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Foreign. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 276 of the Kate Show. I am Kate, and today I'm talking about social media. Social media is such a hot topic. It is something that is usually a thorn in our side as business owners. But today I want to talk to you about whether or not social media is. Changes have made it now a good way to market your services in the high end home industry. And a lot of you might be like, wait, what? We're gonna have this conversation? I thought you hated social media. Oh, I do, I do. For all the ways it's destroyed our culture. For all the ways that it makes parents ignore their kids because they're so sucked into Instagram. For all the ways that it has damaged teenage girls a body image by showing them things that are just completely unrealistic. There's a reason my kids will never be allowed to have smartphones or social media accounts, let me tell you. But I digress. Okay, so social media can be used for good because it is a tool. So in that sense it's, it's mostly benign. And I want to talk about the stats around social media to figure out what, whether all the changes that have happened over the past year have made it a more appropriate way for you to market your design, staging, workroom organizing business. But let me just back up a minute. So let's, let's say that you open Instagram and you start scrolling, realizing suddenly, oh crap, I have not posted anything for my own business in ages. No wonder I don't have more clients. And then you admit to yourself, I just really don't like creating content for social media. Honestly, it's the truth. And if that's you, you're definitely listening to the right episode. Now, most of my new clients experience some or all of the fears that I'm about to list. They admit with so much misplaced guilt that they don't do much to market their business. Some social media at best, but not much else. Or they think that if they just started posting better, more frequent content, they'd get more of the right clients. Or they know at least one person in their industry who gets clients from social media and they feel like a failure because the same thing's not happening to them. Or they are running or plan to run social media ads when they're already working with a tight marketing budget and it doesn't seem sensible, but they feel pressured to so they're going to do it. Or they think having a presence on social media is necessary for clients to take them seriously. Or they admit that none of their social media efforts have actually panned out with ROI in the past, but they feel obligated to keep trying. This is a hard place to be between dread and obligation. And I often find that every single one of these marketing fears can be alleviated by by looking at stats rather than emotions or focusing on what your colleagues are supposedly doing to supposedly be successful. Today I'm diving into the numbers to determine whether or not this is a viable marketing tactic for the high end home industry. When I was researching and preparing for this episode, the numbers that I found both shocked and validated me. And you will feel the same way. So without further ado, let's dive into social all right guys, while the stats that I'm going to talk about today specifically reference the interior design industry, they can and should be applied to adjacent industries like professional organizing, window treatments, home staging. Interior design is the main mother industry from which all these other industries have come. So what's true for design is most often also true for those descending industries. Let's start with the stats from Social Media Examiner. This is a website that you can go to to find all sorts of social media information and they really don't take a hard stance for or against it, they just report the stats, which I appreciate. So they said social media will become more AI focused with content becoming less genuine. As a result. One could imagine it's going to be less authentic. The sense of realness will no longer be there because we'll just assume everything we see is generated by AI, from photos to videos. Now the only bright side is that AI run social media ads perform better than manually created ads, likely because AI is trained on how to set up a good ad, whereas most people have no idea what they're doing. And like I am right there in that camp, but I also don't want to do it. So there you go. This illustrates the fact that AI is not good for creative endeavors, especially if you're trying to market your business and market your services. But AI can be helpful for data analysis and other such related tasks. So the world is obsessed with AI right now. I think that it's, it's a tool. But that tool can't and should not be used for everything because it won't be helpful. Now despite this, we will see the rise of completely AI generated social media influencers. And that information came from Forbes Magazine. That's bizarre to me. Think about some of the influencers that you follow and to think that one will be completely AI generated. Like doesn't actually exist but is influencing people. How creepy is that? All right, so moving on. Finextra said geofencing technology is becoming more sophisticated, allowing brands to target consumers based on their exact locations. Geofencing technology enables stores to deliver personalized promotions to customers as soon as they enter a specific area. Hyperlocalized marketing through geofencing will be crucial in 2025, enabling businesses to engage customers in real time and drive conversions based on location specific promotions. So I'll talk about this a little later in the episode, but as you can see, like unless you have a showroom and you don't mind bombarding people with text messages as soon as they set foot in your parking lot, this is not going to be a good fit for the home industry. All right, so another thing that Finextra said was if AI powered chatbots are becoming an essential tool for brands looking to engage with customers in real time. By 2025, a significant number of customer service interactions are expected to be managed by chatbots offering real time responses and personalized service recommendations. These bots will become more sophisticated, offering human like interaction and helping brands streamline the customer journey from inquiry to purchase. Raise your hand if you've ever had to get in a argument. I mean conversation, chat, conversation with a chatbot. I understand they are highly sophisticated language models. However, they do not have the nuance