Why Your Interior Design Website Isn't Generating Clients (And How to Fix It)
In this podcast episode, digital marketing expert Daniela Furtado reveals the strategies that will turn your interior design website into a client-converting machine.
If you're an interior designer who relies on referrals for their interior design business, this episode is going to change everything.
Daniela Furtado of Findable Digital Marketing is here to explain why so many amazing interior designers struggle to build a consistent stream of clients despite having beautiful work showcased all over their website & social media.
"I've had my firm for years and been able to pay myself a good income without marketing, but things are changing," is a common refrain Daniela hears from designers.
Google data confirms it – since 2016, online searches for interior designers have skyrocketed, and the trend isn't slowing down. Your potential clients are actively searching for interior designers online, not just asking friends for recommendations.
In this interview, Daniela reveals how she helps interior designers turn Google searchers into website visitors into paying clients. She explains why beautiful Instagram feeds often fail to generate leads, how to turn your website’s portfolio into compelling case studies that sell your expertise, and why local SEO is more important than your follower count.
Whether you're struggling with inconsistent client flow or looking to accelerate growth, Daniela's practical insights will transform how you think about marketing your interior design business.
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Chapters
0:00:00 Intro
0:00:33 Origin Story
0:03:11 Interior Design Marketing Specialist
0:06:45 Cannabis vs Interior Design
0:12:34 Interior Design Is Local
0:17:05 Social Media vs SEO
0:17:56 Brand Identity
0:23:10 Can a Designer Grow Into a Brand?
0:28:50 How Can Findable Change Your Business?
0:33:11 What Do You Want Your Design Business To Be?
0:38:01 How To Do Social Media Better
0:44:22 How To Judge Social Media Success
0:48:23 Wanna Work With Findable?
0:55:17 Money, Money, Money
0:58:47 You Should Be Using Story To Sell Your Design Services
Read the transcript…
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Daniela, can you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and, and how you got into digital marketing?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: So my name is Daniela. I have a marketing agency called Findable. We are hyper specialized. We do digital marketing specifically for the design and build industry. But I've been doing digital marketing for a while. It's hard to know when do I mark the start date because I'm self taught. So I got my first computer when I was 9 years old and I liked dabbling with it. '
I was really interested in digital arts. Then I gradually started learning how to make websites and became a big hobby of mine. And by the time I was 24, I was making hobbies as a siding. I was making websites as a side income. So for friends and family, if they needed a website for the small business, I would make one. But then I also started to learn about how to get traffic to these websites. I learned about SEO and ads and branding and social media and all the things.
And so I had one website at the time that was generating a very, very modest side income. It was like a few hundred dollars a month type of thing. So while I was learning on my own, I was listening to all the podcasts, reading books, watching YouTube videos, reading articles and going to meetups. And at the meetups I would meet people that would do this full time. I was exposed to the world of like full time bloggers and, and this profession, digital marketing.
And you know, being 24 at the time I graduated from business school, I was working in hospitality, luxury hospitality because of my languages. But I didn't like the shift work. I knew that it wasn't what I really wanted to do. And so I was at a place in life where I was trying to figure out my career. And yeah, I thought why don't I do this, why don't I do digital marketing?
So I started taking courses and my employer at the time paid for me to go back to school and I did a master's in digital marketing. And yeah, the rest is history. So you're not exactly self taught, but that's, that's how you got started.
Yeah, I just don't know. Do I say it was when I was 20 something and figuring it out myself when I was 12 or when I got my first full time marketing job. That was, you know, the moment that marked when I started.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Daniela, what led you to working with interior designers?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: So I had a position as a marketing manager for a food tech company and it was a cool Company. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was quite bureaucratic and they were slow to make decisions and move things forward. And I at one point got a little bit bored and thought I'd do some freelance work on the side. So friends. Because I had made all these friends through these meetups and it was pretty easy to find a freelance gig.
And one of my first gigs was a landscape architect. She was from Lebanon and she just moved to the country and was doing, you know, projects here and there to, to make ends meet. But she was having a hard time and getting full time work or more projects. And so she asked me to help her with her, her website and her marketing. And I realized it's very challenging to market in this profession or this industry specifically.
Landscape architecture is hard because it takes a while years for the plants to grow and for you to really photograph the projects and tell the stories and market yourself and show off your portfolio. So she told me like, I've, you know, I've tried going to so many different marketers and nobody wants to help me. Can you help me? And I'm like, this is great. This is exactly the kind of challenge I want. And, and then yeah, gradually I got, she referred me to other people and I gradually got more and more freelance gigs in the design industry.
I had other gigs in cannabis and, and then like a, it was like a potpourri of projects I was working on. But eventually with time, I knew that I had to. I ended up quitting that job and started going full time on my own. And when I did, I knew that there are so many marketing agencies, the world doesn't really need another general marketing agency. So if I want to stand out, I need to take the advice I give to clients and I need to position, I need to specialize. And so I didn't know what to specialize in. It's a very difficult decision. But I looked at the roster of clients I had at the time and the ones that seemed to have more of a need and value, my services and that I was attracting the most of were cannabis and design.
And I thought, okay, I'll stick with these two and time will tell, the market will tell me which ones I should, I should specialize in it. So there have been times in the business where we had a 50, 50 split. Other times where we had 80, 20 cannabis and right for the past year and a half.
And I think it will be like this going forward. 80% of our clients are in the design and build industry and then 20, 20, 25% are in cannabis. So we have fewer cannabis clients. They're quite big projects or very large e commerce websites with thousands of products or skus in their inventory. So that's cool.
