This week's episode of Automation Unplugged we’re bringing you a webinar we recorded in October 2024 called “Your 2025 Success Starts Now: Strategic Business Planning for Growth.

About this episode:

Here at One Firefly, we believe that your journey to growth starts with a strategic plan. And now we’re bringing you a ton of great content about how to plan your work, then work your plan. This webinar was presented to Lutron dealers, but contains valuable insights and advice for all integrators starting to map out their goals and ambitions for the new year.

You’ll hear from me and Kendall Clark, One Firefly’s Director of Marketing & Sales. We were joined by Kyle Yamamoto, Marketing Manager - Residential Luxury at Lutron Electronics.

In the webinar, we’ll cover:

• How to set clear business goals for the year ahead.
• Marketing strategies to help stay top of mind with your existing clients and referrals.
• Marketing strategies to help attract new prospects and secure relationships with trade partners.

SEE ALSO: Show #281: Growing a Legacy: Mergers, Security, and Technology Insights with Ryan Cohen

Transcript

Ron:

All right, let's get started. Well, we're here today to talk about really planning your 2025 and the role that marketing has to support your business goals. And very happy and honored to be collaborating again with Lutron on this webinar, really appreciate them putting the word out. And, of course, co instructing here with my partner in crime, Kendall. So let's go ahead and let's get started. My name is Ron Callis, founder and CEO here at One Firefly. I've been working with integrators for the last 25 years. And as you'll see on the slide here in a few minutes, I actually got my start in the industry at Lutron and proud to, to run One Firefly and work with all these amazing marketers that are working very diligently to help our industry grow. Kendall?

Kendall:

Awesome. Well, welcome everyone. I'm glad you're here and spending an hour with us. During this presentation, I, I hope that you can find some time to be, you know, working on the business versus the day to day in the business. I know you all are really busy wearing a lot of hats. My name is Kendall. I'm our Director of Sales and Marketing here at One Firefly. I've been in the industry and actually with One Firefly for just over 10 years now and my background is in web development. So I have a lot of love for web and all things marketing. Joining us is the Lutron ladies. I'll hand it over to you, Kyle.

Kyle:

Yes. Thank you. Hi everyone. I am Kyle Yamamoto. I am on the luxury residential marketing team here at Lutron and I am responsible for dealer growth and engagement. I've had the pleasure of meeting some of you. I look forward to meeting all of you at some point in my time . Joined with me is Laura Jean Null or L.J. She's a Marketing Operations Specialist on the luxury residential marketing team as well. And we all are often on the receiving end of emails and questions and things that we can do to help support you. So we're really excited to be here with you today and thanks again, Ron and Kendall.

Kendall:

Awesome. Also on the One Firefly team, you'll see her behind the scenes is Rebecca from our corporate marketing team. She'll be helping to field questions. So if you have any questions throughout the presentation, drop it into that Q and A, we're going to try and make time at the end for some questions, hopefully about 10 minutes or so. But we love to have this be a collaborative environment. So, who we are is One Firefly. We are a full service digital marketing agency, and we have been exclusively serving the CEDIA space since 2007. We have a team of over 75 marketing experts. We have web designers, we have SEO analysts, copywriters, social media experts, account managers, graphic designers. You name it, we do it all in house and we love serving this industry. And in fact, we do, we manage marketing for over 650 companies in this space every single month. Another thing we got recognized this year is our fifth Inc 5,000, which we are particularly proud to have that achievement, but we have a legacy of, you know, some awards and recognitions for our contributions to the industry. So we love innovation and we love serving you all.

Ron:

So to kind of give you all just a very quick background, you know, as the founder here at One Firefly, just kind of pointing out our collaboration with Lutron. It's, it started at that infancy, really where I joined Lutron out of engineering school, out of Virginia Tech, and I studied mechanical engineering. And in terms of our collaboration with Lutron, we have a long, storied collaboration really from the beginning. And that was initially with us launching more and more marketing services, including websites and various inbound and outbound marketing strategies, helping integrators drive their Lutron focused agenda to really put the word out to their customer base and their local markets that they are Lutron dealers. That they are the go to service provider in their markets. And what you're going to hear as a theme here over the next, 30 minutes, 30 to 45 minutes or so of content is really tightening that bond of marketing, supporting you, achieving your business goals. Lutron believes that we believe that here at One Firefly, and that's why we're honored to be doing this. Bringing this education to all of you.

Kendall:

All right. So a quick agenda, we just went through the introductions here. We're going to talk a little bit about setting the stage for 2025, how looking at your 2024 that can then help you plan and set up your growth goals for 2025. We're then going to talk a little bit about some marketing tactics that help you reach those business goals. We'll end by going into a little bit of information on DMC Funds along with that one Firefly credit that Ron just mentioned and we'll end with hopefully a good amount of time for some Q& A. So I think we're going to kick off here with a poll and Ron, you want me to go ahead and launch that poll?

