If you’ve had just about enough of feeling like you give your clients your all but you’re still not seeing the financial fruits of your labor, you’re definitely not alone. 

I talk to interior designers all the time who struggle with this. I’ve also heard lots of coaches and experts tell designers the answer is to know their own worth and raise their prices.

And while I agree with that, it’s actually only part of the solution. 

When it comes down to it, charging higher prices will only work if you can also attract clients who will trust you and value your work enough to pay those prices. 

So how do you do that? With killer brand messaging!

Here’s how to get it!

Give your prospects a taste of what it’s like to work with you

Even though you’re selling a service, at the end of the day, your clients are entering into a relationship with you. Because interior design is such a high-touch type of service and because it involves their home, your clients must make themselves incredibly vulnerable to you, and that’s really scary. 

While you know exactly what kind of a person you are and how you treat your clients, new prospects have no idea what to expect from you. If you really put yourself in their shoes, you’re expecting them to reach out to you and tell them about themselves, their project, and maybe even their budget, give you all of their contact information, and ask for an initial call with you when they don’t know you AT ALL. That’s a lot, especially when you consider that most of us don’t even want to give just our email address to get an opt-in freebie!

You can overcome all of their reluctance through your messaging by letting them get a feel for who you are and what it’s like to work with you.  

Show your personality in your brand voice and choice of words. State your unique point of view on the aspects of your work that matter most to your ideal clients–and don’t be afraid of turning some people off. As long as you’re not openly insulting, telling prospects what you believe about design, serving your clients, and so on is just part of letting them get to know you. 

If your approach isn’t what someone wants, they’re not going to value you and want to pay you what you’re worth anyway, so let them walk away. The whole point of this exercise is to get you away from low-paying clients. Trust your brand messaging to do its job by repelling the wrong clients and attracting the right ones. 

Show your ideal clients you ‘get’ them

The absolute most important job of your brand messaging is to show your ideal clients that you understand them on a deep level. 

Don’t get caught in the trap of making your messaging all about yourself. Even your bio should keep the spotlight on your ideal clients by angling the facts about you and your background, design philosophy, etc. toward how it all benefits them in the end. 

By making them feel seen and heard in your website copy, social media posts, etc., you’ll help prospects self-identify as your ideal clients and start to earn their trust (remember, as I said above, this is crucial for being paid what you’re worth!). 

Paint a picture of the full value you bring to your clients’ projects

Listen, I know you want your project images to speak for themselves and do all the work of attracting your ideal clients. But the fact is, there are just some things your photography simply can’t convey. 

You and I both know that you bring so much more value to your clients’ projects than just beautiful aesthetic results. You make their spaces functional and practical for how your clients want to live in their homes. You educate them and help them make smart, infomed design decisions. You advocate for them with their builders and contractors. You shield them from all the daily stress of their projects. You handle the B.S. so they don’t have to!

That’s all incredibly valuable to your ideal clients. Your photography doesn’t speak to any of that. It’s not really fair to expect your prospects to extrapolate all of that behind-the-scenes work and value from your pretty pictures because they don’t know how to do what you do. If you don’t have brand messaging that tells them, you’re not painting the picture fully of why your (newly higher) prices are what they are. 

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Getting paid what you’re really worth is about more than just raising your prices. It’s about creating brand messaging that gives prospects a view into who you are and what it’s like to work with you so that ideal clients feel safe to reach out and not-so-ideal clients know to opt out, shows your ideal clients you understand them on a deep level so that you earn their trust, and paints a picture of the full value you bring to your clients’ projects so that they see everything they’re getting when they hire you. 

With that kind of killer brand messaging in place, you might be surprised how quickly you’re able to fill your pipeline and raise your prices all over again! 

Want help building brand messaging and website copy that attracts your ideal clients and gets you paid what you’re worth? Let’s chat!