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You might realize that you need to cut expenses, that you could currently be wasting your money, or that you could accidentally start wasting your money in the new year if you are not careful. Was it worth it? But none of it puts money in your pocket and that's kind of what we're in business to do. Hello and welcome back to the K Show. Today. I'm talking about your 2026 marketing must dos. So if you have been ignoring your marketing all year long or you've just not been staying on top of what's working and what's not working for the industry at large, consider this your easy peasy lemon squeezy recap. I'm going to go over all things SEO aio, but this is not going to be a regurgitation of my past episodes because I know that I've been going over a lot of SEO and AIO things and you guys might be like enough with that stuff. And believe me, I hear you. So it's not going to be that all over again. It's just going to be some other things that you should be aware of. Now, as you're looking at your end of year finances, as we business owners tend to do, you might realize that you need to cut expenses or maybe, maybe you've realized you can finally invest in your business. I've compiled a short list of ways that you could currently be wasting your money or that you could accidentally start wasting your money in the new year if you are not careful. Before I get into that, I want to preface this with I've been in the home industry for a decade, maybe more, I guess more at this point. And all of this, you know, I've been able to see trends come and go. I've been able to see all the things that we all thought would grow our businesses and they didn't grow our businesses, and then other things that were very unlikely contenders that actually landed at millions of dollars in sales. And I want you to understand that is the standpoint I have. That's the perspective that I'm coming from and that is what really adds the flavor to the advice that I'm about to share with you. Before I get into that though, little quick post it note for you. The Socialite app is coming in January 2026. You can get your SEO and AIO powered blogging done in minutes, not days. And you can start sending highly customized emails that take your word of mouth referrals to the next level. And this app is for paying members only. It is exclusive to the high end residential home industry. And it is only relevant for interior designers, home stagers, window treatment professionals, and professional organizers. All right, so let's get into all the ways that you could possibly be wasting your money. The first thing is social media. I know, I know, I am. I have become infamous for being the marketer that doesn't have social media and people definitely have laughed at me for it. Other people are confused, others are concerned, and still others are intrigued. I know, I'm such a unicorn, but I have a question for you. How much time are you spending on social media for your business? And how much did you pay for boosted ads on social in the last year? Or how much did you pay your social media manager? And with all those questions in mind, I have one more for you. Was it worth it? And I suppose it depends on how you measure it. Now maybe you used social media to connect with colleagues and you tagged your vendors and that was a really nice way for you guys to just socialize with each other since it is social media. Or maybe you used it to showcase your work and you got some new followers as a result. All of that holds some value, but none of it puts money in your pocket. And that's kind of what we're in business to do. Since a penny saved is a penny earned, it's important that you take this into consideration. You might have noticed that the five hours it took for you to create a reel which didn't go viral, didn't get you any new followers and definitely did not bring you any new leads could have been spent doing client work or improving your own business, maybe internal, setting up new software, whatever it needs to be. And the money that you paid to social media managers could have been sent to your own bank account instead. Now, I'm not hating on social media managers. There is a place for them, absolutely. But this particular industry doesn't do well on social media. And I'm going to explain why. Because you don't have to delete your social media for business like I did, but you need to look objectively at the time and the money that you might be wasting. So here are some stats regarding how social media helps or doesn't help the high end home industry. So according to Forbes magazine and home trust, only 17 to 20% of interior designers are rating social media as very effective for bringing in new clients or building their businesses, with many designers describing it as overhyped or a time suck without any measurable ROI. Yeah. Furthermore, 80% of designers say that word of mouth referrals are far more Effective. And they drive at least five times more sales than social media. Well, we all know that, right? That's not News. Furthermore, only 40% of all highly successful designers even bother to maintain their socials. They understand that heavy use of social media can actually deter affluent clients who value privacy and discretion. And that's, that's big picture thinking at its finest. Now just for funsies, I asked Grok a few questions about social media marketing in the design industry. Because out of all the AI models it seems like Grok is the smartest. It's just