Interior Design Marketing Strategies
A powerful tool for design discovery, the expansive reach of social media can do more than just earn double-taps––it can be harnessed to drive business.
So, how have the industry’s savviest interior design marketer’s cracked the code on social strategy? With the help of Texas-based Gabby StyleMaker, Marie Flanigan, we unpack her toolkit to how the business of interior design has led to her social marketing success.
Marie Flanigan Interiors (Instagram: @marieflaniganinteriors) has earned an impressive following of interior-enthusiasts. With a team of social-savvy designers and interior design marketing experts, it’s no accident that Marie’s social presence, like her booming business, has grown to epic proportions. With an audience of around 170,000 Instagram followers, Marie has turned valuable ‘likes’ into brand loyalty.
Wondering how to turn your social profile into profits? Let’s get the social scoop from Marie Flanigan and her team of social media strategists.
Getting Social with Marie Flanigan Interiors
While the Marie Flanigan Interiors team utilizes five popular social media platforms; Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest garner the most engagement, and therefore command the majority of their planning efforts.
Early adopters of Instagram, Marie mentions that “recognizing the power of social media early on” was a key factor in their audience growth. While the MFI team rarely engages in paid advertising, they have worked hard to develop creative and organic ways of sharing their work, vision, and values with media and potential clients; Proving there’s no need to purchase followers when you have quality content and a whip-smart team.
So, what are you waiting for? Read on to see Marie’s advice for how interior designers can start leveraging social media marketing to engage audiences and drive conversions.
How to Create a Fabulous Instagram Feed that Reflects Your Work as an Interior Designer?
“Whether it’s how we engage with clients and vendors or how we share our designs on social media, we always strive for excellence,” Marie emphasizes. Follow these three digital strategies, and watch your social standing soar to new heights.
An example of how Marie captures product so beautifully to share with her social followers. Pictured here is the Gabby Lewis Chandelier and Edwin Coffee Table.
3 Social Media Marketing Tips for Growing Your Interior Design Business
1) Focus on quality over quantity. “Building an established brand, on social media or elsewhere, requires a steadfast focus on quality. Once you’ve established a brand voice, be consistent, and strive to post at least four times per week.”
2) Create image-centric content. “The majority of our posts feature our designs, so the look, feel, and the color story may fluctuate throughout the week. With that being said, a great deal of our work leans toward a nature-inspired color palette and we find that serves as a common thread weaving throughout our feed. In the end, we recommend capturing and sharing crisp, bright photography that powerfully represents who you are as an interior design and what you value.”
3) Understand your audience. “People spend an average of 4 hours a day on their phones! Hone in on your target audience and meet them on the platform where they’re already engaging. We’re currently working with clients in several regions throughout the US, some of which found us via social media, so YES, you can turn followers to clients if you know who you are talking to.”
How to Create Engaging Content
Between Instagram posts, IGTV episodes, and blog posts, the Marie Flanigan Interiors team is constantly creating engaging content, creating a balance between sharing images from completed projects to offering design tips and advice to their following.
As part of Marie’s social media partnership with Gabby, she designed this children’s bedroom using the Winslow Chair & a Half creating a comfortable yet tailored look.
But, how do they plan and produce this design-driven social schedule? Plan Ahead. Marie shares, “We work hard compiling and delivering the vast array of content we share each week… It really comes down to planning.”
Over time, Marie and her marketing team have discovered that there is no “secret formula to content creation.” Luckily, they have developed an arsenal of tips, tricks and best practices for social media strategy, including incredible time management skills.
“We have a central blog editorial calendar that is fleshed out six or more months in advance,” says Marie, “And each week’s social media posts go through team-wide reviews before our followers ever see them.”
When it comes to deciding which social media platform to push your content on, users have so many options, and it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. Be sure you’re contributing to the larger conversation and that you’re engaging with your audience and the larger design community on a regular basis.
[Planning Tip]: There are many tools out there to help schedule and plan your social content — try using Planoly to plan out your Instagram post or Hootsuit to schedule blog post!
How to Grow Your Social Media Audience
In the interior design business, you can only gain so much brand awareness by sharing your own work. You have to find ways to get other influential social media users to share it as well, but how do you do that? Here are Marie’s best tips for growing a social media audience for interior designers:
1) Hashtag it out. “You can easily hunt down a few quick tips on best hashtag practices, but we suggest incorporating 3 – 5 strong tags that may help new audience members find you.”
2) Cross-Promote. Collaborations are another great tool because they allow you to partner with the artisans and vendors work that you work with every day to support one another’s marketing efforts.
“We also regularly engage in Instagram takeovers which have proven very successful for both our following and our partners,” Marie stated. “My biggest piece of advice surrounding all of these efforts is to find another brand or individual who shares your vision, goals, and aesthetic. We’ve discovered that the most successful alignments are those that develop organically.”
3) Don’t Be Afraid to Pitch Yourself. “In all seriousness, one of our mottos around the office is ‘the worst they can say is no.’ It never hurts to reach out to brands you admire with a proposal to align, but do your homework first.”
Become acquainted with their goals and values and outline how a partnership with you might help them meet those. “I suggest starting small, with something like an Instagram takeover, and letting the partnership grow from there. Be so good they can’t ignore you!”
Partnering with Gabby was one way that Marie Flanigan has been able to expand her reach, and according to Marie “Gabby was a natural partnership because their quality of craftsmanship is perfectly on par with the homes we design.”
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