Deb Mitchell Writing

design, well written.

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Client Project Reveal: Blakely Interior Design

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interior design website design

“Living Vibrantly” with Blakely Interior Design’s Website Copy

When I set out to write the website copy for Janelle Photopoulos, owner of Rhode Island-based Blakely Interior Design, with Katie Saunders of Pop & Grey, a widely respected branding and web designer for creatives, we took inspiration from Janelle’s fabulous and fun project photography.

Janelle is a wildly talented designer who embraces all things big and bold – color, pattern, and out-of-the-box design ideas included. Part of the beauty of working in side-by-side with a web designer is that we discover the client and their business as a team, drawing the same key conclusions we then are able to carry forward into the web design and the copy, creating rock-solid brand messaging at every touchpoint on their site.

As Katie and I got to know Janelle, we realized her talents don’t stop at creating beautiful interiors. She’s also a super-smart business owner with a fire in her belly to go big and bold with her company. With that knowledge in mind, we laid the foundations for a brand, site design, and website copy that will carry Janelle forward into her business’s bright future.

A deep dive into Blakely’s ideal client profile unearthed the fact that they don’t always feel bold in their approach to their homes’ designs. Instead, they’re looking to Janelle and her team to gently guide them out of their design comfort zones to achieve the personality-filled homes they crave deep inside but aren’t sure how to achieve tastefully.

As a copywriter, it was important to me that I find ways to underscore in the copy Janelle’s adventurous attitude toward design, business, and life, while at the same time not overwhelming her prospects with design adventures they might not feel ready for. Instead, I focused on reassuring those prospects that they would be deeply understood and well cared for with Janelle and her team at their project’s helm.

In the end, much of the basis for the copy I created for this amazing company came back to that most foundational of interior designer core values, trust, but counterbalanced with the wonder and delight that comes from embarking on a creative adventure with caring, talented design guides like the Blakely crew.

Together, Katie and I captured all of that and more in Blakely’s dreamy new copy, stunning branding, and beautiful new site, painting a colorfully bold image for their prospects and fans!

You can see more of this project here.

Packaging & Pricing E-Design Services: How to Give Your Clients What They *Really* Want

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e-design packaging and pricing

 

 

[I was recently interviewed by Business of Home in a webinar about e-Design. You can join their B of H Insiders program here to view the recording. You can also see a B of H post about the discussion here even if you’re not a Insider.]

While I don’t want to keep opining about e-design (read my other post about it here), this topic has always been one I’ve tossed around with my clients – and it’s definitely not going away anytime soon due to our Covid-catalyzed new world of running our businesses. And so here I go again…

As I said in my earlier post, the one thing that isn’t really being addressed in the multitudes of “Should You Offer E-Design Services” articles, blog posts, and podcast episodes is defining what e-design REALLY is and how it affects your business model by offering it.

Packaging & pricing is a key part of marketing

In case you’re wondering why a copywriter and brand messaging strategist like me has anything to say about this, I should probably note that packaging and pricing are key pieces of marketing. 

Don’t believe me?

You already understand the important marketing role packaging and pricing play in product-based businesses (think Apple’s sleek packaging and premium pricing, McDonald’s Happy Meal; the $x.99 psychological pricing trick; etc.). It’s all marketing!

The same goes for service-based businesses like interior design firms.

Marketing is about appealing to the right kinds of clients who’ll buy what you’re selling. It’s a mix of visuals, copy, packaging, and pricing that positions you to sell to those clients. 

So if how you package and price your services doesn’t appeal to customers, you’ve got (among other things*) a marketing problem on your hands.

Now do you see why I’m talking about this? I have to address packaging and pricing with my clients every time I write website copy, email launch sequences for their courses and webinars, etc. I can’t do a kick butt job helping them shout out their offering to the world if I don’t have my arms around the scope, deliverables, and investment… and I love my clients too much to not speak up if I think they’ve got those things wrong for the clients they’re trying to reach. 

(*I feel compelled to note that, even if your service offerings sell great, if the way you’ve packaged and priced things means you can’t take on enough clients to let you pull in sufficient revenue to turn a profit (‘cuz design isn’t a non-profit industry, folks!) you won’t be able to stay in business for very long and you might completely wear yourself out trying.)

So is it even possible to serve high-end clients with e-design? 

I’ve wondered for years if there’s a way for my clients to offer a hybrid of e-design and full service design by specifying trade-only products within a consultative e-design service package. 

