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Foreign hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Kate Show. Happy New year. It's already 2025. I don't know what happened to the last year, but if you are like most business owners in the home industry, you might be thinking this is a good time for me to change everything that I've been doing to grow and manage and market my business. However, I implore you to think again. Just because you haven't gotten all the results you wanted from how you've been growing your business over the last 12 months doesn't mean you're actually doing it wrong. In fact, it could mean that you need to continue sticking with it and give it more time. So the funny thing is that there's just something about the new year that makes us want to start a lot of new things and get rid of things that we don't like doing anymore. And unfortunately, marketing tends to be something that people don't like doing. I get it, trust me. That's how I was able to build an entire business around it. But that dislike of marketing really just comes from overwhelm from being told that you have to market your business in so many different directions in so many different ways and you have to spend so much money on ads. Oh my goodness. Exhausting, right? And expensive. As a marketer with over a decade of experience in the home industry, working directly with interior design firms, home staging businesses, organizers, window treatment professionals, I have to call bull crap on this because the most successful home industry businesses are those that have simple marketing strategies and focus on only a few key areas. And. And they're consistent with that same plan every year, year over year. They are not reinventing the wheel every January because that's not necessary, nor is it practical, nor is it usually a good idea. Now, if you've listened to my other January episodes, you know that I am definitely a fan of taking stock. What did you do that worked or didn't work over the last year? But often 12 months is not long enough to properly assess or test a marketing strategy. For example, all the blog posts that you published last year could gain even more traction next year. Not this year, but next year. Now, all the marketing that you did last year through email has been priming that amazing lead who's going to contact you with her new huge project six months from now. So you can't just stop what you're doing and reinvent everything when you could actually be sabotaging the success that's about to happen. Marketing in the home industry is a long game because the projects tend to be bigger, take longer, require significant investment. So if you go into marketing with that perspective, rather than thinking you're going to get fast results with minimal effort, your business is going to stick around. And that's the good news. So today on the Kate Show, I'm sharing the key ways that established and profitable businesses in the home industry market themselves. Get your notes app ready because this is going to cut through the noise and give you a solid action plan for 2025. Now, guys, as a reminder, you can stream the Kate show anywhere you get your podcasts and you can also watch it on Spotify and YouTube. No matter where you're watching, give it a like, give it a thumbs up and subscribe. And don't forget to leave me a rating and a review. All right, guys, let's get into the top things that legacy businesses do that keep their marketing humming while their business is running and being profitable.
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This episode of the Kate show is brought to you by Honeybook. I love using Honeybook for my business because it helps create a streamlined workflow when people decide they want to work with me. Because, you know, there's one thing to do the right marketing to get the client, so there's quite another to impress them all the way through the end of the project. And with Honeybook, my clients are able to review and sign the proposal, make their payment, and then be told what to do next, all in one fell swoop. I've set up automations that remind them when they need to send me certain assets so that their website project can go off without a hitch. And if you've ever worked with us, you know that Honeybook kept you on track. It kept us on track and it was really easy to use. If you're interested in using Honeybook for your business, go to honeybook.com and use the code socialite at checkout for 50%.
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Off your first year.
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This episode of the Kate show is brought to you by the Foundation. Website Guys, if you need a new website for your business, but you can't afford a fully custom site or you.
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Just don't have that much time to spare, you should check out the semi.
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Custom website design service from the Socialite.
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Agency for home pros who need more.
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Than just a DIY website template. How many times have you purchased a website template only to never use it or get stuck because you don't know how to complete it, you don't know how to connect all the things and well, doesn't that end up being a waste of money? It does. That's why the Foundation Website Exists if you want a professional to set up your website, handle your on site SEO, optimize your images and write your copy and you want to maintain full control over that website moving forward. This website is for you. You'll be able to see what's included and what's not included by heading over to katesocialite.com and under the Services page click on Semi Custom Website Design. Every great build begins with a solid foundation and we've made it easy. You'll be able to learn exactly how the process works, why we have a 10 business day turnaround, and why we can keep the fees so darn affordable with no ongoing fees to us whatsoever. The cool thing is, and the thing that a lot of our clients appreciate is that when you get our website, whether it's fully custom or semi custom like this one, we are available to help make updates to your site. We only charge you when you actually need an update made, which means that months, years might go by. You don't have to pay us a dime, but when you're ready for help.
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We'Re there to help you.
