As the owner of an interior design firm, you need to draw upon a variety of skills to keep your business profitable and growing. You must be creative, and have the kind of timeless design talent that provides clients a unique vision and meets their personal aesthetic. You have to be able to manage, delegate and coordinate various contractors, which requires considerable people skills. You must possess an understanding of building construction and architecture so that you can execute your vision. You also need imagination, vision and foresight to be able to see the big picture as you begin to develop and sketch out a design. Lastly, you must keep up with marketing and attracting new clients.

Content marketing efforts establish your interior design firm as a thought-leader in your area, which in turn drives traffic, generates leads, and creates sales.

When you take all of these skills—and then add the demands of challenging clients—it can become an exceptionally difficult job. Of course, the best problem to have is to more clients than you can handle allowing you the choice of projects, and people you would like to work with. That's why a sound, visual marketing plan for your website is necessary, both to gain that heavy consumer traffic and to provide an organized marketing picture when you get busy.

How To Get Your Interior Design Website Found In Search Engines

Your website marketing strategy should fit within your vision for your broader business. Make sure you're targeting the prospects and projects that most interest you and have the highest profit margins. One of the best ways to increase traffic to your website is through content based inbound marketing campaigns. These initiatives always start with written page content and blogs. Why? Here's a step by step of the online traffic generation/search process. 

1- People search online for interior design services use specific terms - keywords.
2 - Google looks for the most relevant content and provides the results based on (in part) keywords you've chosen and relevance.
3 - People scan the available articles and click on the one that mosts interests them.This takes them to a website where they learn more about the firm that wrote the article.

Notice these two important points

• Nowhere in this process are images relevant to driving traffic to your website. Portfolio based websites are practically invisible online. 
• The more articles you have, and consequently the more keywords on your website, the often you will be featured in search results.

Marketing With Your Interior Design Website

Most owners of interior design firms believe a portfolio based website, one that is primarily devoted to showing design projects, is a marketing tactic. It is not. Portfolio based interior design websites have limited value as a lead generation tool. They are best used at the end of the marketing process simply as confirmation of your professionalism. 

To get people to visit a website, designers often rely upon print advertising in home magazines and attending design center or magazine events. This method takes the control of your messaging out of your hands, is expensive and does very little to illustrate your unique sales proposition. It is slow; it does not scale well and it though it can be beneficial when used in context, it is a small part of what should be a multi-channel marketing effort. Content marketing, inbound marketing, and permission-based marketing are all pretty much the same thing. They are marketing tactics in which you offer potential clients valuable content, in the form of blogs, images, videos, etc., to passively market your business. Rather than telling them how great you are, you're demonstrating your ability through engaging images, informative how-to videos, and blog articles on industry trends. Content marketing efforts establish you as a thought-leader in your industry, which in turn drives traffic, generates leads, and creates sales.

A content calendar for your website will help you organize your thoughts and posts to get the most out of your inbound marketing strategy. You should create a detailed, step-by-step plan that includes all scheduled blog posts, months in advance. Having a regular posting schedule is critical for gaining a market share by increasing followers for your blog or other content.

Your content generation strategy needs to offer a unique voice—your voice—so that readers or viewers are compelled to seek out your firm when it comes time to hire an interior design expert for their projects. The sum value of your blog articles should add up to more than its individual parts. Viewed collectively, blog articles and page content should provide a narrative that grants insight into how your firm functions and the aesthetic you embrace.
For interior designers, this means you want to create a record of past work for clients and emphasize the type of client that is most attracted to your style and appreciates your work. Your posts should target your core client base in content and tone. The more precise a persona ( A fictional composite of your ideal customer) you're able to develop, the more effective your posts will become.

The Critical Elements When Marketing a Website

Developing a buyer persona before beginning a content marketing initiative is an important first step. It forces you to consider your current best clients and write in a voice that resonates with them. If you're looking to grow your business in a different direction, it also helps you set goals for a change in your customer base. Start with a persona if you're seeking to move from a high volume, low-profit clientele to longer term, high net value clients, or if you are looking to move from residential to a predominantly commercial client base. 

When it comes to marketing your design skills with your website content, you can choose to focus on general or specific skill sets. Certainly, this isn't an either-or proposition. But if you feel like you have a unique ability in a sought-after interior design niche, be sure to make it a central feature of your inbound campaign. 
Blogging is a different form of writing that requires an understanding of keywords, formatting, website continuity and a soft sell. As you become better at blogging and build an audience, consider requesting guest post opportunities. Ask vendors and contractor partners if you can provide them an article for their website. It will help you grow as a writer, give you a valuable link back to your website and reach a wider audience. This type of unorthodox networking provides value to your contacts and brings you more closely into their business circle and helps you grow referral business.

The single best ways to convert visitors into leads is to offer an in-depth piece of content on your site that's available for download. These e-books or white papers, if well done, are worthy of a visitor providing their email address in exchange for access to the high-value content.

The Look and Feel of Blog Articles

All aspects of your inbound campaign should tie together with your broader brand. Without getting too deep into brand strategy, (that's another article) keep in mind the voice used when writing, the tone of your blogs, and design elements like your hierarchical font choice, and color schemes throughout. While you want to convey the nature of your work, don't feel obliged to give away all the details. Retain just a bit of mystery about your process. Mystery leaves your readers with just another question or two—one worth picking up the phone to call or opening up their inbox to send an email.

About Michael Conway and 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 tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition. Contact me for a free-of-charge consultation and marketing review. It takes about 40 minutes and you'll be provided a list of actionable improvements designed to solve your specific marketing problems.