Getting your house designed by an Interior Designer is in vogue and this business is slated to grow at a significant rate for the next 5 - 7 years. There are many players in this business as the entry barrier is low. Given the rising trend in business and many number of players an Interior Designer must improve her marketing effort to stand out from the rest.
Here is what Interior Designers can do to market themselves in 2021
1. A Specific Niche
The day of the generalist is over. Now we have the era of specialists. The more expertise you have on one area of business the better. The more you can cater to one type of client, the better. The specialist commands more price. This is the most important thing that interior designers need to understand.
Here are some examples of a Niche for Interior Designers:
- 2 Bedroom Houses for double income nuclear families
- Small houses for large extended families
- Luxurious houses for entertaining purposes
- Houses to be used for rentals on AirBnB
- Small Offices with maximum seating capacities
- Large offices with lavish landscaping
- Restaurants
And so on....
A niche is defined as a group of people with a specific set of challenges or problems that you can solve.
The benefits of selecting a Niche and then build your expertise in that, and be known for that are many:
- You will be a big fish in your small pond. This is so much better than being a small fish in a large pond and get lost.
- You will understand your customers and their pains much better and hence be able to talk their language and project your expertise
- The more work you do in one area of expertise, the better you become. The better you become, the more testimonials you get. This will help you to attract more customers of the same type.
So pick a Niche and specialize in it. Then market yourself as an expert in that Niche
2. Website
A website is an absolute must. Everyone and their dog checks you online before they sign up with you. A WordPress website works well. It needs a little bit of know how to set up a website that generates leads and sales for you.
Most Designers are creative people in love with aesthetics and so they have a very beautiful looking website. The challenge with such creative beautiful websites are, that they do nothing to speak to the prospects and doesn't engage them in any way. They are standard and every Interior Designer has similar websites. These websites don't work to generate leads or sales. The reason they don't work is because - At any given time only 3% prospects are ready to buy now. The rest need over 8 - 32 touch points to buy. So the website must do something to capture the information of all the people who come to the website. That way we could send them regular emails over a sustained period so that the relationship is warm and when they are ready to buy, they think of you and reach out to you for a quote thus giving you a chance to sell.
Here are some key points to look at while designing a website:
3. Professional Approach
I can't emphasize on this enough. I see a lot of interior designers doing these common mistakes that take them away from appearing professional. Here are some key aspects that you need to take care of.
Appearance. Dress professionally. If you are design a property that's a few hundred thousand dollars, then please dress like owner of a property of that value. People make up to 13 different judgments based on your appearance alone and you must put your best foot forward.
Visiting Card. Invest in a classy looking visiting card rather than those cheap printed in 30 minutes cards. Your visiting cards is the one thing that will keep reminding your prospects of you much after you've finished the meeting.
Email. Please ensure that you block a domain with your or your organizations name. Have a professional email id on this domain. It is inexpensive. It creates a huge impression.
Don't have email ids like
- yourname@gmail.com
- yourname349@gmail.com
Instead a professional id could be like:
- design@yourcompanyname.com
- yourname@yourorg.com
4. Social Media Profiles
Create your social media profiles professionally. You must do a little bit of research on how you can optimize your profiles. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube are the ones that work well for interior designers. If you are a commercial interior designer then add LinkedIn to your kitty. Pinterest goes a long way too keep some interesting and exciting photos of your work alive.
Once your page is setup (or if you already have a page) follow these steps to optimize your page for success.
Here are 5 key points to remember for Social Media.
5. Content Marketing
You have to establish yourself as the number 1 choice in your prospects mind. We can easily achieve this through content marketing. When people read content written by you and if the content adds a lot of value to your audience, then it creates your image as an authority in your field. Slowly and consistently people seek your content and you become an sought after name in your industry. Here are some avenues of content marketing.
All of this not as difficult as it sounds. Once you learn to do this then it becomes easier and easier. Anyways all of this works well if it is done consistently and it compounds over a period time.
7. Lead Capture & Lead Nurturing
Lead magnets are the best way to separate those who are your target audience from the ones who are not. Lead magnets get people to raise their hands say "yes, I am interested in what you have to offer" and thereby express interest in what you do. A lead magnet is also called as an ethical bribe. It is a piece of content that is valuable to your audience and they would happily exchange their contact details to get the lead magnet. For an interior designer some lead magnets could be in the form of:
Once a document like this is prepared, the interior designer can distribute this document in exchange of an email id. Then send regular emails to the people on the list of various valuable ideas in decorating and designing their property. What this will do is it will create top of the mind recall for the interior designer. So when the prospect is ready to hire an interior designer, more of then than not they will think of the one who sends them valuable content every week.
As an interior designer, you could distribute your lead magnet in the following places:
The more this document is distributed, the better your reach will be. The more you collect email IDs, the more you can nurture the relationship. Sending regular emails on a periodic basis, say weekly or daily would give you that much more visibility. 3 out of every 4 emails should provide value and then the 4th one can be a sales offer and this will help you generate a regular flow of enquiry.
8. Google My Business
For any local business, this is becoming a big platform. Google my business listing is easy and free. Getting your customers to rate you and leave a testimonial is a relatively easy affair on GMB. The better your ratings, the more people who use your services and comment on GMB the better your ranking. Google search results show GMB results right at the top. That means on a search page with the term that is relevant to you, your business could be right at the top of the Google Search Page. 90% of the business goes to the top 3 results on a Google search page.
This is an absolute must as it gives you a chance to direct customers to your office, to your website and share all contact details. They could write in or call you instantly.
9. Get Client Reviews & Testimonials
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10. Pain Killer Marketing
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11. Joint Ventures
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12. Go Virtual
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