Marketing Strategy for an Interior Design Business -

By: Karen Anglas & Camila Antia

Interior design study and work with the artistic, creative, and technical principles involved in putting together inviting and appealing indoor spaces. Interior designers work with many areas like textiles, color theory, and furniture design, as well as architectural technology, property management, and more.

But, how can you make a Marketing Strategy Plan to get more clients, more projects and let everybody know you are the best option in the field? We will tell you how!

Photo by Max Vachtbovych for Pexels

MEASURING SUCCESS

If you want to measure your success (because you WILL succeed) you need to take note of where you start. It doesn’t matter if you start from zero, you have a big opportunity in front of you, and you have to take the chance.

SMART GOALS

As the Corporate Finance Institute writes, Goals are part of every aspect of business and life, and provide a sense of direction, motivation, a clear focus, and clarify of importance. By setting goals, you are providing yourself with a target to aim for. A SMART goal is used to help guide goal setting. SMART is a word that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Therefore, a SMART goal incorporates all of these criteria to help focus your efforts and increase the chances of achieving your goal.

Miro App has a SMART goals template you could use to get ready before starting your marketing strategy plan.

Smart Goals Template by Miro

You might also find it useful to write down short and long-term goals, later in the road, you could compare these with your starting point. Here are some examples, but you can find your own, according to your business characteristics.

Short term goals:

Increase the followers and interactions on social media channels 1000 at the end of the month
Implementing at least 3 new ideas or projects.
Signing 2 customers per month

Long term goals:

Build relationships with previous customers and get one customer per week.
Grow the social media network with a YouTube channel
Rise the number of employees for a better job distribution

Also, last year, Kate O’Hara, CEO of O’Hara Interiors share an article with 5 Goals for Interior Design Entrepreneurs as:

Start with your bottom line.
Move to your top line.
Be a better place to work.
Get your brand out there.
Educate yourself.

Image by Macrovector for Freepik

Digital Strategy to improve your plan!

Social Networks are bigger than we thought, more than contact with friends and sharing news or memes, social networks are perfect to gain some new customers, clients, and business proposals. That’s why it is so important to have your social media always on top.

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and even TikTok are amazing weapons to get closer to potential customers, to expand your brand, and let people get in touch with your amazing work. Remember to use hashtags in your posts, they can improve the views of them.

Don’t forget about Google My Business, this is the best way to put yourself in the top of the searches when people google for an Interior Designer.

Take a lot of photos of your work: Now it’s time to make cool posts about them on your social media channels. You can improve the quality of your photos and edit them using these apps:

– Lightroom

– Snapseed

– Picsart

– VSCO

– A color story

With those photos, you can use simple apps and tools to create amazing posts to show your work and creativity. Canva and Crello are so easy to work with, that you could do great posts from scratch. Also if you record some videos, you can use CapCut or Video Leap to create new material for your website or stories on Instagram.

We know you can do it great but if you need a hand, the best you can do is to start a course with us! This Digital Marketing Master for Entrepreneurs™ MENTORING PROGRAM would be the best for you.

Identifying your target market

Photo by Master1305 on Freepik

Identifying a target market helps your company develop effective marketing communication strategies. A target market is a set of individuals sharing similar needs or characteristics that your company hopes to serve. These individuals are usually the end users most likely to purchase your product.

Understanding customer needs and wants will help you to focus just on the buyer persona.
Determining who is your target market will help you to easily make decisions about what marketing methods to use for attracting new customers, and how to add additional value to your product/ service.

Photo by Master1305 for Freepik

This exercise could help you imagine your ideal client based on what you are offering as a professional and as a business:

What’s her/his name? Is he/she married or has children? What’s his/her profession? Does he/she live in a house, apartment, chalet, duplex? What does she/he do in her/his free time? Which social media apps does he/she use? (You can add many more questions you could find interesting and useful)

Now, stand on this person’s feet and imagine YOU are them, and then ask yourself these questions:

What does she/he look for when she/her wants to buy a product or contract a service? What does she/he want to get? What does she/he want to avoid? Why is she/he has doubts about buying or contracting this service? How would she/he feel or do if she/he gets what they want?

This little homework will help you mentalize your potential client and try to find out what she/he wants so you can work on what they need. This also could inspire your blog or media content, so you can tell a story to anyone out there reading you.

Know your competition

Looking at my competition – When you are doing your research take a good look at these subjects: How they reach their public? Is their website or channels attractive? They invite you to look for more or contact them? Is it easy to navigate through them? Do they offer any special prices or promotions?

About their social media: Which apps do they use? How do they use them? How do they react in front of negative comments? Do they share only their content or they share other content too? (other specialists, reports, memes, polls, etc.)

