We recently connected with Daniela Furtado and have shared our conversation below.

Daniela , appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

We’re tremendously specialized – we are excellent at search engine marketing for the design and build industry.

Since we only work with designers, we understand what many want so we’ve revolved our entire business to help them. Our services – how to structure, package, price, and deliver them – are tailored just for designers. Even who we hire on our team and how we delegate are tailored to designers.

We mean it when we say we want to help designers grow their businesses by getting more and better business opportunities. We want to do it well and we want to be the best at it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Daniela and I’m on a mission to be the marketing teacher many designers and architects didn’t get in school.

I manage a digital marketing agency in Toronto and we help design firms across North America market themselves and grow their businesses online. Our specialization is search engines. We get design firms on Google to help clients double their revenue and get featured in international press – ultimately making business enjoyable.

I first learned about website design and search engines at the age of 12. My scrappy personality led me to a career in digital marketing. I spent several years working for large companies and completed a Master’s in Digital Marketing at Aula CM in Madrid, Spain before I started an agency of my own. Nowadays, I take the best of what I learned from corporations and teach the most meaningful parts to my team and clients.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Since starting a business, I’ve had to unlearn a lot about value and self-worth.

I don’t like the saying, “know your worth”. I think it’s meaningless business advice.

Value is relative. In a free market, our worth is measured by our ability to solve other people’s problems. The deeper and more expensive their problems are, the more valuable your solutions are. The dilemma I have with “charging your value” is that that mentality got me attaching my self-worth to sales.

“If they don’t like my work, if they reject my proposal, if they ask for a discount, if I’m not as fast, if I don’t make as much money…does that mean I’m a loser?”

The reality is that people could have hundreds of reasons for not working with me or liking my work – and my not being good enough is just one possible reason.

Instead of “knowing my worth”, I tell myself to “know their problems”. In consumer psychology, this is called framing. Framing is using words and images to make people believe that you can help them solve their problems.

Once I started to learn how to frame and communicate value, I was able to charge well beyond what I ever thought was my worth. It’s not about me and what I believe I am worth. It’s what others believe my service is worth. This shift has helped me detach myself from work, handle rejection with grace and it made it tremendously easier to negotiate.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

From day one, I knew I wanted to walk the talk. If I’m helping others grow their businesses online, I wanted to do the same for myself. I wanted clients to come to us.

It took me a while to figure it out but eventually, I realized hyper-specializing in a specific service and industry was the best way to do it. For us, that meant doing search marketing for design.

This is how I put our hyper-specialization into action:

1. Say it loud and proud. Our website, marketing material and PR efforts speak directly to the design industry. We’re on the first page of Google for “interior design SEO agency”. Nowadays, we get about 3 inquiries a week from Google, public relations, and referrals.

2. Cookie-cutter operations aren’t a bad thing. Since we do similar work for similar businesses, we created standardized templates and processes. Our team is also specialized in the design industry. We take a third of the time and staff to do the same (or better quality) work than full-service agencies.

3. Less custom proposals, more standard packages. Custom proposals are dreadful. They take hours of researching, strategizing, and blindly estimating labour costs. With a detailed list of deliverables and timelines, we started creating standardized packages.

Being hyper-focused made everything easier. Every decision I made and action I took had a clear intention. With focus, managing my time and saying “no” also became very easy. I didn’t have to put in long hours trying to be everything to everyone. I could do what a do best, do it efficiently and charge well for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.findabledigitalmarketing.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniela-pimentel-furtado/

Image Credits
Photographs by Lizzie O’Donnell