But yeah, the market has really changed and yeah, now, now we're pretty deep into the design industry.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Daniela, do you see similarities between those two industries and what you do for them?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm glad you asked. So they're both new to digital marketing, but digital for different reasons. The cannabis industry is new to digital. Well, the legal cannabis industry is new to digital marketing because in Canada it was legalized five years ago and a whole new industry was created. And because, because of the Canadian Cannabis act, there are restrictions in how they can communicate and advertise their products.
So organic marketing, especially SEO, is one of the few channels or maybe the only channel where there is no censorship, no restrictions. So that was an easy fit. The design industry, I don't know why it's like this. Maybe Douglas, you have more of a insights on this. But historically it's an industry that has been slow to adopt digital and technology, but consumer data is changing.
So when I was working with a lot of these clients years ago, starting and learning about the industry through the clients, I had a lot of people would tell me, Daniela, you know, I've been, I've had my firm for 10 plus years, 10, 15, 20 years. And I've, I've had a good, like I've been able to pay myself a pretty good income. I haven't had a problem getting projects. I have a website, but it's been abandoned. I don't even remember the password to it. But things are changing. In the past couple of years, all these, I remember one person, she said, all these young yuppies are coming in and competing with us.People I've never heard of now are creating companies and they're doing digital marketing. They're all over social media. They have these beautiful websites and we're losing projects to them. And if you go to Google Trends, it's a free tool. If you go to Google Trends, Google Trends is a tool that will show you what people are searching for in a given country or time period.
And so if you search interior designer or architect near me or just that, that term, you'll see that it was about, in 2016, the line starts to go upwards and it has been going upwards ever since. It hasn't stopped. Like usually with most industries, they see that there's a spike during COVID that there's a spike in demand or interest in their services. It hasn't really gone down, it keeps going up. So that there we can see that consumers are going to the Internet looking for design services, design and build services more than ever before.
It's not just something that you ask your friends and family. It's not, you know, a referral only type of business anymore. And yeah, I started to see that and a lot of people did not want to be that marketing agency that in the marketing world a lot of consultants will say, don't be a client's first ever marketing agency. You will have such a difficult time because you have to be the person that really educates them and teaches them how this works. And it's going to be, it's like having someone's first boyfriend. Like, it's, it's to do everything for the first time. So, so yeah, no one really wanted to do that.
But I, you know, like I said, because of my background, I'm, I love a challenge. I love being the first. I loved, you know, pulling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty and, and yeah, so that's kind of, that's, Sorry you asked me the difference between the two, but.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Oh, I, I, I appreciate like anybody who's willing to dive in and be the first. I agree. You're definitely educating more than if it was 10 years down the road. Right, but, and you're also right about, I mean, that's interesting.
That date, 2016, I mean, I would assume, I mean still, referrals are the number one source of new clients for residential designers. Right. You know, you do a good job. They tell their friends, they tell their neighbors and that's the way it's always been. But then you have HGTV comes and all of those design shows. So I would assume that is tied into that. Then you tie in Instagram and designers love Instagram. But I see and I'd be curious to your point of view is when I look at most designers, Instagram especially their wall, their walls have to be perfect and it's beautiful, beautiful images.
But to get designers, and maybe also it's designers of a certain age or who doing video is really new to them is getting them to do reels, getting them to do stories, it's like pulling teeth. It's like, you know, if everybody's got these beautiful, you know, images all over their Instagram, that's fantastic. But how do you stand out amongst all of them? So, yeah, I mean, losing clients to people who are willing to do those things, who are willing to market their their business digitally while you're not at. At. You know, that impacts your bank account and you're like, oh, I guess I'd. I better change for sure.
Do you find that there's. When you, when. When a designer reaches out to you and inquires, are there any kind of common challenges or problems that. Okay, there are. So dive right into that.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Sorry, you please finish your question. Common challenges?
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah. Are there common challenges that they come to you with all that they have and that's why they're coming to us?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: It's. It's exactly what you said, that they younger or old, it doesn't matter. Well, I should say. Okay, there's. It's usually newly established firms nowadays that come to us. I think during the pandemic, there were a lot of people that had firms for years and years and years and they were coming.
I don't hear from those kinds of people anymore like I used to. But yeah, nowadays it's typically newly established firms, they have been in business for a few years, running on referrals, and they see how inconsistent it can be and unreliable, and that scares them.
They're also a little bit more. They're pretty business savvy. They're reading books and taking courses and listening to podcasts about business. Not just interior design business, but just business. And because they're younger, they are digital natives and they understand the importance of marketing and what marketing can do to help them expand their network.
You know, not just get clients from their personal circles, but from outside to stand out, to position themselves as premium and charge the rates that they want to charge and be picky about the projects they take on.
So, yeah, that's typically why people come to us, is to get more or better projects.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, so these, these newer clients, when they come to you, do you see any commonalities in terms of what their existing marketing strategy is like?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Yeah, so one, I think a qualifier, if I could say that to working with us, is that you have a website that works, that you're proud of. We can make changes to parts of the website if you're not happy about it.
But if you want a full rebrand or, you know, redo the whole thing, then I tell people, okay, you got to go see a branding or website designer and fix that, fix the foundation, and then come back to us. So they got to have a beautiful website already.
