Today I’m giving you four tips on how to make your interior design firm stand out. From fantastic photography to a brand that will take you from today through the next 5+ years of your business, these are tips for any interior designer ready to take their business to the next level.
Invest in great photography
Potential clients can’t always visualize like you can. They need to experience walking through your incredible spaces. Great photography is the next best thing. Paired with testimonials, photography is one of the most powerful ways to communicate with potential customers.
Having lots of wide-angle shots showing expansive spaces doesn’t tell a story. The best photographers get a mix of wide-angle shots, decor details, vignettes of cozy nooks and combine them to create a narrative of the space and show the little ways that you inject your customers’ lifestyle into their homes. This shows your potential clients how you pay attention to every detail better than anyone can explain it.
Photography helps to support your marketing message. Just like how good photographers communicate the story of the space and its inhabitants, they also help craft your story, and help you stand out amongst the crowd.
Love to incorporate family heirlooms into their new home design? Ask probing questions like which hand they use to dry their hair so that outlets are just where they need them? Whatever you do to make your design unique and personal can be communicated much easier through photography than explanation.
A brand photoshoot goes a long way in communicating with potential customers and making sure your whole brand, supported by beautiful visuals and a compelling messaging, is cohesive and is on the same level with the service you provide. As much as your portfolio images tell a story of your homes, your brand photography tells a story of what it’s like to work with you.
Photography and design lean on each other, and one can only be as powerful as the other. Together they tell the ultimate story to your customers.
Don’t expect your logo to say everything
I get it, you are a visual creative. Your business is built on creating something beautiful for your clients. You want your logo to encompass everything from your aesthetic to your service experience.
However, remember that your logo is one piece of a larger whole. It can say so much, but it doesn’t have to say everything.
It’s the welcome mat on the front door, but it’s not the whole home.
Designers get very hung up on getting their logo exactly right before building the rest of the brand because they think it has to do all of their communicating for them. But that’s just not the case.
Here is what your logo should do:
- be recognizable
- give people a hint at your design aesthetic
- be versatile and work equally well in lots of different spaces and applications
- intrigue potential clients and make them want to see more of your work
- pair with your tagline to tell MORE of the story so that neither has to do the whole job alone.
Where your logo stops is where the rest of your brand picks up. It tells part of your aesthetic story, combined with your color palette, fonts, and brand patterns to form a unified visual message. Your logo might be stark and minimal, but you may need a little warmth and approachability too, so we pull that in with soft, curvy patterns. Alone, your graphics are beautiful, but together they are impactful.
Communicate your service experience
Designers can talk all day about their design style and what they do to make their clients’ lives easier in their homes, but they often gloss over the experience of what it’s like to actually work with them.
The experience of working with you should be integral to your messaging and to what your visuals make potential customers feel. What is it that they get from you besides a beautiful home? No matter how gorgeous the final product, if it’s painful to get there, your customers’ overall feelings about the project and your firm suffers. Remember that the journey is just as important as the destination.
Design firms are a dime a dozen, and it’s difficult to stand out on style alone. When you highlight your experience, it gives your firm a platform to stand out above the rest and really differentiate yourself.
Make sure you know what your customers need and what’s important to them. The more you know about your customers, the easier it is to highlight what’s important to them in that process.
Build a brand that supports your future
Where do you want to be in 5 years? Your message and your design should be forward-thinking, nimble, and supremely optimized for growth. Don’t create a brand for where you are today or you will box yourself in and outgrow it when you hit your goals. And what’s the point of that?
Maybe you want to move from doing piecemeal room renovations to whole homes or maybe you want to go from service work to starting a furniture line; whatever your goals, make sure your brand is flexible enough to grow with it.
Here are some simple ways to do that:
- design a logo that can morph into other sub-logos for spinoff brands
- make sure your tagline and message is versatile enough to speak to your current and future audience
- build a website that can accommodate a future shop, blog, or anything else you may need down the road.
When you implement each of these steps, it will make your interior design firm stand out effortlessly.
Feeling a little overwhelmed? I would love to help your design firm craft a brand that helps you stand out, attract your ideal clients, and close more deals. Contact me here today.
More references on how to make your interior design firm stand out:
- The Correlation Between Brand Personality and Customer Loyalty
- 5 Pivotal Steps to Take Before a Rebrand
