An Inbound Marketing Process For Interior Designers

Most interior design business owners have an awareness of “inbound marketing or content marketing,” Many designers are using at least some inbound techniques such as blogging, social media promotion, and email newsletters. All too often, the inbound process stops at posting and sharing blogs, and many have too many images and not enough written content. Images are important, but it's worth remembering that weekly postings of keyword rich written content are how your website gets found in search engines. The steps below will help you turn your website into a lead magnet that is the hub of your marketing efforts. We've outlined a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy that consists of several elements. These include blog articles, using keywords in your content, social sharing, creating landing pages with strong call-to-action elements, creating white papers and guides, list building, and email marketing.

The key to successful inbound marketing is using these content creation techniques to drive traffic back to your interior design website where landing pages, premium giveaways, and strong calls-to-action can convert those visitors into leads for your business. If done correctly, you can capture those leads as subscribers to your blog articles. This will allow you to remain top-of-mind when your publishing articles weekly or more often. (Yes, I said weekly) Let's break down some of these techniques to see how they work together to attract better leads for your business.

5 Steps Interior Designers Can Take To Attract Better Clients

1. Blog Articles That Attract Prospects Through Education
Blogging is one of the best ways to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field and drive traffic to your website. If you incorporate a blog on your site, you can reap other benefits like better Google ranking and greater online visibility.

Your blog consists of content related to interior design like “Color Trends for a Kitchen Renovation” or “Compact Furniture for Small Spaces,” basically anything that is of interest to potential consumers of your products or services. Search engines use this content to determine your relevancy for specific terms and having unique content can help to drive traffic to your site.

2. Keywords and Phrases for SEO
Keywords are words or phrases that are directly related to your business.  For example, “interior design,” “curtains,” “exquisite interiors” and “soft handmade furniture” may all be words or phrases someone would use to find your interior design business. 

By incorporating these words into your content, when Google crawls your site for indexing, it “sees” them and establishes your website as relevant to these phrases. When a potential customer searches Google using these keywords, your business appears in the search results.

3. Landing Pages for Lead Capture
Landing pages are pages on your website devoted to a single topic that includes a call-to-action designed to elicit your reader into giving you their contact information in return for an item of value such as a guide or white paper.     
For example:
If you've created a blog post titled “Choosing the Right Appliances For Your Kitchen Design” you can include a link in the piece offering a free report on the best professional grade appliances. When your visitor clicks on this link, they're brought to a landing page. There, your visitor is asked to supply their contact information to receive the premium report for free. Once they enter their information, they're given access to the report, and you can begin the lead nurturing process.

4. Call–To–Actions That Link To Landing Pages
A call-to-action does exactly what the name implies. It's a graphic, button or highlighted text block that when clicked brings the user to another page on your website, for example, a landing page. 

Calls-to-action like “Want to learn more?” are used to direct users to more information about a topic like a related blog post, or a separate landing page where your user can give their information for a premium offer like a free white paper or ebook.

5. White Papers and Guides That Solve a Prospects Pain Point
White papers are longer form content that you create to educate consumers on a particular topic. Generally speaking, a guide should include 7 – 10 pages including graphics and photos, a white paper should:
            

• Educates prospective clients and demonstrates your expertise
• Provide unbiased information and analysis
• Present both a problem and a solution
• Is based on sound research when providing a solution

These are just a few techniques you can employ in a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy. Here's an example of how these elements work together:

Imagine a consumer is searching for an interior design firm.  They go to Google and input the term “interior design, kitchen remodel” if these keywords are used as relevant content on your website, your site shows up the search results page. They click on the search results link and are brought to a page on your website.

Once on your site, they read several blog posts on kitchen remodeling. They see a call-to-action and click on a link for a free report. They're brought to a landing page called “Kitchen Appliances for Small Urban Spaces.” There they are asked to input their name and email address to receive your guide. They are now a potential lead and are put into an automated email marketing system like MailChimp for further nurturing towards a sale.

Therein is the beauty and power of inbound marketing. By offering information as opposed to a hard sell, you can draw potential business to you rather than searching for customers. Your content can educate visitors while building a trust relationship, establishing your thought leadership, and keeping your business top of mind. When properly executed no method is more efficient at attracting highly qualified leads to your business.