Why “How Many?” is the Best Question to Ask

How many people are there in your market? I mean REALLY how many?

So you market kitchen design- how many kitchens and bathroom were built last year? Of these, how many were renovations and how many were new builds? Of these, how many were in apartments and how many in detached houses? Of these, how many are inhabited by the person who is going to live with the final product?

In an age of marketing metrics, there is often suprisingly little time for professional marketers to spend with their own industry or market data. When we at Universal Media Co present to a room of marketers in the kitchen business, it is often the very top-line facts that seem to create the most excitement and attention.

So- how many? About 603,000 kitchens and bathroom projects are built each year. 220,000 are in new homes, and about half of those are in new apartment buildings. The 383,000 left are renovations. The HIA estimates 150,000 kitchens and 233,000 bathrooms will be built in 2019/20. The may be duplication in these two figures as many renovations contain both rooms in one project.

If your product is for the self-selecting renovator, as opposed to the architect designing a multi-unit block, then you are dealing with a fairly distinct market. If you are selling localised services that market, the kitchen or bathroom design, it’s even more distinct if there are on average 12,500 kitchen renovation projects starting each month nationally, which means just over 4000 per month in NSW, 3000 in Vic or 2500 in Qld.

These market realities often jar against marketing metrics. Using the kitchen designer as an example, if their radio campaign delivered 100,000 listeners last month, and their digital campaign reached 25,000 views last month, we are asking does it really matter in a market that might grow by 4000 per month? At Universal Media Co, when we’re working with the Sydney-based kitchen designer we are interested in reaching the 4000- effectively, efficiently and with impact.

We also have to consider the work involved in targeting a market. If search volumes for derivations of ‘Kitchens Sydney’ deliver 18,000 views per month in a market that only starts 4000 projects a month, we have to ask why and what intentions are actually behind those searches. How many early-stage, low-conversion clicks do we have to pay for before someone is ready to step into a showroom? How much time do we have to put into removing ‘Kitchen-hand Jobs’ or ‘Dessert Kitchens’ before we get to the true result?

As marketers, however, we must take an interest in real industry data as it applies to our own markets.

At Universal Media Co our approach is to know the market size and look at it by behaviour. We see relevant purchasing behaviour as a great indicator of other purchasing behaviour. We use this approach to sell magazines online at key times of the year, and we use this approach to get results for our customers. Who wants to see irrelevant ads anyway?

Once you’ve pinpointed the audience, it’s about looking closer and seeing what they are doing. Markets tend to reveal themselves by behaviour. As consumers get closer to a project, their search patterns change entirely. They move from just browsing images to hunting for facts. Our mission at Universal Media Co is to find them and make our customers look brilliant at the time they are most actively looking. This means having the discipline of a real market. If the Sydney kitchen market only expands by 4000 kitchen renovations a month, we should stop looking at how many thousands of people we can reach and start looking at how many touch-points we can deliver to the portion of the market that is exhibiting the greatest engagement right now. That might be the 4000 people you really want to market to.

References for the Housing Market

For the Kitchen & Bathroom Market specifically, Click Here for a top-line HIA Report

The HIA Economic Unit are an excellent source for a number of studies on the home market.  For a quick reference Click Here.

The Reserve Bank of Australia also has some good resources. Click Here

The Housing Updates from the ABS are also of value.  Click Here.