my opinion. So I have, I have some fun with Grok. So I asked what social media could actually be beneficial? Like what could a designer do to use social to grow her business? And here's what it said. Social media is not the most reliable for direct connections with affluent clients where privacy and personal networks dominate. Well said, well said. If you're looking to cut expenses as you go into the new year, make social media the first item you deduct. Because all the data shows that social media is not working for the high end home industry, especially service based businesses. So this is not just about interior design businesses, it's organizing and staging and window treatments. Think of this like as a window treatment professional. If you're selling Hunter Douglas. If you're selling insole, like it's not $500 a window here, but the audience on social media is expecting budget lines. You can't sell your services on social unless you are budget blinds. Get what I'm saying here? Okay. You've got to go where the correct audience is for the product that you're trying to sell or the service that you're trying to sell. And social media is not that place. The next thing you need to do is rethink your Google Ad spend. Now, when a designer or an organizer tells me that she's been running Google Ads, she always says these three things. Like always. It is so predictable. Number one, she says I'm paying 150 to $2,000 a month on Google Ads and I'm not getting any leads that actually turn into good clients. The second thing she says is I'm getting website traffic but no one is contacting me. Or alternatively, she says I'm not tracking my website traffic. I have no idea what's actually going on with my website analytics. And then number three she says I don't know if my website is set up correctly. And that is the reason she felt compelled to rely on Google Ads from the start. That is the root problem. If your website is not set up properly for SEO. And now aio, it will not rank well and you will not get the proper or the correct levels of organic traffic you need in order to turn your website into a selling tool. If your website's not a selling tool, then what is its purpose? It has no purpose. Get the website fixed and then you'll find you don't even need to pay for Google Ads. All right, now what can you do if social media is not that great of a solution? If Google Ads really aren't necessary, what does it leave you with? Well, it leaves you with my favorite thing, and that is email marketing. Because even in the end of 2025, email marketing still has one of the best ROI in all of digital marketing. So here are some stats. Email marketing is still 40 times more effective than social media when it comes to selling. So actual putting money in your pocket. The average email marketing ROI is over 3,000%. So if you're not doing email marketing yet, I don't know what you're doing. Also, over 80% of small businesses use email marketing for customer acquisition and retention. A lot of people think, well, I can't send email newsletters because my contact list is just past clients. Well, those past clients might need to hire you again, or they might have a friend or a family member that needs to hire you. But you'll never get that referral if you don't stay in touch with them every two to four weeks. Okay, again, big picture thinking. Now we're going to touch briefly on the whole SEO and AIO conversation because they are real ways to get more clients. The changes that Google has made over the past year, their core updates, they have changed, well, everything. Let me just go over it briefly with you. In March 2025, Google's first core algorithm update of the year focused on rewarding high quality content and demoting low value pages. Well, what's a low value page? One that has hardly any text on it. So those very chic, minimal websites. Yeah, they don't, they don't work anymore. And then in June 2025, the big behemoth change showed up. This broadcore update completely changed how websites are ranked in Google. It has an emphasis on human authorship and original content. And that meant traffic declined and continues to decline for websites that have thin, not enough content, outdated content, or unrefined AI generated content. Meaning you told ChatGPT to go write you a blog post about X, Y and Z and then you just took it and immediately stuck it on your website. Well, Google can see that was written by AI and that it's not deep enough, it doesn't show true human authorship experience or expertise. And it's a no go. It's a no go for Google doesn't like it. Also, it needs to indicate that you have firsthand experience in the topic that you're writing about. You need to be also sharing unique insights and comprehensive coverage. So yeah, ChatGPT can't do that because it's not you. Then on top of it all, to make things even more crazy, a bigger upheaval in the SEO industry, Google started using a new algorithm called Movera. Movera Movera M U V E R A Basically this makes search results better and faster. It matches what the user really wants with the content that covers that topic fully. This means that you need to create detailed, helpful content on your website that covers topics from start to finish in order to rank higher. So no more fluff content. No more how to style a coffee table. Bull crap. Okay, now the other algorithm that Google AI started using is gfm. It maps out how everything on the Internet connects to each other. Like a big web of links, they interconnect ideas, websites and