that the human brain has and they are so frustrating to work with. So if you're starting to think maybe I should have a chatbot on my site so if people have questions, they can get them answered really fast. No, the more you remove the humanity from your brand, the fewer humans will want to engage with your brand. Given that what you do is in person, custom, it's an intimate service. It's something that can't be farmed out to bots. All right, moving on. Forbes said that the integration of generative AI into search engines isn't just an upgrade, it's a complete reimagining of how people find information online. So let me just pop pause here. If you've googled anything recently, you've probably noticed that your Google results aren't just a list of links anymore. There's actually an AI summary which pulls information from various places on the web and then puts it all in one paragraph for you to read. That's what this is talking about. With both Google and Bing now embedding AI generated responses directly into search results, marketers are facing a fundamental shift in how they approach visibility. The traditional SEO playbook isn't just being updated it's being completely rewritten. This isn't just about keywords anymore, it's about understanding and influencing the AI systems that are becoming the new gatekeepers of information. I have more to say on this later. Nobody panic. SEO is not actually changing that much. In some ways it's getting easier. User Generated Content and this is from Appeasy. User generated content so like video reviews free from customers is five times more effective than anything the business or brand could post on social media itself. So it makes sense, right? We can trust someone because they have a past client who put out a great video review of them. But what could that business post on social media that would make us trust them in the same way? Nothing. It's not possible. And interestingly enough, that user generated content is even two times more effective than influencer content. Now the next thing I'm going to share with you is heavy. It's also from Forbes. It says that in a recent YouGov survey among the wealthiest Americans, so $10 million or more in net worth and a household income of 350,000 or higher, they found that only 10% of the wealthy regularly use the services of an interior designer. With some 1 million US households among this wealthy class, only about a hundred thousand households are actively engaged with interior designers. What about the other 900,000? The answer to reach that other 90% is effective marketing. No duh Forbes. While word of mouth marketing is most effective, we knew that one most designers are turning to social media in hopes of attracting new clients. Yet among those designers using social media, only 17% of them rate social media as very effective in promoting their business. 17%. This compares with 85% of designers who say word of mouth is very effective. In other words, for 8 out of 10 designers, social media over promises and under delivers. Communicating the value of interior design services is a particular sticking point for interior designers. A recent ASID survey found that 64% of designers believe the public does not understand the true value of design services. Interior designers overwhelmingly find that word of mouth marketing is what produces results. Everything else barely measures up. Finding creative ways to get satisfied customers to talk about their success from the services delivered by an interior designer is what is needed, not more self promotion or talking amongst one's peers on social media. Amen, Forbes. Amen. Amen. Okay, in summary, they're saying social media is not working for this industry. But what is working is word of mouth. So lean into that. And you guys know that's what we're all about on this podcast. But I've got More. And this is a really long quote from Designers Today magazine, specifically Pamela Danziger, who is the president of Unity Martin Marketing and a lead researcher in a study that was done on interior design and social media. I didn't think anyone was obsessed with that topic, that very nuanced topic, like I am, but apparently so. So here's what they said. Despite the lack of measurable success on social media, an overwhelming 2/3 of interior designers say they'll focus more on social media in marketing their business next year. Fewer than one third will keep their social media activities on par with the past and only 4% will pull back. That so few interior designers are holding social media accountable and maintaining at least a steady pace or pulling back. Surprising given that so few social media active designers can measure real success in social media generating new business. So to kind of break that down, she's saying that all the stats are showing social media doesn't work for designers, but the designers are disregarding those stats and are instead pushing forward and just trying to do more. With only 4% of them looking at it and saying, this isn't worth it, let's not do this anymore. They'll have a lot of different reasons for doing that, but a lot of it is just simply peer pressure. Peer pressure to stay on the platform even though it's not working. And like Pamela said here, um, so few interior design firm owners can measure real success on social media, meaning actually getting new business. She goes on to say that while many interior designers believe social media is working, too few can point to any real results. They think it's working and hope it's producing results for the amount of effort and money put into it. I, however, see little evidence to support this belief in the research. And then it goes on to say in 2022, 50% of interior designers received only 5% of their income from social media. 