They've got to have a handful of projects. I say at least three on their website. And sometimes, or usually they've tried some sort of marketing already. They've maybe tried social media or PR and they start to understand the difference between the different channels and the purposes that they serve.
They start to see, just from experience, from dabbling themselves, they see that PR is good to get, get you in the magazines and that will get you that credibility and authority. Right. That ability to say as featured in. But.
And it might bring, bring a rush of traffic or views, but it seldomly brings leads, very, very seldomly. And then social media is great to build a brand, to tell your stories, to nurture your audience, but getting leads from that, I don't know. I don't think it's that you can't get leads from social media, but I think you have to have a very targeted or intentional strategy. You have to have a very clear purpose. You got to be very consistent. Like it takes a lot nowadays to get leads from social media and people.
I think they start to understand that it's going to take a lot more resources or strategy than they expected. Yeah. And then they start to think, okay, what about Google, what about search? What about utilizing your website A lot more? And that's when they come to us.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Residential design especially is highly local for most, for the vast majority of designers. I mean, if you're a designer on Instagram who's got 50,000 followers, right. If you just look at that vast number, at some point, even if you, you are a local business, you end up with clients. If you've got 2,000 followers or 6,000 followers and, and they're spread out all over North America or the world in general, how many of those people are actually going to be your clients? Right. Whereas SEO, you can specifically target that for local clients.
Yeah, right. Yeah. Get coming back to when designers start reaching out to you, do you find many of them have that kind of established brand identity, what they see themselves as, who they see their, their ideal client avatar?
Do they come with that or do they. You. Is that part of the education process?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: They come with like a baby idea of it. It's very young. I think that's a very difficult question for a lot of designers to answer. What makes you unique? They can tell us a little bit about their target customer. They can tell us more about their target customer than about what makes them unique. And yeah, actually this is something that we've been talking a lot about in the, in the agency is how do we, how do we address that?
We've tried a few different things, like workshops, like workshopping it or giving them questions. Well, well, well before for them to sit on it and think about it. But I think I'm realizing that, you know, I'm.
I'm taking it for granted that everyone thinks like me. You know, I'm a marketer, and that's why I think about these things. Like. Like what makes us unique. And I look for it. And I have trained myself and. Or I've been trained to think like this.
And I sometimes think like, okay, if I just give them the questions and they think about it, you know, in the shower or while they're going for a walk, they answers will come to them. But no, I think it needs a little bit more. I don't think it's.
For designers, it's something that they can answer in just one sitting. It's got to be. It's. I think that needs more of a journey. So something I'm starting to put my finger on is I think there are two exercises that will help people understand their.
What makes them unique. One is comparing yourself to other designers. And I know they say comparison is a thief of joy, but let's make this an exception. Go talk to other designers. Go to events, conferences. Study the way other designers do their work. Talk about their work. Maybe even ask your inquiries or their. Your clients or sales prospects. You know, who else have you spoken to and what. Why did you like them or what stood out to you about us? Compare. And that might give you some perspective. The other thing is tell the stories behind your projects. The more you talk about your projects and the more you tell stories, you'll start to gradually with time.
It won't happen overnight, but gradually with time, you will start to see some patterns and how you approach problems, what your style is, what clients say they like about you. So you'll see the theme here is it takes a lot of introspection and reflection to know what makes you unique. There are some obvious things like it. Like you mentioned location, right? One of the things that's going to make you, your services unique is that you maybe target a specific city or neighborhood. Even you may want specific types of properties, like a condo versus a home.
Maybe you specialize in a specific room, like kitchens and bathrooms only maybe it's a specific aesthetic. And that's a difficult thing for designers to articulate sometimes. Are you modern? Are you traditional? There are some people.
For some people, it's going to be very, very easy. Like I met. I've met some designers that specialize in creating playrooms. I've met someone else that specializes in wheelchair accessibility and like, creating homes for that or someone Else that she creates Victorian inspired homes. That's really cool. For some people that's going to be a very easy exercise, but for many others it's going to be more challenging.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah, I mean most designers are generalists. I mean they probably would never want to admit to that. But also, I mean if, if you've been doing this for a length of time, you probably have a better idea of who you are as a designer and someone who hasn't been doing it a long time, not only do they not have that history to look back on, to look at like all these clients, what, what are the similarities between these people and, but they may still be aspirational.
They're like, okay, I'm at this point dealing with these type of jobs worth this amount of money, but I want to be higher. I want to do bigger and better things. So who is that brand? Is it who they are today or is it who they dream they're going to be in two years time?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: if this is an unconventional take. I. But okay, so I have this email newsletter that I put out every week and I look at the analytics every quarter and I try to decipher like what are the topics that people care about that perform the best.
And I notice it's three topics. Social media, PR and branding. Branding especially, people love talking about it, maybe because it's the more creative, fun side of marketing, but I actually think that branding, okay, yes, it's important. Like I can see a big difference when we have a client that has a very strong brand identity versus one that does not. You know, the website just performs so much better. We can send traffic to it and then the ink, it just, the traffic flows through the website and it turns into inquiry so smoothly.
So I definitely believe that branding is important, but I, you know, a lot of people will recommend that you have a clear brand from day one. And like you said, Douglas, like that's really hard. Like I talked about myself being a marketer. I knew that I had to position, I knew the value of positioning and branding, but I had no idea how to do it in day one until I went out there and tried and experimented and then let the market kind of, and the feedback and also see how I feel. Right.
