Marketing with Facebook

Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies

I listened to a great webinar today hosted by Gail Dody with Design Success University presented by Amy Porterfield. The subject was marketing with Facebook. Amy is a very engaging down to earth speaker. Visit her on Facebook and like her page, you're sure to get lots of great marketing tips from her.

She also mentioned that she was one of three authors that wrote the book "Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies." This book discusses everything you ever wanted to know about how to effectively use Facebook as a marketing tool. Check out the book, it has a wealth of information. Amy shared a lot of great tips on the webinar today. Thanks Gail for having the insight to have Amy do a presentation today.

How to Build Year-end Momentum and Profit for Your Interior Design Business

I read a great book in June that said that your revenue and profits are a lagging indicator of the quality and quantity of your relationships. Boom! That one statement was worth reading the entire book.

How well are you doing on a scale of 1 – 10 for relationship building? Be honest with yourself. Your numbers are the symptom of the problem.

Every relationship is important, yet some are more important than others. Your relationship with your current and past clients is the fastest way you can get more business. What are you doing to nurture those relationships? Are you keeping in touch frequently and more than just for job reasons?

What about past clients? Do you have a nurturing program to keep them informed? Do you have a monthly newsletter that you send either physically or digitally?

What about your referral partners? Are you constantly seeking to build relationships with the top advisors who serve prospects you prefer to work with?

Here are seven tips to transform your results:

1. Start a 12-touch program prospects, clients and referral partners. Plan this in advance and have an intern, virtual assistant or junior designer manage the process.
2. Invest in lots of cards – thank you, sympathy, congratulations, birthday, anniversary, new house, etc. Have note cards printed with your branding and carry them in your car with stamps and a pen. Literally write a thank you note after you meet someone new. Add their name to your database immediately (delegate), and follow up frequently with offers of connections for them.
3. Ask your current clients about other projects they’ve considered and make an offer for a new service. (50% is the typical close rate)
4. Contact your past clients to “check in” and see how they are doing. Let them know you’re doing a short survey to improve your services, and would like their feedback. Ask for a testimonial if you haven’t gotten one from them in the past, and of course, ask for referrals if they are happy and not interested in a new project. It’s a perfect time to remind them that they can get projects done by the holidays if you start now. Give them an incentive to do so. (33% is typical close rate)
5. Have a “Client Appreciation” party and have them invite a friend they think might be interested in your services. Create a memorable event, and even invite a local celebrity. It can be less expensive than you think.
6. Make a list of the most connected and influential advisors in your city, and reach out to them to meet. Ask them if you could get their advice about how they grew their businesses so successfully. Keep the interview short. Find out what their biggest challenge is in their business and ask how you would know someone who would be an ideal client for them. Always send a thank you note. Maintain your contacts frequently.
7. High visibility creates implied credibility. Get published frequently in magazines and newspapers, get interviewed on TV or radio, send out press releases online and offline, get involved in one major charity that you are interested in, and speak locally and nationally. You can even write an eBook that you can publish on Amazon.

What’s your favorite way to build your business?

Gail Doby, ASID is an author, speaker, writer, interior designer, and Chief Vision Officer of Design Success University, your shortcut to a more profitable and passion-filled design business. Click here for your complimentary copy of the Interior Design Fee and Salary Survey eBook. ($79 Value) You’ll also receive our complimentary weekly newsletter, New IDEAS.

How to Get Found Online & Get Interior Design Business

You have a nice website, yet you’re not getting the calls you want or need to have a profitable and sustainable business that provides the lifestyle you deserve. Why is that?

Just because you have a website doesn’t mean consumers can find you. Have you searched for interior designers in your metro area? Do you come up on the first page of Google or Yahoo? If not, you need to do some work. 80% of the calls go to the top three listings on the first page of the search engines.

List your site with the search engines. If you do this yourself, this can take many hours, but it is free. I really recommend outsourcing this to someone who does this all of the time.

Optimize your site for the keywords that people use to search for interior designers in your area. Keywords could be “interior designer new york,” or “kitchen designer San Francisco.”

Your website should be optimized with your keywords, in what are called anchor links within the text of your site. An anchor link is text that the search engines see that indicates relevance to a search by someone looking for your services.

For instance, one search term you might use to look for me is “value based fees.” If you’re looking for information about growing a more profitable and passion-filled interior design business, the link takes you right to another site we own. (Be sure to download the complimentary eBook!)

