Flooring Industry Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide to the Customer Journey

Flooring is one of those things you don’t think about until you need it. To most of us, it’s simply a memory of our grandparents old linoleum floors, or stained carpet that evoke certain memories. 

However, behind all of this is a bustling industry with a huge breadth of surfaces, styles, colors, and more. Understandably, this makes choosing new flooring very complicated as the multitude of options cause a sort of analysis paralysis.

Because of this, flooring marketing is also incredibly challenging as there are often times many steps of consideration, decision makers, and parties involved in the process of purchase. This article will explore marketing strategy used across the flooring industry with a particular focus on digital marketing and in-store experiences.

But first, how does flooring business operate? Let’s look at the business model for flooring companies.

Understanding the Flooring Industry Business Model

The flooring industry has several key players involved in distributing, selling, and installing product. Among these, the two most important channels are manufacturers and retailers.

• Manufacturers: Design, create, and distribute the product
• Retailers: Sell the product to consumers (Customers of manufacturers)
• Consumers: Purchase product from retailers (customers of retail)

While both operate independently, they share a common interest in pushing the sale of their product to consumers. This creates a unique ecosystem where both parties are responsible for marketing effort.

In certain instances, flooring manufacturers will sell the product direct to consumers. However, this business model is new and not widely adopted in the flooring industry due to an overwhelming consumer desire for a more personalized experience.

Key Players in Flooring Marketing

Both manufacturers and retailers play central roles in the purchase process, but occupy different stages and efforts.

Flooring Manufacturers: Creating Demand Through Education

Manufacturers have two distinct goals in marketing their products: promote with retailers and create intent with consumers.

Manufacturers will use sales reps to engage with their retail partners and provide educational materials, style guides, and general materials that will be used in the retail sales process.

This not only helps build their direct relationship, but enables the retailer to sell their product more effectively.

Manufacturers also must have their eye on consumers, as they drive the actual demand for the product. 

This can be done through: 

• Providing educational resources on a website (i.e. blog, installation materials, warranties, etc.)
• Advertising (pay per click, social media, traditional media)
• Better in-store experiences (product showcases)

Each piece has a unique strategy aimed at providing education. Getting these strategies to work together is essential to avoid crushing workloads.

Flooring Retailers: Driving Store Traffic and Conversions

Retailers are the primary channel of sales to consumers, meaning their marketing strategy goals are slightly different. While they still aim to educate consumers on their options, they are not necessarily brand-loyal (in most cases).

Instead, retailers are focused on driving foot traffic (people in their stores). Beyond that, moving a consumer to purchase faster (shorter consideration phase) is a main focus. 

They can do this through several means:

• Better educational resources (pricing, installation, style lookbooks)
• Proactive customer support (sales reps)
• Incentives (Financing, seasonal discounts/promotions)

Each strategy has it’s place in the consumer journey, often a long complicated process highlighting the need for valuable resources at each stage.

So let’s take a look at this journey, and where each piece comes into play.

The Flooring Customer Journey: A Comprehensive Breakdown

The consumer journey involves a long process split between online and offline channels. Both manufacturers and retailers have the opportunity to engage with consumers along this journey, but each phase has its key player.

Digital Marketing Customer Journey

Offline Marketing Customer Journey

Awareness Stage: How Flooring Manufacturers Create Demand

Key Player: Manufacturers

In the first step of the journey, the consumer is aware of their problem (they need to re-do their flooring) but has no knowledge or idea of what solution works best for them. At this point in the journey, the key goal is education. This can be done effectively through several channels.

• Blog
• Video Advertising
• Brand Advocates

These channels act as discovery mechanisms whereupon new-to-brand consumers can learn about the product, benefits, and differentiated value.

For example, a consumer that has a 10 year-old dog may learn that there are fully waterproof vinyl floors with benefits like ease of maintenance and easy cleaning specific to their needs. 

Consideration Stage: Collaborative Flooring Marketing Strategies

Key Players: Manufacturers, Retailers

The second step of the journey involves deeper research into a specific solution. Consideration has narrowed to a type of flooring (carpet, hardwood, vinyl, etc.) based on specific needs. Now, comparisons across brands, styles, and price points begins.

