Does your business have a strong home improvement marketing strategy in place for the coming year? If not, then this is a great time to review last year’s marketing efforts and draft some new ideas based on your findings.
Crafting a marketing strategy to target the best customers for your home improvement center or contractor business is just sound business practice. But all too often, this critical part of the equation is set aside, quickly assembled, or repeated from the previous year without giving careful enough (or the right) analysis of the previous year’s results.
Having a home improvement marketing strategy in place can help grow your business by targeting your best potential customers.
Hotmart Blog: “Basically, a marketing strategy is nothing more than planning all actions to promote your brand, product or service in advance and monitor the results of such actions to understand what should be maintained and what can be improved.”
Bottom line: if you’re not planning ahead, then you risk leaving money on the table this year, and next. Why? Because strategic planning is akin to mapping out a specific path to discuss. Without it, you could be squandering marketing dollars in the wrong places, while spending too little in others.
(If you already have a plan in place, then don’t forget to review, analyze and revise to maximize impact. You can do this quarterly, as well as monthly or weekly, depending on your marketing channels. Let’s discuss.)
To help kick-start 2021, here are 5 huge reasons why your company needs a home improvement marketing strategy for the coming year (and beyond):
1. To Grow Your Customer Base
If you’re looking to attract new home improvement customers, having a game plan in mind is key. There are wide range of avenues you might take to attract new customers, and the ideal home improvement customer varies from region to region, company to company, store to store. Your marketing strategy is the essential connector between the products and services you offer and your best potential customers.
“Having a well-defined and implemented marketing strategy is ideal for your business to grow and be promoted in the most varied ways possible. This is because it is from these strategies that you can get more people to know your brand and thus, attract more customers.” (Hotmart)
2. To Produce Sales
As with most businesses, your marketing strategy will likely involve attracting the right new customers in order to generate (or increase) sales. A successful marketing strategy will outline a map that your home improvement business can follow in order to produce more profitability and sales.
Pro Tip: Even when aspects of a marketing strategy are “unsuccessful” at producing sales, they will provide critical knowledge about your target audience, so that your goals can be refined next time. And this will help you generate future sales.
Your home improvement company’s most direct road to sales will change with the season, the market, the economy, and with emerging technologies. Navigating over a changing landscape requires an expert guide. Often, timing is key to getting the word out to the right audience at the right time. Doing this well requires more than “hunches” or references to past trends; it requires a deft collaboration between home improvement industry expertise and digital marketing savvy.
3. To Build Brand Equity
Your marketing strategy is not only about attracting new customers. It’s about adding to your brand authority, becoming an industry thought leader, contributing to your community, and exciting your customers with new ways to interact and engage with your brand.
There are a host of creative, fun and community-strengthening ways to empower your brand. For example, you could dedicate one of your social channels to DIY project ideas, tips and suggestions for your fans and followers. You could create a Facebook group for woodworkers or kitchen design inspiration seekers. You might help spread the word about local drives, food banks, or fundraisers. You might offer support and supplies to help rebuild local communities after disaster strikes or congratulate the high school senior class on Instagram. All are good examples of actions that build brand equity.
Brand equity is that feeling of pride and neighborliness your customers feel when they see your brand logo. Beyond what products and services you sell, your brand’s connection to surrounding communities is what sets your home improvement center apart from the big box stores.
Don’t underestimate the power of brand equity, and the ways that it can work for you 24/7 behind the scenes.
4. To Stay Competitive
Competing for your share of the home improvement market requires aggressive marketing. Your competitors are certainly marketing aggressively, and so should you. But you can get the one-up on your competition by marketing your products and services smarter, not just harder. But spending less money but applying it in the right places, you can leapfrog your local competitors.
Increasing your budget isn’t always the best solution. Using less to do more… that’s what gives your brand competitive advantage.
5. To Keep Your Customers Engaged
BusinesstoCommunity.com: “Marketing is a tool to keep the conversation going. Engaging customers is different from pushing your offers. Engaging involves furnishing your customers with relevant information about your products and your business as well. It’s all about creating fresh content.”
Remember, engagement equals relationship, relationship equals trust, and trust equals brand loyalty.
Providing a monthly newsletter is a great way to keep your existing customers engaged. But social media is the perfect place to begin or continue a dialogue relevant to your potential customers.
Share great stuff to social! Stuff that your target customers will find helpful or things that will make their day easier. This way, they will be more apt to follow your social channels and/or engage with your brand. Plus, they’ll already feel a familiarity with your brand when the time comes to purchase home improvement products or services.
Pro Tip: Stay responsive on your social channels. Respond to comments, encourage questions and feedback, and ask interested visitors to share your post to anyone who would find the content useful.
Even though strategizing takes an investment of your time, not making the time for this important step may cost your home improvement business time (and dollars) later. To prevent your strategy from landing on the back-burner, consider building your home improvement marketing strategy during your store or company’s off-season. Often, this is the time when you can perform marketing review and analysis without being distracted by more pressing business needs.
Getting a marketing strategy in place for 2021 is a no-brainer. But not all strategies are created equal… How effective is yours?
Sources: https://www.business2community.com/marketing/why-is-marketing-important-9-reasons-why-you-really-do-need-it-02186221, https://blog.hotmart.com/en/marketing-strategy-to-attract-customers/
Attract the right leads to your home improvement business. For a limited time, speak one-on-one with a marketing expert about your goals for the upcoming year. Free Strategy Session!