Make sure you anchor link keywords to secondary pages within your website. This is called “deep linking.” The search engines reward you for this because you have more content that makes the search on your site more relevant.

Here are examples you might use on your site:

• Interior design city
• Interior designer city
• Kitchen design city
• Bathroom design city

If you’re really on top of the game, your website address, or URL, should include the main keywords someone might use to find you. For example: http://www.interiordesignorinteriordesigneryourcityyourcompanyname.com.

If you don’t have a website address like this, you can register a new domain that uses this naming convention and forward it to your current website address.

Be sure to list your site on Google, Bing and Yahoo! maps. This is free, and extremely important to help you get found. These days, over 70% of all people who look for any service look online and view your website before calling you. If you’re not on Page 1, you’re not very likely to be found.

Add a blog to your website, and post articles at least once a week with the main keywords for your site. Search engines “crawl” the web every day looking for new content. Fresher content gets higher rankings in the search engines. If you don’t have a blog attached to your site, then at least update your website as frequently as possible.

I recommend a blog because you can update the site yourself. There are many qualified web developers who can set up a template for your site and teach you how to use it. You can even use a hybrid blog template that looks more like a website. Just search on Google for WordPress templates and take a look at the options available.

Every website or blog can be customized with your logo, branding and graphics.

Remember to write your content to appeal to the emotions of the potential client. Don’t use a laundry list of what you do. Tell your visitors how you improve their lives.

Use alt-tags for all photographs on your site. Alt-tags are the text you see when you roll your mouse over a picture or image.

Use similar naming conventions that I mentioned above. “Master Bedroom Interior Design NYC” is a good tag if you want your images to be found in the city of New York. Images are more likely to be found than your website.

Talk to your webmaster about your H1 tag (Title Tag), Meta Description and Meta Tags. These must be relevant to the keywords that your prospects use to search for you on the web.

If you really want to get found, use a video about your business. Few designers use videos yet, so you’re very likely to get a high search ranking if you use a video with keywords and your URL in the description.

Gail Doby, ASID, is co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of Design Success University. DSU is your shortcut to a more profitable and passion-filled interior design business. Click the link to get your complimentary copy of the Interior Design Fee & Salary Survey eBook now ($79 Value). This article was originally written for Decorati.

2011 Interior Design Business Predictions

Written for Decorati by Gail Doby, ASID

My crystal ball predicts a mild recovery in 2011.

The tax bill passed in December 2010, and economic indicators are stronger for remodeling. The affluent are spending again. However, they are more cautious and value-driven than before.

What can you do to grow your business?

1. Specialize. Create a specialty niche that capitalizes on a growing trend. It doesn’t mean you’re limited to doing that work, but it makes it easier to market your business because you will be known for that specialty. Neurosurgeons make 265% more than family practice doctors. Kitchen and Bath designers make much more than the average interior designers based on NKBA statistics and our findings.
2. Create your own economy. (Some interior designers are swamped, congratulations to you!) Why? They spent their year marketing consistently. They revamped their websites, reconnected with past clients, used social media, increased their visibility with public relations and generally worked hard. Action: Create a 12-Month Referral Program for your business. One for past clients, one for current clients, and one for referral partners. Automate it with software like Constant Contact, Send Pepper or AWeber.
3. Increase your visibility. Self-promote or hire a publicist. Create a 12-Month plan for Advertising, PR and Marketing. Make sure you have a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter Account, Optimized LinkedIn profile and an updated website. List your business on the Search Engine Maps for your area. Optimize your website to include the words, “interior design your city” on more than one page, create a blog and post at least once a week (make sure it is attached to your website) to increase your website traffic. Set a target for your media exposures. Don’t stop until you have commitments for the number of articles, public speaking opportunities, TV or radio interviews. Write blog posts for your local on-line newspapers. Get involved in your community.
4. Joint venture. Find people who are in allied businesses and co-promote. If you’re not a specialist in window treatments, kitchen or bath design, partner with someone who is. Develop a relationship with a remodeler and create joint articles or press pitches about the latest trends. The media loves to hear about trends.
5. Systematize your marketing. Some wise person said, “you never know which day you missed marketing that caused the phones not to ring months later.” Inconsistent marketing creates inconsistent results. Market, Market, Market. Marketing makes selling irrelevant. Analyze what you’ve done in the past. If you didn’t get a result after spending thousands of dollars on advertising, STOP!

