Create a Marketing Plan for Your Interior Design Business

If your business is struggling you probably need to be doing a better job at marketing. And even when you are busy you can’t let up on your marketing efforts. In other words, you always need to be marketing because when you stop clients stop.

If you’ve never created a marketing plan now is the time. You may have been marketing and not realized it (and if you’ve had clients this is probably the case) but if you want to get more ideal clients, now is the time to focus on your marketing efforts.

There are three steps that I’d like you to work on: who you’re targeting, your marketing goals, and what actions you’re going to take. I think that people assume that you have to have a huge budget to have a marketing plan and that is not true. There are many low-cost or free marketing actions that you can take.

But if you aren’t thorough in any of these steps - if your targeting is too general, if you don’t know what your goals are, and if you take half-ass actions - marketing will not be effective.

Targeting

Who are you targeting? Who are you trying to reach? When you have no target you’ll never hit it. So, if you don’t know what client you’re going after when you are marketing - you’ll reach no one. So it is super important identify who you want to serve so you can market to them.

When you can fully and completely understand your dream client then you know where they are. If you don't understand your client, then you don't know where to look for them.

You want to consider things like: demographics, location, motivation/dreams, hobbies, and desires.

Read more about How to Find Clients here.

Goals

After you understand who you want to target - you need to consider what your goals are for your marketing. What your goals are determine where you focus your actions. It’s important to have one top marketing priority to focus on, but at the same time you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. So my advice is to have a big goal, but also have 3-5 more minor goals or areas of focus.

Here are some examples of marketing goals.

• Increase local community awareness.

• Grow network.

• Generate a larger email list.

• Get published.

• Raise referrals.

• Have more repeat clients.

• 5 award submissions.

• Have more website viewers.

• Be on first page of Google for “Atlanta Interior Designer”

• Increase qualified leads by 100%.

• Improve social media reach.

• Be quoted in 3 shelter magazines.

So you can see some of these are more specific than others and as you choose your goal and start to flush out your actions - your goals should become more specific. So your goal may be “get published” and as you work on how that can happen, your goal should be more specific - get published in 3 local magazines. Or get published in Telluride Homes and Lifestyles. Or have a 4-page spread in newspaper. Or get XYZ project photographed and published in national magazine.

Actions

Now that you have your big goal - think about all the actions you can take to achieve that goal. So if you want more repeat clients - maybe you’re going to implement a regular newsletter, send birthday cards, and send a proposal on what could be done next in their home.

Or if you want to grow your network - you’re going to attend ever event you’re invited to, have new business cards made with your photo on them, send out invites for coffee.

So you’ll want to determine what are the actions you can take for your big goal, but also what regular actions you’ll take for the smaller ones. I suggest that you have marketing efforts in these 4 categories: Community, Clients, Press, and Advertising.

Community is about being visible in your community by public speaking, lectures, volunteering, charities, professional organizations.

The Client category should be focused on retaining clients and getting them to return as well as referrals. This may be in how you wrap up client projects, regular communications to past clients like birthday cards, holiday cards, or newsletters. It could be asking for referrals and offering a referral bonus (like donating to a cause of their choice.)

The Press category is about getting published and building awareness in print and online.

Advertising is more direct paid efforts - like Facebook ads, newspaper ads, or sponsoring a float in your local parade.

So if you’re big goal is in the Client category - you’ll also want to create smaller goals in the other categories so you make sure to cover everything. So maybe you’ll add in volunteering monthly, submitting finished projects to a favorite blog, and placing an ad in the PTA newsletter to your marketing plan.

Create your Marketing Plan

1. Know who you are trying to attract and target with your marketing.

2. Determine your big goal.

3. Break down the big goal into actions - include specifics and dates.

4. Consider smaller marketing efforts in the other categories.

5. Break down those smaller goals - include specifics and dates.

6. Put all those specifics and dates on your calendar so you can always be marketing.

7. Evaluate what works and what doesn’t - but keep in mind, not all marketing will result in direct sales and it can take awhile to gain momentum.

Share Below: Have you done a marketing plan before and if so, what has worked for you?