My crystal ball predicts a mild recovery in 2011.

The tax bill passed in December 2010, and economic indicators are stronger for remodeling. The affluent are spending again.  However, they are more cautious and value-driven than before.

What can you do to grow your business?

1. Specialize. Create a specialty niche that capitalizes on a growing trend. It doesn’t mean you’re limited to doing that work, but it makes it easier to market your business because you will be known for that specialty.  Neurosurgeons make 265% more than family practice doctors.  Kitchen and Bath designers make much more than the average interior designers based on NKBA statistics and our findings.
2. Create your own economy. (Some interior designers are swamped, congratulations to you!)  Why?  They spent their year marketing consistently.  They revamped their websites, reconnected with past clients, used social media, increased their visibility with public relations and generally worked hard.  Action:  Create a 12-Month Referral Program for your business.  One for past clients, one for current clients, and one for referral partners.  Automate it with software like Constant Contact, Send Pepper or AWeber.
3. Increase your visibility. Self-promote or hire a publicist.  Create a 12-Month plan for Advertising, PR and Marketing.  Make sure you have a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter Account, Optimized LinkedIn profile and an updated website.  List your business on the Search Engine Maps for your area.  Optimize your website to include the words, “interior design your city” on more than one page, create a blog and post at least once a week (make sure it is attached to your website) to increase your website traffic.  Set a target for your media exposures.  Don’t stop until you have commitments for the number of articles, public speaking opportunities, TV or radio interviews.  Write blog posts for your local on-line newspapers.  Get involved in your community.
4. Joint venture. Find people who are in allied businesses and co-promote.  If you’re not a specialist in window treatments, kitchen or bath design, partner with someone who is.  Develop a relationship with a remodeler and create joint articles or press pitches about the latest trends.  The media loves to hear about trends.
5. Systematize your marketing. Some wise person said, “you never know which day you missed marketing that caused the phones not to ring months later.”  Inconsistent marketing creates inconsistent results. Market, Market, Market.  Marketing makes selling irrelevant.  Analyze what you’ve done in the past. If you didn’t get a result after spending thousands of dollars on advertising, STOP. 

Create a successful 2011!

While you were busy preparing the financial statements of your company, you overlooked a very important factor. Don’t worry because this doesn’t refer to any miscalculation of your revenues or assets, rather you had skipped an integral part of your success: the interior design of your office. Don’t roll your eyes thinking that designing an office is a negligible and an irrelevant expenditure because getting some interior design ideas for your office is important.

Rogers Design Group (Office Design Ideas)

Decorating your office is as important as decorating your bedroom or your drawing room. It can have a very positive impression on your customers as well as your employees. Plus, it could be an indirect way to boost your revenues. The minute ‘revenue’ was included, your interest must have developed, so before you lose it, let’s have a peek at the corporate side of interior designing.

Designing the interior of your corporation includes designing your offices, work rooms, boardrooms, and other spaces inside your office premises. It may cover everything starting from your office bathroom to your conference room.

Interior designers who specialize in designing commercial interiors usually work with corporate clients to create professional yet tasteful environments. An office will give a professional touch with appropriate office furniture, carpeting, flooring and lightening, along with the regular office items such as proper electric systems for computers and other office equipments.

Sometimes, you don’t just need to fill in your office space. Rather, simply arrange the existing furniture in an appropriate manner to give it a different look. Before you decide on how your office should look, review your company’s goals and objectives. You can’t close your eyes and bring your office some casual furniture when your work requires you to act formally. It is important to have a clear idea on what type of visitors or clients your company is expecting or hoping to attract.

Clients are like company guests who can bring either profit or loss to your financial statements. So, if you make your clients happy, surely they will please you by contributing to the profits. To take extra care, make them comfortable. This can be done by having a waiting area which is decorated perfectly to match the corporate environment, but is riveting enough that it doesnít allow your clients to move unless they sign a contract or close a deal.

After you have dealt with your client’s needs, you must also consider your employee’s preferences. They are the ones who will make the deal work out for the clients, thus compelling them to visit the company’s waiting room again to close some more deals. A deal or contract which was induced by a pleasant corporate environment ends well only when your employees are given a comfortable environment. The goal of professional interior designing is to provide a perfect corporate environment that is cozy yet conducive to efficient working habits.

