The great thing with Facebook and Google Adwords is that your space to write advertising copy is limited. It stops us waffling and makes us realise that every word is important. To get that elusive click you need to stand out and truthfully say what can be expected when the click is made.

But let’s go back two steps.

Firstly, in the UK Google is THE dominant search engine. We, KOTHEA, advertise to interior designers and I run similar campaigns on Yahoo and Bing. I can tell you that 95% of the impressions and clicks come from Adwords. So if you are short on time just focus on Adwords. It is a similar scenario in the US but Google’s monopoly is not so great there and Yahoo is more prominant.

Secondly, advertising through Facebook and Adwords is different proposition. This is because the audience that sees your ad has arrived at your ad through a quite different process. In Adwords you get put in front of people who type in the keywords you believe to be relevant to your product/service offering ie people who are actively looking at your keywords NOW eg they may have just typed “Find Interior Designer In London”.

Whereas in Facebook the users’ profiles are analysed so you can choose their demographics or select by keywords in their profile that match your target market eg keywords “Yacht Owner” and age profile 20+. Your ad is then displayed to all 20+ year olds who own up to being – or who claim to be – yacht owners. The Facebook ads are displayed periodically (and repeatedly) and could be displayed when the recipient is organising a cinema date with friends – or it could be displayed when they are researching interiors products for their yacht, you just don’t know.

I appreciate that my description is a little negative towards Facebook but there are benefits and dis-benefits of each approach to audience selection. In some scenarios Facebook will be better for you. So you, the advertiser, must appreciate that when your ad is displayed the person seeing it on Facebook will probably be at VERY different point in their interior designer selection process than someone who sees your ad on Adwords.

So if the abovementioned Yacht Owner is typing in “Find Interior Designer In London” into Google then I suggest it is likely that he/she is VERY interested in your services as an interior designer NOW. However if your advert is displayed to them in Facebook there is no guarantee WHATSOEVER that the Yacht Owner is interested in having anything interior designed at this moment, or ever, BUT they might be.

So think about the AIDA model ie Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action. The AIDA model represents a potential customers interest in your service. Your initial contacts with customers create awareness of your interior design service. You then hope to move them through the ‘customer voyage’ by increasing their interaction with your organisation to a point of action when they decide to commission you. I would suggest that your Facebook ad is more geared towards ‘Awareness’ part of customer acquitision whereas your Adwords ad is more geared towards an impending purchase-related ‘Action’.

Furthermore it might be a generally reasonable assumption that Facebook “Yacht Owners” probably own yachts and you can refine that to indicate the owners possible levels of affluence (eg simplistically to: Superyacht Owner). However someone typing “Find Interior Designer In London” could be very affluent or not. They could be someone like me who works for a fabric house trying to prospect for customers or they could be a potential customer looking for a designer for a restaurant or hotel or villa or, well lots of reasons. What I am trying to say here is that lots of types (segments) of people using your keywords in google may NOT match your target audience even though they are typing in the ‘right’ words to the Google search engine. So you are faced with the difficulty of writing copy that attracts only the right people and does not cause expensive clicks from people who are never going to buy from you. You are also faced with the dilemma of how to tailor your one ad to many segments (hotel-villa-yacht-restaurant owners etc). Also the further dilemma of what keyword-ad combinations actually work.

There’s more to go into on this subject but I’ll distill the rest into some recommendations. So without further ado here is what I think you should do:

1. Facebook

• Write an ad that is positional of your services. More of an ad to further your brand awareness rather than selling your services today.
• Use graphics where possible.
• Be truthful.

2. Adwords

• Write LOTS of different ads and get Adwords to rotate them and for it to choose the best ones.
• Use the keywords in the ads as keywords get highlighted in the ad.
• Really, really think what your customers will be searching for. Ideally ask some existing customers so you know for sure.
• Take Adwords suggestions for capitalisation. eg it suggests I use KotheA and neither KOTHEA nor kothea. This draws the eye to the ad by using mixed capitalisation.
• Use graphics where possible.
• Be truthful.

