How To Market Your Interior Design Business Online? Here Are 18 Strategies

My cousin Reema has been running her interior design firm for almost 8 years now. She has relied mostly on her client’s word-of-mouth to get around all these years and somehow magically managed to do pretty well through just that. Though, I have been persuading her to go online for quite some time with her interior design marketing ideas, she has avoided it mostly by saying “I want to do it but no time now dear.” This was till the pandemic hit and her business experienced an unpleasant jolt much like every other business around the world. With almost every client cancelling or putting a stop to ongoing or planned projects, the world had suddenly changed.

As a small business owner, Reema knew she had to re-adapt to survive. The pandemic taught her that going online was more than just a need. It was a necessity. Also, like many small business owners who survived the pandemic, she realised the need for a brand presence online so she could reach beyond her references and attract diverse client across the country, and even beyond (for eg the needs of the Non-Resident Indian community). 

This is what the plan we gave her to market her interior business online. If you have been thinking of how to promote market your interior design company and trying to find the best interior design marketing strategies, you can copy this plan too.

Our Recommended Content Marketing Techniques will Help You 

• Increase brand awareness for your business
• Stand out from the competition
• Get more business through more visibility online

The goal here is to prove that you can offer better interior design than anyone else. When it comes to hiring an interior design firm, clients mostly rely on what work you have done before, your credentials, your references and largely your knowledge about the subject. This is where you need content marketing. Marketing your interior design business might look hard, but it will generate 3 times more leads than you generally would. 

Why Does My Interior Design Company Need Content Marketing?

Like my cousin Reema, many interior design businesses are happy to go by with the good old ways of doing business. But unfortunately, they’re leaving tons of money on the table, passing up tremendous growth opportunities to their competitors. If you aren’t in on it yet, chances are your competitors are using content marketing as a secret weapon against you, literally stealing your leads. Here are some of the things you’ll likely be missing out on if you haven’t got a content plan going yet for your interior design business

Reason 1: Increased Organic Traffic

When you learn how to market your interior design business through proper content-driven digital marketing, you put your business right up the noses of organic searchers who are actively looking up your type of interior design solutions. More traffic means more and more people are coming to know of your brand. There is more brand visibility and awareness. 

Reason 2: Relatively Higher Conversion

Content marketing might sound like a huge hassle compared to traditional marketing techniques like advertising, which seems more like plug and play. However, the extra effort is almost always worth it, sine online marketing generally is associated with comparatively higher returns. Organic search traffic usually comes with higher conversion rates, since most visitors who search for your services have already made up their mind to buy something. That’s because helpful content these days often generates higher conversion rates compared to paid ads. Your customers will be more willing to open up to you when you offer valuable information first before pitching your product unlike ads.  

Reason 3: Improve Your Credibility

Content marketing helps you build a stronger connection with your audience. By providing customers with the information they need to make good purchasing decisions, you earn a place in their heart. There’s never a shortfall of options for providing valuable content to prove your worth. For example, if someone is trying to search for “sofa design ideas”, “best kitchen designs”, “how to buy wooden furniture”, and you have put up blogs on topics like that, you are helping your buyer with valuable information. The reader registers your company in his mind, and enters your sales funnel. He is aware of your brand now. As he starts reading your blogs on a regular basis, and consumes your social media content, and downloads your ebook, and registers for a webinar that you have designed for home owners, he is slowly moving down the sales funnel and emerging as a lead.

Reason 4: Fast-track Your Marketing Results

Online marketing gives you greater control over your outcomes. You can accelerate your results by scaling your efforts in the right direction. Also, with the significantly higher conversion rates, it usually doesn’t take long before substantial results begin to trickle in. 

Reason 5: Establish Your Authority and Gain Competitive Edge

You can use content and marketing together to distinguish yourself as an interior designer. You can craft content that conveys your brand’s unique voice and creative flair. One simple strategy for building your authority is narrowing down your topic range to quickly gain traction in that sub-space. Doing so in multiple sub-niches can shorten your route to building overall domain authority, compared to going the general direction.

You can also use content to create a unique customer experience. For instance, you can do regular live videos on the latest trends for specific design arrangements like minimalist decoration, nature-based decor, etc. When your viewers begin going in for the specific design concept, guess who they’ll most likely turn to? 