Put a lot of effort into your BRANDING

Branding is absolutely important to your business because of the overall impact it makes on your business. According to Brandigmag, “Branding can change how people perceive your brand, it can drive new business, and increase brand value – but it can also do the opposite if done wrongly or not at all”. Now, read this quote:

Of course you want all the community to think about how good your work is, the positive role you have in society as a worker. So here, a tip could be to start working with artisans in your city, people doing their own fabric or furniture, small businesses that work with ecological material to take care of the Planet.

Your business has its own personality. It’s a good start to think about your company’s vision, mission, values… what you are, and what you aren’t. Your business has its own DNA, so be true to it through all this marketing plan.

Look for what makes you different from your competition

Try to always be aware of new trends in Interior Design. Year by year, trends change, and others come back from the past. Also, in digital marketing a good way to follow and see new trends in public searching is using Google Trends, this tool helps you related subjects in Interior Design and you can customize your research by the country or city you are working in.

Here you can see a short video of the Interior Design Trends for 2021, hope it could help you!

YouTube Link Channel: Posh Pennies

Interior designers work closely with architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, and construction laborers, and helpers to determine how interior spaces will function, look, and be furnished. Try making a directory with the best contacts you have, introduce yourself and your social media accounts to them, tag them when you work together and make a working web wider for both of you.

Excellent customer attention: Make your best to have a better interaction with your potential clients, be empathic (and patient), nice, and educated. WhatsApp Business or Facebook Business Suite gives you many options of fast replies when a client asks you a question when they try to reach you for the first time. Always check the personalized options about automatic replies and try to follow the conversation yourself when you have to give important information to the client. We don’t want to talk to robots, we want to hire a professional.

Earning your NCIDQ Certificate already sets you apart as competent. You’ve proven your ability to design safely for code regulated environments, like commercial projects. But it’s still up to you to show how this can bring a better return on investment for business clients.

Good customer attention leads to excellent reviews, in many social media apps it’s really important for a new client to see real comments about your work. That improves the possibility to gain more trust.

IMC (INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS) / CREATIVE DESIGNS

Social media is developing faster than ever. Everyone knows how important social media is, and the big change it’s making in our lives.

Our decisions and behaviors have been drastically influenced by different media channels, clearly digital content is heading towards the future creating a huge impact in society. This is a big advantage for all the businesses out there trying to promote themselves. Therefore, it’s become easier to get to our customers’ minds and project a message effectively and efficiently. However, competence is even higher, now that we are all trying through the same strategies.

This integrated marketing communications strategy will help you succeed within the interior design industry.

Having a powerful website: It offers the user convenience as they can access the information whenever they want. Easy and quick exchange of communication between seller and buyer. Creates credibility and a faster customer service.

Keep in mind: – Has to be user friendly – Accessible in all devices

– Add call to actions – Visible contact information

Portafolio (BEHANCE is a great choice): According to Fobes Professional portfolios are a fantastic way to highlight your successes as well as demonstrate your ability to grow. Showing your portfolio on your website will elevate trust with your customers and will create an idea of the style of your work

Social media: Social media channels are supplemental to the brand’s website and, if there is one, its brick-and-mortar location. It also helps you to drive more traffic to your website, increasing engagement between your audience and your brand. Social media is meant to build relationships with your customers and make them fall in love with your work.

Instagram
Facebook
Tik Tok
Pinterest

3. Influencers: People that are highly recognized in social media have the advantage to spread their voice to thousands of people of a specific niche that believe and trust in them. This is a powerful strategy to make someone show and promote your work and make everyone know that it’s good and worth it.

4. Personalize your business card: Have some on your wallet for any time you meet a possible client, but also have a virtual version of it, so you can send it to anyone who needs your services.

4. SEO with organic content:

Search engine optimization is important because businesses can use this technology to create a page that ranks well for terms related to their industry.

Carefully create your website and social media content with accurate keywords that people are using in the area of your business. This is called organic content that helps your website to be highly visible as a trusted resource by Google and other search engines is always going to work in a brand’s favor. As marketers know, Google owns a significantly larger portion of the search market than competitors.

The higher you rank in results pages, the more clicks and traffic your site will generate. SEO also improves user experience, making it more likely for customers to become repeat buyers. All of this can be achieved when focusing in your website content.

We know you can do it!

Interior Design is an amazing career and Digital Marketing is the best match to get all the best of it with all the tools that we have. If you want to improve your social media interactions, content, and put yourself in the spotlight take a look at our learning leaf and we bet you will find what you’re looking for. Good luck in this awesome trip!