Like do I enjoy working in cannabis or design? After two years, maybe I, I would do it for a little bit and hated it. You know, like, or maybe the, it was just a, a trend and, and it wasn't sustainable for a long period of time. So. So yeah, I'm a big believer in giving yourself a few years to experiment and try and not attach yourself to any specific brand or positioning until you know you, you're very confident.
Because if you hire a brand, brand design firm like a graphic designer or a website design firm to create your brand identity, they're going to ask you a lot of questions. They want you to come prepared. The more prepared you can, you can come to them. The, the more that they have to work with, it will be a lot more stimulating for them. They'll, you'll get more out of it. And so the only way you can come to them with, with that, with the question, with the answers to the questions they're going to ask you is if you have some lived experiences.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah, I've always thought that. Not always, but I mean, I'm, I'm interested in marketing. I'm interested in business in general. I've, I've owned and sold two businesses and it excites me. And when, when I was running, I ran two fitness businesses, one online and one in real life. And the one in real life. We thrived on referrals. And for me, when I was young and starting out, I thought I knew everything. And then as I got older, I realized I knew a heck of a lot less than I thought I had. And I was. And I realized I, I needed the feedback from existing clients. And not just the good stuff, but I wanted to hear the things we were doing wrong, the things we were screwing up, the things we could do better. And I tried to always get my employees, whether they were training staff or doing office work, to go after that information, figure out, let your clients tell you what you could be doing better for them.
And almost to a person, the ones who would do that were the ones who left me to start their own businesses. And they're also, they're also the ones that I'm still friends with to this day. Right. And I'm proud of everything they did since leaving me. And, and they're like, you know, I can't believe how helpful that was, looking at the things that I could be doing better.
And my wife, who's been in design for 20 years, would say the same thing. And it took years to gain that confidence for her to be able to do that. And a lot of her, her jobs were, she'd be working for, you know, 12 months on a job and she got to really know these people. And at some point discussions would come up or there'd be a bump in the road with the project or whatever. And how she would have to deal with it. And, and she slowly started to have those conversations with clients. And earlier in the job, you know, what could we be doing better? Right. Where, where have you been frustrated?
And even in the middle of a job. Right. You're asking those questions. It was always refreshing to the clients. They're like, well, you know, there is this one little thing and then, but then you can go and fix that one little thing and make them happier and then more referrals and you know, and, and, and I love that.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: But yeah, so I always looked as brand is like this. If you can nail that down, then at least you're, you have a path of where you want to go with all of the other aspects of marketing. Yeah, but it's not an easy task. No, it's very difficult to get there. Yeah. Yeah.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah, Okay, let's look at something super positive then. Let's go. Okay, so somebody's been working with you for six months and everything is going fantastic. How are their businesses changing? I want, best case scenario, this designer is just so happy with Daniela she cannot do anything wrong.
How is, how is their business better? Money, time, stress, any of that.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Okay, well, disclaimer like. And if they've never worked with a marketing agency, we will have, not that a difficult time. But usually, yeah, the first three months is a bit overwhelming to a lot of clients and I gotta like tell them I know there's a lot you're doing really great. Like, like we'll get through this. Wait till we get to month six and then you'll see the increase rolling in.
So, so yeah, but yeah, usually month six, they start seeing consistent inquiries rolling in. So a lot of them, even before a lot of them, by month three, they start to, to see them coming in. But months 6, 9, 12, especially the number of inquiries just keep increasing and have more consistency behind them. And at first the inquiries may not be great quality. What we're really trying to prove to ourselves in the beginning is that we can get complete strangers that have never heard about you reaching out seriously inquiring about your services.
This is the first thing that we want to prove. Right. And once we can do that enough times, then we can kind of narrow it down and filter and be a little bit more selective. We'll start adding more questions to the contacts form and filtering out people that are just price shopping.
And then that's when you start to see higher quality increase. Another thing that clients start to do at month six and onwards is, is they start to realize that they have to tweak their sales, everything about their sales actually their sales processes their pitches a little bit because they're so used to speaking to people that came from referrals.
When you speak to a complete stranger, you've got to introduce yourself a little bit more thoroughly. You've got to have more of a pitch. You got to start tracking leads now because you got to send it back to us and we want to know what's working, what's not working so we can change the kind of content we create and the how we're designing the website and the flow.
A lot of designers have never done that before. They've never, they can have a ballpark estimate of how many leads they get every year or month, but they've never had to track, get into the habit of tracking every single one one and capturing information about it. Yeah.
And I think another thing that they start to see is you get this wide range of people reaching out to you and you have to start asking yourself, okay, some, I've been saying that My minimum is $200,000 to, to work with me, right. You gotta have a budget of 200,000. But someone's coming in with 150k. I really like them, they have a good vibe or someone else, they say, I really want to hire a designer, I just don't have the budget. Can you do like a full day consultation? Like you're going to start to be exposed to a lot of different needs and you have to start asking yourself, do I want to meet them where they're at?
That doesn't mean that you lower your prices, but that means do you want to start offering a breath of packages like tiers, you know, like a premium, high, low, medium type of thing.
So a lot of our, I see a lot of designers after they've been working with us for a year, year and a half, I, I notice little by little their sales and their business starts to morph and change because of digital marketing.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I was actually just speaking with, with a woman yesterday whose Design business is 100 consulting. She doesn't, she's not involved with the, with the building, with anything like that. All she does is provide advice and information and still most of it's local. Like 80% of her business is still local. So now she also has connections with trades and contractors and where to go shopping and whatnot. But, but that's all she does. And she is super busy and she's always thought, you know, like a large, a design firm that does a full service, they can't really have a designer working on full service projects and doing consulting.
