Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing Strategies For Interior Designers That Work!

By Just Digital Team
digital-marketing-for-interior-designers

There is a huge market of people on the internet who adore interior design. You see it everywhere on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and other pages dedicated to the art of interior design. It’s the perfect place to market your work and get seen. You have the opportunities laid out in front of you, you just have to do the work to get started. Interior design marketing is crucial if you want to get a steady stream of incoming leads and grow your business. In this article, we give you marketing strategies that are sure to help you with just that!

For over 12 years, Just Digital has been helping companies achieve sustainable growth, including interior designers and similar industries. Here are our 9 interior design marketing strategies that actually work.

interior-designer-marketing

 

You can be one of the three types of readers:

  1. First, you’re an interior designer who’s new to the digital marketing sphere. You’re doing research and gathering information to help you decide which route to take. You might be skeptical of the power of digital marketing or you’re feeling overwhelmed by the learning curve, doubting if you could actually do it.
  2. Second, you’re an interior designer that has a digital marketing strategy put in place, but it generates no results. You may be feeling lost and helpless because you’ve put all of the time, effort, and money into this marketing strategy only for it to go down the drain.
  3. Third, you’re an interior designer who already has a rocking digital marketing strategy that converts and delivers results, but you want to update your knowledge and try to even make your strategy better.

If you’re either one of these, then we can start by reinstating the importance of digital marketing or marketing, in general, is to your interior design business or firm.

Interior design is an industry that can benefit a lot from digital marketing. For example:

  • There is a huge market constantly searching on the internet for an interior designer. We can’t deny that there is a high volume of inquiries, the average monthly search volume for the keyword interior designer alone reaches 12,000. This fact alone shows that not being present online is already a huge loss.
  • An effective marketing plan/strategy can get you a higher spot on SEO ranks. It’s the ticket to getting more clients because you’ll be on the first page of Google’s search results page. That spot will put you miles away from the competition.
  • Digital marketing done right can help you establish your authority and credibility online. Once users see your website ranked on the first page, they will flock to your site. It’s engraved in their minds that the websites on the first page of search results are the most credible and reliable, so you’ll get even more leads that can turn into conversions.
  • Two words: Brand recognition. Having a strong online presence will lead users to your door (or website for this situation).

There are many many more benefits digital marketing has to offer interior designers, but at the end of the day, the most important one is gaining new clients. So, without further ado, here are 9 digital marketing strategies for interior designers that actually work.

Interior Design Marketing:

Establish a clear branding identity

“Determine who you are and what your brand is, and what you’re not. The rest of it is just a lot of noise.”

– Geoffrey Zakarian

Before we dive in, I want you to answer these questions.

  1. What do you want people to know you for?
  2. What’s your vision for your business?
  3. What are the core values of your interior design business?
  4. What’s your ideal visual identity?

These are 4 questions that you should take some time to ponder about your brand.

What do you want people to know you for?

You need to have a niche and a field of expertise. Are you a mod designer? The kind that designs glamorous mansions and offices? Ore, are you all about vintage pieces? Pick a niche, an expertise, what you truly want to be known for, then embody it. Embrace your identity.

What’s your vision for your business?

Ask yourself what your goal is.  What’s your purpose for starting an interior design business/firm? You have to be clear on that. Ask yourself important questions, create a vision board, a short and long-term plan for your business. This will be your guideline. Once you have this, making future decisions will be easier because it all goes back to your vision/goal. Everything you’re going to be doing in the future should help you achieve your ultimate goal and turn it into a reality.

What are the core values of your interior design business?

Your brand is an extension of yourself. It’s present in everything you do, in the minds of your clients (past, present, and future), your past work, your website, social media, everywhere. The characteristics of your brand will refer to you.

The identity and personality of your brand are deciding factors for future clients. All of the most successful brands have distinct personalities, core values, and stories. People resonate with these types of brands.

Write down keywords that could potentially serve as your brand attributes or core values. Once you’re clear on your values and brand attributes, you can easily develop a marketing plan that reflects those values and attributes.

What’s your visual identity?

