About
My Design Story
I am a marketer at heart, yet I happen to have fallen in love with the interior design and office furniture industry. Read my story. I have been in this space for about 15 years. Being in sales and marketing my whole life, I have had to learn how to generate new business based on the changing landscape of market conditions. My passion of interior design results from seeing a plan come to life and the transformation of a space from old to new.
What I have realized is that there are a lot of designers who feel the same way as I do about design but have gone a step further and has taken the time to get the interior design degree so that they can practice their craft. I have thought about doing that as well, and as I did some soul searching about this I realized that my true passion is marketing. In fact over the last two decades I have read and studied hundreds of books on sales and marketing, learning new and old techniques and putting those into practice. When I combine marketing with interior design that really gets me excited.
I also realize that as a designer you do not want to be spending your time marketing. You want to design. In fact, most designers struggle with marketing, therefore struggle to have their own successful interior design firm. You know who you are. On one side is design, which you get and understand and love! Then there is a gap and across that gap is marketing. As a designer you do not have the time, or skills nor the desire to bridge that gap.
As I mentioned I have kept up with the changing business conditions, so I have created a website to help me attract new customers for my interior design and office furniture business. If you search office design Chicago in Google, you will see Think Spaces come up 1st or 2nd right after the “local” business search. This positioning has allowed me to get a number of qualified leads of companies that require my services. I enjoy this position, and my firm is not even based in Chicago, but a suburb of Chicago. Something you will note if you click on the businesses that are under local business search, none of them focus on office design. Now if you click on Think Spaces website you are taken right to a page that is relevant to interior office design.
As I mentioned that the landscape of business has changed, so I have changed my business model design as the landscape has changed.
Think Spaces, Inc is building the bridge for interior designers to connect their design talent to marketing. By featuring your interior design services on Think Spaces website for your local area, you will be marketing to those who go to Google to search for office design in your area. Additionally you will also be building a web presence for your services, and you will also have the ability to utilize automated e-mail marketing on prospects and who are interested in your services but yet not ready to move forward. But by keeping in front of them will allow you to be the go to firm when they are ready to move forward with a project.
Now there is also another aspect of Google that I would like to discuss. See Google looks for relevant content on a website so that when someone is searching, it will pull up the most relevant information for that search. As Think Spaces grows and adds more designers from different markets to the web site, Google will put us up further and further in the search pages. Each new Think Space designer we add will have an exponential effect on the search results. Another thing about Google, is that it looks at your history. We have been marketing Think Spaces, Inc well over two years now. In year one, I was not in the position that I was in on the search terms. It is almost like relationship building with a computer if you can believe it. But after about 6 months I began to rise and the leads started to come in. The results get enhanced by utilizing Search Engine Optimization, or also called SEO. So as time goes on Think Spaces website position or relationship gets stronger and stronger.
There is one thing that you should keep in mind. I will only have one designer per local market.
For example, in Chicago, I have a commercial designer spot, that has been filled. A market consists of a major metropolitan area within about a 50 mile radius. To see our Chicago Designer click here.
If you would like to learn more about the Think Spaces Marketing program, click here.