Create a successful 2011!

Gail Doby, ASID and Co-Founder and Chief Vision Officer of Design Success University, is your shortcut to a more profitable and passion-filled interior design business. Download your complimentary copy of the 2010 – 2011 Interior Design Fee & Salary Survey eBook for more great strategies.

Time Triage Tips - Part II

Continued...

6. Taming Your Inner Demons – many of our members had some AHA moments during one session we did on Planning for Profit. It is critical that you find out if it is you that is stopping you from being successful. If you are insecure around affluent people, or you are a people-pleaser, it is important to ask yourself if your insecurity is causing you to miss your goals. If so, this is one of the biggest leverage points you need to work on. I have learned over the years that if something is making me nervous or I am procrastinating about something, either it isn’t a strength, I am fighting something internal, or it is an opportunity to grow and become more skilled. You should always feel a little stress right before you learn something new. Sometimes it helps to think about the benefit of doing the thing you are avoiding, and doing it in spite of the feelings of discomfort. If you aren’t feeling discomfort or fear, you’re probably not pushing yourself enough.

7. Business Dashboard & Drivers – you need a Business Dashboard with 5 – 7 key metrics or measures for your business. How many clients do you need? What is the lifetime value of your client and how do you increase it? What other measures are important in your business? Profit?
Marketing and sales are the key drivers of your business. Period. If you don’t like marketing and sales, you really need to ask yourself if you really want to run your own business. If you are an established business, about 1 – 2 hours of each day should be devoted to marketing without fail even when you’re busy. If you are new to business, or the economy has impacted your revenue, spend as many hours as you can on the highest leverage activities for marketing. What are they?

• If you really WOW your clients, you’ll easily get great referrals. This should be your number one focus of your business. If you aren’t getting this response, you’re slowing down your referral stream. Go back to your current clients and ask what “WOW” means to them. Think outside of the box, act and then ask for referrals and testimonials. One out of two existing clients may opt for a new offer from you. This is your easiest route to more business because they know, like and trust you.
• If you have clients whose projects have been finished for awhile, you are likely to activate one out of three of those clients, so this is your second best way of getting business. Ask these previous clients what they liked about working with you, what they’d like to be different and then think about an offer you can make to get them to do business with you again.
• Referrals from people that are doing business with the people you want to do business with. The best way to get referrals is to give referrals. Ask the question that Bob Burg, The Go-Giver, suggests – “How would I know who would be a great referral for you?” Start there and give, give, give. Be the hub of giving in your marketplace and you’ll get lots more business.
• Niche – be as clear, concise and narrow as possible with the description of your niche and services. Phrase them as benefits that your client receives.
• Ideal Client – have a complete profile developed for the perfect client for you. It should include their demographic (income, age, marital status, etc.), psychographic (interests, educational level, hobbies, values, etc.), and technographic profile (computer savvy, text messaging, social media, email, etc.)
• Brand – make sure your brand is consistent throughout all mediums that you use to market – messaging, website, blog, social media, cards, stationery, PR, advertising, etc. It should be authentically you so that if someone sees anything from your firm, they say, “Oh, that’s so you.”
• Brand message – what is it you do uniquely that no one else does. Your brand messaging should be focused on what you do for the client instead of what you do as an activity to serve them. This is where many designers go wrong.
• Keep current with new marketing standards. If you’re not keeping up with technology for marketing using online social media resources, you will be seen to be “out of touch” and “out of date.” Be sure that this is part of your marketing focus. Always be learning! This includes LinkedIn, Facebook Fan Pages, a blog, Twitter and YouTube. These are the fab 5 of the online world right now.

8. Measure Your Progress - once you create your dashboard, it is important to measure your progress. Review your dashboard daily. Create one for your personal life, too.

9. Awareness and Improvement – being aware of yourself and your emotions is vital. Your emotions drive your activities. If you aren’t clear on what is working and what isn’t, it is time to ask yourself more questions. Is this activity a driver? Is it something I can improve? Do I
want to improve? If I don’t do this, what will happen? It’s up to you to find the core motivation to get over your own hurdles. Keep a journal and ask yourself at the end of the day what you learned. What would you do differently? What will you start doing? What will you stop doing? What will you do more of? What will you do less of? (You can use these questions for employee reviews, too.) Awareness truly is the key to change.