Once you’ve established everything above, you can easily decide on your visual style. This includes the fonts you use, the colors you choose, the photos, all the visual elements that will reflect your brand. It’s also one factor that sticks to the minds of your clients. If they see your aesthetic and they like it, chances are they will remember you and immediately think you’re credible.

Check out this blog for more thoughts on brand identity and logos.

Interior Design Marketing Tips

Embrace and embody your brand

Remember, your brand is an extension of yourself. You need to love your brand so much that you’re willing to embrace it, embody it, and even fight for it.

Other than that, you need to add value to your brand so it becomes deeper than the aesthetic appeal of your work. Think of it as the soul of your brand.

Consistency is key

A consistent brand image increases brand awareness and recognition. If you want people to remember you, you need a consistent brand image. This includes your website, social media profiles, email signature, business cards, even your actual office, and yourself.

Let me give you two examples:

MZPA

MZPA is an interior design company that specializes in wood pieces. They create objects that accentuate well-being.

As you can see, MZPA is very consistent with their branding. Their website and social media platforms complement each other. The colors are the same and so are the fonts. Everything is minimalistic and calm with pops of wood pieces here and there. It’s calming yet professional and chic at the same time.

MUUTO

Interior Design Marketing

MUUTO’s designs are rooted in Scandanavian design traditions of simplicity, functionality and craftsmanship. Using forms we’re already familiar with, MUUTO innovates the designs by using new materials and techniques to create their modern take.

MUUTO is another great example of an interior design company that has a consistent branding identity. It’s all minimalistic with pops of color. Everything seems modern and contemporary. The brand conveys quirkiness, yet remains professional.
Those two examples have very different branding identities, but they both do a great job of staying consistent.

Interior Design Marketing:

Do your research!

For this particular section, I want you to focus on doing research for your target audience.

Consumer research is a type of market research that goes deep into the psyche of your target audience. You’ll know their buying behaviors, like their preferences, and motivations.

You can gather the data by observing the market, surveys and questionnaires, interviews, or past research material.

I can’t stress how important this is. You simply can’t sell your services if you don’t know who you’re selling to. You need to know what your clients really want, not what you think they want.

Find out about their problems and pain points, then provide them with your solutions. You need to know what makes them tick and use it as leverage.

Interior Design Marketing:

Target your audience

After you’re done with your consumer research, it’s time you learn how to target them.

There are many ways to target your preferred clients, you can:

  • Use keywords
  • Decide on a tone of voice
  • Produce relevant and valuable content
  • Targeted ads
  • Referral marketing
  • Social media

Whatever you do, make sure it speaks to your target audience. It should resonate with them and they should feel like you understand them and their pains.

Interior Design Marketing:

Create a website that represents you!

These days, websites are an absolute must-have. A website is a digital representation of you, sort of like an online showroom. With that being said, you must have a website that can truly embody and represent your brand.

Think of your website as a room you’re designing for yourself. You can work with a web designer and developer to make your vision a reality.

The better your aesthetics, the more people will want to engage and interact with your website. As a designer, you’d want your art to be showcased in the best way possible.

Aside from the aesthetics, think about the user experience. Put yourself in the shoes of the prospective client and try to think the way they think. Users want a smooth experience when it comes to using websites.

Another thing you can do is to take a look at your competitor’s website, observe how users interact with their website, and see how you can improve that experience.

If you’d like to have a discussion about working on your website with us, feel free to check us out!

What you need for your website:

  • An aesthetically pleasing design
  • Smooth user experience (easy to navigate, loads fast, does not lag, etc.)
  • Optimized for all screens, desktop or mobile devices.
  • Represents your brand and core values
  • Portfolio of your previous work
  • About Page
  • Contact Page
  • Call to action
  • Links to social media channels

Poliform

We love Poliform’s sleek website. Everything looks rustic and it ties together with the brand. The website is easy to navigate, loads fast,  showcases their work, and has all important information easily accessible. It’s simply wonderful!

Interior Design Content Marketing

Want to increase your SEO rank? Want to get noticed online? Then produce content!

Content marketing is an extremely effective marketing strategy that’s amazing for generating leads.

The best thing about content marketing is that you’re allowed to share your expertise, ideas, knowledge, and work with your target audience. Aside from providing value to your audience, you also get to establish your authority.