Reason 5: Create an Auto-Pilot Sales Funnel

Content marketing is more or less a set-and-forget system. You can plan it out weeks or months ahead of time, and things will just fall into place once you’ve put in the required upfront work. For instance, an evergreen blog post can keep bringing in visitors and leads years after it was first published.

Reason 6: Establish an Active Community

Only a few things can be as fulfilling to an interior designer as the thought of an active community rallying around your brand. An active online community can help you bootstrap your product launches, source more leads, and propagate your brand awareness. They can also help out each other, serving as an extra customer support unit to help other customers work around their interior design issues.

Reason 7: Attract Self-Directed Customers

Online customers these days love to be self-directed, working things out at their own pace. They love to serve themselves without intervention from customer care or sales reps. Content marketing can help you put your brand in front of prospects whenever they look up anything related to their buyer journey. As such, they’ll most likely stick it out with your brand all the way, even while doing their own thing.

Reason 8: Woo Local Searchers

Content marketing puts your business on the local map, making it easier for customers within your locality to find your business. ‘Near me’ searches are proliferating at an astronomical rate, and content marketing is the most effective tool for securing a top spot on relevant local search result pages. 

18 Content Marketing Tips for Interior Designers

So how do you go about exploiting all these benefits? These 18 tips will help you market your interior design business and fast-track results.

1. Build or Refresh Your Brand’s Website  

A website is the best way to establish your authenticity and enable potential customers to contact you easily. Consider the website as your online business address. There are several free or affordable website building tools available these days, which you can use. If not, contact a reliable website development company to build you a website. Make sure you choose the right colours for your brand. 

Your website should ideally act as your sales person. Think about all the queries your customers ask, and make sure that all the answers are right there on the website. In short, your website should talk about your style, the kind of interior design services you offer, happy client testimonials, all your past projects, FAQs and your contact details. Better would be to have a lead generation form in the main pages of your website. The whole site should be easy to navigate, clean and crisp to view, and easy to read. Call to Action or CTAs are important too and should be positioned wisely so that visitors can sign up for emails, get a quote, view a case study or download a free. 

2. Start Blogging

Blogging is the easiest way to get in front of your target audience and also drive traffic to your website. A blog works as a vehicle of trust. It can act as a first touch point of communication with your audience who does not know you, or the second touch point of trust for someone who has already gone through your website or social media. If you can use your blog to address your buyer’s pain points and offer something of value that can help your buyer, you immediately stand to gain trust. When your buyer is still considering other options and still exploring other options (which means he is still in the middle of the funnel), your blog can act as a sales enabler by showing your work and case studies. This will push him a step further into your sales funnel, pushing him closer to a purchase. 

You can also use your blog at the last leg of the sales funnel, where the buyer is almost there and yet is looking for a more definite reason to convert his desire to purchase. You can do this by allowing your blog to talk about transactional topics, like cost, best prices, best discounts, best interior designers in your city etc. Hence, blog can work at various levels for your – at the top of the sales funnel to build brand awareness, at the middle of the sales funnel to cement the trust of the buyer, and finally at the bottom of the final to convince and convert the buyer. 

Recommended Reading: Easy Way to Understand The B2B Sales Funnel & How to Build One for More Sales

Just like your website, your blog should have a neat layout and be easy to navigate. Position CTA buttons cleverly so that visitors are prompted to sign up for your newsletter, head to your website, book an appointment or submit a query. WordPress, Wix, Joomla and Tumblr are among some well-known platforms that let you set up a blog easily. 

Here are some great interior design blogs to refer to – 

A blog run by a Toronto interior designer

The blog of Studio McGee, a Salt Lake city based interior design firm.

Closer home, you can check out 

Blog run by Mads Creations, one of the top firms in Gurgaon. 

Blog run by Design Pataki, an interior design studio based out of Mumbai.

Another interesting example is the Livspace blog. 