Ron:

If you don't mind, that'll be helpful. Yes.

Kendall:

All right.

Ron:

While she is launching it, I'll read the question. We're just trying to take a quick summary of how did 2024 finish up for all of you? It'll be an interesting data set and we'll share the results with you right away. We want to know this year, 24, were you up more than 20 percent somewhere between zero and 20%? Were you flat? Were you down a little bit? Or were you down a lot? And, you know, we have conversations every single day of the week here at One Firefly with all of you, with integrators across North America. And we have opinions, theories on what you all are going to tell us right now. We have 46 percent of participants, 47, right? So about half of you that have attended so far have answered, would love to get that participation rate up. It's going to make the data that much more valid.

Kendall:

All right. All right. We'll give it another second here. Going. Going. All right. All right, gone. So here, Ron, I'll share the results and then we'll get your feedback on it. So definitely a split.

Ron:

This is super interesting. So about 24 percent of you have had a really solid growth year in 2024. About 33%. Anywhere from flat to, to modest growth at 20%. By the way, there's nothing wrong with a 10 or 15% growth year. That's, that's a great year by many standards. About, I'm gonna round, well, I won't round 18% of you were flat and, 22% down about 20% or up to 20%, and then only 2% have had a really negative year. That's frankly, pretty awesome. So I'll, I'll do some high level summary here. About 40 percent of you are flat to negative. And, about 60 percent of you had solid growth this year. That's awesome. Now, where we want you to park your thoughts over the course of this hour is now starting to envision 2025 and what your ambitions are for 2025.

Kendall:

Yep. All right. So to kick us off, we're going to use this analogy of a boat. We love it. And there is an expression that we use here in one firefly world, and that is you can only change what you're measuring. So to start and why you've seen Rebecca, she put that link to a business planning worksheet is we want you to very clearly understand what your current state is. How did your 2024 wrap up? What were those goals? Did you hit those goals? And really know what that looks like before then planning and modeling your future. Because until you know both your current state and future state and once you have those two things established and very well defined, a smart goal, then you can really decide, you know, how fast, what is the path that that boat is going to take you from your current state to future state. So we're going to be talking a little about that. All right, I'm going to go ahead and just make sure that we have or run in the chat here. There is a link to this worksheet. I'll drop it again once more in case you missed it. We're going to run through the first section of this presentation is actually running through the questions that are on this 2025 Roadmap so you can go ahead and click that link. Feel free to drop in the chat if you're having any issues with downloading it. It is PDF editable. But frankly, even if you just want to have it up or follow along on the screen here, we're going to go through the questions and you can take a couple notes on a notepad. That works, too. But we are going to have all the questions on the screen, so in case you're having some issues downloading it, they'll be listed here. The first one being is, what are your current key business objectives? And then looking into the future state, what are your top priorities for the next 12 months and what milestones do you hope to reach? So, there's really no right or wrong answer when it comes to answering these. This could look like a revenue number. This could look like a profitability percentage. Maybe it's forging a new relationship, adding a product line, whatever that looks like for you and your business, they're all going to be unique. So I'm going to give us about 30 seconds here to fill this out or jot some notes on this topic. And there's only seven of these, so it'll go pretty quick. This is probably our most in depth question.

Ron:

You have Jeopardy music, Kendall?

Kendall:

You know, that would be pretty good if we had that.

Ron:

I'm almost going to hum a tune, but I'm going to save us from that.

Kendall:

I also see a quick question here. How many people on this call for reference on percentages? I believe we had 60 or so that participated in that poll. So that gives you a good look on percentages. Next one, this one should be a little bit quicker. What is your current residential and commercial split? So what is your current state split? Meaning at the end of 2024 and then looking into 2025, do you see that balance shifting over the next year? If so, which direction and why? So we'll give you a quick 30 seconds here. I also see from Kevin, adopting Vital as business guidance resource and utilize the enhanced workflow process for our client journey. Love that. Cool. Yeah. And see a couple answers here. A lot of you are leaning residential. All right, let's jump to the next one. Solutions mix. Current state, which of your products or services are your main focus right now? And in the future, meaning 2025 forward, are there any specific products or services that you plan on pushing or maybe even phasing out in the next 12 months? Maybe you're even getting tighter with the products and services that you want to offer because that's more profitable, or you can do that more efficiently, or you know, maybe you enjoy it a little bit more. So that's your solutions mix. Question number three.

Ron:

Maybe some of you want to drive more Petra lighting fixture business or shading business or lighting controls business hint hint nudge nudge.

