2 Ways to Quickly Get Interior Design Clients

The Studio Designer blog, Top 10 Business Practices, features great advice from design business consultant and Studio Designer CEO Keith Granet.

One of his tips is to “Look for Work When Busy.”

But what if you haven’t done this? What marketing opportunities exist that can get you short-term results?

INVEST IN HOT LEADS

There are two short-term strategies that we implement at my agency Client Expander that give our interior design clients increased visibility and traffic within a few short weeks.

Let’s first discuss what they are not: social media, networking, content creation, digital PR, and SEO. None of these strategies, from our experience, yield immediate results. So, just scratch them off your short-term list. Those are all great long-term methods.

For the short-term, you need to quickly be seen by hot leads- there is no time for brand building and relationship nurturing.

Hot leads come from search engines. Mainly from Google.

Yet, search engine optimization (SEO) takes too long to implement- often between 6 months and several years before it has a significant affect on one’s bottom line.

SOURCES OF HOT LEADS

1 – GOOGLE SEARCH ADS:

Formerly Adwords, is a quick way to buy yourself to the top of relevant search results. It is important that your campaign is set up by someone deeply familiar with your industry or you can lose a ton of money to DIYers searching for design inspiration. Yet, when set up properly, it is a fantastic way to buy the traffic of hot leads locally looking for your services.

2 – HOUZZ OPTIMIZATION:

Houzz optimization is another great way to get immediate visibility, traffic, and leads, as Houzz has already done the work of building a top SEO position and they are already getting a ton of traffic. By optimizing your profile, you are piggybacking on their success. If you need a deeper explanation of the relevancy of Houzz, look at this anatomy of a Google page article

The trick with Houzz is that you want to ideally be #1 in your town organically. Most designers would benefit from skipping the paid Houzz Pro+ advertising- it doesn’t work out well for most designers and it can’t provide you with a #1 position.

The ROI on Houzz is in getting organically to the top and that is done through Houzz optimization. It isn’t a good fit for all design studios, so feel free to contact me and I’ll let you know whether it looks like it holds promise for yours.

To conclude, it is best to heed Keith Granet’s advice to “Look for Work When Busy.” But, if that hasn’t happened, there are a couple short-term options to get yourself visibility, traffic, and leads.

If you have questions, feel free to ask here.

I’d love to hear if you’ve had any success with short-term marketing strategies—so leave your comments below.

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