3. Implement an SEO Campaign

Finally, your business needs leads to stay afloat. And getting leads online means getting in front of your target audience, and building brand credibility. For your customer to be aware of your brand, register your brand in their mind, build trust, and finally place an order, they need to first find you online. For that, you need a good SEO campaign driven by content. Search engine optimisation is what will help your website rank on first page of Google search results, or as close to the top as possible. Since SEO covers a lot of things, which also includes technical aspects, its best to outsource it to an SEO agency or probably hire someone inhouse if you can afford it. Here is a handy article we have written for small businesses, based on our agency knowledge, on “How to Find Right Service Provider for Your Small Business SEO”.

If you are one of those business owners who is already putting out a lot of content and wondering why do SEO, please do read this article – “Why Content Marketing and SEO Needs to Work Together to Achieve the Best ROI?”

Alternatively, you are looking for more answers on how to implement an SEO-driven digital marketing campaign to grow your interior design business, then just reach out to us here.

4. Get More Local Clients with GMB Listing

Remember how you search when you are looking for a local doctor or a cake baker? You turn to Google local search results. This is how we appear if you search content marketing agencies near me. That is what is called Google My Business Listings. For example, this is ours. 

If someone wants to search for your brand (given that the customer knows your business’ name), your GMB listing will appear like this –  

With such a listing, any generic or specific search will have a better chance of showing up your business on the Google search results page. In a GMB listing, apart from your business’s name, you can include a short description, address, phone number, email ID, work hours and even reviews from clients. It is easy to add images to such listings too, so that searchers feel encouraged to check you out further. 

To read further about why a GMB listing is important for your business and how to use it more for leads, read this blog which we wrote keeping small businesses in mind – 

Google My Business in 2021: Why Do I Need It and How to Use It for More Leads?

5. Your Social Media Presence Matters

The role of social media platforms, especially like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and LinkedIn is critical for marketing your interior design business. That is because these social media platforms allow you to show your work to your potential clients and increase the reach of your brand. Among the above, I feel Instagram and Pinterest are amazing platforms to showcase your work, while Linkedin could be more used to build your network. 

We quickly look at the top 3 platforms you can use and how.

a. Instagram

The need for regular posting of good visual content is still important in Instagram since this platform has a sizeable amount of design conscious people. Videos, however, have become extremely important for increasing reach and engagement with your audience. For marketing your interior design business, you will need more videos of your work, customer testimonials, tutorials, your team in action or simply a peek into your day. You can either post them as Stories or as Reels, depending on the content. Going Live is also great way of reaching out to your target audience. 

Recommended Reading: Top 5 Ways to Use Instagram Marketing to Improve Your Business

b. Pinterest 

This visually stunning social media platform is a great way to drive traffic to your interior design business website. The easiest thing to start adding the pin button on your website images or blog images so that people can start using the picture on their pinboards. This way, your images has a way to proliferate across Pinterest, leading to more people discovering your brand. Just do a quick google search on how to add the Pinterest button to a picture. 

Also, make sure you are using “Pin worthy” images on your blogs so that people feel motivated to pin it. Remember to use brightly coloured pictures, vertical layouts, add a description, maybe even add a bit of text on the picture. I would recommend Canva to do this since it’s very easy to work on.

The last thing is create boards to show of your style and your design aesthetics. These can be as easy as a collection of images you have liked on Pinterest but it does give clients a sense of the style and design work that resonates with your brand. 

c.  Facebook 

This is still the largest social media platform hence you make sure you do not ignore it. While you can use the same images you have prepared for other social media here are features you should definitely use more.

• Create a group for your followers. This would be helpful in developing a community.   
• Make sure you are posting the video content that you are already making for Insta. 
• Use Facebook homepage as your website by putting all the relevant information about your business so that it is easy for anyone to reach you. Don’t forget to use CTA buttons. 
• Leverage Facebook Lives for more reach

Recommended Reading: What is Facebook Post Boost and How It Helps Businesses?

6. Niche Down to Cut Down Competition

Unless you’re a long-established brand with a proven track record in many types of designs, you might want to stick to certain styles. By narrowing your focus, you can build credibility more quickly in a specific area compared to taking on the field in general. For instance, you can start out with singles’ home decor, focusing on decor for apartment homes, dorms, and smaller dwellings. When you go niche, you are likely to face lesser competition and hence you get the chance to make your brand stand out online. Once you’ve conquered a niche, you can use the same formula to add more new niches to your territory.