Kendall:

All right. Let's jump to the next one, Ron. Next up here is Marketplace. Which markets are you currently targeting or are you currently working in? And then looking into next year, do you want to expand that to any new geographic regions or market segments? I also want to add here, this could even be as specific as a neighborhood. You may not know this, but there's a lot of things that you can do to target homeowners and direct neighborhoods as well.

Ron:

I love it. I, Kendall, a lot of folks are actually chatting here in the webinar chat, some of their answers to these questions, which is fun.

Kendall:

Current state control systems, future state lighting, lighting design, lighting fixtures. We're going to have some fun ideas for you later.

Ron:

As much as we love seeing you in the chat. Awesome. Make sure you're also writing it down for your own notes because it's going to tie into what we talk to next.

Kendall:

All right, Ron, let's jump to the next one. Next up is your push to specifiers. Are you currently working with any specifiers, architects, designers, builders, and in your future state in 2025? You're saying I don't listen to the instructions. That's funny. And into 2025 is increasing your focus and part of on this group, part of your strategy for the next 12 months. Are you looking to maybe foster some of the relationships that you have and nurture those? Are you looking to find new builders, new specifiers that you want to work with? And then what are those goals for engaging with those individuals? And we are going to hit on this point a little later as well. All right. Hopefully we're not moving too fast for everybody, but we're going to keep pushing forward. Current state, what is your projected revenue for this year? And then what is your target for next year? And what are those key drivers that are going to help influence that growth? So yes, it's great to say, I want to grow X percentage or from 1 value to another, but then what are those levers that are going to help you reach those goals? All right. And finally, the number of employees. So you have this revenue goal in mind, now it's time to start thinking about staffing. With your current revenue projection, how many employees do you have on your team today? Is that enough? Or are you planning to grow or restructure your team over the next 12 months to maybe hit some of those goals? And if so, what areas, what roles? All right. So obviously we kind of rapid fired through those questions, but really it's to get you thinking about, you know, like I said, thinking about your future. You might be answering these and saying, you know what, there might be more projects that you're looking for that you enjoy, maybe projects that are more profitable for you. Maybe you're better equipped for certain projects or that are in a closer proximity or more convenient to you. You might be aspiring for more as you're putting these 24 and 25, comparisons together. If you have not thought through, or maybe as we're going and we're rapid firing through these, there might be questions you didn't have a great answer for. These are the questions we really want you to know backwards and forwards, so that we can start, you know, just like that boat image said, start planning for 2025. So it is time, the time is now, to start designing your future. So you may have a sheet that's filled out, looking something like this, with a few notes added, and what I suggest from here, taking all of this information, you could actually use a tool like ChatGPT. Maybe you're listing out some bullets. And what I want you to do is extract and have a statement, have an understanding of what those goals are for you and your business. I'll give you an example here. Maybe your business looks something like this. You want to grow from two and a half to 2.75 million. And you want to do that by, you know, nurturing your partnerships with architects by hosting targeted events. You want to extend into the next county up being Palm Beach County, I'm in Broward County. And maybe you want to expand your offerings in the lighting and shading categories. So we're going to kind of operate on an assumption of something similar to this and we're going to provide you with some tactics.

Ron:

Yeah. And a reminder here is for all of you is you're going to hear these tactics from Kendall and I over the next bit. You really want to have the end in mind for next year when you're deciding, then what are you going to ultimately do in terms of this dirty word called marketing? What is this thing you're going to do? How much money are you going to spend? How much time and energy are you going to spend? It really needs to be designed to help support your vision for the future. So, and that does mean writing it down. And so if, if you did not. Follow along in this activity. It's it's okay. You understand the concept and I'd recommend, you know, really leaning in with your leadership team and making sure you guys do write this down, ultimately, so that the various actions you're going to take as we get, we close out this year and you ramp up into the new year, you're really aligning yourself towards success.

Kendall:

All right, so you might be asking me, Kendall, Ron, where do I start? And I'm going to tell you, it's just as easy as...

Ron:

It's as easy as?

Kendall:

Easy, right, Ron? Just, just a couple of things, right? Webinars, press releases, backlink building, Facebook, directory listing, drip campaigns. There's so much out there. Should they panic Ron?

