Interior Design Advertising: The Key to Growth is Visibility

For any business, visibility is a major facilitator of growth. The same is true for interior design firms as well.

As an interior designer who wants to grow their clientele, your primary focus should be on marketing your services wherever you can. And one of the core components of mass marketing happens to be advertising.

Let’s take a look at the best ways to advertise your interior design business while also exploring the cost-benefit of each method.

Before going into the best interior design advertising options, let’s first understand the difference between marketing and advertising.

Interior design marketing is the process of understanding your client base and reaching out to them in any way you can.

This includes things like setting up your brand identity, creating a brand tag-line, deciding on your target audience, choosing a communication style, etc.

Interior design advertising, on the other hand, is the process of promoting your services to a mass audience using creative content.

The aim of your advertisement should be to cast a wide net and hopefully attract potential customers who are interested in your services.

Advertising is often paidand most media platforms (whether they are online or offline) will charge a fee before sharing your adverts. To put it simply, advertising is a subpart of marketing.

It is inadvisable to focus on advertising (especially paid advertising) before setting up your interior design brand’s core identity.

Advertising is just a part of marketing, and your interior design ads will have better chances if you have a core interior design brand identity.

Here are some key steps you need to complete before moving on to the advertising:

Choose Your Core Demographic: Are you looking for high-paying clients who want luxury designs? Or are you casting a wider net that includes middle-class residents and small businesses?

Choosing your core demographic should ideally be the first thing you do, as your brand identity must be designed to cater to this audience.

Create Your Brand Logo: No business is complete without its own distinct logo! Your logo is a visual representation of your brand that distinguishes you from your competition.

Create a Slogan or Tag-Line: A tag-line that is catchy and unique will help your customers remember your brand. Plus, your tagline can also act as a short description of your firm’s core principles.

Have a Coherent Tone-of-Voice: Do you prefer to be formal in your communications? Or do you want to be more semi-casual and personable to create friendly relationships with your clients?

Choosing a tone of voice is essential as it gives your interior design business a recognisable personality.

Highlight Your Specialisation: Each interior designer has a distinct design philosophy and a style that sets them apart from the rest.

Find your distinct style, and ensure that you highlight this uniqueness in all your marketing outreach and advertisements.

Interior design advertisements work best when these prerequisites have been fulfilled. After all, you cannot advertise yourself if you don’t know what your brand stands for.

Now that you have a coherent interior design brand identity, it’s time to find as many clients as you can via advertising. Broadly speaking, there are two main types of advertisements—organic & paid.

As stated above, most advertising platforms are not free. However, thanks to the power of the internet, free ‘organic’ advertising is now easier than ever before!

Interior design advertising is the process of attracting new customers naturally using social media, content creation, and search engine optimisation(SEO).

But advertising yourself online can be a lengthy and time-consuming process. You first need to create an online identity and then regularly post content that attracts new users.

Generating organic traffic requires effort and care; you cannot expect immediate growth from the very beginning.

In spite of its downsides, organic outreach is a must have for any interior design firm, as it gives you a passive source of new customers.

Unlike the former, paid advertisements are far more effective at finding new customers quickly. Most platforms usually promote paid ads over organic results.

Hence, paid promotions can help you reach new potential customers even if you don’t have any organic presence.

But what’s the catch?

While paid advertisements are an instant solution, they don’t provide exponential dividends over time.

Once you stop the advertisements, the results are instantly gone. Unlike organic marketing, paid advertisements don’t keep giving results even long after you’ve stopped investing in them.

Moreover, some people are incredibly wary of paid ads, seeing them as intrusive and habitually ignoring them.

This decision depends on your long-term goals, current budget, scope of the profits you make from every project or client, and your target audience.

While paid advertisements give you assured exposure, they don’t necessarily build trust with your audience or establish you as an expert.

On the other hand, organic reach can be slow and takes time to build, but it keeps providing the ROI for years to come.

All in all, if you have the patience and enough budget to get you started on organic marketing, that would be an ideal choice for any interior design business. If not, you can opt for advertisements for quick exposure.

If you’re creating your interior design ad by yourself, choose a medium that you are most comfortable with. If you have the budget, consider hiring a professional advertising agent.

Hiring the help of a professional will make your task much easier and let you focus on other facets of your business.