2% of interior designers earned as high as 21% of their annual income from social media leads. Now that that little 2 percentage, that accounts for the one designer you know who does get leads from Instagram. But I digress. But here's the catch. Most of these designers who are getting some revenue from social media are selling products on the platform, not services. They're making that revenue off products. Now, if you're strictly selling services, this data indicates social media marketing to be a poor investment, with it next to zero roi. So this begs the question, after all the things we've talked about, should you be running AI generated ads on social media? Should you use AI powered chatbots? On your website? Should you start investing in geo fencing? Should you ask your clients to create video reviews for your social media channels since user generated content is five times more effective than anything else? And how should your SEO strategy change if keywords aren't king anymore? And with 90% of the affluent residential market left untapped, what's your plan to reach them? Big questions, right? So let me break it down. AI generated ads. Should you do it? Well, you can't successfully run an ad unless you already have a sales funnel in place. The ad is not meant to convert a client. The ad is meant to get their attention. You have to have a sales funnel set up after that to carry them through to the actual point where they pay you the money. Next question. Should you use AI powered chatbots? Going to skip that one. Y' all know the answer. Geofencing. Should you do it? Well, how many of you like to be bombarded by text messages as soon as you set foot in a certain store? Like if you walk into Home Depot and then suddenly Home Depot starts texting you. Seems a little big brotherish, doesn't it? Don't do it. Should you ask your clients to create video reviews for your social channels? Maybe this depends on your client. If they're the type that doesn't mind getting in front of the camera, sure. But if they're going to do it out of obligation and look really awkward and nervous the whole time, don't put them through that. Just use their written reviews and encourage them to always leave a review for you on your Google business page versus anywhere else. Next big question. How should your SEO strategy change if keywords aren't king anymore? Do they matter at all? Yes, they do. And your use of keywords should be bigger picture. So conversational blog posts on specific topics, written with a specific person in mind. That way that content is easily picked up by AI as being friendly and conversational and helpful. So really, all of this is just making SEO simpler and easier. In my opinion, that means strategies like keyword packing, which I still see happening today. Nobody should ever tell you to keyword pack. They'll say, we're going to hide some text behind an image on your website and that's going to help your SEO rankings. Or we're going to create a separate page on your website for every geographic area you serve and that will help your rankings. It does not. That's a very old SEO tactic and they're black hat tactics at this point. You don't want black hat tactics because you could get your site Penalized. And you're also paying a lot of money for a service that you should never have done on your site. So save yourself that money and don't go that route. All right, last big question. With 90% of the affluent residential market left untapped, there's enough business for everyone out there. So you should feel excited and have a plan to reach them. But you know, social media is not it. Word of mouth marketing is. So how do you capitalize on word of mouth? How do you take that to the next level so that you're not passively sitting around waiting for your clients to refer another person to you? That is where email marketing comes in. And one of my recent episodes I talked about email marketing. The ROI, it's 40 times higher than social media, which is a good thing and an easy thing to do because social media is giving you next to no results. It's not hard to get 40 times more results. You know what I mean? So that's my take on it. Social media is changing. It's still not a sensible place to market your business. If you enjoy being on social media, then do it. But if you're doing it out of obligation, if you're doing it because you think it's going to get you more clients, then I suggest you take a step back and reevaluate your decisions and your business decisions. Your marketing decisions should be made based on the stats, not based on emotion. And I know that is really hard. It's really hard. Especially as women. We're very emotional creatures and that is a strength most of the time. But in this situation, we have to look at the numbers and ask, is this worth hiring a social media manager? Is it worth me spending so much of my time creating reels and posts? I'll let you decide. But I will say that there's something to be said for the proof of life concept. If you feel like you have to have social media, then just post once a week, post a photo of your work or a photo of yourself, add a little caption and call it a day. You don't have to create reels. They don't need TikTok. You don't need to do all of these things because really, that is busy work that is meant to make people feel better. Like, okay, I'm doing something for my business. I feel busy, which makes me feel successful and important, or at least, at least makes me feel like less helpless. But the truth is it's not actually moving the needle. So reevaluate that for this year. It's still early in the year. And consider whether you need to back off on how you approach social or if you're going to be selling retail products. Maybe it is a place for you to be, but this is something that you shouldn't take lightly because it's your time is so valuable. Let's not even talk about the financial investment of social media. Let's talk about your time. Even if you're hiring someone else to post for you, you still have to provide content. And the way that drains your creativity, the way that eats up the time that you do have, couldn't that be spent somewhere else, making more money spending time with your family? I don't know. I'm just saying there's a reason that even myself, as the owner of an online marketing agency, one would think I should have a very heavy social media presence, but I don't. I post maybe like once every two weeks or, you know, twice every other week, basically. And that's fine because I'm doing other things to market my business that I think are far more valuable and viable and sustainable long term. So you guys know where I stand on this. If you come to me and you're like, well, I want your help with marketing, but I also want to keep doing social media. I'm not going to boot you out. We're very tolerant here and I respect the decision that you make for your business as long as you're making it based on what your business needs and not on what people around you are telling you to do. All right, guys, that is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for watching and listening and if you haven't yet, I would love it if you could give this show a rating and a review. Just a star rating is fine, but if you have time to actually write a review, that is awesome as well. Thank you guys so much. And until next time, keeping your marketing simple, your message clear, and I'll talk to you soon.