7. A Picture is Indeed Worth a Thousand Words

As we mentioned before, interior design is a kind of business that requires you to appeal to customers visually. This is the reason why even traditional interior design advertisements are visually rich. Make sure, your website or blog features plenty of high-resolution and beautiful images of projects you have done. The more the visual element, the bigger the impact. You can also categorize these images based on themes like contemporary, vintage, classic, colonial and more. Have a dedicated page that shows your latest projects and keep updating it regularly. Make sure you also do the same on social media. If you are lost on what type of content to create, follow popular home and interior design sites like Houzz, Homify and Good Homes Magazine to get fresh and unique ideas.   

Here are some picture-intensive content we wrote for Homify, which has pulled in a lot of traffic.  

8. Utilize Video Marketing to The Fullest  

Where do most people head to when they are trying to soak up some design inspiration, look at the latest interior décor styles, how to choose this and how to find that etc etc. Well, Youtube videos are the answer. This is one channel you should not ignore if you are trying to market your interior décor business and establish yourself as a trustable service provider. If you are thinking what videos to make, the first thing to start with are your past projects. Do not forget to shoot videos of projects are doing, before-and-afters, and customer testimonials. Apart from these, you could also do videos on trends and styles, or how to do this and how to do that etc. Whatever you do, make sure you are putting up good content that can establish the authority of your brand in the market. You get the drift of this right? 

Here are some channels run by interior décor business owners where the content is really great. 

Ariyona Interior run by designer Rittika 

Kinwoven – Robeson Design

This channel called NestArtfully is not really run by a business, but an example of how value-driven content can attract a lot of traffic, and then ofcourse great leads.

9. Explore Immersive Digital Layouts

To enhance the self-directed user experience, use interactive media to give users greater control over their experience. Think of tools that help users visualize designs like interactive 3D formats and virtual staging. With these, users can have a better picture of what you have in store for them.

Visualization options can aid your collaboration with clients, allowing you to create and manipulate mockups and hyper-realistic renditions of designs.

Virtual staging is even more powerful because it allows users to visualize design models for their home in real time. They can splash colors and spruce up their setting to their taste, feeling super-confident when finally putting their foot down on something.

10. Research Your Clients Pain Points

When crafting your content, think of the common challenges your clients are facing. You should be able to get this from the common questions that Google through up on particular keywords of your strength areas – like restaurant décor or living room décor or kitchen cabinet designs etc. You could also ask your sales team the type of queries they get from customers. If you deal with customers, you already know those first-line questions. Jot them down and try to create content around them. These could be transactional in nature or informative, but they should ultimately help your customers. 

Here are some examples of blogs written by us keeping in mind the typical problems that are faced by customers while buying wooden interior décor furniture. 
Which wood is best for furniture?

Teak Wood vs Sheesham Wood: How are they Different?

11. Turn All Your Business Profiles to Landing Pages 

With the internet becoming ubiquitous, customers these days expect businesses to run a robust presence online. And there’s no better place where they can properly assess your web presence than your business profiles. Your business profiles should give customers a good impression of your business and prime them to do business with you, from your social media accounts to your GMB profile page and various business listings. 
Some of important landing page elements to include in these places include: 

• Appropriate keywords
• Captivating headers
• Full contact information
• Product or service description
• Important web pages
• Portfolio links
• Testimonials and case studies
• CTAs

12. Join a Design Community for Better Reach 

Platforms like Homify, Houzz and Nestopiaallow interior designers to flaunt their work and reach out to millions of potential clients. You can upload all the details of a residential or commercial project you have completed, smashing photos and even describe the photos or highlight the materials or styles used. You can connect your profile on these platforms with your website, follow other designers and get more leads than usual. These communities allow designers to answer queries of potential clients directly too and establish a connection. You can also promote your services through deals, free design pitches or free quotes as well. 

Recommended Reading: Grow Your Brand Community with Facebook Group Marketing

13. Leverage the Power of Email Marketing  

Email marketing has always been and still is a great asset for business owners, when used correctly with great content. Yes, the internet is flooded with emailers but if you are putting out good and relevant content, emailers can be a great marketing technique to generate leads and drive traffic to the website and also for content distribution. Suppose your business is investing a lot of time creating blog content. Emailers can be a great way of sharing that with your customers and alerting people of your brand. Just make sure you are sharing something of value. In fact, you might be interested to know that a 2018 IBM study showed that close to 50% of emails get opened on mobile gadgets. 

