Marketing

Let’s Talk Podcasts

The next area of opportunity for social platforms is podcasts, which over half of Americans listen to. Podcasts provide a captive, engaged audience and podcast ad revenue may grow to $2.56 billion. 

Secrets of AI-Driven Marketing: How to Work Smarter, Not Harder

AI tools promise to revolutionize your business. And while there are many tools with applications for marketing strategy, it's best to understand how to collaborate with them to find success.

5 Steps to Improve Predictability

Achieving a predictable lead flow can be challenging. These 5 steps can help. 

Servant Leadership Serves Business Growth

Focus on people to create business growth and a strong culture.

Use Winter Downtime to Develop Your Business Pipeline

The winter lull is a good time to make sure you have a solid pipeline for 2023 window and door projects. Consider these four tips that can help boost your business in the coming year.

Text to Improve Customer Service

Texting is an excellent way for window and door installers to communicate with homeowners. It improves the customer experience and, therefore, makes it easier to close sales.

Is TikTok a Space for Fenestration Brands?

TikTok, unfairly labeled as a social media platform geared toward high school students doing dances to popular songs, has almost 85 million users of all ages in the U.S. alone. And big brands have made their way to this growing platform and found an opportunity to connect with users. So, the answer…

Do More with Less

Offering fewer product lines can bring value to your business.

Tune Up Your Search Marketing

Years of connecting homeowners and home improvement professionals, including those in windows and doors, we’ve learned quite a bit about how to use paid search advertising to help with that matchmaking. Here are the first three things you should focus on to improve your search marketing.   

The Key to Honest Online Reviews

The Federal Trade Commission published two new guidelines around online reviews: it all comes down to transparency.

Crystal Window & Door Systems Expands YouTube Channel to Include Installation Tutorials

Crystal Window & Door Systems’ NYC YouTube channel now offers step-by-step video guides to guide customers through common situations such as installing window hardware, adjusting sliding window rollers and swing-door hinges, and adding window opening control devices.

3 Tools to Measure and Improve Window Sales

The following three foundational practices measure marketing performance data that will make sense for any contractor, whether you are optimizing within one channel or allocating investments across multiple lead generation strategies and channels.

What Are Google Web Stories, and Do You Need Them?

If you're getting great engagement with "stories" on social media, or if you have products and services that lend themselves to visual marketing, Google Web Stories might be the next online marketing frontier for your business.

4 Tips to Maximize Your Social Media Strategy

Social media is part of doing business in today’s digital environment. Managed strategically, social media can transmit new information and reinforce the positive image you’ve worked diligently to build with your customers, suppliers and other audiences. Crystal Window & Door Systems offers…

Virtual Sales Are Here to Stay

The virtual tools companies adopted to maintain business continuity during the coronavirus are here to stay.

3 Tools to Leverage Your Instagram Business Account

Having a robust social media presence is key to furthering awareness of your brand, gaining customer leads and getting more clicks to your website. However, as social media platforms change, so do their features. Specific to Instagram Business accounts, here are some tools you already have…

Can Houzz Help Manufacturers with Marketing?

The pandemic has made digital marketing and sales a must for most companies, and resulted in many people investigating online platforms they had not used in the past. Recently, podcast hosts Zach Williams and Beth PopNikolov of the “Smarter Building Materials Marketing” podcast, sat down to address…

Market Like You Mean It

Marketing is more than posting to Facebook once a week and doing some ads here and there. Marketing is every single way that you present your product and your business. So here's a checklist to get you started.

3 Ways to Leverage YouTube for Your Business

Video lets you easily illustrate and bring to life the before-and-after transformation in a home when you install new doors and/or windows. YouTube can be the perfect place to promote that transformation to your target audience.

How Video Can Help Launch New Products

How to successfully launch a new building product in the midst of COVID-19.

4 Branding Considerations for the Current Market

Kantar Media hosted a webinar series regarding COVID-19’s impact on the retail market. In the initial webinar, David Morcotte, SVP for Kantar, offered tips for how brands can respond and be upfront during this time.

The Power of Words

Powerful language—content that conveys your message quickly and appropriately and helps the reader see your products and services at work in their lives—should be the aim of all your marketing content.

