Is it time you dumped LinkedIn posts from your interior design marketing? Before you hear the answer, let me explain the reason for the question. LinkedIn post reach, the number of people who see your posts, is falling. Rapidly. In fact, LinkedIn post reach is dropping like a stone.
And lots of people come up with lots of reasons why it’s happening. Not that any of them matter. To keep with the analogy, a stone still falls when you drop it regardless if you understand gravity or not. Similarly, hypothesising why LinkedIn reach is in freefall won’t help your interior design marketing.
So, is it time you dumped LinkedIn posts from your interior design marketing? In short, no. But it is time you made significant changes to how you use LinkedIn posts in your interior design marketing.
Hope and Pray LinkedIn Posts Have No Place in Your Interior Design Marketing
Put simply, don’t expect to fire off any old ‘look at my project / award / magazine feature’ post and expect to generate leads. Without the intervention of Lady Luck, it won’t.
And don’t confuse cooing by your interiors industry buddies and suppliers as lead generation. Because they’re never going to buy your services!
Instead, you need an interior design marketing strategy that uses LinkedIn posts in a very intended and specific way. But there’s good news. Less posts!
Forget LinkedIn and Go Back to Basics, What is Interior Design Marketing?
Interior design marketing, like all marketing, is the process by which you guide a complete stranger along a journey that ends in them becoming your client.
Each step a potential client takes requires your encouragement. And the encouragement you give them needs to varies depending on where they are in their journey.
Often this client journey is described in 3 phases:
- Awareness: people who haven’t realised they’ve a problem, want, or need that’ll be satisfied by your services. Encouragement: focus their attention on that problem, want, or need they previously didn’t know much about.
- Discovery: people know they’ve a problem, want, or need. But they don’t know how to go about solving or satisfying it. Encouragement: focus their attention on the benefits of interior design and remove obstacles.
- Action: people know how they can solve their problem or satisfy their want or need. Now they decide which products or services will meet their want or need, solve their problem. Encouragement: focus their attention on the benefits you bring compared to your interior design contemporaries.
Marketers often describe this client journey as a sales funnel. With the ‘Awareness’ phase at the top (‘top of the funnel’) and the ‘Action’ phase at the bottom
Why It’s So Vital to Make Use of LinkedIn in Your Marketing Strategy
Because with LinkedIn you can target people at the top of the sales funnel. To recap, you’re mainly marketing to people who were previously unaware they’ve a problem, want, or need that you can satisfy.
In contrast to Insta, where your followers have likely ‘discovered’, and are interested in, interior design. Which means there are more people at the top of the funnel than in the discovery and action phases.
Sure, you can occasionally happen upon someone who’s looking for an interior designer at the exact moment they see you on LinkedIn (thanks Lady Luck!). But mainly your marketing activity is focussing peoples’ attention on problems, wants, and needs they haven’t thought about too much before. And generating leads by making them realise that it’s you who can satisfy the problems, wants, and needs that they’re now aware of.
How You Can Make Best Use of LinkedIn in Your Marketing Strategy
By building your LinkedIn part of your marketing strategy on two very strong pillars. Namely, a well-thought out connection approach and a fantastic LinkedIn profile. Both these pillars are subjects on their own.
Fortunately, you can read about connection strategies here. As for your LinkedIn profile, start with your profile picture.
Once you’ve got a great profile, you’re ready to start your lead generation process. And it is a process:
- Send a connection request (no introductory message required)
- If they accept, say ‘Hi’ using LinkedIn messaging
- Give them the opportunity to read one of your posts (don’t worry, I’ll come back to this!)
- Invite them to follow your LinkedIn page. Yes, you’ll need one of those. But if you’ve already got a great profile, it’s easy to create
- If they follow you, say ‘Hi’ again using LinkedIn messaging
- Entice them to follow your Insta using LinkedIn messaging
Make sure your process joins up. And the easiest way to do that is to focus on one type of client for 8-12 weeks. For instance, if you’re targeting busy working mums, send connection requests to professional women in their 30s and 40s (use graduation dates as a guide). Your ‘Hi’ messages should tell them how you help busy working mums. As should your profile headline and about section. Finally, your posts should resonate with busy working mums.
