Content Lead Generation
Study: Interior Design Blogs

Your #1 job is to find clients. #2 is to keep them coming back. No one understands this better than the thousands of flourishing interior design bloggers. Ask them how they apply Inbound Marketing techniques and they might say “Inbound what?” They’ll tell you it’s just good marketing, and marketing that works.

Don’t be fooled by the beautiful photography, staged living rooms, or the restored mid-century sofa found at a flea market, this is serious Inbound Marketing in action. Gaining access into someone’s home requires their permission and a fair degree of trust. Therefore, applying permission-based marketing techniques is something these designers understand well. “How can I find someone to make my house look like that?” Well, you’ve come to the right place.

L-R: Erin Gates, Annie Crowninshield, Jennifer Ramos

Call it what you want, but they have been doing it for years and you could learn a thing or two from them. I recently spoke with 3 successful bloggers caterering to the home design industry: An interior designer from Boston, entrepreneur/designer from Las Vegas, and a mid-century shop owner based in Los Angeles. Each one claims a combination of good content development, analytics monitoring and social media outreach have brought them customers. Erin Gates of Elements of Style says she has been blogging for over 4.5 years and has grown her blog traffic from just a few loyal family members to approximately 300,000/month. Jennifer Ramos of Made by Girl has been blogging for 5 years and she reports her traffic is currently at 220,000/month. That’s a lot of leads.

Content Life Cycle by Digital C4 Marketing via Visual.ly

When talking about content creation, Annie Crowninshield of Relish Small Pleasures and Empiric says that avoiding trends, sharing what inspires her and stay- ing true to her unique taste always resonates with her audience. “Social media and blogging has allowed me to reach the public outside of Los Angeles who share my aesthetic and lifestyle values. This personal forum builds ‘friendships’ who in turn have become supporters and new clients. As a store that doesn’t advertise, this has been crucial to growing our brand.”

In addition to creating quality content, Gates has also succeeded in developing a following for herself as an approachable person and the kind of person you might want to work with in a creative endeavor. When asked about her content development strategy she replied, “The posts that get the most traffic are actually my personal essays. I think people forward them around to their friends because they relate to them on a personal level.”

In addition to churning out pages and pages of indexable content, they also understand how to move their voice through different social media networks. Ramos uses Twitter, StumbleUpon, Tumblr and Digg. Crowninshield uses Facebook and Twitter, and Gates finds Twitter to be her most valuable asset. Harnessing the power of analytics is also understood and fully utilized by all three. Crownishield responded, “Analytics have been extremely helpful from a business perspective, to see what the public is searching for and determine how best to reach that client base.”

So, what’s the ROI on this time investment? All three report they receive 80-95% of their business through their blog and social media channels. Gates says, “People get to know me, my taste and my approach very well before they consider hiring me. I always say the blog is THE best marketing tool out there.”

Whether you own a small business or are trying to convince your superiors at a large corporation, you can learn a lot about content creation from these types of blogs. Stop barging your way in unannounced and start offering your customers a little more value for your proposition. Become a unique voice, cultivate a distinct style, provide useful advice, or show off your expertise within a vertical market. Turn your marketing department into a factory of useful content and the customers will follow.

Further Reading:

Inbound Marketing 101: How to create remarkable content
5 Reasons Why Your Company Should Blog
Snackable Content
6 Lead Generation Offer Ideas for Content You Already Have