You almost need to have a separate branch and hire a new designer or transfer a new design, existing designer over to just handling consultations. But, but I don't see many designers offering that as a legit service. They might, you know, give it a little bit. We, we can do this for you, but they don't really do it. Yeah. So it's interesting, it's interesting you saying how, how they, their businesses change as their marketing improves.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Yeah. And that's not to say everyone starts offering different packages, but these are the questions they start to ask themselves. And it's up to every person to figure those things out for themselves. Because it depends on you. Right. Like, it depends what you like doing and where you're at in life. Sometimes your personal life will determine as well, like if you have constraints, you know.
Another client, for example, when we first started working together, she was doing all types of projects. She was doing condos, full bill new builds, full gut renovations. She was also doing cafes, restaurants, offices. Like she was doing a little bit of everything. And very early on I said, we can't keep doing this. Your. Your portfolio looks like a potpourri. Like, you can't. We got to narrow it down. And it was really hard. That took. That's. That's what I mean. When people have. Yeah. Six months are. It's like boot camp. It's like.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Well, yeah, in a way, maybe you're helping them narrow down that brand identity that they haven't been able to.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Right. Because there's this big fear of saying no. I find in not just this industry, I see it with marketers as well. There's just that people are afraid of saying no. When you're in a position you're just new to, you're new to business, you need the money.
It just seems counterintuitive to start saying no to work. But it's a very courageous thing to do. It's a very scary thing to do. But if you persist, then, well, it doesn't always work out in the end. Some people, they pick a specialization and they do it for. They say, okay, I'm going to do it for a good like 6 months or 10 months or 12 months. And then they figure, they realize this is not what I thought it was. Right. So I think specializing or having a tech positioning is very important, but it is difficult to get there.
It's a risk for sure. It's definitely a risk. So anyways, I was trying to say was. We went Back and forth we negotiated that we would choose two specializations, not like five different projects. So we narrowed it down to full builds, new build homes and cafes or restaurants, hospitality cafes. That was, was specifically it. And she admitted she's like, actually I'd love to get to a place where we're only doing cafes, but I just can't afford like the projects are going to come, they come slowly, right?
So it's going to take some time for me to establish myself as like a go to cafe restaurant or cafe designer. So she's, it's been like maybe a few years, like four years in progress, but she's now, I touched base with her recently. She might go all the way with it and separate the, have two different websites, like kind of like you said, like divisions and go all in with the cafe design. So that's an example of how doing marketing will change your business.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I want to get into the services you offer specifically. But before that, I'm still curious what makes, if I'm on social, I'm on Instagram, not so much the website, the socials. Okay. And you nail down what makes it easier for a designer to be found online on socials than somebody else.
Is it just a numbers game? Like I've already got an established presence or are there things that designers are doing wrong or could be doing better?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: I think the website and social media, like all the things that I'm, when I'm talking about positioning, that applies to everything. That is a marketing principle. So technologies, platforms, algorithms are going to keep changing. But that the, the four P's, we call them positioning is one of those P's That's a, that's a principle and then I think will always be true.
So if you have strong positioning, if you, that means that like you're, you've got some sort of specialization, something that makes you really unique and you communicate that clearly, be it the website or social media, you may not have hundreds of thousands of followers, but your followers will be people that really value the thing that you're doing, the solution that you're providing.
And your conversion rates or your engagement rate will be much higher. The thing is, is you got to commit to it. You got to go all the way. It's got to be really, really clear. You can't be wishy washy about it. It's got to be in, very, very evident from your description, right?
Like what you call yourself, how you describe your services, the hashtags, you use the captions but also it has to come through in your photos and the content that you create. It's got to be consistent. I can speak to a little bit of how you show. Once you got that, then how you show up on social media is a different ball game.
I think there are, there are a few different things that you've got to do. One is you got to provide a lot of value on social media. You got to, I don't know what the number is, it's maybe you got to provide value 10 times for every call to action or sales pitch that you make. Maybe it's even more. But you've got to provide a lot of value before selling. Another thing that works really well on, on social media is creating a two way communication. I think this is a little bit difficult
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES - Daniela’s internet dropped :(
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Hey, you're back. Yeah, you froze up for a second there.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Sorry. I think our Internet disconnected, but I'm using my hotspot.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. So we were talking about the two way communication between designers and people who are on social media. So why don't we dive back in there?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Yeah. The other thing is that people need two way communication on social media. But I'm gonna admit now with the way that the social media landscape is, I think it's increasingly difficult to do that. Still possible, but it's a little bit challenging because now the platforms are so focused on the algorithm and getting attention and the content that we're creating, especially with the rise of AI and people are putting producing at scale.
It's so polished. So actually we have the, every, every week or so, every month the team and I, we have these like show and tells we call them, they're like this, we have these like informal discussions about marketing and business and this is what we're going to talk about this week.
We're talking about the tick tock man and, and the state of social media nowadays. Yeah, so, so, but yeah, platforms like Discord, Substack, YouTube, lives and there's another one. Oh, Reddit are becoming, are increasing in popularity because it gives people space to have conversations. So yeah, there's going to be a value exchange. There's got to be two way communication and I think as well people need to have a sense of belonging and that happens when I think when you have the other two things in place, when they feel like they have a familiarity with you, that they, you seem personable, that they could talk to you.