The argument in favor of that would be that it might appeal to a higher end market while still carving out space for those who don’t want full-service functionality. 

Under a traditional e-design service, you’re limited to specifying retail products so the client can take on the ordering, receiving, and installing portion of their project. Of course, there are tons of great products available in the retail market. But I have to admit that, when I started working in the interior design industry nearly a decade ago, I didn’t have a clue that what I could access as a non-designer was a teeny, tiny tip of the iceberg relative to what was available to the trade. I mean, it was SHOCKING! I actually felt a bit foolish to know that I’d been doing my best to find decent products at retail when all that time, there was a whole world of beautiful, fully customizable items for the asking. 

Listen, I fully believe that any good designer can put together gorgeous spaces using retail products. But the truth is that most higher end clients aren’t going to be satisfied with the creative limitations even the best designers are up against when sourcing from the retail market. 

And that problem brings us back to the idea of sourcing trade-only products within an e-design service model.

What would a high-end e-design package look like?

Imagine that you’ve sold an e-design service to a client who wants a one-of-a-kind, designer-caliber space. They tell you they 100% do not want a sofa or a rug that they’re going to see at their neighbor’s house, as well. ‘Custom’ is their watchword. Even so, they think your full service design is more service than they need. Here’s the rundown of what they want, broken up into “e-design” and “full service design” functionality categories.

e-Design

  • They don’t have time for all those site visits and meeting at showrooms and they want this room done quickly. 
  • They want you to provide them with a moodboard, CAD drawings, and product options. 

 

Full Service Design

  • They’ll need you to source the products because they’ll need to be trade-only to achieve the custom look they’re going for.
  • To source the products, you’ll have to come up with a complete top-to-bottom design of the space, including all fabric and finish selections, and every available option for each piece (like hardware, seating cushions, drapery hardware, etc.)
  • You’ll also have to source art and accessories
  • You’ll also have to orchestrate having the products delivered and installed in their home (because how else is that going to get taken care of for the client?). 

 

Based on this, it seems like you couldn’t charge much (if any) less for all of that vs. your full service design package without giving your client a screaming deal on your time and effort. There’s very, very little difference between what we’re describing above and a traditional full service design project. 

For all intents and purposes, you’d be performing a full service design functionality – just without site visits (which would probably make the job of specifying every last detail even harder for you) and with remote client meetings and presentations.

Let me be very clear here: Charging less for your design services “because it’s e-design” is…

a) completely unfair to anyone paying for your standard full service design package

b) probably not sustainable for you since it’s taking you the same amount of time or more, but you’re not charging as much for it

Of course, there’s always the option to make sure you mark the product up sufficiently to cover the expense of your time, but that could result in some major push back from your clients – especially if your markup for full design clients is lower since you’re making more in the design fee. 

All things considered, what you’re really offering under the scenario above is a full design service with remote components. It’s not really e-design and there’s no good reason to charge bargain rates for it.

Is it a good sales tactic to use the words “e-design” on your website anyway?

As a communications expert, I’m always thinking about not only the message being sent, but the receiver it’s going to. 

Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to try to use your clients’ language to talk about what you’re trying to sell to them. That can serve two purposes – catching their attention in the first place and making them feel like you understand their needs

In the name of using your packaging to “give the people what they want,” there might be something to be said for using the words “e-design” to describe your full service design package that includes remote components – especially in the time of Covid. 

I see pros and cons to that and think you should consider these things carefully when deciding whether to promote any service under the banner of e-design.

Pros

It’s in the vernacular of design clients.

It’s timely during quarantine and post-quarantine Covid fears.

SEO – searches for keywords related to e-design are up right now.

It highlights that you have capabilities in place to design remotely.

Cons

Stigma as a low-end/bargain option so use of the term with higher pricing could be seen as misleading.

Feels like a step backward to some designers used to working with high end, full service projects.

Some high end clients think of it as a low-end/bargain option and NOT the custom level of design they’re looking for.

Offering it alongside your full service design could confuse clients if both are roughly the same with the exception of remote meetings and no site visits.

Offering it could trick you into feeling like you have to charge less than it’s worth/ less than it’s going to cost you in terms of your time.

If you offer it as a temporary service, you’ll have to deal with deciding when to pull it off your service menu and whether or not to provide it upon request from there on.