Ron:

I think panic's advisable. I think they should totally freak out. Anxiety is the answer. Man, those eyes are piercing in that AI image. I think he sees my soul. That's, now, in reality, the answer is you do not need to panic. The answer is you need a plan. And so there are activities that you should do that are going to give you a probability of helping your goals or outcomes for next year be realized. At the same time, what I'm going to go over here very quickly are just some foundations. We would call these non negotiables. This needs to be true. In order to build a strong house, you have to have a strong foundation. And the same goes for your business and your brand. You need a strong foundation. And so just, I'm going to give you a couple of pillars of a foundation that are areas where we believe you should, if you have not already done, so you should make sure these elements are super stable and strong. And number one is your website. Your website needs to be a beautiful, it needs to be speaking to your target customer. It needs to be, it needs to be very obvious the markets and areas that you serve. You need to, I've given you a few checks here. You need to make sure your name, address, phone number are accurate on your website. I know that seems simple, but just go back. If you haven't looked at your website recently, make sure all of that's accurate. Make sure all the forms on your website, test all of them, fill them out and press enter and make sure they're going to the right person on your team that's ready to respond to them. Make sure that if you, for example, are trying to drive your Ketra fixture business, make sure that lighting, lighting design, the different stories that you can tell around lighting, make sure that content's on your website. Make sure Lutron content is on your website. Make sure Ketra content, make sure circadian rhythm type education content is on your website, right? And if it's not, then those are going to be projects. Those are elements for you to work on as a foundational item. And then in terms of modern imagery that reflects the types of projects that you do, remember a lot of your customers, the majority of your customers or prospects are going to go to your website as a quick reference check on your business. Let's say that you've been referred the business, your architect referred you, or a customer referred you, a lot of those folks are still going to go to your website and many of them are going to go to your projects or case studies. And so if you have that content on your website, and you can bet we do recommend that you have that, that those example projects on your website are representative of the type of projects you want more of. So put out to the universe what you want to attract. So if you want projects of a certain size or status, put that content on your website. It's going to help attract the right customer. It's also going to help push away or deflect the type of tire kickers or the folks, maybe that you aren't best positioned to serve. So it actually works in both regards. And then a quick tip, ensure your website contains all the above information above the fold. You have a fraction of a second is different science somewhere, somewhere around a third of a second to make a first impression. So you want to have accomplished the mission of speaking to the customer, your address, your market served, your value proposition, all of that above the fold on your website. Next is your Google Business Profile. Now this for many might be underserved. You, for example, maybe in years past, if you attended a webinar with us, you would have not seen us really enforce or strongly recommend this as much as we are today. And the reason is the internet is changing. And so there's a type of real estate showing up in Google search. It's called zero click. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment, but your Google business profile is the most important real estate in zero click. And so you need to make sure your Google My Business Profile is updated with your imagery, your business information, your service offerings. You can load content. You can load image galleries. You can load events, your Google My Business, or it's not called Google My Business, your Google Business Profile is a rich source where of information that Google now is sending significant volumes of traffic into. And so if you have not paid attention to this, now is a good time to do this. You do notice, here on this Texadia systems account that they have 49 Google reviews. You do now need to be actively driving reviews for your business and you need to be driving them into your Google Business Profile. So there are tools and techniques to help you do that. But you'd certainly don't want to underserve that. And your Google Business Profile is always tied to a Gmail email address. Actually it's Kendall. I'm going to ask you, do you want to expound on that tip for me, please?

Kendall:

Yes. So your Google Business Profile is always going to be attached to a Gmail account versus tied to a company email address. So if you're ever looking to get access to anything within the Google Suite, maybe your website uses Google Analytics, or you want to get into something called Google Search Console, which gives you some web data. Your Google Business Profile, all of that's going to be tied to a Gmail email address. So you'll be able to log in and kind of troubleshoot there, how to get access.

Ron:

