw – to get better at what you do and improve the value of your brand.

• Product discovery
• Industry insight
• Networking opportunities
• Expand your influence
• Gain competitive advantage
• Share your success stories and challenges

 

Joining professional organizations

Joining a kitchen and bath organization can do several things to broaden the influence of a design firm. From its staff’s education and professional development to networking opportunities, from participating in seminars and other events, trade shows broaden the scope and even contribute to the earning potential gross profit of a kitchen and bath design firm.

Being an affiliate of an industry organization can help boost the credibility of your brand by helping you strengthen your niche and improve in areas where you may have overlooked.

From buying groups to certification-required member groups, joining a professional kitchen and bath organization ought to be designed to make you and your team better at what you do.

Top organizations in and related to the kitchen and bath industry:

• KBIS
• NKBA
• The SEN Design Group
• American Society of Interior Designers (ASID)
• National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)
• Interior Design Society (IDS)
• American Institute of Architects (AIA)
• National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI)
• Bath & Kitchen Buying Group (BKBG)

Choosing a professional organization to join is as simple as identifying ways to deepen your niche and augment your business’s performance, thereby achieving new heights of gross profit margin earnings.

Tracking and measuring brand success

Keep Performance Indicators (KPIs) – measure a company’s short and long-term financial performance. Understanding KPIs is essential to revenue growth and achieving annual goals.

There are many key performance indicators, the ones you use to track and modify your company’s quarterly performance should serve your company’s goals.

Keep performance indicators to track brand development include:

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – How much is spent to acquire new customers
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – The total revenue expected to be earned from a single customer
• Conversion Rate (CVR) – Measures by percentage the users transition from passive browsers to those who take action on something a company offers, such as a form fill, booking a consultation, and retaining a project
• Operating Margin – How much profit a company makes on a dollar of sales after accounting for the costs of production
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSS) – Measures the level of satisfaction customers have with a product, service, or experience

Brand investment is a broader concept than digital advertising since it pertains to the long-term perception of a company’s identity and values.

Established successful brands stretch beyond advertising to influence customer engagement and content creation. They are:

1. Effective in reaching their desired outcomes
2. Efficient by avoiding any waste in execution
3. A minimum risk by being backed by data

It can be beneficial to lift our gazes above kitchen and bath design and see what companies are doing to achieve success in other industries. Adopting a universal perspective can help us distinguish ourselves from different design and build firms.

For kitchen and bath firms looking to and those already differentiating themselves from their competition, why would owners want to measure their success rate only against the efforts of their peers in the industry?

Advertising is as much about style as it is about the substance that’s being advertised. Its approach and panache win the sales and its valued product and service in a growing audience for the company.

Strengthening customer relationships

When a homeowner trusts a design firm to remodel a room in their home, the design firm has succeeded in differentiating itself from its competition. Firms that have won the client do not offer something radically different than their competition. What they have done is won their trust.

1. Transparent communication – Tangibilize service by transparent budgeting with the client. This is a trust-building measure that offers control to the homeowner so they can choose their price point from what’s available and see how each product and service contributes to the overall cost of the job.
2. Experience – Your firm’s portfolio, client referrals, and testimonials offer tangibility by showing how other homeowners’ investments paid off.
3. Streamlining operations – Utilize Good-Better-Best (GBB) selling to offer the homeowner three price points. In addition to offering multiple price brackets for the prospect to choose from, GBB can reduce purchasing anxiety in the prospect by showing them where their money goes and why.
4. Enhance customer experiences – Be an educational source for clients and prospects. Educational services are a way to differentiate your business from your competitors and demonstrate leadership and expertise. Offer incentives to homeowners who refer someone to your services to encourage repeat business and rave reviews.
5. Focus on the community – Plant the seed of business opportunity by bringing locals into your showroom for community events. Host open houses to show off your clients’ new kitchens. Bring locals into your showroom for events. Get homeowners thinking about remodeling a room in their home.

When kitchen and bath firms have established trust with their target market, they can charge more for their products and services. These aspects of a design firm increase its value in the homeowner’s eyes by tangibilizing its services.

No matter how good the products are – how fast the service is – and how smoothly things are run, the roots of branding are in the emotional connection between the client and service provider that drives the investment to its completion.

When you identify the components that make that emotional connection so powerful, you have the kernel of your kitchen and bath remodeling firm’s brand.

 

—SEN Design Group

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