Helping is the New Selling

How to leverage Instagram and LinkedIn for sales and marketing.

How to Leverage Instagram and LinkedIn for Sales and Marketing

Marketers are tasked with finding new ways to get in front of potential customers and communicating messages that resonate. And, with people remaining home under coronavirus-induced shelter-in-place orders, organic reach is incredible right now. More people than ever are online and the time is ripe…

3 Lead Generation Channels

Five Steps to a Comprehensive Social Media Strategy

Being social with consumers online helps potential customers see your company as one that is run by caring, accessible people, and that inspires trust that can lead to sales. Social media marketing is a must to compete online today. But, window and door companies without a comprehensive strategy…

Intent and Awareness

You probably already know that search engine optimization and social media aren't optional in today's market. But do you know some of the most important considerations that go into home improvement marketing via these channels?  

How to Win at Marketing

Last week, I wrote about how Brian Elias has the whole marketing arena figured out in our remodeling space. I also laid out the six functions that businesses need to figure out in order to thrive, noting that almost nobody figures out the marketing side of the business.

Six Keys to a Thriving Business

I’ve met exactly one marketing genius in the remodeling industry since I began specializing in remodeling marketing in 2005. His name is Brian Elias, the charismatic owner of Hansons Windows in Detroit. He’s built an impressive business somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 million a year—not by…

Google My Business Page

Google My Business is a free online tool that is super easy to use and can help increase any business’s online marketing performance. Still, many companies have yet to claim their business profile on Google.

SEO Misnomers

Regular readers know I remain a strong proponent of doing everything possible to make your window and door website rank as highly as possible in organic (unpaid) local search results. While pay-per-click advertising and other internet marketing techniques have gained traction in recent years, local…

Legal Protection in the Age of Digital Ad Agencies

Many companies rely on the expertise of internet marketing agencies for ad development, placement and intellectual property right protection. But, as recent experience with Facebook and “tailored” content has illustrated, internet advertising can also present a Wild West for the digital frontier.…

Audit Your Website Content to Ensure It’s Working for You

I’ve written it many times before, but it bears repeating: you can’t take advantage of everything online marketing can do for you if you don’t have great content on your website. Content is foundational to attracting website traffic, converting visitors into leads as well as achieving top-quality…

Actions to Improve and Protect Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn, the online professional networking tool, was a topic of two workshops I gave at the American Architectural Manufacturers Association 2017 National Fall Conference. Even if you’re not currently job-hunting, you should care about the state of your current LinkedIn profile. It’s always good…

Google Puts Mobile First

For some time now, Window & Door has covered how the mobile experience of a website is just as critical as that on a desktop computer. As mobile devices have increasingly become the main way potential customers search for products and services, it is imperative that a site's design and…

Video Introductions

Video is not a fad. It is no longer a “nice-to-have” addition to your business. Video is highly relevant now and it is the key to the future. Consider that, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2016–2021, “every second, a million minutes of video content will…

Writing Content Headlines

I realize that, as fenestration dealers and manufacturers, you are not in the business of writing headlines, but in the business of providing excellent window and door products and services. Regardless, in this digital age, all businesses must focus strongly on how they market themselves online.…

Branded

In the early stages of any industry, innovation is active. The winners are those who tightly integrate design, production, sales and marketing. Take the auto industry as an example: because the products (cars) were not quite good enough and needed constant improvement, proprietary integration…

Fishing for Customers

Not long ago, I was on a call with a potential client who was lamenting the fact that he didn’t have enough leads in his business. “Once I get in front of them, we can close the sale,” he told me. “But getting in front of them—that is the issue.” Some variation on that theme is one of the three…

Blogging for Search Marketing: How Long, How Often, How to Do It

Regular readers of my articles know I have a one-word answer for any small business looking to improve search engine optimization: content. It's really that simple. Yes, you can do many other things to improve your window and door website's SEO, but nothing matters more than content. Many say…

How Not to Write for SEO in 2018

For more than a decade, search engine optimization has been the headline topic for businesses trying to boost their website rankings. But the SEO techniques that worked 15 years ago do not work now, and many of them can actually diminish organic search rankings on major search engines (such as…