Most importantly, remember that your marketing is at the top of the funnel. Bringing people’s attention to problems, needs, or wants they didn’t know they had. And raising awareness about your brand. So, don’t use the words ‘interior’, ‘design’, ‘designer’ anywhere in your marketing other than in your company name. If you read on, you’ll see how you can do this.
4 Example Messages So You Get the Very Best from LinkedIn
These examples are taken from Abigail Bright’s interior design marketing activities. Abigail owns Brighter Interiors, a residential interior design business in Burton-on-Trent.
Abigail’s ‘new connection hi’ message
A few things to note:
1. It’s really friendly and concise
2. She doesn’t use the words ‘interior’, ‘design’, ‘designer’. Remember, you’re marketing at the top of the funnel
3. There’s a clear call-to-action (‘send me a message’) and a link to her website. These allow the new connection to short-cut their journey to becoming a client if Lady Luck is helping out
Everybody’s interior design marketing bugbear, how often to post
Post once a week. That’s all. Because new connections are likely to get a notification from LinkedIn that you’ve posted something. Which means new connections are the most likely to read your posts (other than your interiors industry buddies). So post something like this:
Much like Abigail’s ‘new connection hi’ message, there are a few things for you to note:
- No mention of the words ‘interior’, ‘design’, ‘designer’ other than in the hashtags (see below)
- Her message addresses the target audience (busy person) and their problem, want, or need (brighter living room)
- There’s no image. Shock! Horror! That’s right, text-only posts on LinkedIn get the same reach as image posts. So save yourself the effort of finding an image 50% of the time.
- Her call-to-action is a message and there’s no website link. Because LinkedIn doesn’t like users leaving their platform. As such LinkedIn restricts the reach of posts with external links
- She makes use of hashtags to reinforce how she helps, who she helps, and her brand.
Even better news, slight rewording (‘professionals / women / parents’ for ‘people’ and ‘kitchen / diner / bedroom’ for ‘living room’) provides 16 different posts.
Abigail’s ‘new page follower hi’ message
Similar to her ‘new connection hi’ message:
1. It’s really friendly and concise
2. She doesn’t use the words ‘interior’, ‘design’, ‘designer’.
3. Clear call-to-action (send me a message). And a website link so her new connection can short-cut their client journey
4. The messaging (taglines, style, etc) is very similar to her previous communications
Abigail’s invitation to follow her Instagram
The final step in the LinkedIn interior design marketing process. Again:
1. It’s really friendly and concise
2. As she’s marketing at the top of the funnel, she avoids the words ‘interior’, ‘design’, ‘designer’
3. She sets out the reasons to follow her Insta: more great tips, discounts, etc
4. There’s a clear call-to-action (follow me on Insta)
By this time, you’ll have contacted someone up to 6 times. If your interior design marketing message has resonated with them, you’ll have created enough interest so they follow you on Insta. If they don’t follow you on Insta, they’re not interested (at least not now). So leave them alone.
Interior Design Marketing: Is It Time You Dump LinkedIn Posts?
Is it time you dumped LinkedIn posts from your interior design marketing? No, but hope and pray LinkedIn posts no longer have a place in your interior design marketing. Instead, you need a marketing process that creates interest that otherwise might not be there for you. And once you’ve created interest, you then drive those newly curious people to somewhere you can start enticing them to buy. Most often, your Instagram.
Learn How to Make LinkedIn an Effective Part of Your Interior Design Marketing…
…by creating demand. Now needed more than ever. Because there are more interior designers than clients.
Oversupply in the interiors industry comes from design schools and universities pumping out fresh hopefuls. Half of whom won’t have an interior design job 18 months after graduation. As such, more graduates set up on their own.
Also, an abundance of employable designers means industry pay and conditions don’t improve. Causing more people to leave corporate firms to launch their own studio.
So, in today’s world, you need to create demand to find new interior design clients. And I can show you how to do that on LinkedIn. Not do it for you. Instead, give you the skills and experience you need to successfully market your business and win new interior design clients. Interested? Then register your interest!