When done correctly, email marketing can help you convert more leads into paying customers. So, make sure that you have a realistic goal for your email campaign, a headline that compels recipients to click on the email and preview text that generates curiosity. Creative images and crystal clear call to action in the email body will also help immensely. You can also experiment with videos, infographics, memes, graphs, and so on. Updates on sales, discounts and deals can also be communicated interestingly through emailers. 

14. Ask Clients to Review You

Reviews are powerful. Period. People trust reviews since they are being given by someone who has already experienced a service. That is why positive reviews on Google, social media platforms and important directories can make a world of difference to your interior design business. Potential clients will know why you should be considered as an option more than others. You can simply request your past clients to share a feedback or rating on your website or on Facebook by providing them a link. You can also go an extra mile and create a short and easy template or format for them to make reviewing easy, especially when multiple parameters are involved. 

Recommended Reading: How Customer Reviews Can Bring a Whole New Meaning to Your Content Marketing

15. Make Use of User Generated Content 

UGC or User Generated Content is basically the content that your clients create through images, videos, text or even reviews. When shared on social media channels with the right hashtags, such content can engage more readers than branded content. Why? Because smart shoppers always trust what others, like them, are saying and advocating, rather than what a brand claims. So, if you can encourage your past clients to share pictures of the homes or offices you had designed for them, visitors will trust and follow you more. This form of marketing is trendy as well as affordable and hardly needs much effort from your side. You can also create contests to make this activity more fun, and offer a prize to the client who shares the best images. 

Recommended Reading: The Power of User Generated Content on Instagram and How to Use It Effectively

16. Measure Results and Track Competitors 

Always measure how well your marketing campaigns are performing with the help of the latest analytics tools. This way, you can tweak your strategies as and when required. These tools let you compare your performance vis-à-vis competitors. Also, check what your competitors are doing online, regularly. Find out what strategies they are using and what they are missing out on. For instance, if most local designers don’t have a GMB listing, it is the right time for you to get one and also add a virtual tour. Or, if most designers are focusing on blog topics that cover general information on bathroom design, you can create topics that address what a bathroom needs to suit the needs of children and seniors. 

The easiest free tool to use for checking how your marketing strategies are working is Google Analytics. This excellent tool, which comes free, shows how much traffic is flowing into your website from which channel and platform and article. If you have set up goal conversion and defined what you consider as a goal, then you will also get to see how many leads are being generated from your marketing efforts.   

Here is a quick read that you might want to catch up on – Wondering how to shape your marketing strategy? Use Google Analytics.

Want to start with content marketing for your small business? Here is a blog we wrote on content marketing for small businesses. 

17. Leverage a Referral Program

To increase the likelihood of turning your customers into true brand ambassadors, give them even more reasons not to say no to it. An attractive incentive is one good reason. You can get creative with this. For instance, you can offer a prized decor item, customized orders, discounts off their next purchases, or even a treat at a trendy restaurant for spreading the word to friends and family. Be careful with this though. Don’t make it look like you’re trying to buy off your customers. Think of something witty and fun that’ll bring a ray of inspiration to their daily lives.

18. Partner Up with Brands and Influencers

Brands and influencers can open up more opportunities to raise brand awareness and generate leads. Find influencers that are followed by your target audience and see if you can collaborate with them. Discuss your interior decor specialties and possible areas where you can collaborate. For instance, you can offer them a unique promo code to give to their referrals. If you can cut a nice deal with them, they can draw from their immense audience engagement experience to rally their follower base behind your brand.

Conclusion 

Though we have given a list of 18 ideas marketing for interior design business online, make sure you do not try to do everything at once. Go slow, but go steady. If you were to ask us what to do first, we would definitely say start with the basics of digital marketing – build a relevant and sharp website, start SEO, begin social media (at least choose one channel), and then see what you can add on. What we can guarantee is that if you do it right, you will definitely see an increase in traffic, brand visibility, leads and overall business growth. 

Have any more questions? Shoot us an email at sales@justwords.in or type out your query here. We would love to help you out.