Focusing on providing more detailed information at this stage is necessary. This can include:

• Product catalogs
• Buying guides
• Search Advertising

For manufacturers, this is a key step in providing value that’s differentiated from competitors. This could be a more streamlined website experience, a visualizer tool, unique marketing offers or high quality content that details expectations and next steps.

Room visualizers have become an industry standard in product consideration because of the importance of aesthetic and design in the flooring purchase process. Tools like Roomvo offer additional opportunities to engage consumers beyond simple room visualization.

Popups offering incentives or guides can aid in email capture as well as providing additional content for users to engage with. Once a user has built a room visualization, it can be sent through to their email and a lead is captured in the tool.

Calls to action within the tool direct the user to the next desired action, and subsequently increase conversion potential. Optimizing tools to capture user information and provide a more seamless experience is becoming the norm in the flooring industry.

Consideration doesn’t only happen online, however. In an industry where most consumers are looking for a personalized experience, visits to a local retailer happen during consideration.

Evaluation Stage: Bridging Online and In-Store Flooring Experiences

Key Players: Retailers

Manufacturers can drive foot traffic to local retailers using retailer locator tools on their websites. This not only creates the opportunity for a feedback loop – manufacturer sends consumer to retailer, retailer provides manufacturer with information on what the consumer is looking for – but reduces friction in the path to purchase.

Retailers also must engage with consumers at this point of the journey. This means that getting in front of consumers through channels like Google Ads, social media, or through their website’s organic presence.

Once a consumer has chosen retail location, usually based on proximity to their home, the in-store visit offers the first opportunity to experience the products first-hand.

Manufacturers must create visually striking displays that make product discovery and experience easy, organizing based on colors, features, and collections are just a few ways to make browsing feel easier.

Retailers must educate sales reps on the breadth of product offerings to ensure they provide support to customers as they browse. This can be aided by manufacturers with regular sales enablement tools (product specs, guides, lookbooks).

Conversion Stage: Removing Barriers in the Flooring Purchase Process

Key Players: Manufacturers and Retailers

Once consumers understand what product they are interested in, the key message shifts to an offer – what will they need next to make a decision?

There are some common blockers to making a decision when purchasing flooring:

• What will it look like in my space?
• How will the color match my room?
• What does the material feel like underfoot?

To alleviate these blockers, marketing offers a set of solutions to better compare flooring options.

Sample Programs: A Critical Flooring Marketing Tool

Samples are small sections of a flooring style that offer potential customers their first opportunity to experience it in real life. The primary goal of this service is to alleviate the common concerns highlighted above.

However, flooring marketers know it’s more than simply addressing consumer hesitations. Sample orders also offer a valuable opportunity to collect user data.

There are two approaches when it comes to selling samples:

• Charge a nominal fee ($1 -5) to recoup some cost
• Give out for free

Both ways, the user data provides specifics around the product style preference, location (address, zip code), contact info (email, phone number), and whatever additional questions are asked during the process (what room is being remodeled, installation method of choice, etc.)

This gives manufacturers the opportunity to provide specific customer information to retailers to help facilitate the sale. For retailers, this information is valuable as it helps them personalize the shopping experience for the consumer.

Manufacturers will likely require some feedback on what style was purchased, the purchase amount, and date of purchase, but this should be well worth the tradeoff for retailers.

The goal of providing a more personalized experience is also seen in another popular flooring marketing offer: Design Services.

The Role of Design Services in Flooring Marketing

Design Services are a way for Manufacturers or Retailers to provide more personalized support in choosing a specific flooring style that compliments the customer’s home interior style/décor.

Given that style and aesthetic is a primary point of consideration in the flooring purchase decision, it makes sense that this service is highly successful in its goal.

The program acts as a concierge service taking the place of an interior designer. Trained professionals review the interior style of a customer’s house and provide recommendations for styles based on product spec needs and aesthetic.