Social Media Trends to Put into Practice in 2018

According to James Mulvey, senior social media strategist, Hootsuite, there are three main challenges for businesses utilizing social media in 2018. They are: the continuing decline of unpaid, organic reach; keeping pace with social network innovation; and validating the worth of existing…

The Ban on Gating Reviews … and what to do instead

Last year, Google declared that if it discovered any “review gating” by businesses after April 12, 2018, any reviews posted after that date could be eradicated. Review gating is when companies put together a system that gets potential reviewers to reveal whether they want to post a positive or…

Comprehensive Content

The path to the top of local search rankings used to be so much easier—professionally written content wasn’t a necessity. And, frankly, content didn’t even really need to be all that great. Getting ranked in local search was as simple as posting copy packed with a ton of keywords about a particular…

PPC and SEO

Pay-per-click advertising campaigns—in particular, Google’s PPC ads—offer a lot of benefits to window and door retailers. Many love the cost-effectiveness, as well as how PPC ads display the company prominently at the top of search engine results pages. The fact that PPC advertisers can tweak ad…

Sales and Marketing Success

Once a homeowner upgrades their windows or doors, chances are they won’t need more for a long time, if ever. Since most home improvement projects are a one-time deal, success for window and door contractors depends on having a steady stream of new customers.  Hiring good salespeople is necessary…

Case Studies: Online Reviews on Steroids

SEO and website conversion are fairly complex and multi-faceted, Harshaw wrote in a recent installment of Your Business Matters in Window + Door magazine. The bedrock foundation of both: great content. Of the four types of content he outlined in that article—including core content, blogs, online…

The Window for Organic Reach on Facebook Is Mostly Closed

Organic reach on Facebook—that is, how much of your target audience sees "free" social posts—is now simply dismal. As a percentage, it's hovering in the low single digits, often as low as just 1 percent. That means only a few (often literally only three or four people) see your window and door…

Two Birds, One Stone

Want to juice your SEO rankings? Simple! Just create and post a ton of great content on your website.  Want your website to do a better job of converting lookers into buyers? Simple! Just create and post a ton of great content on your website. Is it really that simple? Yes and no.  Both…

Google My Business

How to Create a Post for a Google My Business Page Go to google.com/business to access your GMB page. Click on Posts in the left side menu. Choose a new type of post to create. Google has templates for post types such as What’s New, Events, Offers and Products.  Choose an image to accompany the…

Key Changes in Buyer Habits

Buyer habits are changing more quickly than ever. There are some shifts beginning to take shape over the course of this year that will play an even bigger role in how successful your marketing is in 2020. Here, we’ll break down these changes to shed light on how customer expectations are changing…

Effective Marketing

It’s common for residential window and door contractors to have uneven business over the course of a year. When it rains, it often pours with added window replacement and repairs. Then, the course changes and, when you need customers, it can take weeks to produce bids and close deals.  The good…

A Legacy of Excellence

On September 13, the Window and Door Dealers Alliance, along with Window & Door magazine, honored its 2018 Dealer of the Year recipients at a ceremony at Window & Door Dealer Day in Las Vegas. This prestigious program honors excellence in the window and door industry, and this year’s…

Prep for Show Season

When we take time to plan for the future, we set ourselves up to get a leg up on our competition. There are a few places in the home retail sales business where future planning can save big bucks. Home shows are one of them. Home shows can be a great source of leads, can help increase local brand…

Grassroots Approach

The problem is clear: the construction industry is booming at a time when labor is scarce. The causes are just as well-known: experienced workers are retiring faster than new hires can fill jobs, and skills are going with them; young people aren’t interested in the trades, nor do they possess the…

Fishing for the Ideal Customer

Not long ago, I was on a call with a potential client who was lamenting the fact that he didn’t have enough leads in his business. “Once I get in front of them, we can close the sale,” he told me. “But getting in front of them—that is the issue.” Some variation of that theme is one of the three…

Improving Leads Management

Many business owners and managers seek my help to create more sales leads. While lead generation, marketing messages and advertising can all be super tough nuts to crack, the problem may not always be on the generation side of the subject. Before spending a ton of time, money and effort fixing a…