Awesome. All right. And so I mentioned zero click, that's a fancy term and I'll give you a very quick synopsis, but if you want the in depth attend one of our SEO webinars and we'll go much deeper down the rabbit, down the rabbit hole in terms of education around this. But when you and I go onto Google and we type in a search query we're given what we call page one search results. And there's lots of different types of information on that page one. What is now 60 percent plus of that real estate is actually zero click. Zero click means Google is trying to give you and me an answer without us actually visiting a website. And of that zero click real estate, your Google business profile is at the moment, the most dominant piece of real estate there. So this is a really neat opportunity for you as a business operator to be modifying, adjusting and refining the way that your business is showing up in that Google Business Profile. It is going to lead to additional lead gen and phone calls because that is how people that is going to be for many their first experience with your brand. And so pay attention to that. It's more true in 2024 than at any point, likely in the history of your business online, super important. And, yeah, it is the number one piece of real estate in that zero click. So you definitely want to pay attention to it. The other non negotiable is your vehicle wrap. So if you think about how many eyeballs are going to see your brand. We believe the most number of eyeballs are probably going to be your website. A typical integrator has anywhere from 200 to a thousand sessions a month on their website. An above average business that's likely doing some marketing might have anywhere, anywhere from one to 3000 sessions a month on your website. Okay. So that's a lot of, likely very interested people visiting your website that you might want to ultimately speak to. Well, you also have all your vehicles driving down the street, stopping at stop signs and stoplights, parked in front of your job sites. You want to make sure that your brand is beautifully and accurately represented on these vehicles. So this is, it's surprising maybe to Kendall and I, but we talked to many, many people and they're like, yeah, I have white unmarked vehicles out on the street. And so if that were true, then I would say this is an area likely to spend a little bit of time, money and energy, get your vehicles professionally wrapped. And it's anywhere from lettered to half wraps to full wraps. There's a whole language to learn here if you're new to that. And you can certainly speak to wrap companies and they'll help you understand the cost. There are differences in costs of, of, of marking your vehicles in these ways. The least expensive part of this process is actually getting a beautiful design. The expensive part of this effort is ultimately lettering or wrapping the vehicles. Okay, so we're going to be speaking when we talk about, you know, what you want to accomplish next year. I want you to think of a frame of mind. And what we've done here is we're giving you two primary audience types. Audience type number one is your existing customers and your existing trade friends that are sending you work. Okay. And I'm putting, and I know we could go very segmented and we could say, well, there's different tactics for these two different groups at the moment, for the sake of our 45 minutes together, we're going to put these two groups together and we're going to say, they are your existing relationships. And what I'm now going to rapid fire through are tactics that you're going to be able to get in front of these people that are very important to you. Why is the current customer important? Because they're likely to buy from you again and they're likely to refer their friends and family and neighbors to you. And why is that existing referral source valuable to you? Well, that's for those of you that have them, you know the answer to that. You score a relationship with an architect or designer, they can feed you for many, many years. One relationship can feed you many years. And we'll actually go a little bit deeper into that in just a moment. So you want to keep your brand, your message, and your value proposition in front of these people, even though they already know you. Now, and a few slides, we're going to switch to a different audience and that different audience are the people that are your prospects. You want them to be your customer and their trade partners that you want to be doing business with. So just remember, we're going to get to that category or that cohort in just a bit. But for right now, these are your existing relationships. So when you work with Mrs. Smith, or in this case, we have Mr. Smith over here, he's your customer. And he might buy from you again, or he's going to talk to his friends and neighbors, and they're going to send you their, you're ultimately going to get contacted because they, Mr. Smith had such a wonderful experience, his friends and neighbors are going to come to you. And for most of you, that is where the majority of your workflow comes from. That is, frankly, the way our industry works. There's another type of individual in your life, and that's your interior designer, your architect, or any of the trade partners that are on job sites are involved in the design process. When you build a rapport with them, not only are they going to send you customers month in and month out, but then you also get the benefit of those customers, send you referrals. So obviously it's an interesting proposition. I know Lutron believes this, and we here at One Firefly believe this, that for you to be developing strategies to build your trade partners, this is a really good idea. It is hard work, and it does not come easy, but the payout is significant. So it's something to keep in mind when we're looking at audience targeting and tactics of communication. So number one tactic is email market. The number one tactic we're going to talk about to your existing relationships is email marketing. So you want to, you have an opportunity first of all, to have your email list organized. So you want to have your customers and your contacts not exclusively live in your sales teams', email accounts, but you ultimately want to have them aggregated and organized at a company level and you want to have company designed messaging going out to these folks. Where you are keeping them updated on what's going on in the industry, what are the latest products, what are the latest solutions, what are the latest activities going on in your business or your industry that some of them, some of the time might find interesting. This is the idea that even though you did a great job for Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith leads a busy life. And he may not be thinking of you top of mind three years after you finished that job. If he's at a cocktail party on Friday night and somebody asks him, who did you use for this? Or who should I use for this new addition on my home? You want your business to be top of mind and email marketing, even with all the noise of marketing strategies, email marketing is still today in October, 2024, still one of the best strategies to keep your business and brand message in front of those folks. The tip down here is to utilize never bounce to clean up old emails on your list, because what you don't want, if you're emailing out, you don't want to get blocked for spam. As you all know, you are the receivers of spam and garbage emails that you do not want to receive. I can tell you as a matter of fact, that if you put out value in your email marketing to your customer base, they will not unsubscribe. If you harass them or abuse the list, or you're too promotional or salesy you will see them unsubscribe. And if you have too many unsubscribes, you run the risk of ultimately getting your email account flagged for spam. So you just really want to have a strategy in terms of what are you messaging and to whom are you messaging? And you want to do that at a corporate level or a company level. And when you do that magic happens. Now, organic social, I do want to differentiate many of you know this, but let's give you a reminder. When you make a post on Facebook that's called an organic post. Separately in Facebook, I can do what's called paid social. I can pay for advertising in Facebook and I can design audiences. We're going to talk about that in just a moment, but right here, what I'm talking about is organic social. You have an opportunity to put your people, your message, your brand voice out in a consistent, professional, polished way on the various platforms. The big ones would be Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Those would be the most common or primary platforms. You also know this gets a bit advanced. But the reality is when your business is on these social platforms and your name, address, phone number, and web URL are properly listed, that is called a high quality link back to your website. That is in the world of organic rankings for your website, it's a top 10 ranking factor. So that is a reason, even though some of you want to go Ron but I hate Mark Zuckerberg and I hate Facebook. I hear you, but there are very legitimate reasons to be on social media that are going to drive the visibility of your business. And for some of your customers that are active on the various social platforms, it's an awesome way for you to stay in front of them when they're standing at the line at the grocery store and they're scanning through their Facebook feed. They're going to see those