Thinking through your packaging and pricing carefully from both a marketing and a business perspective is ALWAYS important, but all the more so with so much advice to jump on the e-design bandwagon out there. Whether or not to create an “e-design” package in any way, shape, or form is a complicated issue. It’s not a simple pivot – just throwing it out there without thinking through the complexities and potential downsides could be risky for your marketing strategy and your business as a whole. 

That all said, I’d love to hear from anyone who’s found a way to package an e-design service that high end clients love and that isn’t undercutting their business, but I also understand that most of you would want to keep that “how the sausage is made” kind of info to yourselves. If, however, you’re willing to share your idea with me and the design world, I’d love to help you shout it out! Reach out to me at deb@debmitchellwriting.com and we’ll chat!

How to Tap into Your Clients’ Emotions with Your Interior Design Website’s Copy

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“People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.”

  • Zig Ziglar

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that a few years ago, I made the decision to work exclusively with interior designers (although I also work with a good many designer-adjacent folks like fine artists and product designers). One of my biggest reasons for making that switch was that I knew how hard it is for interior designers like you to find writing help that actually fits your unique marketing challenges.

How is your marketing needs different?

Sure, you need copy for your site that sells your services just like any other business, but you’re also firmly in the lifestyle space. Copywriting for interior designers isn’t like writing copy for other industries; it’s way, way more challenging because you have to weave marketing messages into your copy subtly! People don’t want to read web copy from you that’s a straight-up sales page – you need to take a softer approach while still delivering powerful marketing messages.

Your business also differs from the others because yours is a luxury service. That’s not to say that what you offer isn’t important, but it would be inauthentic (if not completely tone-deaf!) to try to sell your interior design services as something customers NEED to save them/make them feel loved/give them happiness/health/economic stability, etc.

But it’s Marketing 101 to try to connect with buyers by using their emotions to inform your copy (this is a HUGE aspect of the Know, Like and Trust Factor that’s crucial in marketing any business online).

So do those differences in your business rule out you using web copy that taps into your buyer’s emotions? Not at all!

The problem is, if you were to follow most of the marketing advice you find online for how to leverage people’s emotions with your copy, you’re going to get it all wrong for the clients you’re trying to speak to.

Here are some examples of that typical advice, and how you should approach your copy to connect with your clients and their emotions around hiring an interior designer.

The Usual Marketing Advice: Speak to their deepest, darkest fears and tell them how you can help them avoid having those fears come true.

Interior Design Marketing Advice: Here’s the truth: Your clients know their lives aren’t going to completely fall apart if they don’t hurry up and hire you. That said, they DO have worries. They’re worried about making sure their families have a warm, comfortable, functional home and that guests feel welcomed and taken care of whenever they visit.

So, instead of thinking about your design marketing copy from a “fear” angle, base it on your clients’ real concerns and show them you’re the one to resolve those for them!

The Usual Marketing Advice: Speak to their envy and desire to be the “-est” (thinnest, richest, whatever-est).

Interior Design Marketing: Like all of my clients, you probably aren’t someone who cares to spread an icky “keep up with the Joneses” message. It’s not congruent with your personal or business values, nor with your clients’ values (or at least not the clients you want to work with!)

But there is a nugget of truth in the idea that your clients might be feeling a little insecure about their home’s design. I’m not talking about the insecurity that their home isn’t “good enough,” but a worry that they don’t have the ability to make their home look and feel beautiful, stylish, and comfortable. They’re concerned that they’ll make costly mistakes with their design project if they go at it alone.

Weave messaging into your copy that assures them they’re not alone in feeling this way and that you won’t judge them. Then outline exactly how you and your services provide the help they need!

The Usual Marketing Advice: Create a sense of urgency.

Interior Design Marketing Advice: It’s a little too “in-your-face” to deliver a “Hurry! Act now or you’ll miss out!” message to your prospects.

On the other hand, your clients may not realize they could, in fact, miss out on time- and money-saving help by starting their projects without you. And they’re painfully aware that the last thing they want is to spend more than they should or to slow their projects down!

You can capitalize on that pain and gently nudge them toward bringing you onto their projects sooner rather than later. Paint a picture with your copy of what you can do for them as an advisor and safety net for their projects – someone who will be there to save them money during the planning stages by preventing mistakes and ill-advised design choices.

How? Simply agitate their fear of wasting time and money by telling stories of problems other clients ran into because they didn’t bring you into the picture soon enough and tell them how you’ll be there to help them avoid those issues if they call you now!

The Usual Marketing Advice: Give them hope by showing them you have the solution.