If you search through my blog there are other related posts on these subjects. Look at the category “The Business of Interior Design” or the tag “Sales & Marketing In Interior Design” – they may well also pull up related blogs by other people.

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We are half way through the year almost. Who was right?

Maison & Objet said: 2010′s trends are for Grey, Linen, Pink, Natural Wood Finishes, Metalics, Over-scaled Motifs, Stripes & Ethnic.

Kelly Hoppen said: LINEAR SHABBY CHIC,

Colours:  neutrals still rock and always will. But with added bits like art, photography etc. can be anything and everything

Carpets and rugs: PATTERN, SHAG and THICK PILES with a comfortable sinking feeling.

Walls: seductive and edged and capped in metals. Wallpaper will be also be massive this year and it will all be textural.

- Floors: there will be a lot of wood in all colours

Farrow & Ball said:

industrial colour trends – earthy shades of stone, clay, chalk and brick. Soft grey neutrals and inky darks. Uplift with splashes of citrus shades.

aquatic trends: subtle natural colours contrasting with strong inky blues

urban decay: strong vibrant colours with a vibrant edge, use dark and dramatic colours and inject zingy bright colours.

glitz and glamour: use rich opulent shades alongside shimmering metallics. Exotic combining colour and excess. The key is a myriad of colours.

We say: Interior Designers do not normally push particular products. Manufacturers have a bias towards what their R&D (or whims) have told them to sell. I’d always give more credence to what designers like Kelly Hoppen have to say. Fortunately for here she took the time to write those thoughts on her blog and unfortunately for many of you…you didn’t. HAVE MORE CONFIDENCE IN WHAT YOU DO, tell us about it and trends blog post is the easiest thing in the world to do.

This is a quick one from me. A little bit fun, a little bit serious.

The “Wordle” web site tool looks at your web site and then, I think, nicely presents what it thinks are some of your key words based on some mysterious linguistic algorithm. It probably places emphasis on strongly emotional words that you use.

As you can see from the image it picks up ‘loathe’, ‘discerning’ and ‘beautiful’ as well as words we commonly use like ‘Interior’ and ‘Design’. Although I’m not too sure about the visual combination of those words, which I can assure you I don’t! But it also makes me think maybe I should express strong positive comments like “love interior design” and not occasionally using strong negative words. Food for thought anyway.

Just click on the image and you can do one for your web site or blog as well. It takes a minute or two, not long.

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2010: Sort It Out Now

With the benefit of proverbial hindsight the changes that have hit the Interior Design sector in 2009 were ‘obvious’. I’ll take a quick look at how some of the aspects of sales & marketing in interior design will affect ‘you’ in 2010. As always I’ll be practical and sensible and not carried away by the hype of technologies or media evangelists.

So prediction number one. I started my introduction by saying how it will affect ‘you’ with the you in parentheses. That means all of ‘you’, plural, not just you my dear reader. Well, very, very many of ‘you’ will do little different this year to what you did last year or the year before. So not much change there. But just because you refuse to change does not mean that change will not be forced upon you by the market. For example, many large design practices are now much smaller, the people who left are now starting innovative new businesses and stealing your customers. Action Point: Innovate and survive. Make a point to change something in your business this year, something important not trivial.

Prediction number 2. 2009 was an historically pivotal year. The time we are now living in will be looked back on by scholars as the period when the East truly began it’s economic ascendancy over the West. Not a nice prediction I know and I am not happy about it. Unfortunately, in 2010, the western economies will experience further serious difficulties. The American economy will trundle along and the UK economy will either stay in recession or double dip back into recession as massive, impending public spending cutbacks put government employees out of work. (The UK government has over the last year borrowed more money than all UK governments EVER ADDED TOGETHER that is a LOT of money and yes I have written it correctly and yes it really is true. The country and 6th ish biggest economy risks bankruptcy). This will impact you designers indirectly and directly. I doubt many of your clients work in government; however their businesses rely, in part, on the direct and indirect custom and spending power of government employees and government agencies. Action Point: Look at the type of customers you have and assess the risks to your future levels of business from that area. Survey the economic landscape in your target markets.

