No matter the business, creating a marketing plan and a marketing budget is rarely an easy task. The best marketing plans ever created can be ruined by a lack of budget, or massive amounts of money can be squandered on a mediocre set of tactics. But regardless of the uncertainty, a marketing plan and marketing budget are completely necessary. Your interior design business needs a clear roadmap that describes where you plan to go. And more importantly, it puts limits on how much you’re going to spend. In other words, how much risk you take.
Why Interior Designers Need a Marketing Budget
When money is tight, marketing is often the first expense to be cut. But this is often a mistake. How will you attract new clients if you’re not reaching out to them? A marketing plan with an appropriate budget can allow your firm to stand out in a crowded market by differentiating what makes you special. Attracting clients consistently throughout the year will make sure you always have projects in the pipeline. A major issue we see among designers is an unwillingness to attract new clients while in the thick of a project. However, this contributes to the dreaded feast-or-famine cycle that so many designers fall into. A marketing budget split out across every month of the year will ensure that you always have potential clients on the horizon, even mid-project.
Determine Your Marketing Budget
Setting aside money for marketing can be stressful, and can feel a bit like a roll of the dice. However, there are a few reference points that you can use to decide how much to invest in marketing. The rule of thumb is to spend between 5-10% of your business’s annual revenue on marketing, though this number can range anywhere from 2-25% depending on who you ask! And the truth of the matter is that it depends. Most businesses will probably aim to spend between 5-15% of revenue on marketing. The low end of this range is a safe amount to spend that will allow you to maintain your current level of revenue. The high end of that range and beyond signifies a more aggressive marketing strategy that is focused on fast growth, and is the common choice for startups. If you’re looking to grow your business, see if you can allocate at least 10% of revenue toward marketing activities.
If you don’t have much to spend on marketing and the prospect of this investment makes your nervous, not all is lost. You’ll want to be more attentive to what’s working and what’s not working. Don’t invest money in areas that aren’t bringing growth to your business. Focus on the areas that require the least amount of time and money and produce the best results, otherwise known as Return On Investment (ROI).
Identify Your Marketing Channels
These areas of focus can vary greatly, and you’ll probably want to at least experiment with each in order to see what works. Every business is different! But every marketing budget should consider most if not all of these marketing channels.
Website and SEO
An attractive and functional website is essential for any interior designer. Thankfully, creating a good-looking site is easy and accessible, and most of all, affordable! A website service like Squarespace, WordPress, or Wix will get you started and allow you to showcase your projects and create a contact page for very little money. However, if you’re not confident in your ability to create a website or make edits to it, hiring a freelancer to do these tasks is recommended.
What you’ll certainly want to hire an expert for is SEO, or search engine optimization. This optimization process will help your website show up in search engine results, and this research is generally best outsourced. If you want to create ongoing blog content, you’ll also need to hire a writer, or spend your own time on the task.
Social Media
Social media is free, right? While you can certainly post to your heart’s content without spending a dime, the social media landscape is such that you will probably need to spend money if you want to succeed. First of all, a scheduling tool such as Hootsuite, Planoly, or Later will streamline your social media efforts. These services let you schedule posts in advance and sometimes even see detailed analytics about what’s performing and what’s not.
Your organic social media posts are unlikely to make much of an impact (although if they do, you may have struck gold!). That’s where you can spend some money on boosting your posts. You can also run ads to bring in potential clients. The data that websites like Facebook have is astounding, and this lets you target your audience very specifically, down to age, location, and interests. Before running ads, make sure you’ve identified your ideal client and understand what sorts of advertising they respond to. And don’t be afraid to test multiple types of ads to see what works.
And don’t forget the potential cost of photography or videography for social media content.
Social media has many aspects that can find their way into your marketing budget, so make sure that you know where your audience spends their time before committing too much money toward it.
Email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach your audience. However, you first need to create that audience. Usually, you will need to offer something in exchange for signing up for your email list. This can be as simple as promising a certain amount of knowledge, education, or updates in your newsletters. You can also incentivize signups with free downloads of exclusive information or worksheets. These resources take time and money to create, so include that in your budget.
You will also need an email platform such as Mailchimp or Keap. These platforms give you the ability to maintain a contact list, create attractive-looking emails, and automate them. These services have a subscription cost associated with them which will need to be factored into your marketing budget.
Events
Some designers may like to attend industry events, trade shows, or home shows. These events have costs associated with them, including booth rentals, signs and swag giveaways, and of course the time investment of attending.
PR and Publicity
Public relations and media outreach can cost money, as well as time. It takes time and patience to research and reach out to media outlets. It can also cost money to get the placements you like, and hiring a dedicated publicist to get your name out there is another optional expense related to PR.
Plan for Time as Well as Money
As we’ve alluded to a few times, money is not the only expense when it comes to marketing. You also have to factor in the time spent on these activities. And this time costs money. You either need to pay a marketing assistant or freelance, or you need to consider your own time. Every moment you spend on marketing in time not being spent on design projects! We suggest you spend about 10 hours per week on marketing, at a minimum. This is enough to keep the clients coming in and make sure you’re always working on gaining a steady stream.
Track, Analyze, Adapt
Almost no one gets marketing right the first time. It’s all about trial and error. So make sure to record your results, compare your efforts to other efforts, then adjust as needed. If something isn’t producing results, you can either adjust that strategy, or abandon it altogether. If something is working well, focus more time and money on that strategy. Just because you think you need to be active on social media doesn’t mean that you really do. If that isn’t serving you and your business goals, you don’t need to waste time and energy on it.
You can use a simple spreadsheet to record your data, as well as analytics platforms like Google Analytics and the dashboards of social media platforms to gain insights.
Don’t think of marketing as an expense. It is an investment that helps your business stay afloat by bringing in new clients and new projects. Be intentional with your marketing. Don’t implement a tactic into your overall strategy if it doesn’t serve your overall goals, just because you think you have to.
If you’re unsure of where to begin, consider adding a coach or consultant to your marketing budget. Get in touch with Pearl Collective if you want to take control of your marketing, finances, and business growth.