When you’re designing home interiors, you’re fabricating someone’s personal space: setting an energy that sets the tone for days, moods, relationships and headspace. Basically, you’re marketing services at a modern-day god-tier level of personal.
At the same time, you’re doing it in one of the most cutthroat, saturated markets. Two deeply contending forces. Which means the interior design industry doesn’t follow the standard rules of digital marketing. If you’re going it alone, there are some things you should know before you set out.
Of course, there are dedicated interior design content marketers. They’re experts at growing interior designers’ businesses like yours. They also make your marketing environment even more competitive.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to market your interior design business effectively and discover ideas and inspiration to inform your strategy.
How Is Marketing for Interior Designers Different?
Interior design is a highly visual and incredibly personal field. We hire interior designers to create the basis for our personal narrative. In your marketing efforts, you almost need to present yourself as an oracle more than a designer: You have to use storytelling, evoke emotion and demonstrate visionary compatibility with a potential customer.
Ultimately, this helps you connect with your ideal client and win their trust. But it’s not always as simple as it sounds. Similar to real estate marketing, you must approach your interior design marketing strategy through a lens of:
- Brand storytelling: Who is your brand, and why do you do what you do?
- Design philosophy: Front and center, what are your design beliefs, values and ethos?
- Customer’s transformative journeys: How do you make people feel? It’s equally important to what you do in the design space.
Bring people into a world where they can envision, imagine and recalibrate their identity through their experience of space — a space you create, no less. Paint a clear picture of your positive impact.
While it may sound wishy-washy, some clear technical and creative marketing strategies will help you achieve the presence you need for your target market to find and perceive your business in the right way.
10 Steps To Create an Interior Design Marketing Strategy
1. Define Your Goals
Before you get into the depths of the strategy, define your ‘why.’ What do you aim to achieve with your marketing efforts? This could be:
- Attracting new customers.
- Securing repeat business.
- Encouraging higher spending.
Your goal informs your strategic direction. For instance, if you seek repeat business, focus on re-engaging past customers and nurturing relationships. To achieve higher spending, zero in on positioning and upselling your services to clients. And if you’re unsure? Go to the numbers. Break down your goals with actual business data — this will show where you’re already performing and where you need to focus.
2. Identify Your Target Audience
Whatever your goals, everything starts with the people you want to engage. If you’re looking for new customers, do you want ones similar to those you’ve previously worked with or to access a wider audience in a different location or industry? Research their demographics, buying behavior and psychographics to better understand how — and where — to reach them.
Here are some questions to ask:
- What social media platforms do they use?
- Do they follow design trends and inspiration? Or do they prefer the psychology and logistics of design?
- How do they make their purchasing decisions?
- What does a successful project look like (and mean) to them?
Document your findings, create target market profiles for each and update them over time.
3. Differentiate Yourself Through Positioning
Positioning describes how your target audience perceives your brand relative to your competitors. Positioning your interior design firm involves creating a brand identity with a unique offering that sets you apart from the competition. Your brand’s positioning influences how a potential customer behaves in the awareness, consideration and purchasing stage of the buyer’s cycle. They may consider factors like:
- Value: Can I afford this service?
- Timelines: Does the delivery timeline work for me?
- Aesthetic: Do I like the designer’s style?
- Trust: Am I confident the designer can execute my vision?
Use your target market identification to consider your audience’s needs and how to position your brand to meet them.
Studio Park Nine is an excellent example of positioning. You’ll find this brand on Pinterest using language like “soulful approach rooted in intention” and “moments of the unexpected.” The profile offers a thousand visual folders showing location- and aesthetic-inspired images, paint colors and interesting furniture. The audience has a deep pool of inspiration, including design trends and completed projects.
This tells us that its ideal client is thoughtful, intuitive and particular about design preferences.
Studio Park Nine strategically positions itself at the intersection of its audience and the industry. Depending on your audience, you may opt for one or several of the following marketing channels.
4. Set Up a Google Business Profile.
Local SEO puts your design service on the map — literally. Setting up a Google Business Profile (GBP) is an easy, inbound digital marketing strategy that connects you with audiences searching for services locally online.
