Weaving Old-School Service and Artisan Craftsmanship into Modern Marketing
You don’t meet a business like Carpet Impressions every day. They do things with Old World sensibilities — acutely accurate, absolutely meticulous, and always on time. They are competing in an oversaturated market with white glove service and a high-quality catalog. They are niched-down hard with interior designers and architects in a to-the-trade only operation that has been growing steadily since 1994.
Business partners Hope + Philip are happiest when they nail an install: the product is just right for the application, the designer is in love with the carpet, and the client can’t wait to show it all off. Lines are precise, edges are clean, and we’ve brought out the very best in the textile.
It helps having the only in-house Install team in the area, trained in the craft and immersed in a culture that embraces Pride of Work and deeply cultivated relationships with the best suppliers on the planet.
After two-point-five decades of word-of-mouth and reputation building, Carpet Impressions has the foresight to see that their loyal client base is retiring.
Up-and-coming designers and architects expect to make an authentic connection and interact with brands on a digital landscape.
And so, the team found themselves in the unique position of needing to start from square one on the marketing tactics their competition had already been implementing for years.
They needed a plan for Social Media and an updated Website. And that was all they knew.
“You are our social media Rock-Star!!!! Always producing and creating value to our success.”
If you love interior design and want some delicious eye candy in your Instagram feed, get with us on the ‘Gram. I love to live vicariously through the glorious interiors lucky enough to get a handmade rug, custom carpet, or specialty flooring from Carpet Impressions.
Enter Rebecca (that’s me!)
- Where do we start? At the beginning. We brought in a cross section of the team for a half-day Define Your Brand Workshop. We got to know what makes our Ideal Customer tick. Together, we answered all of the Q’s: Who is the designer/architect and what does s/he need? How could we deliver the peace of mind that they so desperately require when it comes to high-end and high-profile projects? What can we say that will hit them (you used this earlier) (“right in the feels”?) (“right where it counts?”? We put a fine point on the pencil… why Carpet Impressions and why now?*
- When we were done we had established Core Values, developed a Positioning Statement, and identified Team Cohesion. Our made-to-order Brand Book serves as a comprehensive guide to serve with HR, marketing, and PR. (See the finished result!)*
- A’s: talented and time-pressed creative pros balancing multi-faceted and time crunched projects; a textile know-it-all to help them look really good in front of the client with pitch-perfect flooring solutions; give them the one-on-one relationship building that builds trust and inspires creative collaboration; the floor is our canvas.; because we know just how to do it right and why waste another brain cell on all of those “what ifs.”
- In Grows & Glows, I presented Hope and Philip with a report that provided an overview of their biggest strengths, their most pressing challenges, AND what to do about it. We put together a 12-month Marketing Plan and plotted out the steps to implement our Brand Strategy that concentrates on marketing to their own network.
- We wiped the slate clean on a dated website that served no one. Our Website Revamp dropped all of our favorite things about rugs/carpet (and the people that love them). Chock full of beautiful imagery and Compelling Copy, we now had an online presence that was functional and on-brand. Bonus: it’s the home of our new Blog, Talking Textiles, where we inspire designers to fall in love with flooring.
- We drive eyeballs to our new site on social and by (a.) promoting the blog and (b.) pushing other great eMail Content to our growing Mailing List. When sales outreach or company communications are called for, the team has access to a small catalog of Customizable Sales Scripts and Templates.
- No platform set the tone for the magic of Carpet Impressions like Instagram. Our clients are visual — here we play to those strengths with a curated feed that is equal parts project portfolio, featured products, and team spirit. Oh, we’ve got a little digital footprint on Facebook and LinkedIn, too, but Instagram is where we bond with our people.
- It’s not every day that you get to celebrate 25 Years in Business. (Especially in this industry, where textile mills have reduced to record lows and cheaper products dominate the market.) Back in 1994, when Hope + Philip first opened their doors in McLean, VA, they couldn’t imagine the dynamic 12-person team and top-notch client roster they command today. In partnership with Michelle Brown Consulting, we threw a party fit for queens and kings of the showroom. From Custom Graphics to the #CI25 Social Media Campaign, we leveraged all of the good vibes that an Event like this can generate in our Marketing Mix.
