Be it “marketing for architects” or “marketing for architecture firms”, one thing is sure that, in this day and age, your business definitely needs marketing to stay in the game. You might have many good ideas and expert knowledge in your niche, but unless you get clients consistently, you cannot get suitable chances to show your capabilities. To get consistent growth in your business, these architecture marketing ideas can assist you greatly:
1) Tweak Your Website for These Elements
Some people believe that just by creating a basic website, making it live, and leaving it as it is can help them get a lot of leads!! Well, sadly this is a misunderstanding. In fact, a website’s actual success is determined by how many leads it can provide out of all the visitors the site receives in total. Let’s say your website receives an average of 300 monthly visits out of which only 12 of those visitors take your services, then your conversion rate is 4%. So if you really want your architecture business to be a success then you need to increase the KPI (key performance indicator) of conversion rate over a period of time. Some of the ways to do that are listed below:
a) A direct appointment scheduling option should be made available on your website for grabbing active leads.
b) Phone number must be clearly displayed on the homepage along with a live chat widget to serve visitors right on spot.
c) Mobile device-optimized website needs to be made in order to prevent clients from leaving it because of bad UI/UX problems.
d) Quick loading and interactive website is needed to prevent users from leaving it and also to decrease the bounce rate.
e) Testimonials, awards, and other accomplishments need to be added to increase the trust factor.
2) Post More and Get More
Content marketing creates long-term possibilities for the growth of a business. It is a fairly simple process and involves regularly posting content/articles related to your business on your website. If you are searching for ideas/topics related to your architecture business for creating content, you can make use of any keyword exploring tool to discover hundreds of keywords. If you keep on writing and posting regularly, then the number of articles on your architecture website will grow which will cause more visits to your website and accordingly more customers.
3) Get Social to Expand Your Business Exposure
Social media, with billions of profiles, is a huge free resource that your architecture business can dive into to drive quality leads time after time. However, to be successful on social media, you first need to have the perseverance to develop a following/audience on social media platforms. People won’t be interested in engaging with your business page or profile until you take the time to create good content. To build up a follower base, you will have to consistently post high-quality informational content for the first few months while doing nominal promotion of your business. Your marketing efforts for business branding can be pumped up after you have successfully built a solid follower base. Joining local groups on Facebook is also a great way to make your business known to people from your region.
4) Press Releases Can Open New Opportunities
The general perception about online press releases is that they are used to convey official statements and to inform about the latest addition of services/products or achievements and financial reports. However, very few businesses know that press releases are one of the key strategies of online marketing. The three most significant advantages that can be gained from press releases are traffic, brand visibility, and quality backlinks. Instead of hiring an expensive public relation agency to get your architecture firm or business covered on big online magazines and news sites, you can just create and send a press release through any qualified distribution network to get similar results for a fraction of the cost.
5) Score More Deals with Good SEO
Most new age people are inclined to search engines for searching for goods and services. SEO or “search engine optimization” is the most effective part in determining how well your architecture website will appear in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Unlike the paid traffic that arrives through ads, organic search traffic is generated through higher rankings on the search engines and this requires good implementation of SEO techniques either by yourself or by any professional service provider. As you might have limited time to dedicate to studying and coping with various SEO technicalities, the best way out is to get your SEO managed by any digital marketing agency.
6) Get Your Business Displayed in Google Local Listing
To show up the details of your architecture business on the top listings of Google search results, a good strategy is to create an optimized GMB or “Google My Business” listing for your business. Creating a GMB profile is very easy and you will have to enter various details related to your business like photographs, business name, address, phone number, etc. Whenever any keyword relevant to your business will be typed by any user on Google like “architect in [City]”, your GMB profile will have a strong chance of showing up on the first page of Google. With a strategic optimization of your GMB profile (either by you or by any SEO agency), your business will start getting much more visibility and thus clients.
7) Do Effective Use of LinkedIn
LinkedIn has over 800 million users with a “professional” focus, which makes this platform worth paying attention to. And there’s no better site than LinkedIn to connect with top corporate clients and big real estate developers from your region or city. Moreover, it’s simple to make connections using LinkedIn, just send them a request along with a message and once they accept it, you can chat or pitch your business proposal. However, if you want to reduce your waiting time and want to roll out things quickly and efficiently, prefer upgrading to LinkedIn’s paid plans. And because LinkedIn is a professional B2B networking hub unlike the majority of other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it is much better for marketing your architecture business online.
