If you’re looking to expand your home design business, one of the best approaches you can take is to focus on digital growth. Although you may not think it is necessary to grow your online presence and start using digital tools like 2D floor plans, it is one of the best areas for business growth and, if you have a clear strategy, one of the most straightforward, too.
If you want to grow your home design business, you will need to attract more clients. This is why creating a congruent online presence is so important. The majority of your customers will be online, and it is one of the best methods for building your brand image, which is crucial if you want to attract prestigious clients.
After all, attention to detail is one of the most important qualities of a successful architect. If your website, social media, and personal presentation are incongruent and lacking in quality, this will reflect poorly on your ability to do your job. Furthermore, you will need to have the right tools in place if you’re to make your business as efficient as possible. For example, by using high-quality 2D floor plans, you can present completed plans to your clients in a format they can instantly understand.
Here’s how to grow your home design business digitally:
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You can improve the speed of your drawings with 2D floor plans
One of the most useful tools you can use if you want to grow your company is to present your floor plans in 2D. There are many reasons why 2D floor plans can benefit your business.
Firstly, you can quickly create floor plans because it enables you to create standard building templates, which you can then modify for specific clients. This saves you a great deal of effort and helps you create more plans in a shorter space of time. Like any company, a lot of your growth as a home design business will come from improving your existing workflows, increasing the number of projects you can take on at any one time.
Furthermore, this template-based design tool allows you to quickly adjust details like individual walls, doors, and windows, even when you’re showing your plans to a client in your meeting. This enables you to collaborate closely with your clients and bring them into the design process.
If you want to find new clients for your home design business quickly, setting up social media accounts is a no-brainer. There are thousands of potential clients on social media, and it gives you a valuable opportunity to demonstrate your completed projects on what are inherently visual platforms.
Like any brand, your hardest job is to convince clients to trust your abilities to deliver a high-quality service. Designing a property only exaggerates this challenge, so it is imperative that you showcase your successful design projects with high-quality images and videos to give your prospects a full flavor of your potential.
However, an easy trap to fall into with social media is to create accounts simply because you heard it was a good idea. Without a strategy in place, you will likely end up posting sporadic content of questionable quality. Remember, in marketing, not doing anything is better than looking average.
This is especially true if you’re a home designer. Demonstrating a lack of attention to detail on your social media suggests that you approach your work with the same lack of focus, potentially ruining your brand in the process.
Think of this as an opportunity rather than a burden. While it is a lot of work, posting consistently high-quality social media content that is relevant to your business will help you stand out in a crowded marketplace, demonstrating that your company is willing to go the extra mile and pay attention to the small details.
Of course, while social media is important, you should keep this aesthetic congruence in other areas, too. Ensure your appearance is always the best it can be because even details like a dirty car or a badly pressed suit can betray a lack of attention to detail. Instead, make the most of every opportunity to demonstrate your prestige and eye for quality. Often it is the smallest gestures that go the furthest in building your brand image.
Consider hiring freelancers
A steep challenge for any small business owner is working out how you’re going to juggle your projects, administration, accounting, sales, and marketing all at the same time.
It is an almost impossible task to do without compromising at least one of these jobs. It leaves you at risk of cutting corners and making mistakes with your projects, which can tarnish your image and risk the structural integrity of the property plans you are designing.
Instead, consider hiring freelancers to do the job for you. This will work out cheaper than hiring full-time members of staff who you may not need all of the time and cut out the hassle of interviewing candidates and the responsibility of consistently giving them work.
Freelancers will also help you take on larger projects because you will feel more comfortable with your workload. Rather than worrying about whether you can handle lots of work projects alongside the more menial tasks of admin and marketing, for example, you can focus on what is important – your client drawings.
Keep in touch with your clients regularly
Thanks to the internet, it is now incredibly easy to stay in touch with your clients. If you want to grow your architect business, you should consider using this ability to your advantage.
Your clients will likely be anxious to be kept in the loop regarding your designs, so it would be an added string to your bow if you could set up weekly or monthly video conference calls to check in with them and discuss modifications to the design.
Going above and beyond for your clients is imperative for growing your business because word of mouth is still one of the strongest methods for finding more business as an architect. After all, with a service that requires so much trust, prospects are much more likely to invest their time and money in your business if someone they know has already bought designs from you.
You could also incorporate this transparency into your social media strategy. Consider hosting live videos in which you answer frequently asked questions, film how-to videos for budding architects and curious homebuilders, and demonstrate your knowledge and skills in real-time.
Using technology to find new and innovative ways to impress your clients is, therefore, one of the most powerful approaches for growing your home design business.