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Head over to katthesocialite.com and look under the Services tab to get the website your business deserves.
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All right, so let's get into it. The first thing that legacy businesses do in the home industry, that gets them the long term success that results in a company they can hand off to someone else versus just shut down. They can sell it, they can make a profit on it. When it's all said and done, the first thing they do is focus on consistency. They market their business even when business is booming and they double down when it isn't. This is so, so critical. If your business is busy, if you've got projects coming in left and right, they're wonderful, good for you. But that will not always be the case. Now it might last that way for years. I hope it does for your sake. But it does eventually dry up. I have had so many new clients come to me saying I never had to market my business. I've been in business for 10, 11, 12 years, never had to do any marketing. The leads just kept coming from the day I started my business. But now there's nothing. And I haven't the slightest idea what to do because I've never done any marketing. I have nothing in place. I don't even have a mailing list of past clients. I've got nothing. These clients are panicked. They are frantic. They don't know what to do. They've never experienced a moment in business where they had no project on the horizon and it's not a fun place to be in. So what I always remind them is you're going to get out of this slump. Okay? I've only seen a few businesses completely tank or over the last decade that I've been in business helping, helping other businesses. Most of them go through slow periods from time to time and come out of it. So there's that. But number one, if you want to be one of those legacy businesses that doesn't just shutter its doors when you want to retire, but you can actually sell it and make a profit, you have to be consistent now and all the time with your marketing. Number two, they, the legacy business owner that we all aspire to be delegates each marketing responsibility to a specific person or entity. So that could be or assigning something to themselves, to a va, to a different team member or freelancer or an agency. You have to understand that in order to have long term success in business, it should not all rely on you. You, you should not have your end goal be. It's only ever going to be just me in the business. I'll do my own bookkeeping, I'll do my own marketing, I'll serve the clients. I mean, maybe if you're working with one client at a time, but even then you're going to be stretched and your creativity is going to be really, really harmed. You have to bring in other people and build your tribe that is going to help support your business in the long term. Number three, these people who have long term success in business set routines and deadlines for each marketing task. A lot of my clients will do this because we remind them, hey, pick your newsletter for your for the month. Pick your blog post. We have it all created for you. Just pick the one you want. It gets them into a rhythm of okay, every two to four weeks I'm picking something out, I'm getting it to the socialite team so they can turn it around and send it to wherever it needs to go. And the marketing is getting done. And that's how people get results. Now you can do that on your own too. You can use Asana or Google Calendar or whatever, but you have to keep that appointment with yourself. And that's another thing that like people who haven't really taken themselves seriously in business yet, but they want success and can't figure out why they're not getting it. They haven't taken themselves seriously. They break appointments with themselves all the time. They break promises to themselves all the time. And they make investment decisions based on how they're feeling that day and on what other people around them are doing and spending their money on and their businesses. So it's not a great way to be successful. Instead, you have to have a specific routine and a deadline. Okay, I'm going to send out my newsletter on the 1st of every month. So that means a week before I better get my button gear and know what I'm going to say, and so on and so forth with things like blogging. Not that that's the only two forms of marketing that you could or should be doing, but for sake of example, that's what I'm using. Number four, they don't market themselves everywhere, only in places where their ideal client has a longer attention span. So in other words, not TikTok and not Instagram. People have such short attention spans on social media. And I'll talk a little bit more about this later, but you guys know how I feel about social media. I do not hate it. It is a tool. But using social media to grow a high end custom services business is like trying to pull a trailer with a tricycle. Okay, technically it might be possible in the short term, but it's not practical and it looks ridiculous. It's not the right tool for this particular job. Now, if you're just trying to go on a joyride, a tricycle is a great option. So if you want to enjoy yourself on social media as a business, that's fine. But don't give yourself the unrealistic goal of getting clients from it. If it happens, fantastic. But it likely will not result in the big projects that you're looking for. More on that later. Number five, they, the successful legacy entrepreneur will tell their referral partners how to refer people to them and what constitutes a good referral. These are two really important steps that a lot of people forget about. You can't just say at your local BNI event, hey, refer homeowners to me because I offer organizing services or I'm an interior designer or whatever. No, that's not enough. You have to say what you want those leads to do and who is a good lead. So instead you could give a one liner like this if you know of anybody who is moving. So the realtor in your BNI group would probably be a pretty good resource for this. If you know anyone who's moving and they're really busy, send them over to my website. Or better yet, here's a flyer for them. Could you give that to them when you see them? I would love to help make this move really easy for them. You have to be specific. You are not looking to work with just anyone. And the more specific you can be with who you want to work with, the easier it is for people to refer good leads to you. Leads that will likely convert. There is nothing more frustrating than having someone take the time to send you leads and referrals. But those things never pan out because they're really, really low quality. I had this happen early on in my business and this one lady tried so hard. She kept referring people to me and referring people to me and every single one was like a nightmare client. Finally I had to say to her, hey, it's okay. You don't need to send people to me. It just seems that for whatever reason, people from this source or this event where you're telling people about me, they. They're just not my people. They're. They don't understand what marketing is or why they need it. They don't understand why they're not getting results within five minutes. Like they're just, they don't even have mailing lists. I mean they're just like, they're not ready for this. They don't even know how to turn on a computer. So you have to be very careful about who your referral partners are and you don't need that many of them now. You will get more and more the longer that you're in business. But having two or three good referral partners can really carry and grow and scale your business for the long term.