Prediction number 3. Many of you will start writing blogs because either it’s a good idea or because you competitors do it. About half of you will stop doing that because it takes up too much time. Action Point: Either write a weekly business blog  or, if you have not got enough time to grow your business (hmm?), use Twitter/Facebook to micro-blog.

Prediction number 4. Some of you will take a strategic view on where new customers will come from and prosper accordingly. Look where the money is. Bankers STILL get huge bonuses and many spend it on houses. There is less funding available for large capital intensive projects like hotels but, once started, hotels are usually finished. Multi-billionaires are still billionaires; they will still buy ski chalets, yachts and villas because they are still rich. Footballers and MDs of PLCs still get paid too much. Fewer people will buy second homes and overseas homes. The property market (sales not letting) might grow from last year but it will still be at low levels. B&Q recently reported good sales in 2009…indicative that people are spending money on where they live now and not that they plan to move. HOWEVER remember that all economic bubbles EVER in history ALWAYS burst. (South Sea Bubble, Dot come bubble, house price bubble,  footballers’ salaries!, etc.) also remember that just because an industry is in recession it does not necessarily mean it EVER will pick up at some point in the future. Action Point: Review and understand your customer segments.

Prediction number 5. No new marketing wonder solution. 2009 saw Facebook dramatically take over from MySpace. Facebook will continue to prosper. You should use it as a marketing channel if your clients ‘hang out there’. A mini-risk with Facebook is that adoption by the young and trendy is slowing as it is no longer as cool as it used to be, mainly because their parents’ updates keep appearing on their wall.  Even I remember that sort of thing is not cool (just like using the word cool probably). Action Point: Use Facebook for your customer networking remembering that you are trying to network with potential business partners or customers NOT the competition, it’s not the size of your network that counts.

Prediction number 6. Traditional advertising’s terminal disease will not improve.  Online advertising will continue to be adopted by designers. Traditional print circulations are falling, technologies exist to let us skip TV ads, etc. How many times do you get called with the latest greatest deal for a full page ad in some magazine you’ve never heard of? How many times does a new online web site try to sell you advertising space?. Why, for the first time in 23 (TWENTY THREE) years has Pepsi stopped spending on advertising on the Superbowl and switched to an alternative online media campaign? Advertising is intrusive, usually annoying, often irrelevant and we can now avoid it as well as ignore it. If I owned a small design business I would not entrust my money with an employee marketing manager to spend blindly on advertising. If I controlled my own media spend I would review closely every penny I spent on traditional print advertising and I would want proof that it worked. And that proof would not be forthcoming. Unlike Google AdWords, for example, which tells me exactly what happened and only charges me for success. Unlike this blog post that I know will get at least 500 hits. Action Point: If you do not advertise do so online with a limited budget. If you do advertise in print consider switching a significant chunk of your spend to online.

Prediction number 7. Although Twitter is rubbish. People will use it more and more in 2010 because, for the time being, it fills a need. The need is broadly defined by the ease of connecting with people, simple quick messaging, and convenience of use with technologies like mobile/cell phones. Action Point: You should really use Twitter for your business.

Prediction number 8. Search engines have changed and continue to so do. They now look more at the instant chats and posts that your customers are making. Maybe they evangelise about your business or are less than kind about it. Either way that sort of up-to-date pertinent information will find it’s way up Google’s ranking and you really, really (yes REALLY) should know what is being said about your business. Action Point: Review weekly what is being said online about your business.

Is that all so far fetched?

You can read more of my sales & marketing for interior designer post here.

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Great Fabric By KOTHEA, Great Design By McVitty

As an interior designer you appreciate the beauty of the things you design. So how can this flimsily-named Twitter-thing have any beauty? or any use for that matter with the constraint of 140 characters. How can it be a professional marketing tool?

Well it is and I’ll tell you why. I should also let you know that I am from the original anti-Twitter brigade but have been converted as I wrote late last year.

1. Many of the readers of this blog are owners of small to medium-sized interior design firms. We just don’t have that much spare time, right? (more…)