Advice For Home Stagers on How to Get New Clients

A recent question was asked, “What has been your biggest success in building your staging business in terms of getting new clients?”

At RESA HQ our team is asked questions from home stagers throughout North America on a daily basis, from where to get training, how to keep up with inventory, where to find clients, the best resources for contracts, and more! For our Ask The Experts Blog series we take some of these questions to experts in our industry to get their advice.

The RESA mission is for home staging to be an industry where high standards are well-established and practiced universally, and by sharing some tips from the experts we hope to help those in the staging industry be the most successful they can be.

Dawn Bach Thurman established Eye to Eye Interiors, LLC in Chicago in the summer of 2007. She has since served over a thousand clients in the Chicago area, specializing in occupied staging and redesign.

She has been a member of RESA since 2011, and recently served as the President of the RESA Greater Chicago Chapter 2019. Her work has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, Voyage Chicago and Lux Magazine who awarded her firm with a 2018 Leading Designer Award.

“There is plenty of work for all of us out there – a plethora of homeowners and realtors needing your professional guidance to present their properties.”

Dawn Bach-Thurman gives advice on her most successful way to build business by gaining clientele:

I have been in the staging and design business since 2007. The path to a successful business requires effective marketing. The end.

Okay, just kidding. Of course, the answer is a bit more nuanced. If you’ve been around for a few years, you know that the marketing game has grown several hundred feet and sprouted multiple monstrous heads since 2007. I call it the marketing dragon – a truly menacing and slightly terrifying creature.

Imagine multiple snarling mouths that spit out algorithms, SEO jargon and keyword protocol. Do I feed the monster? How much? Which head do I feed and when? Should I hire a marketing dragon-tamer to manage it all? How can I make it all work seamlessly like that other firm over there with the little blue check mark next to their name on the Click Clack platform?

Well golly, that’s a lot to absorb. So let’s take a step back from the monster for a moment.

First, let’s talk about the real way to attract clients.

At certain points during the life of my business, I have solicited advice from people I admire. People who are successful in their fields – leaders. And I say to you – anyone with a business, at any point in the life of your business: seek advice from other business owners and people you admire. I don’t care what type of business they are in – there are universal truths to learn.

Join organizations where you will meet people who are successful at running a business (not organizations that require a hefty fee to join – more on that in a moment). Ask for advice. Get feedback. Be open to listening. Really hear what they have to say and pay attention because these individuals possess something you don’t have: a unique perspective. They are seeing you and your business from the outside, possibly for the first time. Sound familiar? In staging, that first impression is everything.

So let yourself and your business be critiqued. Be willing to embrace the fact that you don’t know everything. Entertain all suggestions, all possibilities.

Be willing to learn.

Be willing to try new things or change something that is not serving you and your business.

Be willing to be staged.

The best advice I ever received from one of my fellow business owners was to raise my rates.

The second-best advice was to not spend a dime on marketing. You heard me. Not a dime. Out of fear, I didn’t implement either of these suggestions at first. I kept my prices stupidly low because I thought that because I was new, my work wasn’t worth what the other guy was charging. (Wrong!) And when the social media guys came calling, I succumbed to the slick sales pitch from the popular business review site. I bought that ad, boosted that post, enhanced my profile. ($$$) And after shelling out more than a few dollars a month for a year, I looked hard at the data. To my surprise, not a single dollar I had spent had resulted in more business. I suppose my profile looks better than the next guy, so there’s that. But shelling out the marketing dollars has had no direct impact on the growth of my business..

So what leads to a growth in new clients? Quality. And word of mouth.

When I deliver a quality product, the word spreads. The word spreads because I ask for it to be spread. I request that people review my work. I ask them to tell their friends, their family members, their real estate agents.

Word of mouth about the quality of work I provide is the strongest, cheapest backbone to my business and it’s growth. Just as you will gear up the courage to ask your colleagues for their business advice, you’ll need a little courage to ask your clients to spread the word, to go as far as to provide their honest review of your work. So when those review sites come knocking on your door, go ahead, try out their “products.” Plop a few dollars on the table to test the waters. If it leads to business, you will know. And if nothing changes, you will know your money is better spent elsewhere. In my experience, you don’t have to (and shouldn’t have to) pay to play. Client reviews are considered “content” by those review sites. Think of it this way: without review content, review sites would not exist.

advice for home stagers seeking new clients

Similarly, don’t pay for leads!

There is plenty of work for all of us out there – a plethora of homeowners and real estate agents needing your professional guidance to present their properties. As a homeowner myself, I don’t want to BE a paid lead. I’m the person who scrolls down past all of the sponsored listings to get to the “real” reviewed businesses. It should come as no surprise that I will never accept an invitation to join an “exclusive” networking group that requires a monthly or annual fee to be a member. The fees are steep, and I don’t need the stress of generating leads for other group members. I’ve attended a few “audition” meetings only to leave with a bad taste in my mouth. I get recognized because I do quality work. I get referrals because I do quality work. People tell others about my quality work, which costs me nothing.

Say it with me: Don’t. Pay. To. Play.

I did promise to get back to the marketing dragon that nearly derailed my answer to this question. No doubt, social media is an important component of marketing. These competing platforms are like the heads on a hungry, algorithm-spitting, snarling multiple-mouthed monster.

You know the ones – all the kids (and not so young kids) are addicted to scrolling through countless posts of cat videos and life hacks. Here’s my take: dive in. It’s okay to be late to the party. Why? It’s an opportunity to keep your business engaged and possibly get noticed in the crowd, and you’ll never guess what the social media experts agree is the best way to be noticed: go ahead, guess. If your answer is “provide quality posts” then ding, ding, ding you’re the winner.

Woman seeking advice for getting new clients for her staging business

Engage your audience, share tips, tricks and advice about your niche. Maybe throw in a cute cat video for funsies, but focus on quality and always ask for a call to action (like or comment below).

This is where you nod and say “I sense a theme here, Dawn.” So what’s my advice on how to grow your business and get more clients? Start with providing a quality product. Then ask for people to talk it up. It is and will always be the most effective marketing.

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Together through the RESA executive team, RESA leadership, and the RESA Board of Directors, and our members, we have built a community of entrepreneurs and professionals that are stronger together. The RESA community supports, uplifts, and encourages one another to continue to grow as an industry. Together, RESA home stagers and affiliates are growing industry awareness and raising expectations.

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Felicia Pulley

Creative Director at RESA

Felicia is the Creative Director for the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA®). Her goal is to promote those in the industry who advance professionalism and excellence in real estate staging and provide valuable resources for home stagers and real estate agents alike.

Felicia has a background in production design and studied at Academy Of Art University where she had a focus in Motion Pictures And Television. In her free time you can find her reading about the latest marketing trends or hanging out with her husband in Disneyland.