Stephen Alberts

Synchronous Solutions

In my last article, I spoke about non-traditional ways to grow your countertop shop in 2023. Some of them were focusing on voice search in Google, producing video content, getting uncomfortable, and also going above and beyond with reviews. I truly believe in when marketing your shop, if you put the effort in and do things just a little bit differently from the competition you will see great results. 

The problem is that you need a solid foundation. Your shop needs the basics and you shouldn’t be focusing on Google voice search results if your website looks like it’s from 1996! So in this article, I’m going to break down what you need in 2023 and what we’ve learned in 2022. We work with dozens of fabricators and we love looking at the data to develop ideas on how to improve our client’s campaigns. 


Post on your social media accounts with project pictures. Do that a few times a week and don’t stop. But you should be investing in Facebook and Instagram ads if you want to reach more retail customers. Your Website and Material

What we’ve learned in 2022 is that people want to look at material on your website. I sound like a broken record with this statement but it’s not what I believe, it’s what the data tells us. We have data from all of our client’s websites on what people visiting their sites are doing online. And every time that we build out a gallery of material on a client’s site, we find that people visiting their site spend a lot of time on those pages. The screenshot below explains it all. 

The / in the left column below represents a homepage, and most likely your homepage is the most visited page on your website. But the next pages are some material pages, and you can see people are spending 2X the amount of time on those pages! What does that mean? It means that they are looking through material pictures and investing more time on your website. 

Now, what if you don’t have material on your site? They will hit that back button and jump over to a competitor. 

The / in the left column represents a homepage

What we learned in 2022:People want to look at material. Invest in a decent website and show material you have on your website for visitors to look at online. It doesn’t have to be everything you have in stock, you want to give them ideas so they call you, and then you have your sales reps lead them down the path of figuring out the best product for their project.  


Facebook and Instagram Ads (with Price)

Facebook and Instagram AdsFacebook and Instagram ads work. You should post on your social media accounts with project pictures. Do that a few times a week and don’t stop. But you should be investing in Facebook and Instagram ads if you want to reach more retail customers. 

What works is putting a package out there and promoting it. We have shops that come to us and don’t want to put prices in the ads and that’s OK. But we do let them know that price yields better results in terms of getting leads through each platform. Your lead cost will generally go down if you include price in the ad. Develop a kitchen countertop package and promote it. We even promote porcelain shower packages for clients!

What we learned in 2022: Homeowners want to see price and a package. I wish I had a psychological explanation for this that makes me sound really smart but I don’t! What we do have is the data and the clients that let us promote price and packages, they get more leads than the ones that do not. And 95% of the time that lead cost is cheaper when price is included in the ad.


CRM’s and In-Home Measurements for the Win!

I beg you, if you are going to put money into any type of marketing for your countertop shop please invest in a CRM to manage the leads. It’s probably the biggest flaw we see in the industry. Some of the industry tools can be built out to manage your sales and there are also dozens of CRMs available. 

We work with a shop that is one of the best companies we have worked with in terms of following up and closing leads. I was speaking to the owner one day and picking her brain about what she does. And she does exactly this:

After a lead comes into our system she calls them right away. Part of our system is to send the lead an email and SMS message instantly so they are getting hit with a few messages quickly. 

She then schedules an in-home measurement. Out of the leads she gets, she schedules about 75% of appointments. 

Out of those 75% of appointments, she closes 50% of them.

Our CRM follows up with them automatically but they also follow up with phone calls. 

Those numbers are impressive! This company is a machine with their follow-up process and also the personal touch of the in-home estimate really resonates with people. We have clients that charge for in-home estimates but the numbers are much different than these.

What we learned in 2022: Your competition isn’t following up properly with leads and it’s a BIG opportunity for you to cruise right by them. You also don’t want systems and software to do everything. Pick up the phone and call each lead. And then have someone follow up with those leads with a proper CRM and on the phone. This personal touch will help you close more jobs. 



Stephen Alberts is the owner of the Countertop Marketing Co and STONE ENGAGE. They specialize in helping countertop companies grow the retail side of their business outside of word-of-mouth and referrals. They also offer software to help you engage more with customers and close more countertop projects. To learn more visit countertopmarketingco.com/ or stonengage.com. You can also email Stephen at steve@countertopmarketingco.com.