factual information. This improves search rankings by favoring trustworthy, well linked content. This means your business website should focus on grouping related content. So use blog post categories. Do not use blog post tags. That there's a technical reason why you should avoid tags at all costs. And then make sure that if you have the opportunity for another website to feature you, make sure they link to your website so you get a nice backlink. When it comes to backlinks, it you shouldn't aim for thousands of them. Ten good ones will always outweigh a hundred cheap ones from random websites that you know you just paid to have your website show up on like that. Don't do that. But let's get into what's really working when it comes to SEO and aio. Well, what is really working is following EEAT guidelines. That means experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. It's a guideline from Google that helps decide if website content is high quality and useful for search results. So let's break that down in layman's terms. Experience. Does your blog post show that you as the author have real life hands on knowledge of the topic? Well, as a designer or an organizer, yeah, you would as long as you didn't have ChatGPT write the whole darn thing. Then expertise is the content made by someone who knows the subject well. Your content should be factual and personal, not based on guesswork or anecdotes. The next one is authoritativeness. Does your website present you as a leader or a go to expert in the home industry? Now, if you're running a new business, this point may not be in your arsenal yet, but it will come eventually. A lot of it has to do with how you choose to represent yourself online. All right, the final point is trustworthiness. Can your website visitors and blog readers rely on the information that you share to be accurate, safe and honest? This includes things like clear sources and no misleading claims. Now, of all these EEAT guidelines, this is probably the easiest one to follow. Like, don't make crap up. Okay, we won't. No big deal. Now, AI hallucinates like crazy and it will make crap up. So that's another good reason to avoid having AI write something for you from start to finish. You can certainly use AI to bolster what you're doing and to make the tedious research parts faster. That's fine, I, I do that too. But you can't just say, go write this and expect things to turn out well for you. Just saying. So, with all of this being said, what are your essential 2026 marketing tasks? Well, I have a list for you, broken down by category. When it comes to your website, you need to look at what Google's asking you for based on their core updates. This is what your website needs in order to stay relevant. It needs a comprehensive about page, services page and homepage. You'll need to do things like detail your team's background, qualifications, your mission, your achievements, showcase your expertise and authoritativeness. Make your website really information packed and really easy to use. You're also going to need to have a display of clear business and contact information. You would be shocked how many websites I go to where nowhere on the site is even listed as far as like, oh, I serve this area, I serve that area like you just like skip that part and like, well, what cities and states do you serve? I can't tell. That's the problem. It's a problem for people, it's a problem for search engines, it's a problem for AI. You'll also need to make sure that you have testimonials or case studies and that you're using something called schema markup. Now this is highly technical and it's really useful for ensuring that like your Google Business rating appears under every link to your website that appears in search results. And overall, it helps search engines recognize your credibility more quickly, which is always a win because I bet most of your competitors or your colleagues are not doing this yet because they don't know to do it. But I'm telling you right now, do it. The next thing you need to do is keep content updated and people first. So regularly update your website content if the information is becoming outdated and focus on your clients needs more than your own business. There is such a temptation in website copywriting to just go on and on and on about your mission and about your approach and about your team and your expertise, but none of that really matters. It certainly it doesn't matter to AI who's trying to match user intention with the appropriate content. Your website should talk more about the people that you serve and the problems that you solve for them. That's how you're going to stay ahead of the game when it comes to AI and SEO. Lastly, you need you do need to avoid over optimization. Most people in the home industry are not over optimized, so I'm not overly concerned about this. But most people are under optimized. But over optimization would be doing things like keyword stuffing, so repeating the same keyword too often. You should be using keywords naturally, so aim for a density of 1 to 2%, meaning 1 to 2 mentions of that keyword per 100 words and also focus on variations or synonyms and then prioritize user experience. So write for the human first, ensure that content is readable and valuable and solves problems and reject hidden keyword strategies. So some people will try to conceal extra keywords in the white text on a white background or add them to more than one image alt tag or list them in the bottom of the page in really tiny