Interior Design Marketing Advice: OK, so this one’s pretty much the same whether you’re selling a toothbrush or interior design services! You always want them to know that you have the solution to their problems. Start by building positive emotions by talking about 1) the aspects of the experience you know they’ll love and 2) in what ways they’ll enjoy the results.

From there, talk about how your services are the path to those positive emotions.

This should be infused into all of your marketing copy, no matter the topic or strategy you’re using to connect with them.

As you can see, a different approach is needed for writing marketing copy for interior designers than for other industries. That’s one of the reasons you may not have had luck with general copywriters in the past – and it’s why I work love working with you. I love this industry and the unique marketing challenges it poses. I want design professionals like you to make the best impression on clients you possibly can. If you want interior design marketing copy for your website that truly connects you with your audience, please contact me today!

Can You Fit All of Your Personality, Creativity, and Vision Into a Website? See how we did exactly that for Janelle Photopoulos of Blakely Interior Design!

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The short answer is yes…

But it’s not easy.

You already know your website should be a reflection of who you are and the values you and your company represent. The second someone clicks on the link to your site, they should be able to know the type of company you are without even reading a single word of copy. You want to hook them right off the top with your visuals – not just your project photography, but your logo, colors, fonts and brand patterns, plus how it’s all laid out on your site’s pages.

But that’s just one layer of how you want them to experience your brand on your site. From there, you need copy that fills out the picture of what you’re all about – what services you offer, what you value when it comes to design and what it’s really like to work with you.

And most importantly (you may not know this already), they need to see themselves in your copy.

That’s right. I said “see themselves.”

Because while your project images represent something aspirational for them (how they want their homes to look and feel), your copy needs to tell them you see them, understand them and care about them just as they are. It needs to communicate in a voice that will appeal to them; to reassure them that they really are in the right place.

But that’s waaaayyy easier said than done.

Let’s be honest, there are a lot of mediocre interior design websites out there. Which doesn’t actually mean those designers haven’t put their time, effort and even their hard earned cash into trying to get a great site. How many times have you heard designers tell horror stories about how their website projects took 6 months or longer, drained their time and energy, frustrated them like crazy and yet they STILL ended up with “just OK” results?!

It doesn’t have to be that way. It SHOULDN’T be that way. You really can get an amazing website that represents you in all the right ways and appeals to your ideal clients.

I’ve recently finished working on a website for a client who knew she needed branding, a website and copy that would properly introduce her design firm to potential clients. Her name is Janelle Photopoulos, and working with her on her site was such a pleasure. I’m not even going to pretend to hide how excited I am about this project! My collaborative partner, brand designer Katie Saunders of Pop & Grey and I, worked hard on this project and we’re both thrilled that it turned out to be everything we hoped it would be and more. I believe it truly offers a fantastic experience of Janelle’s vibrant personality, passion for her clients and skill as an interior designer.

What I got from working with you went far beyond the physical logo or website. You created a feeling around our company’s brand. The tagline you came up with along with the entire new brand and website will have MASSIVE impact on the direction of my business. It was a great experience!

Janelle Photopoulos

The Key Question

From the start, the key question for Janelle’s project was, how could Katie and I take her vibrant personality, boundless creativity, and huge vision for her business and make it all tangible on a website? How can we make the 2D visuals and words on the screen make her site’s visitors feel as loved and inspired as they will when they eventually meet Janelle and her team in person?

The First Step

As is always the case for these projects, the first thing we wanted to do was get to know Janelle better. We had her fill out our project questionnaire, then we spent time with her on video conference. It’s important that we not only hear the tone of our clients’ voices, but also see their facial expressions and demeanor as we talk with them, and even add to the picture with how they dress and what their office environment is like. This adds so much to our understanding of who they really are and what their clients experience when working with them.

Here, Janelle absolutely excelled. This is a person who knows how to make a first impression! From the very first moment we met her, we could instantly feel her warmth and energy. It was clear she doesn’t just give lip service to her work. She and her entire team throw themselves into everything they do. They truly care about their clients and pour their hearts into making every project completely unique and an overwhelmingly positive experience for the client.

Rather than simply sit there and speak with us during our first meeting, Janelle completely delighted us by picking up her laptop and taking us on a visual tour of her incredible office in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. We were able to see not only the creative, collaborative space she built for her team, but also how she surrounds herself with bold colors and patterns on a daily basis (oh, that incredible hand-painted agate wall!). This sent us a big message about what inspires and energizes her. More importantly, it filled out the picture for us of the experience Janelle creates for her clients, making them feel inspired and energized, too!

