Online Marketing with Houzz and Squarespace

Once you've built a professional website on Squarespace for your interior design firm (if your site isn't built on Squarespace, it should be!) it's time to begin to develop a comprehensive online marketing strategy to drive traffic and develop your brand. The first step is to determine where you're most likely prospects can be found. Since first coming online in 2009, Houzz has become a valuable channel for interior designers and others in the building and design trades. 

Houzz states that it has over 35 million users and that their average annual household income is $125,000. Houzz is a photography based website that allows professionals in the home trades to build a profile and use it to develop leads and drive traffic to their company website. 

Appearance is everything, especially when it comes to representing your brand. You need to grab visitors attention in order to drive them to visit your website, convert and enter your lead funnel. Having an exciting, dynamic, profile page on Houzz, complete with vibrant photography, is an important step. Basically, you want to give visitors as much detailed information as possible highlighting your brand's strengths. This helps to convey your skills and works to drive visitors to your company's website.

Let's look at how you can use your Houzz profile to drive traffic to your website and Squarespace landing page to convert visitors into leads and leads into paying customers for your interior design firm.

Rocking Your Houzz Homepage

Much like using keywords to aid in your organic search rankings on Google, you can help your profile get found on Houzz by using keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business. When you add a project to your Houzz profile there is a section reserved for keywords. Your list should include location based keywords, for example, if your project is a living room redesign and your interior design firm is based in Boston, consider adding “Boston living room design” in addition to “living room design" to your keywords list. Make sure to also include some of the same keywords in your description section of your profile. 

These keywords are important for showing up on Houzz lists, for example, if someone searches “San Francisco Interior Design Firms”, they will see a list of local firms. Houzz is also indexed by Google, so your Houzz profile will help aid your SERP rankings. Also much like Google, Houzz ranks their internal lists. One way you can increase your position on Houzz is to include company reviews.

Your best leads probably come from word-of-mouth referrals. Online reviews carry that same kind of weight. Today, consumers will often begin their research online and online reviews are highly valued when making a buying decision. Houzz reviews can be very beneficial when it comes to your ranking on the site.

Another area that can help increase your Houzz ranking, as well as begin to drive traffic to your website, is external linking. If your website has a blog component (and if it doesn't, it should!) when you add a project to Houzz, you can add an external link to your blog. Getting visitors to your company website for further research is a key step to convert visitors into leads.

Using Houzz To Improve Lead Generation

All roads should always lead back to your website. Whether it's your Houzz profile, Facebook page, LinkedIn profile or any other social sites you use, your ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your branded website. This is where you will ultimately convert visitors into leads, and leads into paying customers.

Now that you've gained the interest of your Houzz viewer and got them to make the leap to your website, it's time to convert them. Your blog posts are an excellent way to bring visitors further into your lead funnel. Including a call to action within your blog posts is a great way to convert your visitors into leads. Link that call to action to a landing page to capture contact information and grow your list of contacts interested in hearing about your firm and the advantages you offer.

When clicked, your call to action should take visitors to a separate landing page on your Squarespace website that is focused on a single topic. You can offer them a premium report that can expand on your blog post in return for their email information. At this point, your Houzz visitor has been converted into a viable lead and can be further courted through personalized email to develop your relationship and build trust as you lead them through the buying process.

About Michael Conway

I'm the owner and strategist at Means-of-Production. My firm builds Squarespace websites, Houzz profiles, and content marketing and advertising solutions for architects, interior designers, design-build contractors and landscape design firms. Our all-in-one marketing tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition.