Why are Luxury Brand and Website Designers against SEO & Email Marketing?
“My last website designer didn't offer SEO."
I hear this far too often from new clients, and it’s similar to a full service design-build firm doing everything to make a new build beautiful...except bringing in an electrical subcontractor. Sure, the house looks great, but nothing happens when you flip the light switches.
Hmm.
As with any other professional, I'm highly critical of my own industry. If website designers would learn how to optimize each site they build, they would truly be offering full website design services. Having to hire a website designer AND an SEO consultant (and a copywriter) are duplicate expenses that you the client shouldn't have to pay — but often do. The more professionals you have to hire, the pricier your website becomes.
Remember this: If someone is offering website design but not SEO (which always includes copywriting, because where else would those keywords come from?), the end result is not a complete website.
How to Know if Your Interior Design Website Has Good SEO
Here’s a quick way to know whether your website has proper onsite SEO that will help you be found in Google.
What is SEO? Search engine optimization, or SEO, determines how highly ranked your website is in search results. It’s a combination of copywriting / keywords, loading speed, and user experience.
When I googled "how does copywriting affect SEO," here's what Google said: (Because why not ask THE SOURCE, right?)
Copywriting significantly impacts a website's SEO by influencing how well search engines understand and rank your content, primarily by incorporating relevant keywords, addressing user intent, and creating high-quality, engaging text that encourages users to stay on the page, ultimately leading to better search engine visibility and organic traffic. Websites with very little copywriting generally do not have good SEO because search engines heavily rely on textual content to understand a website's relevance to a search query, meaning a lack of substantial written content will significantly hinder its ranking potential. - Google
Copywriting for SEO: Your headlines should contain keywords that are specific to your services, location, and / or ideal client. Most headlines are too vague, which is a shame, because that is the first thing Google and humans will read. Also, copywriting must first and foremost highlight your ideal client and their pain points, then provide a solution (your services). This is a great way to naturally use the right keywords in your body text.
Images for SEO: Every image on your website should be compressed to around 500 kb or less. Each image file name should be changed to contain the service provided, the location of the project, and the type of project. For example, a file name could be “interior designer Charleston modern white navy kitchen remodel.”
User experience for SEO: Basically, this refers to the design of your site. Your home page should contain these key 11 elements. Your about page should include your first-person bio. Testimonials should be sprinkled throughout the site. Your services page should list no more than three offerings.
Each page should end with a call-to-action (headline and button) that takes someone further into the site. Most sites just repeat “contact us” or “book a call” at all the wrong times, causing most of their traffic to leave the site entirely.
What about Google Ads? Long story short, your website SHOULD be bringing you clients without relying on paid ads. If you have a great site and good SEO but still no leads, you still have options to help fix that organically:
Blog 1-2x per month, ensuring each post is SEO'd
Optimize your GBL by completing your profile, uploading images, and routinely asking happy clients to leave you a review
Share your blog posts to your GBL and Pinterest
Paid ads via Google exist only to bring traffic to the site. Once traffic reaches the site, it’s the job of your website and sales funnel to convert them into leads. If your site and sales funnel aren’t up to par, no amount of Google Ads will bring results.
How to damage your luxury design website and ruin your SEO
If you’ve ever worked with someone who calls themselves a “luxury” website or brand designer, you’ve probably heard at least one of the following:
Your website should be minimal. Luxury clients just don’t have time for more.
Your website shouldn’t offer a freebie, a quiz, or any other sort of lead magnet.
Blogging and email marketing don’t matter to the high end client. They are too busy to read those things.
Oh boy. This is a problem.
A simple website can be great... if "simple" means it's easy to navigate and clearly understood. High ticket clients want to see that you 1) understand their needs and 2) that you can deliver the appropriate solutions that make sense for them. It's impossible to convey any of this in only a few sentences of copy. Also, the lack of text on a website also hurts your SEO ranking because Google simply has nothing to index.
As for high ticket clients not having time to read email newsletters, these people often check their email upwards of 10 times per day if they are in a professional career. They also make most of their buying decisions based on their own research (using Google...which is why your SEO is important) and they also make buying decisions based on word-of-mouth referral (which is why email marketing is so important).
A newsletter that is sent every 2-4 weeks and delivers helpful, inspiring design content (not sales-focused) has proven to help designers stay top of mind with luxury clients, increasing both repeat business and referrals to new clients. In fact, email marketing is 40x more effective than social media.
Regarding high ticket clients not wanting to see quizzes, I agree. Quizzes are very DIY and don't suit a luxury design studio's target audience. However, providing a complimentary download that they can sign up for (investment guide, how you work, etc.) is helpful because, if they are in the research phase and not ready to fill out your contact form yet, this allows you to capture their info and stay in touch with them every month.
This makes it more likely that they will contact you versus another designer when they are ready to move forward. Their world moves quickly, and the businesses who don't make an effort to stay in touch are missing out on great leads.
Consider this: If high value clients didn't respond well to email marketing, why do brands such as Porsche, Chanel, and luxury real estate and hospitality companies all use email marketing? Email marketing has been around for over 20 years and continues to grow.
Lastly, having a website with good SEO, offering a download, and sending a monthly newsletter is a simple yet effective sales funnel. If those things are absent, business growth won't be as good as it could be.
What happens when you follow mainstream "luxury" marketing and SEO advice
An interior designer reached out to me with a stunning email. Here is how her story went, in her own words:
Hi Kate,
My website's SEO was completely ruined by the way a luxury branding expert instructed me to format the website. There was no text on my Hero page, which I now realize was not good for my SEO. She instructed me to stop blogging and to stop email marketing. The sad part is that I listened to her. The branding expert told me that if I'm looking to move into the luxury branding that I no longer need to blog or do email marketing. She said that's for designers that are just starting off. I do believe that this is a big factor in why we derailed. (She'd stated in a previous message that the last calendar year had been one of their WORST years in business while she was implementing this unfortunate advice.)
My thought was "I'm paying thousands of dollars to this person as a luxury branding coach so she must know what she's talking about." Sadly, she didn't specialize in SEO or Marketing. I believe it's the reason our pipeline dried up.
It took me some time to figure it out. I spoke with other women in our industry who've had the same experience. I'm just looking to get things back on track! Since I resumed my email campaign, we have already been getting quality inquiries in such a short time again. I'm so grateful.
Once she explained the situation to me and asked if I could help, I reviewed her website analytics to see what was happening with her SEO. Sure enough, the same month that her website was redesigned to meet these so-called "luxury" branding standards, her website traffic absolutely tanked.
She and I quickly put together a plan to revise the site, fix her copywriting, and save her SEO. Her relief was palpable and that, alongside her email marketing, has gotten her back on track to running a successful design business.
It will take several months to regain the traffic she had before the “luxury damage” was done, but we both were so glad to catch it early on and repair the damage.
Why do luxury brand and website designers think less copywriting and no client email marketing are a good idea?
At this point, it's clear that avoiding website SEO best practices and saying “no” to email marketing is to ignore the data, and that comes at a detriment to your bottom line. Why do some luxury brand and website designers show such resistance to these things? While I can't answer that for certain, my suspicion is that they 1) don't understand the data and / or 2) don't want to offer the services, nor do they want their clients investing in those services with other companies, as it would take away from what the client could spend with THEM.
Cynical, perhaps, but that's my take. I don't think there is any malice involved, just some good old fashioned ignorance or avoidance.
Email Marketing Stats You Should Know
88% of Email Users Check Their Inbox Multiple Times a Day
Email Open Rate Reaches 37.27% Overall
Spam Rates Dropped 34.66% Between 2011 and 2023
60% of consumers prefer to be contacted by brands through email
39% check their email 3-5 times a day, 27% check their email 10-20 times a day, 22% check their email 20+ times a day
59% of consumers report that marketing emails influence their purchase decisions
top reasons for unsubscribes: Email relevance (40%), Content too salesy or spammy (28%), Email frequency (27%)
For every $1 spent on email marketing, $36 is made in return, according to email marketing data from Litmus. That equals a 3600% ROI.
Email outperformed banner ads and SMS marketing by 108% in 2023
87% of brands said that email marketing contributes to their business’ success. (HubSpot)
SEO Stats You Should Know
57% of local search queries are made via mobile devices
People are 70% more likely to visit a business with a complete Google Business Profile
Clients are 2.7 times more likely to consider a company reputable if it has a complete Business Profile on Google Maps and Search
96.55% of the pages on the internet get zero traffic from Google
More than 50% of customers use Google to discover or find a new brand
78% of local mobile searches lead to offline purchases
Only 0.0008% of keywords get more than 100,000 searches per month
Google Ads Keyword Planner is accurate only 45.22% of the time
70% of internet users prefer to learn about a company through its blog posts rather than advertisements
76% of blogs publish how-to posts, making them the most popular content format
Small blogs get nearly 44% of their website traffic from search engines
On average, companies that implement SEO strategies save up to 400% on ad spend
What should you do if…
If your website is beautiful and you love it, wonderful! But it also has to be functional. Just like interior design, a space that is aesthetically-pleasing is absolutely useless if it can't provide for the functions and needs in which is what was created.
If you want more luxury clients, you have to do your part to stay top of mind with them. No one is above the laws of marketing, and being told that luxury brands are exempt from email marketing is to deliberately turn a blind or ignorant eye to reality.
If your brand messaging (the written content on your website, blog post, or newsletter) isn't bringing results, make sure it's easier to read and understand. Many of us will accidentally sound too corporate or robotic. Plus, if you've worked with a "luxury" coach, you might have been told to use language that is honestly too elevated to be quickly comprehended. That's not only off-putting to your client, but it also doesn't do your brand any favors.
As the owner of your business, the one who is responsible for its proper management, you don't have the luxury of ignoring or avoiding reality. Take these stats into consideration and make an independent decision about what is best for YOUR business.
If you want to talk it through, I'm here for it. Book a discovery call and marketing audit by going here.
