Take Your Client on a Design Journey

Experience is the new luxury.  Affluent consumers are spending more on travel, resorts and fine dining, less on luxury goods and home furnishings.  For interior designers, that means you need to rethink your marketing strategy.  Instead of promoting your access to custom and to-the-trade-only products, or showing them pictures of someone else’s project, offer them a unique experience, a journey through design that ends in a new, re-imagined space that will transform their lives or their business.

Design is hot.  Clients are intrigued by the design process and want to be more involved.  Leverage their interest to your advantage.  Yes, they may be influenced by design TV shows and all the other design media available to them, but you have the tools and expertise to make design – their unique design project – come alive.  Despite all the photos and makeovers they’ve viewed, clients still have a hard time visualizing the results of their project.  Sketches, plans and renderings help, of course.  Even better, though, with today’s digital drawing and presentation tools you can show them how the space will be transformed – right before their very eyes and in 3-D!

Creating an experience for the client begins with engaging them in a story.  It is the story of their lives or their business.  How is it now?  How would they like it to be?  Think of yourself as a guide.  Your job is to make the design process come alive for the client.  Describe the journey you will take them through, how you will transform the here and now to the then and there.  Help them to imagine how their lives or their business will be different in the new space.  How will the results of your design improve their quality of life or help them attract and retain the loyalty of their customers? How will it better suit their needs and the needs of their family members or employees?

Affluent consumers value professionalism but expect a high level of service.  Exceed their expectations by offering them a bespoke experience.  Let them know you understand their needs and desires. Explain that you provide a personal, customized service that will result in a design created exclusively for them, not some off-the-rack turnkey design package.  Prepare them for a journey they will treasure for years to come.