posts from you about the latest project. And that's going to remind them, Oh yeah, I want to talk to Susie about my new project. And that's really what this is, is staying in front of these people that matter to you. And that's really a primary value of organic social. Now, for many of you, this category is one of the most powerful strategies where you can invest time, money, and energy to get very good at. And that is, holding events to love and nurture the relationships with your existing customers and with your existing architects, designers, and trade partners. It can look a lot of different ways. For example, it could look like maybe you hold a private listening event because brand ABC speaker company has a brand new product launch. You have it exclusively in your showroom and you want to give a, by invitation only VIP experience to your customers. Well, isn't that wonderful? If they accept you on that offer and they come and they drink a glass of wine with you and eat your hors d'oeuvres and they listen to the new gear. Why? Because these folks are the folks that are most likely to buy from you again, and most likely to refer their friends and the same for your architects and designers. It is worth thinking very strategically about how to hold very, very, refined, valuable events for these very important audiences. And I would say this is one category where collaboration with your Lutron reps and your Lutron salespeople, they excel at this. They're some of the best in the business at doing this. They've understood this, since the beginning, I'll say for many, many decades now. And so there's a lot of fun, probably brainstorming with those partners about how to hold really spectacular events that have your customers and your trade friends talking and sharing with their friends and then asking you when you have that next one. Okay. So now that was tactics that you could ultimately put into a strategy for your existing customers. Now we're going to talk about a new category, and this is people that you would want to be your customers. Maybe there's a neighborhood in town and you would really love to be in a lot of those homes, or there's that architect or designer in town and you would really like to be their go to. What are some of the best channels of communication to get your message in front of them? So the first we're going to talk about is paid social media. And I'll just, I'll start here by talking about LinkedIn, for example, through paid social media. And I'll say, LinkedIn, LinkedIn is really the professional social network I can design... I always want you to think about two important criteria when you're looking at paid social advertising. Number one is your audience. I can design the demographic profile of the audience. I can think about what are the types of people, the types of job titles in this case, maybe with LinkedIn and the category of service or work that I would want to be in front of. So number one is audience. Number two is message. What do I want to tell these people that might inspire them to take a next step with me in their journey of learning about my business and or learning about my brand? And so that is what makes social advertising so powerful. I am not stuck only communicating with the people that follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. But now I get to go out and target them. They are top of the funnel, right? So you're targeting them, but now you get to put your message in front of them to ultimately nurture them down the funnel to where you get to make contact with them. And that is what makes paid advertising so powerful. And you can, now it depends. All of these platforms are not the same and you really need to go down, and look strategically with your marketing partner about which platform to be on that matches aligning with your business goals. But you have a lot of different tools in your tool belt, if you will, in terms of these strategies. And then tip before committing a significant budget, always launch a test. You can, you know, these tools can be used for good and they can be used for evil. And when I say evil, you could burn a lot of money really quickly. If you weren't launching and designing these programs, eyes wide open. So you want to do it strategically, test it, prove it out, and then scale up those efforts when you start to see good conversion data. So now we're talking about holding the same category of events, trainings, lunch and learns, parade of homes. But now I'm looking to expose my brand to people that may not yet know me, may not know my business. So for example, lunch and learns, back to that idea of Lutron CEUs or maybe CEDIA's inventory of CEU courses. I now can reach out to that prospective designer or architect and I can offer them something you know they need. Which is they need continuing education credits. And now you can bring in your Lutron rep, bring in your Lutron salesperson, and, or maybe you are that CEDIA CEU certified individual, and now you can gain audience with these people. And then you can look professional. You can have a professional presentation. You can wear your company uniform. You can have your professional collateral to hand out. You can give them the binders of information that you know they will need that are in reference to home technology, automation, Lutron, you can be that valuable resource to them. And that's how you start to gain their trust so that ultimately you get to earn that relationship. And the same goes for trainings with prospective clients or even creative homes. Maybe you're trying to attract that target demographic of homeowner by getting in and sponsoring that event. But the, it does not stop at simply sponsoring the parade of homes. The devil is in the details and how you ultimately present your brand in every way. And that's where paying attention to the marketing and branding really will make a difference. Search engine optimization. I want you to define the words, not keep them in your head, but I want you to write them down for all the solutions. This is lighting control, motorized shading, home theater, multi room music, insert all the other solutions you offer. Then I want you to think about the brands or the categories that you want to be found for on the internet. Then I want you to think about the markets, right? You don't, if you were in St. Louis and someone searches in Baltimore, it might not be terribly valuable if they find you on the internet. But if you target St. Louis and someone in St. Louis finds you and then they visit your website, that could be extremely valuable. So that really starts with a keyword strategy and then optimizing your online presence to improve the way that you're showing up in search results. And so what ultimately you're going to do is you're going to utilize all of these varying tactics. And you're going to look at the audiences that you're targeting and the message that you're targeting. And you're going to decide what is the integrated approach, just as you all integrate all the different technologies and homes and businesses, you're going to integrate these marketing tactics to help you improve the probability of realizing those business outcomes. And yes, in many cases, more is better, but your business has finite limitations. You're probably only willing to invest so much. You're probably want something to happen in the next 90 days, or maybe you're willing to let it happen over the next 18 months. Knowing these sort of considerations are going to help you ultimately engineer the marketing plan that's going to align with your goals. And many of you are saying, well, how much money should I spend? Our belief is you should be spending somewhere around 2 to 5 percent of your projected revenue goal for next year. So if your goal, I'm just going to do a I'm gonna attempt some simple math. If your revenue goal was a million dollars next year, then you should be planning to spend somewhere between 20 and 50 thousand dollars next year in this category called marketing. And then ultimately, you would divvy that up across the appropriate number of categories. And, within that two to 5 percent spend, yes, you need to have the line item on your PNL for your business next year on what you're going to spend. Even if that means persons on your payroll and or hiring a marketing agency locally in your market and or a One Firefly. So just as a reminder, all, and then we'll, we'll take some questions when you are designing your goals for next year I want you to think about marketing is not black magic. Marketing is not a cloak and dagger. It is not smoke and mirrors. Marketing's role is to strategically align with what you're trying to do next year and to try to get in front of those audiences, put the right messages in front of them to help support your business initiatives. So to connect the dots, if you wanted to drive your Ketra business next year that we need to think strategically who would be important for that growth. Maybe it's design partners. Maybe it's certain customers that you've worked with in the past. Let's design those cohorts and then design the channels to communicate to them and then get the right message in front of them. And then, auto magically, you're going to see more hand raises and more conversations happening around those things that are ultimately in alignment with your business strategy. And that is the way that we see marketing and business strategy aligning. So I think with that, we're going, and by the way, you can email us. You can also give us a call. And with that, we're going to take some questions.