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The sixth thing that legacy business owners in the home industry do is they make past clients a huge part of their marketing strategy for both referrals and new projects. Now I could go on and on about how your past clients are not dead to you unless they are literally dead, in which case, I'm so sorry, but if they're still alive and breathing and they have a house, they might still need your services. They may not realize that you offer more services than just the ones they originally hired you for. Do they know you offer window treatments? Do they know you offer organizing services? Do they know you offer maintenance services for those organizing things they already did for you that you already did for them? You cannot assume people are just sitting there thinking about all the wonderful services that you have. No, they're not. In fact, they probably don't think about you at all. Which is why it's really important that you stay top of mind in a way that shows up in front of their face, can't be ignored, can't be buried by an algorithm, doesn't really cost that much money at all to take care of and that is email marketing. But I think the best way to illustrate the power of email marketing to your past clients, your colleagues and your referral partners on a monthly basis is if I just share some of my own clients stories. So this first one is from Natalie Rich and she left me this amazing Google review. So shout out to you Natalie. She's an interior designer and she said I had been dragging my feet on email marketing because it seemed overwhelming while confident in my design abilities, talking about them was a different story. I was so concerned about drafting the perfect email that I ended up Never sending any, I decided to give the social agency a try. Yay. And I've been working with Kate's group for just two months and have already secured two new six figure projects with clients I had worked with in the past. That confirms that, yes, you do in fact need to continue marketing to people who already know about you. Kate's team makes it easy. One of the best decisions I've made for my business this year. Highly recommend Kate and her team. Natalie, thank you so much for that. I love this story because we make things so much more complicated than they have to. Why do we need to climb to the top of the apple tree to pick the apples up there when there's so much low hanging fruit right in front of our faces, so close that we can smell it? Here's another story from Adrienne Morgan, another interior designer. She said, after sending my first newsletter, I landed two large projects right away. I recommend using Socialite's highest level of service because you'll definitely get a return on your investment. Now, am I tooting my own horn here? Sort of. I'm echoing people who are tooting their horns for me. But I wouldn't be pushing this as a marketing strategy if it didn't work because imagine how stupid I would look, right? And I do kind of care how I look, just like you do. If I spent a decade telling people to do email marketing because it works when it actually didn't, people would have found out about me by now. They would have been like, don't trust her. She doesn't know what she's talking about. It doesn't work. But that's not what's happening here. People are landing huge projects and in fact, I just reached out to one of my other clients today. I won't say her name here because I don't know if she wants her name associated with this yet. But I was like, hey, remember that story you told in a recent Mastermind discussion we had? Can you go write me a Google review about it? In short, what happened was she's been email marketing with us for several years. She sent out an email newsletter as she does every month with us. And as a result of that particular newsletter, nothing else, that newsletter, she landed a, I believe it was a 1.2 million project. I was shocked. I was shocked. I was amazed. I'm so excited. People don't always tell me the results that they're getting. I love it when they do. So I'm hoping she'll write me a Google review. By the way, another thing that successful business owners do is ask for Google reviews when it matters. You shouldn't just have a blind ask for Google reviews. You should ask the people that you know are your biggest cheerleaders to write you a review and even remind them, hey, remember how you told me about this great experience you had? Can you tell that story in a Google review? That's so much more impactful than just saying, hey, give me five stars, you know, so if you can get people to tell their stories and make it part of your marketing the way you just saw me do it, that's very effective because it's true. And stories are a lot easier to remember than random facts or strategies or tactics. All right, moving on. The ninth thing that legacy business owners in the home industry do is, well, rather that what they don't do, and that is they don't invest significantly in social media unless they're selling retail products because they've analyzed the best source of leads and the best source of high profit projects. And social media is not where that's at. It's just not. It's okay that it's not. And also the number of followers you have is not indicative of how successful your business is. There are plenty of interior design firms out there who are barely making it, but they have 20,000 followers. And then there are so many other organizers out there