Lighting is included in your corporate interior designing. Lights too bright or too dim can affect their productivity and can be the result of your company’s doom. Depending on what’s most suitable, add some pendant lighting, wall sconces, or ceiling lights.

As interior designing can influence efficiency and productivity, it should be considered closely rather than being classified as an extra expense.

Content provided by Design Shuffle – a social media site filled with interior design ideas from top tier design talent around the world.

A guest blog post by Gail Doby, ASID, Design Success University

Starting in 2007, the market for interior designers turned into quicksand.   The credit markets tightened, and projects that typically went to designers were brought in-house both residentially and commercially.

HGTV and the Internet created more competitors in the middle of the market from the consumers themselves, and frankly, for most designers, those weren’t and aren’t your best clients anyway.

High-end projects stayed fairly steady until the economic debacle of October 2008, and then many of the projects slowed, stopped or didn’t start at all.  Especially in markets tied to the financial markets like New York, the wealthiest clients lost their jobs and their sense of security if they were in jobs associated with money and wealth.

The commercial market was devastated by the credit crisis, and according to economists, the concerns aren’t behind us yet.

Even with this perfect storm, some designers were very busy.  Why?  They adapted to the market shifts, changed their pricing strategies, developed an online presence, spent as much as 10% on marketing, focused on a niche, learned how to differentiate themselves better, and didn’t wait for the phone to ring.  They took these conditions as a challenge and they worked even harder than before.

If commercial and hospitality is your preferred area of business, you’ll want to focus on renovations.  If you can show companies that an investment in renovation can lead to more dollars at the bottom line especially if they depend on consumer spending, then you have an opportunity to build a logical reason why a company should invest.  The commercial designers that become a marketing partner with their clients differentiate themselves and become a valuable solution-oriented team member instead of an expense.

If your specialty is residential design, bathroom and kitchen renovation is still steady.  The budgets might be smaller, but there is work in this specialty area.

A kitchen renovation featured on the Traditional Home blog

Some designers created packages of services they offered on their websites.  Why did that work for them?  The consumers wanted (and demanded) to know the investment required .

Other designers offered Value Based Fees because consumers resisted hourly fees.  ASID surveyed consumers a few years ago and approximately 70% said they wanted fixed fees.  Designers who offered this option found that it completely shifted their role from an hourly wage slave to a trusted advisor, and that helped many designers kick-start their businesses even during the last several months.

You could be the greatest designer, but if people don’t hear about you consistently, then your business will struggle.  These days, you need great photography, a great head shot, articles about you in magazines, online and in newspapers (third party endorsements), a web presence including a website, blog and social media and search engine optimization of your website and blog.

And, if you don’t have a written business plan, marketing plan, vision and strategy for your business, it’s time to get busy and take action.  Referrals and networking may have worked in the past, but they are less effective than ever, so that means it’s time to rethink and reposition your business.

[Originally written for Decorati Access Interior Design, Published June 11]

A guest blog post by Gail Doby, ASID, Design Success University

I’ve been an interior designer for over 20 years, so I’ve had plenty of time to make these mistakes.  Here’s a startling statistic (and I’ll bet it is higher during this recession) – 62.8% of all new businesses fail within 6 years according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and 96% fail within 10 years.  That means you’re lucky to be one of 4 out of 100 to make it past 10 years…or is it luck?

What if you could avoid the mistakes that these business owners made?

I’d like to see you avoid them, and if you’ve already done a few of them, now you can learn what not to do so you don’t waste your valuable time and money:

1. Not having a written “ideal client” profile – If you don’t know who your ideal client is, how can you tell other people who they can refer to you?  If you’ve ever had the client from &%$&, (or more than once) the key is to know what you don’t want in a client as much as what you do want.
2. Not knowing the lifetime value of your client – If you’ve been in the business even a few years, you can add up your billings and divide by the number of clients to get your current lifetime value.  You should also look at how long they stay as a client.  These two metrics are critical in your business planning and if you have this data as part of your Business Dashboard, it will help you grow your business. (more…)