Rebecca:

Awesome. Thank you. I'm going to jump to a question that's been sitting in our chat for a minute. Jeremy is asking, do you, One Firefly, take the time to make sure that all dealers in the same region, have marketing and images that are unique to each company? I've seen a lot of business sites that look the same.

Ron:

Yeah, I'll jump into that. So the first opinion from us as your marketer is that you should have beautiful photography and video of your team and your projects. In fact, as you're designing your plan for 2025, strongly recommend you earmark some dollars for photography and videography. So that the content from your projects, which is exclusively yours and exclusively unique, will exist on your website and on your social platforms. And that is always best. What then there's, there's layers to this game. What then let's say Lutron Lutron provides wonderful beautiful assets and it is exclusive to Lutron dealers that are allowed to use those assets, but there might be more Lutron dealers in your marketplace. So you might see beautiful imagery used by different people in your marketplace. The same, there are classes of videography from one firefly. So we call it our media gallery content. We referenced that we've done video shoots at various Lutron facilities and projects. And we have, I can confidently say dozens of videos that look beautiful on our client websites. In fact, they're the only destination for that media. Only if you've purchased a One Firefly site. And so when you've built a website with us, our team has a proactive step in the process of evaluating other websites we might have built for people in your marketplace. And if we're successful, the answer is we might have done that. Then we're going to proactively look at their websites to make sure if you're utilizing our gallery content, we are trying to ensure that that content is unique and different. And so that's, that's, that's check. And then you get into what are called stock imagery. There's different levels to the game of stock imagery. So there's exclusive stock imagery where we One Firefly have purchased the license to put that on client sites across the country. And then there are single use stock imagery. Maybe if we're really looking for something to accomplish a mission on a page, or on a social media application and we don't have it, we have many tens of thousands of images and videos, but let's say we don't have it, then you could also always purchase the exclusive right, usually in the neighborhood of five to 25 dollars per application to have that one off image. So it's if long as you're a good communicator with. Our team at One Firefly, we are going to work very diligently to make sure that the presentation of your brand in your marketplace is as fully unique as humanly possible, including all of the copy, all of the words, all of the content, all of the imagery, and all of the video. And if you ever see a case where that's not true, then just raise your hand, reach out to us, and we'll work with you to, to, you know, write anything that might need to be written.