Sharing valuable content will attract new people to your business, and will get your old clients to keep coming back for more.

Here are a few different types of content you can create for your audience:

  • Blog Posts (how to’s, tips, tricks, etc.)
  • Multimedia (photos, videos, graphics, illustrations, infographics)
  • Podcasts
  • Emails
  • Ebooks
  • Lead Magnets
  • Newsletters
  • Webinars
  • Quizzes/checklists/tools
  • Resources
  • Social media posts

Apartment Therapy is a great example to look at for content ideas. They also post how to’s blogs, DIY’s, home tours, pretty much everything you need to know!

Make Social Media Profiles

Social media is the best place to engage with your audience and to post photos of your work. Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest are the best and most popular social media platforms to reach people within your niche.

Use your accounts to post valuable and mindful content. Each platform has a different environment. With that being said, try to adapt to how your audience uses each one.

This is what most interior designers do wrong. Consequently, they end up failing to gain clients via social media. You have to be strategic! Know which platforms are the best to use and find out the behavior of your audience on each platform.

TIP: Be careful and mindful of the content you post. Make sure it provides value to your client, otherwise, social media will just be a waste of time and effort.

Make sure to post content on a regular basis so you stay on top of the mind of your followers. Remember, the more you post, the more you are exposed to people!

We’re loving Herrklar’s Instagram feed! It’s fun, quirky, engaging, and most of all – it represents him!

Interior Design Marketing:

Localized and targeted ads

It’s a given fact that interior design is a geographically-based business, unless you’re an interior designer up for traveling. Even if you are, it’s still a good idea to target an audience already near you.

Maximize your local brand presence by registering your business on Google My Business, Yelp, Bing Places for business, etc. Once you’ve registered, make sure you then add in all of your information like your address, links to your website and social media accounts, and contact information. Remember to also update these ever so often.

Another way to effectively reach your audience is via targeted ads on Google or social media. You can make use of the advanced targeting features that allow you to customize the location, age, buyer persona, interests, dislikes, etc.

This way, you won’t be spending ad budget on people who aren’t interested.

One more tip is to track your ads. Doing this will make optimizing your ads easier and faster.

Interior Design reviews and referral marketing

No marketing or advertising campaign can beat the power of the word of mouth. Referrals can also be the lifeblood of your interior design business.

In fact, survey results show that 85% of designers say word of mouth is very effective at gaining new clients.

Referrals

The best way to go about asking for referrals is to simply ask. Give them your business card and tell them they can contact you if they or any of their family/friends are looking for an interior designer. As long as you ask and say it politely, there won’t be any shame.

Reviews

Just like referrals, the best way to ask for reviews is to just ask. Reviews are a great section to add to your website, and a great piece of content to post on your social media accounts every now and then.

“Almost two-thirds of shoppers think that online reviews are an essential part of the decision-making process.”

Smith Willas

Good reviews on your website could seal the deal for many users. Therefore, make sure to include this in your interior design marketing strategy.


Alderman Bushé Interiors has an entire separated page on their website for testimonials and reviews alone.

Houzz has played a big role in driving leads to interior design businesses. It’s an online community for architects, interior designers, decorators, and also home improvement enthusiasts.

The website gets over 30 million visitors coming to their site per month to get inspiration and find professionals.

Interior Design Marketing

Setting up a Houzz account will help you attract individuals who are looking for your services. It’s a platform where you can advertise, connect with past, present, and future clients.

It’s just like another social networking site, but this time it’s fully made for people within your niche! There’s many more interesting features on this site, if you wanna learn more, go set up an account now.

Conclusion

Right now, you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed with the bucket load of information. You may even be doubting if all of this is worth the work, and let me tell you that it is.

All in all, we know you have a lot on your plate, you’re juggling clients and have so much more to worry about than marketing for your interior design business.

If you know you need help to kickstart your interior design marketing plan, reach out to us! Just Digital is a digital marketing agency that serves businesses like yours. We’ve helped many interior designers grow, and we can help you!

Contact us and see if we’re the right digital marketing agency partner for your business.


With Just Digital,
Success is Easy-Peasy Lemon-Squeezy.

When life gives us lemons, we generate results. Contact us today and we can start making lemonade.

Get Started