The Design

Ultimately, that first meeting planted the seeds for the colorful brand and “Live Vibrantly” marketing message we created for Janelle.

Katie and I worked closely with her to nail down her brand’s visuals and language. The idea was (as it is with all our clients) to not only reflect Janelle’s preferences, but to run those preferences together with information about her ideal clients through the filter of our marketing expertise to generate a distilled representation of her company in website form.

Even though may seem counterintuitive to interior designers, it’s important not to get lost in “style over substance” when it comes to your website. So for Janelle, we wanted to make sure we crafted content that would be as meaningful as possible for her ideal clients. I crafted copy to match her fabulous images, pulling forward our message about what it’s like to work with Blakely using carefully curated language and a strategically defined tone of voice.

With Janelle’s creative output, it wasn’t difficult to put all the pieces of her site (her new branding, her copy and her images) together beautifully. You can tell from one quick look at the stunning photographs of her work what kind of results you’re in for when you come to Janelle for interior design help. There are tons of examples of the projects she’s worked on, including shots of her own design studio that I spoke about above (honestly, check them out, it is SUCH a cool space!).

Janelle’s entire process is highly collaborative, so we also wanted to shine a spotlight on Janelle’s entire team. On her Our Team page, you can see group shots of everyone together, as well as matching headshots for each team member. There is also lots of engaging copy written about each person to make sure that visitors can get to know more about who will be working on their projects, and to give anyone thinking of applying to work at Blakely an idea of what the team is all about.

In the end, we gave Janelle something that she loves and is proud to have represent her. It not only speaks volumes about Janelle herself, but also allows her clients to see themselves in her brand and copy, making them say, “I need Blakely!” And of course, our SEO help will give her a nice boost to help them find her in the first place.

I really want to stress that Janelle’s positive experience working with us is what we strive for with every single one of our clients. We’ve built our streamlined, efficient processes around making that happen every time. When you need a new site build from the ground up, we’re here to help you best represent your brand online with exceptional copy and beautiful branding. Contact us today and we can get started building an interior design website that says, “You!” but also makes your ideal clients say, “You get me. I’m in!”

Design or Copy: Which Comes First When Getting a New Website???

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Interior Design Copywriter Deb Mitchell Writing

It’s a more important question to ask than you might think.

Maybe you, like a lot of business owners, think it’s only natural to hire a designer first. That way, you’ll have your website all mapped out so you’ll know what copy you need when you go to a copywriter – right?

Not so much.

As a copywriter for interior designers, all-too-often I find myself having to give my website copy clients the bad news:

The site they had a web designer meticulously create for them needs changes. Lots of changes.

While it’s not the end of the world (at worst the web designer might charge you some steep change fees) it usually means a cranky web designer who would love to bop me over the head for creating all of their rework and a cranky you for not being as close to the finish line as you’d thought..

All of that unpleasantness is easily avoided, though, IF you follow my advice:

Have a copywriter write all your website copy before you even discuss your site with a website designer. 

In fact, designers almost always prefer to build a site around actual copy. Not having it all done and at the ready can stall your project. Your designer may even need to move you to the back of her project queue so as not to delay her other clients, as well.

Actually, the truly perfect scenario is hiring both your designer and your writer at once and having them work together on crafting your site. I’ve forged great relationships with a handful of amazing web designers and developers for exactly that purpose and the results are always outstanding.

It’s like when you have an interior design client who brings you in to weigh in on their house plans only after the architect has drawn them up.

Painful, right?! If they’d only hired you first, you wouldn’t be stuck having to choose between trying to shoehorn your ideas into the existing plan or recommending costly changes.

Just like you, I’m looking to help my clients achieve the best possible end results. That means I need to be able to weigh in on choices like page layouts and where copy is and isn’t needed.

Maybe we need to visually map out your process so your prospects get the picture. Maybe we need to clean up your portfolio or add a press page. Whatever it is, there’s almost always something that – because I know the interior design industry so well –  I’ll think of that your web designer won’t.

The bottom line is, you and everyone else involved will be so much happier (and your website will be done quicker and better) if you work with a copywriter first.

Gearing up to get a new website? Let’s chat!

All the best,

Up Your Website's Game By Finding Your Brand Differentiators

I want it!