Those parasocial relationships.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I wonder about that. The value exchange and producing content for viewers is interior Design is a, is a luxury service at any price point, whether you're working with like the 1% of, of income earners or normal people who are, who want to refresh and have a new kitchen, whatever, at the end of the day, the money they're pulling out of their bank account is going to hurt a little bit to get this service. It's, it's not inexpensive. So I, I've seen designers who will put out content, and it seems geared almost to a DIY audience. Here's something you can do. And I'm like, okay. On one hand, I'm like, good. You're, you're producing content. You're, you know, and if it could get shared, that's fantastic. You get a bunch of new followers. But those people aren't going to turn, not anytime soon, into clients. Right. If they're a DIY mindset, they're not hiring an interior designer for $100,000 kitchen. Right. Two different people. And I mean, talking about the algorithms, right. Like prior to Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, they were still based on connections, people. Yeah. And right now it's, it's more about, you know, what we're enjoying to see as we flip through our, our reels.
Right. something different altogether too. Right. And at the end of the day, if we're going to judge the success of our marketing efforts based on, based on client leads versus follows or likes or shares, because at the end of the day, it comes down to, are we building our business?
It's a heck of a lot more complicated than just putting content on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Yeah. It requires a lot of intention, a lot of strategy, for sure. I think DIY is easy. It's, yeah, like, it's pretty easy to come up with those ideas.
When we look at design magazines, those are typically the topics that they're covering. When we look at really large firms like Studio McGee is a common example, that's the kind of content that she's creating. And so we want to replicate. You know, if they're successful and that that's kind of content they're creating, then yeah, that's logical for me to create.
But their business is different. You know, a magazine is appealing to the mass audience. A magazine is maybe $10 and it's, of course there are going to be people that are DIYers and doing it themselves. That's why they spent $10 on a magazine and, and, and not, you know, 20K plus on a, on a designer And Studio has a huge, huge part of her business is E commerce.
She's selling products again, appeasing the DIY consumer. But there is, there are really great examples. I wrote about this recently specifically for architects, social media for architects.
Because if you think marketing interior design is difficult, architects are like three times harder because they're three times more expensive usually. And the projects are much larger and longer. And what I'm seeing among architects is this, there's this small group rising in popularity on social media and they're creating really great content around their expertise.
There are a few that stand out to me that do these reaction videos. So, so they'll react to a blueprint and kind of rip it apart. And in a very educated, polite way they'll say why it sucks. People love that.
There's this other guy that's going viral. He's an architect student, so he's not practicing yet, but he creates these really great short form videos. He'll create one video explaining the psychology behind retail design and how retail spaces are designed to get you to stay longer or spend more money or browse.
But then he'll create another video. This one was really good. He was created a video looking at all the houses that they used in spongebob and commenting or labeling the architect style. Like this house is boho and this one is art deco. And so we're seeing like there are examples, there are really good examples of how you can create social media content that demonstrates your expertise and the value of your services but is also engaging, valuable and you know.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah, that's, I mean that, and that's going to take time and thoughtfulness and you know. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely aspirational. Right. Like in comparison to the studio McGee thing, like, you know, designers comparing themselves to a juggernaut like that, it just doesn't seem fair.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I'm sure, you know, if that's what you want then, then that, that is a very definite path to becoming the next one of that. Right? Yeah. Why don't we dive into the services you provide directly.
So you've got two main types of programs. You've, you've got your full service 12 month program, but you've also got a new program. Why don't we start with that one? I'm curious.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: So yeah, we, after running the 12 month program for a while, I'll talk about the 12 month program because that puts the 30 day program into perspective.
So the 12 month program is a one year relationship. It's not a retainer it's not like we're trying to lock you into something for like five years. It's a one year program where, like I mentioned earlier, it's kind of like a boot camp where you're really going to learn how to put a marketing foundation into place, have a process and see a full ROI from it.
So many of our clients, they come to us saying, Daniela, you know, I'm not selling tacos and t shirts for $20 and 200 customers a month. If I get 12 really high quality projects a year, that to me is success. So we've tailored our services with that goal in mind.
So the 12 month program aims to, by the end of the 12 months you have this marketing foundation in place. It's rinse and repeat. You're getting consistent leads from it to the point where you're doubling your sales inquiries and five, timing your website traffic.
Now here's the thing. One year is a big commitment for a lot of people. It's a lot of money. It's quite daunting. And so a lot of people come to us saying, how can I just get started? Can I just work with you for three months or six months?
And for a long time I said no. I had tried a little bit, but then I found that people were doing the three months but still expecting the 12 month results. And so I abandoned that idea for a little bit, but I picked it back up.
So we have a 30 day program. It starts with a 90 minute consultation. We send you a questionnaire, we audit your website and we present the audit to you. So we show you, you know, what you want to be on the first page of Google for your positioning, we help you define your positioning, we figure out who are your competitors and what are they doing to get to the first page of Google for that given keyword and how are you ranking from that keyword.
And we look at how big the gap is between where you want to be, where your competitors are and where you currently are. And then we give you an estimate of what you have to do to close that gap. What are the top like five to 10 things you got to do to close the gap in order of priority?
How much time and how much resources do you have to invest into closing that gap? And then from there we, for the next 30 days, we send you emails or I sent you an email, breaking down the top eight things you've got to do within the next 30 days to start closing that gap and building a foundation.