Let’s check out the various media you can focus on when creating a new interior design advertisement:

Video Ads: Video ads take the most effort to create, but they are also often the most effective. Videos can be used to generate organic traffic, or they can be used for mass outreach via paid promotion.

One-Pagers: One-pagers are simple creatives that can be posted on social media. These short-form adverts can be used for paid promotion or for organic advertising.

Written Content: Publishing blogs and articles on your website is one of the best ways to generate organic traffic. Moreover, written content can also be used for paid promotions.

For example, you can write an article advertising your firm and then pay to get it published on another larger website.

Paid publishing not only increases your brand’s visibility but also helps you boost your SEO by spreading your brand’s name on different websites.

Influencer Marketing: If you have the budget, consider sponsoring a content creator/influencer who is prominent in the field of interior design.

Collaborative Outreach: Collaborate with other professionals related to your field to spread your brand’s name via word-of-mouth.

For example, an architect may advertise your services to their customers if you do the same for them. Collaborative outreach is basically a form of offline organic advertising, and it can be highly effective.

Print Ads: Local newspapers and magazines are still quite popular! And they, too, are looking for sponsors who want to advertise their business.

This form of advertising is especially effective if you are looking for clients who are older and well-established in your locality.

Search Engine Ads: You can directly advertise your website on popular search engines. This is done by bidding on major “keywords” that are relevant to interior design.

For example, if you are looking for high-paying clients, you will bid on keywords like ‘luxury interior design services’. Note that the more popular a keyword is, the more it will cost to bid on it.

Highlight Your Niche: What are you good at? What are your specialisations? Are there any design trends that you have mastered or are known for?

These are key questions that need to be answered in your advertisement. Interior design is an art, and like all art, it is subjective.

Different people like different things, and your aim is to find the people who enjoy your interior design philosophy.

Include a Cost Estimate: Many interior designers hesitate to include any costs in their advertisements. They worry about scaring away potential clients by showcasing their charges.

The truth is that cost estimates are actually helpful, and most people like to know the cost of a service upfront rather than beat around the bush. So, don’t hesitate to include a cost estimate in your interior design ads.

Always Include a CTA: A CTA or Call to Action is a simple prompt that asks users to interact with your advertisement. CTAs are a must-have for any advertisement, especially so if the ad is online.

CTAs greatly boost lead generation, as someone who is genuinely interested in your services will take action when asked to do so. All they need is a little reminder.

You can also use CTAs like ‘limited-time deal’ or ‘free consultations for this month only’ to create a sense of urgency and further drive lead generation.

Stick to Your Brand Style: All your advertisements should stick to your brand’s set style. If you have a more laid-back, casual form of communication, then consider using the same style in your advertisements.

Clashing styles may not seem like a big deal at first, but it can confuse potential customers and eventually damage your brand’s public perception.

Moreover, using the wrong style of communication can end up attracting people who are not your target demographic.

Some of the best platforms for interior design advertisements (organic and paid) include:

YouTube- Perfect for those who prefer video ads. You can also create your own YouTube channel if you have the passion and time to create video content. YouTube can be an amazing platform to generate organic traffic.

Instagram/Facebook/Twitter- Large social media platforms can be used for organic lead generation and paid promotions.

All social media ads give preferential treatment to paid ads, so if you want the highest visibility, you will need to bid for your targeted keyword.

Google- Google is undoubtedly the largest search engine in the world. When we talk about search engine optimisation, we are actually just discussing how to optimise your website for Google.

With good SEO practices, you can easily maximise your organic lead generation by ranking in the first few pages of Google.

You can also pay Google to rank at the very top of a specific search keyword. However, note that paid promotions on Google can be quite pricey, especially if you are bidding on commonly used keywords like ‘interior design’ or ‘interior design services’.

Print- When it comes to print media, going local is always the best option. Look for popular local papers or magazines that offer sponsored spots.

While print media may not be as popular nowadays, it is still an effective way to market yourself to your local community.

Marketing is a must for any interior design firm, and advertising is an important part of it — it’s the exposure that gets you seen, noticed, and selected. You can only find new customers when you put yourself out there.

Make your brand visible to a wider audience to expand your clientele and grow your business. And don’t forget the importance of organic advertising!

Once you take the effort to set up your socials, they can be an amazing source of organic leads that give you results for years to come!