Similar to sample orders, this gives flooring companies a chance to collect valuable customer data. Not only will this secure contact info and product preference, but establishes a direct relationship for personalized follow up.

Often times these programs are offered for free on the basis that they improve the chance of sale. Marketing teams can also benefit from the direct feedback on whether their strategy is working.

Tying a user profile that was captured through advertising for example to a sale is an effective way to prove the ROI of advertising efforts/channels.

Financing Options as a Flooring Marketing Strategy

Financing is a powerful incentive in the decision-making process especially in less certain economic times. Similar to a bank loan, financing offers customers the opportunity to make the purchase and pay it back over time.

This strategy can be offered by both manufacturers and retailers, often times through a third party financial institution. In addition to alleviating any financial concerns, this is another opportunity to capture valuable customer information before the point of sale.

It’s important to work with the financial institution to ensure that customer information is collected and transferred in a privacy-safe way.

These marketing solutions are specific to driving the purchase decision. Once a potential customer has decided on the product they want to purchase, the next major consideration becomes installation.

Installation Planning: A Critical Phase in the Flooring Journey

Key Players: Retailers, Manufacturers

At this stage of the journey, flooring contractors enter into the conversation. Often times, a consumer will find a flooring contractor through their local retailer, but may also use online resources to obtain quotes (think platforms like Thumbtack or Angi).

Some of the key considerations at this stage of the journey are:

• Price (cost of the service)
• Timing (how long the installation will take)
• Reputation (experience, past projects)

Retailers and manufacturers can provide guidance during this process with a network of trusted installers. This not only builds a positive relationship with installers, but also provides an additional service to consumers.

Solving for the common challenge of not knowing which installer to pick only helps to speed the consumer along in making their decision. While the purchase is made in-store, the decision is made before that.

Purchase Decision: Finalizing the Flooring Sale

Key Players: Retailers, Manufacturers

At this stage, the consumer has their project planned – product style chosen, square footage of renovation determined, installer picked – all that’s left is to go to their local retailer, credit card in hand.

There are several key considerations for retailers and manufacturers at this stage:

• Warranty information
• Care & maintenance information
• Customer sentiment feedback

Manufacturers can offer a warranty in order to capture customer information when retailers don’t share that information direct. It’s important that in-store sales material makes this clear, and the value propositions are communicated.

Warranties not only help the consumer buy with confidence, but they also open up a line of communication with the manufacturer for any potential questions or concerns.

Maintenance and care information can be provided through email marketing, both from manufacturers and retailers as a value-add that builds trust with the consumer. Retailers can obtain this information from manufacturers as part of an ongoing relationship built on the sharing of content and data.

Customer sentiment is key to understanding how to improve the purchase process. This can be measured in the form of surveys or ratings/reviews. Both captured at the point of sale or during the post-purchase period.

Post-Purchase: Maximizing Flooring Customer Satisfaction

Key Players: Retailers, Manufacturers

Once the purchase is made and installation is completed, flooring businesses must look to capture customer feedback including:

• Reviews/Testimonials
• User-generated content (UGC)

Reviews/Testimonials are most easily captured through email marketing. Setting up an automated sequence following conversion events (for example, 3 months after a sample order) is recommended.

Incentivizing reviews with add-ons, store credits, or features on the website are good considerations if email response rates are low.

Social media marketing drives effective UGC capture with the use of hashtags or contests. Remember, organic social followers are your evangelists – treat them as such and you’ll tap into a powerful source of content marketing.

Even with a perfect marketing strategy, flooring marketing is challenging. For more on effective messaging at each stage of the journey, see Ad Creative Examples That Convert: 6 Winning Strategies for 2025.

Overcoming Flooring Marketing Challenges

Along with a complicated customer journey, there are some key challenges flooring marketers face:

• Lack of direct attribution
• Long customer journey
• Fragmented path to purchase

Solving Attribution Challenges in Flooring Marketing Campaigns

A challenged faced by most marketers in 2025, direct attribution is crucial to understanding what marketing tactics are effective at driving new business. Creating a system of data capture that tracks users throughout their journey is essential to this process.

