KitchenBathChannel.com offers a suite of marketing tools for K&B pros that includes a YouTube video channel and an application for smart phones to help consumers find K&B professionals in their area. The app is built on three platforms — Droid, Blackberry, and iPhone — and uses the phone’s geo-locator to find professionals within a 50-mile radius of the app user’s current location.
Creators Phil Zaleon, president of Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Z Promotion & Design, a marketing agency focusing on the kitchen and bath industry, and Max Isley, owner of Hampton Kitchens of Raleigh, in Wake Forest, N.C., want to promote the app to consumers as a convenient directory tool when they’re shopping for kitchen and bath projects and products. The app provides a free listing — address and phone number — of 15,000 professionals, as well as paid subscription levels for designers and remodelers. The $200 per year gold membership offers one-touch buttons that allow the consumer to call, e-mail, or click through to the professional’s website; a button that allows consumers to add the professional to their contacts; directions to the K&B professional’s location; and if the pro does not have a showroom, the ZIP codes and cities where they provide services. The platinum subscription costs $300 annually and, in addition to the gold subscription services, offers benefits such as the ability to include up to five photos and five videos with the listing.
Pro subscribers can categorize their companies by room/specialty (kitchen, bath, deck, etc.), and by the products they carry (cabinets, countertops, etc.).
The creators hope that as more consumers visit the site, KitchenBathChannel.com will increasingly become a destination for homeowners, driving more consumers to K&B pros via the app.
This is a longer version of an article that appeared in the June 2011 issue of REMODELING.