You can keep it simple, like Poltrona Frau in Shanghai, by adding your location, a few photos of your office and a single five-star review. Or, you can follow Oraanj Interior Design’s lead.
This London-based firm’s GBP includes:
- Address, contact details and website.
- Images of completed projects.
- Product offerings.
- Multiple glowing reviews.
- Links to branded interior design articles (pulled from its website).
- Social media profiles.
For one, it’s easy to find the business. But you also know it provides credible services, customers are happy, it’s an authority in the industry and its designers are active online. And if you don’t have the same marketing budget as Oraanj, social media is a good place to start.
5. Establish Your Social Media Presence
Social media is prime real estate for marketing your interior design business, whether you’re already established or just starting. Go where your audience is, and consider that highly visual spaces like Pinterest, Instagram or TikTok are effective for brand awareness. On the other hand, platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn have plenty of groups to connect with like-minded audiences.
Jenna Rademaker, or @Houseofrad405 on Instagram, blends interior design with a social media content strategy. She shares transformation, creative execution, decorating tips like the 70/30 rule and budget-friendly shopping ideas. And she doesn’t leave personality at the door — her posts are known for their humorous side.
6. Is Email Marketing Your Thing?
Email marketing is also an easy and inexpensive marketing channel for a small business to engage audiences, nurture relationships and get their brand out there. Studio McGee’s ‘Sunday 7’ is a weekly email incorporating storytelling, seasonal inspiration, furniture and fixtures, completed projects and the odd shout-out to her favorite lip gloss.
This creates a connection, reminding us that there’s always a person behind the design.
7. How About Content Marketing?
Disseminating engaging content is not only an effective marketing strategy — it’s a versatile one. Writing blogs for your website? Share them through emails and social media. Have a content idea for a “How To” video? Grow it into a YouTube channel.
Plus, the interior design industry offers many pathways to educate and inspire audiences while launching your brand into the world. Interior designer Christopher Lowell knows this. He’s set up a YouTube channel with 11.3K subscribers featuring clients’ transformative journeys. He’s got a podcast. He’s made at least four TV shows, and he’s written five books.
Perhaps Lowell has more hours in the day than we humble mortals — but he sure demonstrates the power of content to build trust and authority and generate leads.
8. Leverage Tools
Marketing your interior design company can chew up time, but there are a lot of tools to help out. Because the industry is competitive, saturated and highly visual, consider some of the following tools to take a load off and give your strategy a leg up:
- 3D rendering and other graphic design tools help clients see, feel and virtually step inside their future space.
- Photo editing platforms like Canva keep visuals bright, sharp and clear.
- Virtual tour software like Kuula gives audiences an immersive experience of your work.
- Social media monitoring tools like Sprout Social help automate your strategy and offer analytics to improve it.
- Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp automate your email marketing and provide strategic insights.
9. Attend Live Events
Interior designers tend to do business locally — especially when growing. So, don’t forget about traditional channels like local events. Whether it’s an industry conference, community fair or networking event, get your business involved and start making connections.
Sponsoring, participating or just attending are all excellent ways to represent your brand and meet your future interior design clients.
10. Track and Tweak Your Strategy
Your strategy is likely to evolve alongside the industry, economy and your client base. Track your plan regularly, and check in with the numbers. This will show you what’s working and where the gaps are for you to plug. Even the best interior design marketing ideas are pointless if they don’t lead you to your end goal.
Here’s the data you might want to track and analyze:
- New leads, where they’re coming from and lead-to-conversion rate.
- Website visitors, bounce rate and top-performing pages.
- Social media follower growth rate, engagement and reach.
- Email opens and click-through rates.
- Quotation requests and ROI.
Ready To Market Your Interior Design Company Strategically?
Interior design marketing is just as creative as interior design itself, so apply the same care and strategy to your marketing as home interiors. The industry is highly competitive, which requires a unique take on marketing. With these tactics in hand, you’re better equipped to stand out in the crowd and connect with your ideal clients.