who have almost no social following, but they are killing it. They're racking up 30, $40,000 months. They are doing amazing. But that's because they have done a few other things that I'm about to share. The tenth thing that legacy business owners do is keep their services limited to about three options, no more than that, because they understand the confusion that too many services creates in their marketing, both on their end and on the potential client's end. So if you have designer for a day, shop with a designer, a designer on call, Good grief, no. Just offer consultancy services and call it a day because that allows you to do all of those things. And you can still sell bundles of hours. That's fine, but there's no need to muddy the water with all these different fancy service options when really you're doing full service interior design or you're consulting on it. And with organizing you can have, you know, one day rates, you can have one week packages. But the more options that you give people, the less likely they are to make a decision. So keep that in mind. All right, number 11. Legacy business owners in the home industry use their website as an emotional, educational tool, connecting boldly with their ideal client or ideal project, highlighting the pain points they solve through their services and offering a freebie for those who are interested but not ready to contact them yet. So if you're using a one page website, or if your website has almost no copywriting on it, or if it's just really, really basic, chances are you're not hitting the emotional educational marks that you need to. Your website should do more than just look pretty. It should be a salesperson so that when people come to it, they're told who you work with. And if that happens to be them, they're going to stick around, they're going to take the next step. They're going to want to know what pain points you solve and how your services are uniquely tailored to their situations. They're going to want to see photos of your past work and maybe even read some blog posts and then book a call with you. If they're not ready to book a call, they should sign up for the lead magnet, which should be very obvious and easy for them to sign up. And that is how you can ensure that your marketing is solid. When you have a good website, you're consistently reaching out to past clients, leads that haven't hired you yet, your colleagues and any other referral partners. And then maybe even blogging to increase your SEO, email marketing, blogging and a good website. And then there's one more thing. After you've done all of that, you have to make sure that your message is clear. So let me just rephrase that. There are like two more things. If you are email marketing, and you should be, your email marketing is not going to look like journal entries or what we've been up to or what we're loving right now, or retail products that are not your own. You are going to send a newsletter that has one topic and one call to action that relates to that topic, which always directs your readers to hire you for one of your services. Now, with blogging it's similar. You've got to be consistent every month. Don't use fluff topics. Focus on thought leadership, which includes sharing your design philosophy. So like, here's why open concept floor plans are a bad idea for most families, or here's why they're a good idea for most families and something informational or helpful like how we reinvent your small spaces and then go into that depending on what service you're trying to push. This is what legacy business owners do. They do not get caught up in marketing trends. They don't waste time filming stupid TikTok dances. They do not create reel after reel after with no real purpose to them. See what I did there? They pursue and invest in offline relationships with other tradespeople and industry leaders, and they put those people on their mailing list to stay in touch with them. In the home industry, businesses are grown through relationships, not fancy ads or big social followings or even magazine features or awards. Those things are great for credibility and visibility sometimes, but the one thing that translates to more profit when all other avenues fall short is the relationship. Word of mouth is still the best form of marketing, and that only happens to businesses who've cultivated good relationships. So I hope that you've taken some notes today. You've likely picked up on a few things that you want to add to your marketing plan this year. But if you need help, if you're like, I just need someone to go over all my marketing and figure out where the gaps are, figure out what I can stop doing, stop bleeding out money on, and what things I should just be focusing on. We need to talk. Let's get on a one on one call. Go to Kate the socialite.com book a discovery call with me. I would be delighted to go over your marketing with you. It is a no obligation call. It is a discovery call. It is not a free consult. I can't give you a whole strategy in that short call, but I can pinpoint right away here are the things that you're doing that you shouldn't be doing, and here are the things you should do instead. All right, guys, enjoy this fresh start to the new year. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and I hope that this year brings profitability and contentment and peace and blessings to you. All right, until next time, keep your marketing simple, your message clear and and I will talk to you soon.