Interior design branding is often rooted in designers thinking that their aesthetic and online portfolio are going to do all of their selling for them. While your portfolio and photography is a huge part of why clients hire you, you can’t stop there. Think how many truly amazing designers are out there, how many gorgeous rooms and homes you see every single day scrolling through Instagram, how many choices your customer really has.
Where’s the line between the overlooked and the overbooked? It’s hiding in your personal brand (or lack thereof).
What is personal branding?
Branding is all about investing in and being intentional about molding the story people tell about your business when you’re not in the room. Personal branding is grounding that story in the person behind the business to position yourself as an expert and unique in your market. It requires you to find a way to share your authentic self with your audience in a way that is consistent, narrow and intentional, and it gives human, emotional characteristics to a brand. In short, it gives you a way to easily separate yourself from the pack.
- Every interior design firm should be built on some form of personal brand, whether they want to be the face of the business or not. Whether you use your own name or a business name is irrelevant. Crafting your personal brand opens the door for emotional connections with your audience beyond the work you do and makes your business about more than just a list of services or products. When you craft your personal brand, it becomes the easiest way to stand out in a saturated, creative market. People buy from people, not brands, so giving them a clear picture of who you are, helps to make more sales and create long-term loyalty. Once your team understands the pieces of your personality that are important to portray, then the brand can become its own entity with a living, breathing personality.
- How you communicate your personal brand has the power to attract and repel certain people and allow you to niche down and become the perfect choice for a very specific section of your market. For example, one interior design firm may have a really edgy, cool aesthetic and want to attract younger clients without kids who have a more contemporary style. Another interior design firm may have a more traditional aesthetic and love working for families with kids or empty nesters. Each firm needs to pull out specific pieces of their personality that speak to these types of people so that they are drawn to more than just their design aesthetic. You can do this in your messaging and copy as well as in your visuals, and if you do it well, your customers will feel like you understand them on a deeper level. This takes your work beyond just the surface-level design.
- The mistake most designers make is pulling bits and pieces from other brands they like because beyond their portfolio, they aren’t really sure why people hire them. This ends up creating an inconsistent brand that says nothing and speaks to no one and definitely doesn’t show why you and your firm are unique.
How do you define your personal brand?
When defining your personal brand, you will want to create a solid positioning statement. Your positioning statement is the clearest cut version of your message that describes what you do and who you serve in your own unique brand voice. To create it, get clear on your customers, their values, fears, stresses, trust builders, emotions around purchasing, and your own brand values and find where they all overlap. No matter how big or small, that’s where your messaging should focus.
- When deciding on brand values and voice/personality, pick one or two aspects of yourself that you want to amplify. Keep it strictly curated and don’t go overboard. Your personality is too big to communicate all of it, and not all of it will resonate with your audience. As a brand, don’t just rely your personal values, though there is usually plenty of overlap. From there, decide what values are shared between you and your clients and how best you can communicate with them to bring those values to the forefront.
- Use your positioning statement as a filter for how you communicate your brand in your voice and visuals. Every time you write an Instagram post, make an addition to your website or design an ad, look back over your positioning statement to be sure that it’s all cohesive and communicating the same idea and feel.
How do you communicate your personal brand?
Be sure to weave your voice and visuals in your brand so that they communicate the same thing. This forms cohesion and makes your brand much stronger because it’s creating a unified front. People love to focus on communicating their brand through their content and website, but don’t forget about the experience of working with you. Interior design firms that highlight their process and service experience have a huge leg-up on the competition. Home design is a long, intimidating process from the client perspective, so hearing upfront how you will support them and make it easy (and dare I even say fun) begins to build trust that goes well beyond the power of your portfolio. That experience needs to be consistent with what they are seeing online, and if it’s not you lose trust immediately.
- It’s ok to feel like you’re repeating yourself. That means you are sticking to your message. Find a way to weave in stories and show examples so that you can say the same idea in lots of different ways. Stories build engagement and rapport with your audience and don’t feel like you’re constantly spewing a sales pitch.
- Just because it’s a personal brand doesn’t mean your visuals are created from a hodgepodge of your favorite things. Start with your tastes and the look of the homes you design, but filter it through your message and make sure your customer is always at the center of what you create. Go through the same with your brand voice — how you say it is just as important as what you say.
You want your website, social media, print and service experience to all deliver the same message. One that resonates with your ideal client every time they come in contact with you no matter where that contact occurs. This is why your brand needs to get personal. It will allow you to connect to your audience in a way that feels naturally authentic to you every time and show them that the difference between you and the interior design firm down the street is much more than just the look of your portfolio.
Other resources for you:
You don’t have a brand without a message
Aligning your visual identity with your brand personality