This can be categorized into different stages of touchpoint along the path. At each stage, some user data (most likely email addresses) should be captured that builds a user profile.

Capturing Customer Data at Early Touchpoints

Use channels like Google Ads or Social Media Marketing to acquire new leads.

• Guides (Educational Resources)
• Newsletter
• Room Visualizer Leads

Middle Touchpoint Marketing Strategies

Use email marketing, optimize website design to drive action, and utilize search engine marketing.

• Sample Order
• Design Services Appointment
• Financing Application

Conversion Tracking at Late Touchpoints

Use follow up campaigns through email and marketing materials at point of sale.

• Warranty Submission
• Survey Response

This process stitches together a user journey through user data to offer deeper insight into:

• Time in each step
• Success rate of each touchpoint
• Scalability based on CPA

The key with this process is to track all touchpoints with UTMs, stored in a CRM (customer relationship management) tool. This will allow for the creation of unique customer profiles that can be scored based on their proximity to sale.

Effective Strategies for Long Flooring Customer Journeys

The customer journey can take up to 6 months, or even longer in some cases, making analysis of what’s really driving results very challenging. There are two important steps in the process that need to be considered:

• New user acquisition
• Re-engagement

These two tactics fall into the consumer journey at different stages:

• New user acquisition: Awareness, Consideration
• Re-engagement: Evaluation, Conversion, Installation Planning

Different marketing channels will align with each depending on the goal:

• New user acquisition: SEO strategy, traditional marketing, social media marketing
• Re-engagement: Retargeting ads, email marketing, conversion rate optimization, customer support 

Given the length of the customer journey, re-engagement is crucial, but it can’t consist of the entire strategy. It’s recommended to have a 70/30 split in effort, new user acquisition to re-engagement.

Bridging the Fragmented Path to Purchase Through Digital Marketing

In today’s media ecosystem, cheap leads and profitable sales are not a given. It’s taking more tact and long-term thinking than ever before to run a profitable marketing campaign.

Due to this, the time for retailers and manufacturers to operate as completely separate entities is quickly ending. Establishing a relationship of sharing – data, content, leads, etc. – only works to support both parties.

Reference back to the consumer journey diagram above. The consumer has been in-market for up to a month before ever engaging with a retailer. Likewise, the in-store purchase happens completely independently from the manufacturers control. 

This presents problems for both parties. The key pieces of collaboration are:

• Manufacturers: Obtain retail sales data from retail partners
• Retailers: Obtain educational content, sales training, leads from manufacturers

Building these relationships can lead to lasting business impact for years to come. 

Conclusion: The Future of Flooring Marketing

The flooring industry presents unique marketing challenges due to its complex buyer journey, fragmented sales channels, and long consideration periods. Despite these challenges, success lies in creating a seamless experience that bridges online exploration with in-store validation.

As we’ve explored, effective flooring marketing requires collaboration between manufacturers and retailers rather than siloed approaches. The most successful companies in this space recognize that data sharing, content collaboration, and lead exchange create a symbiotic relationship that benefits all parties—including the consumer.

Looking ahead, several trends will likely shape the future of flooring marketing:

1. Data-Driven Personalization: As attribution models improve, expect more sophisticated personalization throughout the customer journey, from initial awareness content to in-store experiences tailored to previously expressed preferences.
2. Enhanced Visualization Technology: AR and VR tools will continue to evolve, potentially reducing the necessity for physical samples while shortening the decision-making timeline.
3. Streamlined Installation Services: Companies that can simplify the installation process through technology and service integration will gain competitive advantage in reducing purchase anxiety.

For marketers in the flooring industry, success will come from embracing this complexity rather than fighting against it. By creating marketing ecosystems that support consumers at each stage—from problem awareness to post-purchase satisfaction—brands can transform a traditionally challenging category into an opportunity for meaningful customer relationships.

The flooring beneath our feet may be something we only think about occasionally, but for marketers who understand this unique journey, it represents an opportunity to build lasting connections that extend well beyond a single purchase.