And our goal within the 30 days is that you improve your rankings within a third 3 kilometer radius. So choose a very specific neighborhood or suburb that you want to do the program with. So improve your rankings on Google for a 3 kilometer radius and get your first few inquiries on Google. And that's a way that people can build a foundation, understand how it works, dip their toes in before they invest in anything else and build a relationship with us, see if they like us.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Exactly. So that, that was my next question was, okay, so I've done the 30 days. I, and I feel it's been, it hasn't been transformational yet because we haven't had the time to do all that stuff. But I can see, I can see now there are things I know now that I didn't know 30 days ago. Right. And I understand a bit better why my marketing efforts to this point have not been working because I've been doing all of these things incorrectly. And so as it's a new program, you don't really have an answer to this, but do you maybe foresee people going, you know, if, if they can continue on their own, they'll keep doing that, but do you see them maybe saying, okay, I understand Daniela's value now completely, let's transition to the full, the full service, I think probably would still be a big jump for people.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: So we've actually done the consultation, this 90 minute consultation without the homework for the 30 days. But we've done that consultation for years. I've done that. I can do that with my eyes closed. Well, I can't actually do it with my eyes closed, but, but I've been doing that for a really long time and I, I've given people that list of recommendations and things to do and some people have actually implemented it and I've seen results.
Most people need a little bit more structure and handholding, but I think going from the 30 day to the 12 month is still a big leap for a lot of people. So actually some of our biggest clients are ones that started off just with a two thousand dollar project and we met them where they were at and we grew with them.
And now I have clients that where they started with $2,000 and now they're spending $60,000 a year with us. So I, our intention is after the 30 days, some people might want to make it three months, like rinse and repeat the thing for three months instead of 30 days.
But the idea is once you've kind of done the work and laid a little bit of foundation, you understand how it works, then we can revisit the conversation and create a custom project for you based on whatever your needs are. So it might be a three month or a six month project. Whatever it may be will define what is the specific. What exactly do we want to do? It's not going to be as grand as the 12 months, but what's the specific area we want to work on? And, and we'll create a custom proposal for that and work towards getting to that 12 month relationship which you.
Okay, so it's definitely, it's not a, it's not a DIY program. It's, it's a hybrid of the, of the two. Right. Yeah. There's an education program component to it but, and then they go and play by themselves for a little while, then they come back and we see how it's working.
We send them emails with homework and it, it's. I send pre recorded videos, copy and paste templates, instructions. You get unlimited email support from us. If for whatever reason I can't respond Right. Then I will forward it to the team and they will respond. So it's kind of like a coaching, like one on one coaching or training. I'm not sure what the right language is. Yeah, but it's,
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: it sounds more consultant slash coaching than.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah, interesting. If, if I, if I decided I wanted to do the full service, I'm, I'm curious about money. My investment with you over a 12 month period. Period. And I mean obviously, you know, and it ties completely right back to an interior designer. When you, when you meet with a, with a homeowner and hopefully you're, you're, when it comes time to sign the contract, you're getting a retainer and all that good stuff.
It's a lot of money. But you're expected in the, in the, the period of time it takes to, you know, do the project, they're going to get value, if not value plus for that money. And I would assume the same thing with, if I want to work with you. Whatever money I'm going to have to put up up front, I'm, my goal is for it to generate more profit, more sales for my business. Yeah.
So can you give us an idea of, of what a designer could expect to spend over 12 months working with you and possibly what they could expect to generate in terms of sales.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Yeah, for sure. This is. So before we take on every client, we do, we send them a questionnaire and we crunch the numbers and see if it's makes sense financially for them to do, to work with us before we take them on. So, so the, the Investment is, our fees are. It's 2005. It starts at $2,500 a month, except the first month is $6,000. So first $6,000, the first month, every month afterwards is 2,500.
And our aim is to double your number of online inquiries. So if you got 10 inquiries last year, then the goal for this year Is to get 20. And we have KPIs or milestones along the way with spread out through those 12 months to make sure that we, we're on, we're on track.
And that's why it's also so important that we get clients to track their leads throughout the month to know if we're, we're hitting those targets. One of the things that we do early on is we've got this spreadsheet with formulas, and we figure out, okay, if you get, last year you got 10 inquiries and your conversion rate was 50% and your average project is, I don't know, $20,000.
So if we were to get double the inquiries and maybe your conversion rate is going to drop a little bit to 40% and you still maintain this, this average value, then how much more money are you going to make? And then we compare that with how much you would spend with us, and then from there you can figure out if it makes sense.
Depending on the business and how their services and products are structured, some people might. Well, the aim is that you see a full return on revenue at least in the first year. So you may not make profit from our, our work, but at least you made back money in revenue.
And in the second year, usually they start to see a full profit from it. That's some people, depending on the business, they'll see profit. And within the first year, if they already have a marketing foundation. But yeah, that, that's typically what you can expect.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, that’s all I’ve got in terms of questions, but is there anything you think I've missed, anything that designers should know?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: No, this is great. You asked some really great questions. I got to talk about things that I don't typically talk about.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah, no, I enjoyed it. I, I knew I was. Because like I said before we started recording, I mean, I kind of bumped into you, into your, how you do your business earlier, and I really love the concept of. Oh, you know, we really didn't talk about was story. Really. Yeah. Yeah. So why don't we talk about that?
