[Fred Kauber]

You’ve raised a wonderful point; given that kitchen and bath design can be such a location-centric service, it is critical to communicate the geographic area that you serve as a designer.

One of the best ways to do that is to have location content on your website which not only speaks directly to prospective customers but which can also help to boost search engine rankings to position the designer as a local expert. I would recommend that designers seek to get represented in local press and websites like chambers of commerce which can further reinforce local expertise and boost search engine rankings via any links generated.

The example site you shared certainly seems to have gone to intentional or inadvertent lengths to obscure their location; even researching their domain does not reveal their location. The lone PA reference is the only clue.

[Fred Kauber]

Couldn’t agree more Karla! For our members that missed the live broadcast, the replay link is now available from your member dashboard or here.

[Fred Kauber]

For ease of reference, the KBIS 2021 Special Issue is available right here: https://kbdesignersnetwork.com/member/emagazine/

Member-E-Magazine

[Fred Kauber]

Great war story with practical tips for escaping the quagmire – thanks for sharing Karla!

[Fred Kauber]

An excellent article. In my work advising online businesses, I’ve found that most marketers are still struggling to truly understand the implications of this change, so I offer the following cheat sheet:

– From a user experience standpoint this will impact mobile app owners and users, which most K+B designers likely don’t need to be worry about if they don’t offer a mobile app. All online marketers will be impacted simply because the data sets collected across customers will be constrained, making it harder to target our ads and campaigns – and hence making customer acquisition more expensive. To be clear, Apple’s change will affect more advertising platforms than Facebook’s, but Facebook (FB) is getting most of the attention because its targeting options have been the most sophisticated using the data in question.

– The type of Facebook ads that you choose to run might be affected. Traffic and Lead ads are not likely to be affected much; Conversion ads will lose some efficiency. This mainly matters based on the action you are trying to incent with your ads.

– The number of event types that you can track will be limited to only 8 per domain. This likely only matters to much larger sites and ad budgets than the typical K+B designer is engaged in.

– The duration that a given user’s tracking data is kept will shrink to 7 days max, limiting the targeting, attribution and reporting of a specific user’s actions over a long period of time. This is undesirable for long sales cycle funnels, which most K+B designers likely have.

– It will take time for iOS 14 to gain widespread adoption, so these changes will take at least several months to meaningfully impact anything. The overall impact will take time to assess, and FB is employing new statistical algorithms to try to minimize the impact.

A few recommended actions to consider:

– Diversify your online ad channels; however, given that Apple mobile devices are so prominent across all channels this will not fully insulate you.

– The importance of ‘owned’ media channels where you have a direct relationship with your customer will grow, with email and SMS being the best examples – start growing your lists!

– Actions taken on your website will grow in importance since you have the most control in tracking them; with this in mind, make sure that you verify your domain with Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/286768115176155?id=199156230960298).

– Finally, FB is adding support for keyword targeting as a new option; this has been the bread and butter of Google advertising for years, so definitely a tactic to start to embrace in FB.

While it may not feel like it, we are still living in a relative ‘golden age’ of online marketing. Apple is not alone in responding to privacy concerns and Google plans to severely restrict third-party cookies in Google Chrome starting in 2022, which will be at least as meaningful as this Apple move.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by  Fred Kauber.

[Fred Kauber]

I will be attending, and have attended a lot of these virtual tradeshows in recent years as I am deeply involved in technology circles where this has been a trend pre-dating the pandemic. The best experiences are keynote sessions that allow active chatting from participants, as vendors often jump into that conversation and make contextually relevant comments; I’m not sure that KBIS plans to do that but that’s what I will be looking for. I will likely primarily focus on the keynotes as I’m interested in macro trends that may be of interest to our community here, but others on the team like Janice are going to be meeting extensively with the brands and manufacturers exhibiting.

P.S> I really enjoyed your interview on the site! 😉

[Fred Kauber]

The site looks great – the team’s hard work is paying off!