Rebecca:

Yeah, Ron. I'm also going to ask this question that just came in because I think it is coming on the tail end of this first one. But does One Firefly have some sort of menu with marketing items that we're providing? A general menu would help a lot and then we could customize from there.

Ron:

It doesn't, and I'm just going to challenge you, and I, please don't throw tomatoes, but if you, if you have a client that meets with you and they ask you the integrator for a menu of items, you are probably not going to show them a list of pieces and parts and labor and show them applicable prices. Because what is appropriate for them probably depends on a lot of things. You need to learn about their needs, wants, budgets, timelines, project goals, experiences with past technology. All of those same types of information you need to know about your customers is applicable to us as your marketing consultants and advisors. We don't sell pieces and parts from a menu because you might buy something from us and then you might not accomplish the goal. And then you might think poorly that One Firefly didn't take good care of you. And the reality is you might have incorrectly prescribed what you needed, based on your understanding. And so at least our approach is to do our best to offer you advice. And even if that advice is at different levels, but managing expectations as to what you might expect to happen or result from those different levels of activities. Kendall, did you also raise your hand there?

Kendall:

I just wanted to add one additional thing. If you're looking even just for a little bit of marketing education on the types of marketing that we do, our website is a really good resource along with our case studies. So our case studies are going to do a little bit better of job of kind of bridging that gap between. Here's the challenge. Here's the solution. And here are the things we implemented to meet that person's goals. So that would be another good place to look to kind of just see how we're applying pieces and parts towards goals and solutions.

Ron:

Yeah, and I'll just give another random factoid. I mean, you could partner with One Firefly and maybe use our review product, and maybe it's a hundred dollars a month, and that's the entirety of your relationship with what you want assistance with. Or you might build, or you might work with us and have a fully integrated digital marketing strategy and you're spending $5,000 a month on a digital marketing strategy. So it's, it just, it runs the spectrum. We do have low dollar, low cost products and services. That is true, but it's really a matter of attaching that recommendation to what you're hoping to achieve from that effort.

Rebecca:

Thank you. Thank you. And yeah, thanks, guys, for asking questions. You can keep dropping them if you have a couple minutes to hang on. We do have one. How important is the accuracy and order of listings on a manufacturer's website? And do consumers really use this function?

Ron:

Importance. Maybe I'll just give a high level answer. And then, Kyle, if you want to add some clarity as it relates to the directory finder on your site. At a high level, we find one of the highest types of referring sites for traffic into our clients websites are the directory listings on manufacturer sites. So the idea is you want to make sure that your business name, address, phone number, and website URL is accurately listed. And then probably with Lutron, your, your dealer grade is accurately listed as you understand it on the Lutron site. So that a homeowner, if they do land there or a trade partner, if they land there, when they're looking for options, they are going to traffic over to your website from there. And so high level that's actually within our SEO services. That's one of the first things we do as a part of our backlink strategy with our clients is make sure their directory listings are accurate.

Kyle:

And then on the Lutron side, there are a couple of different variables that actually go into what, what integrator or what dealer is served up when somebody does search for find somebody local or find a dealer. So there's things like the specific zip code or the city or state, or any other qualifying notes that they put into the search function. If you do have a specific question or concern about your company showing up, please reach out. We're happy to look at that, but there are a couple of different variables that go into that, but we do make sure that it's pulling from our database and, serving up the dealers that we have in our system.

Ron:

Awesome.

Rebecca:

Great. I think I hit questions. If I missed anyone's, please feel free to redrop it. I was trying to check between two places at once, and so, Hopefully I didn't miss anything, but if not, we are about 10 minutes over our time limit. And, so I think we'll let you guys go and Ron and Kendall, I'll let you wrap up.

Ron:

Awesome. I'll just, I'll say thank you, Kendall and Rebecca and Kyle and LJ. You guys are all rock stars. Thanks for being partners in crime here to put this webinar on. And it was our honor to spend all the time with all of you in attendance. Kendall, do you want to say any parting words?

Kendall:

No, thank you. I love how involved we love. It's hard when you're virtual to have that kind of back and forth. So we love seeing the chat, and people really interacting and asking great, great questions. So thanks for spending an hour with us.

Ron:

Kyle, you want to close this out?

Kyle:

Yeah, just thanks again everyone for joining us today. I know it's the middle of the day, the start of the week, so we appreciate your time. And Ron and Kendall and Rebecca and LJ, thank you guys as always. So, any more questions that come up, you know how to find all of us and we look forward to hearing from you all soon. Thanks again.

Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing in the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.

Resources and links from the interview:

• 2025 Business Planning Worksheet
• 5-Minute Marketing: SEO Video Series