10. Identify Your Constraints – this is probably the biggest AHA I had in the last few years. My business coach, Rich Schefren, talks about this. If you take some time to really focus and think about your life and your business, what is it that is really stopping you from achieving everything you want in life? Is it internal? Is it external? Is there another way to look at it? What caused the constraint or bottleneck? Why? Why else? What could you do to remove it? If you were to remove it, what would happen in your life and your business? How would things be different? Why would that be important? Who can help you get there? Just remember to look at this question as if there were no time, money or resource constraints. Once you get clarity on the constraint, then ask these questions, “How can I remove this constraint?” and “How can I get the resources?” There isn’t just one constraint…there are many, but focus on the biggest one first, and then the next and the next. Just think about a river with a beaver dam, if you remove the logs, the water flows freely. If you do this one exercise, you will be amazed at what happens in your life.

Be sure to let me know how this helps you at info@designsuccessu.com.

I’ve been amazed in my own life and business at how much I’ve accomplished since improving my knowledge and skills through classes, coaching and masterminds. Invest in yourself and no one can take that away from you. My personal goals are growing every day, and the more I learn the more I want to learn. Surround yourself with people who know more than you do, and who are more successful. Your success is directly linked to the people with whom you surround yourself.

Here’s one final thought and that is about leverage. You have a choice, and that is to invest in the best you can afford in terms of services, products, education or tools. You can’t afford not to do this. You only cry once when you pay for quality. Are you worth it?

If you’d like to learn more how to get more clients, work less and enjoy your interior design business more, be sure to request Design Success University’s Interior Design Fee & Salary Survey eBook - $49 Value with our compliments. We’ll also add you to our complimentary weekly newsletter, IDEAS that is full of educational and inspirational articles plus a calendar of upcoming events.

5 Biggest Mistakes Interior Designers Make With Clients

Here are a few of the mistakes some designers make...

1. Not setting expectations well. We all hate negative surprises and the worst ones are the ones that cost money and time. From the beginning of your relationship with the client, you need to establish a range for your budget. Clients have no idea how much things cost, so you should have examples of what a typical window treatment, room furnishing budget or renovation cost would be based on either the photos in your portfolio. Give them a range and then you’ll be able to read their reaction. If their eyes flutter and they don’t look at you directly, they are very uncomfortable.

2. Not asking enough questions and truly understanding what the client’s motivations and priorities are. Never assume. Always feedback what you hear your client say to be sure you understand what they really want.

3. Not communicating quickly when there are problems with the project, products or schedule. You should start the beginning of your client relationship by asking how they want to hear the good news and the bad news. Ask if they prefer a phone call, email or a meeting in person. First, be sure you have three solutions…decide which is the best solution and then either discuss it in person (very important for dominant CEO types) or by email or phone.

4. Not taking care of every last detail. At the end of the job, it is easy to get bored and disinterested and not want to finish the last few details, but those details are the ones that determine whether you will have a raving fan or a raving…..you know what I mean. Those extra details and a nice thank you gift and note at the end can mean the difference between more work and referrals or them telling 10 people how badly you handled their project. The little things matter the most.

5. Not asking for testimonials! This is one of the best tips I can share with you. Ask for testimonials early and throughout your relationship with your clients. It actually reinforces the reason why they made such a good decision to hire you. Help them with the testimonials by writing what you want them to say…you remember the compliments they’ve given you, so just write it out for them and ask them to tweak it, put it on their own stationery and that you will pick it up on a particular date and then bring a small token gift. Your clients want to help you, too.

Bonus tip - Job appreciation…any time you make an installation or deliver a product, be sure to admire the beautiful result with the client. This is really not as self-serving as it sounds. Clients need reassurance that they made the right decision. They are very insecure with designers, and this is a great technique that I learned from one of my teachers years ago. It works like a charm because your clients look to you for your approval, so share it liberally, but honestly.

Gail Doby, ASID, is co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of Design Success University. Gail is an Interior Design Business Success Mentor to thousands of interior designers globally. DSU’s Business Mastery Membership and classes include Value Based Fees and Marketing Intensives. Click here to get your complimentary copy of DSU’s Interior Design Fee & Salary Survey eBook and IDEAS newsletter subscription filled with inspiration, business tips and time-saving resources.