font. These are big SEO no nos because Google will see that these are black hat scammy tactics and they will punish you for it. All right now let's move on to blogging. In order to keep your website relevant and to have good SEO and aio, you need to write one to two blog posts per month and each blog post should be at least 1500 words. You also need to focus on original insights, avoid fluff, and avoid AI generated text that doesn't have any human oversight. You need to use clear sections with headers so H1, H2, H3 subheaders for readability and even for voice search optimization, you need to place target keywords naturally in titles first paragraphs, URL slugs, meta descriptions and H2S. You also need to make sure that titles accurately reflect content, so don't make it clickbait. It needs to actually reflect what your blog post is about to reduce bounce rates. And again, you need to focus on people first value with a unique analysis of a topic rather than just a summary. So that means no shallow content. Shallow short content does not work anymore when it comes to blogging. All right, now let's switch over to email marketing. What should you be doing there? Well, first let's talk about the layout. Each email newsletter should have only one topic. It should not include a topic and then what you're loving right now and then your trip to High Point. No, that makes it so ineffective. Focus on one topic and keep it around 300 to 400 words total. You should have one to four images in a newsletter and make sure you have your headshot and a mini bio. And I do mean mini, like a paragraph. The strategy for email marketing is still two times per month. And you should be sending these newsletters to your past leads, clients, colleagues, friends and family because this really helps put your word of mouth referrals on steroids. The topics that you should avoid would be anything diy. You should also avoid redirecting people in your newsletter to go read your blog post because that's sending them backward in the sales funnel. You want them to hit reply, you want to start a conversation, you want them to book a discovery call or a paid consultation. And on top of all of that, so avoid diy, avoid redirecting to a blog post. Also avoid direct sales pitches unless for some reason you're doing a Black Friday sale. But if you're selling services well, your services should never be on sale. They should be for sale, but never on sale because you are not cheap. Topics that you should highlight and include would be anything that relates even indirectly to a service that you offer or to your past work or any professional or even personal insights. So sometimes I will work with a client who's like, well, I just do kids spaces. I feel like there's not a lot to say about that. I can't think of anything else to say. I've talked about designing playrooms and kids bedrooms and kids bathrooms and that's about it. But there's so much more that could be said. You could just talk about performance fabrics. You could talk about the type of carpeting that you often spec for children's spaces. You could go a deep dive into any fit, finish, product, whatever. You could also include personal anecdotes about how you've had to deal with this with your own children or even, you know, how you got those really awful stains out of that fabric. Because a lot of parents will be Hesitant to invest in design of a space that is populated frequently by children. Okay, so this all comes back to knowing your ideal client and what bugs them. All right, so with all that being said, I hope that you're not overwhelmed, because In a way, SEO is going to be so much easier in 2025. You put people first and you put everything else second. Now, the things that might be stressing you out is that you realize social media may not be the best use of your time and money. What you do with that is your choice. And your Google Ad spend probably could be, you know, cut off entirely. That would be great. Be great for you. Put more money in your pocket. You've worked hard. You should be able to take home a paycheck. But when it comes to things like blogging, you know, 3000 words a month, it's, you know, two posts at 1500 words. That is a lot. Like, I admit, that is a lot. That can be intimidating. And staying on top of email marketing and knowing what to say and how to say it and being consistent about it, that's huge. So that is actually why I created this Socialite app. And like I said, it will be available in January. So coming right up, I am super duper excited to be sharing this with you. Now, again, this is a paid app. It is not in the App Store, but you can download it to any smartphone, desktop, tablet, laptop, whatever. So if you're curious about that, please stay tuned because I will be giving a lot more information about it. But basically, it takes blogging from this painful task that requires several days of your time to something that you get done in minutes. And it takes email marketing from something that drives you crazy because you feel like you don't know what you're doing and you don't have time to think about what you're supposed to be doing and into something that's just done right there, right then and there, implemented for you, and sent off to your mailing list so that you don't have to think about it. All right, guys, until next time, keep your marketing simple, your message clear, and do not lose yourself in the process, because there is much more to your life than marketing or running a business. See you next time.