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Case Study:
Before and After: Renovating Content With Decorating Den Interiors
Since 2015, Brafton has been helping interior design franchise Decorating Den Interiors elevate their content marketing.
41%
increase in year-over-year blog sessions.
26%
increase in YoY ZIP locator conversions.
39%
increase in YoY contact-us form completions.
“It wasn’t impressive, and we didn’t promote it,” Kaitlin Pabon, Retail Marketing Manager for DDI, said of the company’s blog in 2015. “It just sat there.”
Posting cadence was spotty and sometimes as infrequent as once every other month. Kaitlin and her team just didn’t have the time, and without consistently strong blog articles, any investments in promoting or beautifying the blog didn’t seem worthwhile. First they needed content. Consistent, great – and consistently great – content.
And that, in so many words, is what Brafton brought to the table for DDI.
Brafton has really helped us elevate our digital marketing and elevate the professionalism of our brand. – Kaitlin Pabon, Retail Marketing Manager for DDI
Decorating Den Interiors is a special kind of company.
They take rooms that look like this:
And they make them look like this:
And they take pits like this one:
And transform them into pools like this:
I know, right?
But when DDI approached Brafton back in 2015, their blog looked something like this:
“It wasn’t impressive, and we didn’t promote it,” Kaitlin Pabon, Retail Marketing Manager for DDI, said. “It just sat there.”
Posting cadence was spotty and sometimes as infrequent as once every other month. Kaitlin and her team just didn’t have the time, and without consistently strong blog articles, any investments in promoting or beautifying the blog didn’t seem worthwhile. First they needed content. Consistent, great – and consistently great – content.
And that, in so many words, is what Brafton brought to the table for DDI.
Polishing a brand veneer
Decorating Den’s client base is chiefly upper-middle-class homeowners who need to be sold on the integrity and quality of DDI’s design acumen. That process starts long before a consultation is scheduled. The client first needs to buy into the integrity and quality of the brand. A 200-word blog post every other month can’t do that for an audience that looks to “Elle Decor” and “House Beautiful” for inspiration.
Equally importantly, sporadic blog posts can’t contribute real search engine optimization value to a website. It takes a consistent and concerted effort to move the needle.
So, when Brafton first started, the team focused exclusively on blog posts with 2 goals in mind:
Create a foundation of polished, professional content that will make the blog more promotable and ultimately more valuable as a digital branding tool.
Target keywords and subject matter on the blog that are of interest to DDI’s audience to improve site traffic and drive up conversions.
We achieved that second goal in relatively short order, and continue to see strong results today. For instance, from Q1 2019 to Q1 2020, we helped DDI achieve:
41% increase in year-over-year blog sessions.
42% increase in YoY unique users visiting the blog.
26% increase in YoY ZIP locator conversions.
39% increase in YoY contact-us form completions.
The first goal, on the other hand, took more than just some blog work. Brafton worked closely with Kaitlin and David Haseley, Sr. Vice President of Merchandising and Marketing, to also produce eBooks, video content and even interactive quizzes like this one:
As a franchise, Decorating Den also wanted to make sure their designers around the country were being recognized across their digital marketing, both by potential customers and within the company.
To that end, Brafton helped with event coverage of corporate events, including the company’s 2019 Designer of the Year event:
Our video team also created video coverage for their 2020 event, which was held virtually because of COVID-19:
Behind the scenes, meanwhile, Kaitlin and David were expanding their digital marketing foundation by ramping up their paid advertising campaigns and social media promotions, and spearheading a website redesign.
“Now that we have regular content we’re having so much more traffic to the blog,” Kaitlin said. “We’re also able to promote it more because we’re proud of it.”
The outcome: A digital presence worth promoting
It’s now been about 5 years since Brafton’s partnership with DDI began and a lot has changed, for the better.
“Now that we have regular content we’re having so much more traffic to the blog,” Kaitlin said. “We’re also able to promote it more because we’re proud of it.”
By “promote it,” Kaitlin doesn’t just mean on corporate social media channels. Her marketing team has also begun sharing digital content with local franchise owners and helping them repurpose it for their own marketing efforts, further maximizing its value.
The polish that Brafton and DDI’s partnership brought to the company’s digital marketing strategy has also been a huge asset.
“Brafton has really helped us elevate our digital marketing and elevate the professionalism of our brand,” Kaitlin said. “And they continue to be very helpful in not just continuing the things that are successful, but by bringing new ideas to the table as well.”
Be that as it may, this story is really about the value that digital marketing can contribute to an organization when there is true buy-in. Our role was a supporting one. We delivered the content and some strategic guidance, but Kaitlin and David’s dedication to, and belief in, digital marketing is ultimately what helped turn this:
