The Interior Design 1-Day Marketing Plan
I created a course for interior designers called the 1-Day Marketing Plan.
It literally shows an interior designer how to take a day out of the office and create a highly-effective marketing plan for the entire year, budget and all.
At the heart of the plan is a focus not on so-called end users, but on those gatekeepers who can lead you to them such as architects, builders, realtors, and former high-value clients. Whereas there might be 2,000 home owners in your strike zone target (a hard number to reach effectively) there are likely only 3-5 key architects you have or want to work with in that same area.
If you have a marketing budget of, say, $2,000 for the month, you could spend $1 for each prospective customer, or more than $400 per architect! (Think that’s a big number? Well, most interior designers spend about 1% of gross sales on marketing when they should probably be spending closer to 4%! Doing the math, $2,000 a month is about what a firm expecting to gross $600,000 a year should budget!)
While a home owner might be lucky to get a postcard given that budget, you could afford to gift the architect with theater tickets, a case of wine…even an iWatch! Think that will get their attention? Think they’ll feel a bit obligated to keep you in mind?
I have interior design coaching clients who have built and continue to grow successful
firms exclusively on the strength of a gifting strategy.
Sometimes this is combined with a highly personal touch of frequent hand-written notes and surprise gifts like subscriptions to Architectural Digest or other related magazines. (Subscription gifts remind them of you every month!)
In a video conference I held for members of The Edge entitled The Advanced Marketing Workshop, more than 15 ideas were presented by members of what they are doing that is working today.
One of the most interesting was sending custom pretzels through a company and website called fattysundays.com. The beauty of this site is that you can create your own colorful pretzel designs, choosing just about any color you can imagine. I like it because the creative interior designer is going to find a way to tie those colors into a marketing message.
The site also makes it easy to send to your influencers with a message included.
Now some interior designers are going to pause when they go to fattysundays.com and see that a box of custom pretzels might cost $20, $30 or even $40! And that’s the wrong way to look at it! Think of the gross profit on your average job and let me know how many boxes of pretzels you would trade for that and still make money!
Members of The Edge will be working through the 1-Day Marketing Plan program this year as we approach our annual members “Boot Camp” in November.
Maybe you should join us!
