Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
The customer is handing you their grandmother's chair. They Google you twice before they ring.
Furniture restoration is a trust-and-craft market that the internet treats like a commodity. The customer with a Federation walnut sideboard or a 1950s Featherston armchair has two real problems: working out which pieces are worth restoring (and at what cost vs replacement), and trusting a craftsperson with something irreplaceable. The trade is genuinely diverse: antique restoration (Victorian, Edwardian, Federation, Art Deco) wants French polishing, shellac, lacquer, veneer repair, marquetry. Mid-century modern (Eames, Wegner, Bertoia, Featherston, Parker, Chiswell) wants oil finishes, sympathetic wax, the original webbing and rubber straps preserved. Upholstery is its own trade entirely (spring re-tying, horsehair, hessian, calico, fabric or leather re-cover). Most restorers do two or three of these brilliantly but their website says 'furniture restoration' and ranks for none of the specifics. Meanwhile Airtasker handymen and the chalk-paint-everything crowd dominate Google for the broad term, and the heritage customer never finds you. Estate, probate and insurance claim work (where the per-job value is genuinely high) lives entirely in the long tail that nobody is ranking for.
Good furniture-restorer marketing is three things, in this order: discipline-specific service pages so each niche ranks on its own (French polishing, mid-century modern restoration, leather upholstery re-cover, antique veneer repair, marquetry inlay), a before-and-after gallery that's the spine of every page (because furniture restoration is a visual trust signal in a way that almost no other trade is), and dedicated long-tail pages for the high-value work nobody else is writing for (estate and probate restoration, insurance claim assessment, AIPP certification explained, Victorian vs Edwardian dating for valuation). The mid-century niche specifically is worth ranking on its own (Eames, Wegner, Bertoia, Featherston, Parker, Chiswell) because the customer who owns a Hans Wegner Wishbone chair is not the same customer who owns a Federation sideboard, and treating them as one query is the reason most restorers' marketing is broken. Get the brand-name and discipline pages live and the high-margin estate work finds you within months.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around the discipline mix you actually want this year: more French polishing on heritage pieces, more Hans Wegner and Featherston mid-century work (where the per-piece margin is real), more estate and probate work (where the per-job value is genuinely high), less generic 'fix my IKEA' chase-the-cheap-quote stuff. Briefs the other agents so the discipline pages, the brand-name mid-century pages, the trust-spine content and the social cadence all push toward the heritage customer.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying for hosting plus a CMS subscription, and ships a discipline-page library: French polishing, mid-century modern (with brand-name sub-pages for Eames, Hans Wegner, Bertoia, Featherston, Parker), leather upholstery, fabric re-upholstery and re-spring, antique veneer and marquetry, estate and probate restoration, insurance claim work. Each page leads with the AIPP credential, twelve before-and-after photos, and a quote-by-photo form. Two taps to push live.
Goes through your live site for what actually moves rankings in a trust-and-craft category: discipline-specific H1s, brand-name H1s for mid-century work (the customer searches for 'Hans Wegner Wishbone chair restoration', not 'mid-century restoration'), schema for furniture-repair-shop (not generic 'furniture store'), internal links from discipline pages into the suburb pages so the local long tail compounds, and a Google Business Profile rebuilt as 'Furniture Repair Shop' with every discipline attribute ticked. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes.
Runs Google Ads on the trust-shopper queries that actually convert ('antique restoration [suburb]', 'French polishing Sydney', 'Hans Wegner restoration', 'leather chesterfield restoration', 'insurance claim furniture restoration') with a clear AIPP-member and 'twenty years on the bench' line that filters out the price-only customer. Drops broad 'furniture restoration' bids that just feed the Airtasker funnel. Uses Meta heavily because furniture restoration is a visual trust market where Instagram converts.
Turns every piece you finish into a post: an Edwardian sideboard French polished in Mosman, a Hans Wegner Wishbone chair re-caned in Surry Hills, a Chesterfield re-upholstered in oxblood hide for a probate estate, a Featherston armchair returned with original webbing preserved. Builds the visual trust spine that wins the customer with a Victorian piece who's Googling 'is this restorer trustworthy' before they ring. You take one workshop photo per major stage, the agent drafts the caption in your voice, you approve.
Drafts the long-form pieces customers Google before they ring: 'how to tell if your antique sideboard is worth restoring', 'French polishing vs polyurethane on Victorian furniture', 'mid-century restoration: when to preserve patina and when to refinish', 'insurance claim restoration: what your assessor needs from a restorer', 'AIPP-member restorer: what the credential actually means'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, that pull the heritage customer onto your site weeks before they make the decision.
Your first 30 days.
- Site imported, hosting bill cancelled
- Annual plan against your discipline mix delivered by Sam
- Google Business Profile rebuilt as 'Furniture Repair Shop' with AIPP membership noted
- Three discipline pages live (French polishing, mid-century, upholstery)
- Brand-name mid-century pages drafted for Eames, Wegner, Featherston, Parker
- Before-and-after gallery rebuilt and indexed
- Estate and probate restoration page drafted for approval
- First fortnight of bench-photo captions queued in your voice
Furniture restoration is the trade where the customer is most worried about who they hand the piece to and least able to find that person on Google. The Federation walnut sideboard or the Hans Wegner Wishbone chair doesn't go to whoever bids cheapest, it goes to whoever the customer trusts after twenty minutes of Googling. Owning the discipline-specific long tail (and especially the brand-name mid-century terms) is the only marketing that pays back, because the heritage customer is not on Airtasker.
Agencies are too dear to actually build the discipline pages, the brand-name mid-century library and the before-and-after gallery for $3.5k a month. DIY tools are cheap but you post one Insta a fortnight and the French polishing page stays in your head. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the discipline-specific pages, launch trust-shopper Google Ads, post the bench work, draft the insurance and probate guides, and rebuild your Google Business Profile around the work that pays. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day. Stop losing the heritage piece to a spray-paint chancer.