Like, I love the idea. I mean, with designers, most of what their websites and their socials are, is pictures, beautiful pictures of the beautiful designs they've done, which is obviously, I mean, it's a no brainer. Right. But I liked how your approach was to tell stories. Yeah. Could you elaborate?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Yeah, for sure. I think one of the reasons Studio McGee did so well in the beginning is she. Because she did that. She figured that out very early on and she did it through video. So she would tell the stories of a project oftentimes while the project was still in progress. So she would go to a construction site and someone, I guess her husband, I don't know who, would record her, and she would walk through the building and explain what they were doing and help people see what she was seeing and think the way that she was thinking.
She would talk about challenges and problems quite openly and talk through how she would figure them out. And that really helps people understand the value of a designer and beyond just the pretty photos that we see. Because the reality is if I see photos of a staged home that you worked on, I don't know what you did. I don't know if you just furnished it, if you added pillows and furniture, or if you tear down a wall and.
Or you got the permits to. Or manage contractors. I don't really know the breadth of the work that you did and your expertise. And like we said earlier. Right.
A lot of people are hiring interior designers for the first time. Time. How often in your lifetime are you going to renovate your home and hire a designer? So, yeah, a lot of people are doing this for the first time. They're educating themselves. And a lot of people don't really know the difference between an architect, a designer and a decorator.
And so, yeah, the industry is in a place where they've got it. Educate the public a little bit. And stories can do that. Yeah.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: And. And stories can be presented in. In different formats. That could be. That could take place in an. On an FAQ page on your website where you tell people the difference between an architect, a designer and a decorator. That could be. That could be video of. Of someone speaking to that. That could be hopping on podcasts.
That it could be so many different things. Yeah. And. And that doesn't need to cost a lot of money.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: I'm something we do a lot with clients that I really try to advocate. If the client is down for it are case studies. So instead of just a portfolio with a photo gallery, walk us through the project.
So you could. I have some clients that love the idea so much that they swap their portfolio entirely for case studies. So every project that you go to, they've formatted it. They have like a title, like the name of the project in the beginning, a short description, some key information, like how big the project was, the timeline.
Some of them even mentioned the budget. And then they have all these sections that walk you through the project. They'll have one section explaining the design approach, and they'll have another section that shows the before and after pictures. They'll have another section that breaks down the permits, the mood board, the blueprints, sorry, the blueprints, construction photos and mood board.
So you get to see more behind the scenes. And then they'll have another section that may go through each room or the common challenges that came up. And then at the bottom they'll have the testimonials. And somewhere in between they'll have photos throughout. Right. But there's quite a bit of copy. It's like maybe 800 to a thousand words of text collectively.
So some people go all the way and they turn their portfolio section into case studies. Other people keep the portfolio section as is, but they'll create blog posts that will do the same thing. So the way you go about it and structure it on your website depends on what you prefer, but I'm a big believer or advocate for it.
Turning your projects into stories like, break it down for me, Walk me through it, show me what happened. Some people. You can create videos. You can create a lot of short form videos. You could do it in a podcast style.
You can create blog posts. But one project could easily be 12 pieces of content or more. It could be one long form video, it could be 12 blog posts. You could create a blog post for every room in the, in the project. You want to get to a point where you're so tired of talking about the project because you created so much content.
If you got to that stage, then that's great. You, like, really made the most out of it. So, yeah, I think it really works. And I hear so many stories from clients of how effective it is. They get so much better at talking about their work and their, and their portfolio on sales calls, they also talk about how.
I've heard stories of clients say that they posted something on social media about a project. Someone saw it, they went to their website, they read the whole blog post or case study into detail. And then the person thought, okay, great. This person gets it. Like they, I have.
My project is very similar to this case study that they wrote. I had a lot of the same challenges that this other client they had. And they get it. They understand the what I'M looking for and how I need to work. I find that especially like in the commercial side of things that that's true, but it can also be from residential.
And then the person then reaches out and contacts, makes an inquiry with the designer and they tell them that story. Right? And then they tell me that story. So it's very, very effective. It's also really great for press as well. Like if you, if you are picking to press and you want to show something more than just photos, you can link back to your case studies and blog posts and journalists see that and they're like, oh great, like there's a lot of meat here for me to work with.
I don't have to book a call with the design firm. I could just read through the blog post and pull out information here because it gave me so much information up front.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I would assume it's also pretty good for SEO purpurses as well, because. Yeah, that's of course.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Yeah, I should have, I should have started with that.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Like, I mean, yeah, my, my wife's business is almost exclusively midtown Toronto. And I mean all of her images on her portfolio are, are tagged appropriately and, and all that. But I have to admit I've been pushing to get her to do the case studies but she's hesitant and I like remaining married, so I don't push that hard. But I think that'd be great like, and tying in video and all that stuff. But I mean we recently another friend of mine, designer, brought on a co op student who was training in marketing and they started doing, they tailed them on every single site visit everywhere they went and she recorded video and took stills and over the course of, it wasn't even two months, suddenly there were, there were DMs showing up that, that had at a number that had never happened before. Comments, people coming to the website and coming to the website and directly referencing the Instagram and this is within two months of a person who is like just coming out of a marketing program. Amazing, right? Like what?
And they're like, well, why haven't I been doing this for the last five years? And it's like, exactly. Why haven't you been doing this?
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Yeah, right. That's a great story. That's amazing. Perfect.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Well, thanks again for coming on the podcast. I super appreciate it. I was really excited to have you on. Likewise.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: Thank you so much. And thanks for the flexibility to move it around.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: No worries. You have a great day.
Daniela Furtado - Findable Digital Marketing: All right, have a good one. Ciao.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Bye.
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