8) Put Efforts to Gain More Referrals
Wherever possible, the marketing efforts of your business should focus on growing word-of-mouth advertising. It’s a straightforward and easy strategy for attracting new clients. For this marketing strategy, provide incentives to your current or old customers to spread your business name to their social circles. People who receive some or the other form of incentive to promote your architecture business to their friends and relatives will be happily inclined to spread good words about your business.
9) Consider Paid Advertising on Quality Platforms
If you want quick results from your advertising efforts, you can consider paid advertising on premium quality platforms. Though paid advertising will provide leads quickly, the quality of the leads generated by paid advertisements on various platforms will vary. When it comes to generating high-quality leads for your architecture business, the number one paid advertising platform is Google Ads, followed by Facebook Ads. Before getting into the world of paid advertising, you should familiarise yourself with the various ad platforms and learn the fundamentals of ad management first. Managing paid ads requires knowledge of a number of parameters, such as selecting target keywords, adjusting bids, and so on. If the optimization of your paid ads is poor, then rather than making profits, you can start making losses. For a successful paid ads campaign, employ the services of any digital marketing agency for expert assistance.
10) Hand Out Low-Cost Custom Printed Items
Handing out inexpensive items with your business name printed on them, such as pens, balloons, pencils, pocket diaries, calendars, etc., is a simple and efficient approach to leave a lasting impression on your prospects. Also, your company’s name will be seen by everybody who comes into contact with these custom-printed items. There are many online services from which you can order bulk custom-printed items.
11) Start Collecting Emails from Site Visitors
Many people, when they hear the word “email marketing”, their first thought is that it involves sending emails randomly to thousands of individuals. Email marketing, on the other hand, is an organized and systematic method for expanding your company’s customer base. If your business makes an effort to gather the email addresses of people who show interest in your services, it will soon be in a position to compile a list of thousands of individuals. The procedure of collecting email addresses is not a fast one as it demands perseverance, but the benefits availed from it are far bigger than the efforts that were put into creating the email list. Therefore, stick out your email opt-in forms wherever possible in all your digital assets like website, social media profiles, etc.
12) Directories are Good for Online Visibility
Not only do websites owned by businesses tend to rank in Google, but even many influential directories and other websites (ex: Yelp, Manta, Crunchbase) also enjoy greater visibility. It is possible for you to build a profile for your business on many of these high-ranking directories as a result of which you will get extra channels for promoting your architecture business. The majority of such high-ranking websites provide a free listing of your company’s information while also providing a few premium options for increased exposure.
13) Videos are Good Assets for Businesses
Due to the high ranking potential carried by videos posted on the YouTube platform, video marketing of your architecture services must not be ignored. Because videos rank faster in Google searches than traditional websites, your business can quickly see results by using promotional videos. You need to produce videos that address long-tail questions (5 or more words) related to your business if you want to improve the chances of ranking your videos on Google search results. Your likelihood of obtaining leads will improve in direct proportion to the number of videos you upload to YouTube. In addition to this, it will also assist in increasing the overall brand recognition of your business indirectly.
14) Connect and Promote Using Influencers
Any person who has built up a sizable online following on any social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) is called an influencer. Such influencers hold great potential to get the word out about your business to their followers. Find and contact such influencers from your local region and decide a fair rate to get your business advertised through them. Your business page on social media can get more followers as well as new business leads if the choice of your influencers is good enough.
15) Get Your Business Noticed Offline Too
Though no one can deny the fact that more businesses are shifting their budgets towards online marketing, offline marketing ads are still perceived to be more trustworthy than online ads. Further, seeing advertisements of a business or service both offline and online strengthens the brand positioning. Although offline marketing comes with its own drawbacks of being costlier and less targeted than online ads, it can be a good supplement to online marketing efforts if your business is good with advertising budget. Billboards, newspaper ads, banners, ads in magazines, brochures are some of the most common ways of offline advertising.
16) Grow Your Business with Trusted Publications
Newspapers and magazines enjoy a high level of trust among the masses and this is why, by publishing articles on such portals, your architecture firm or business can get more recognition. The process to get started with this method is very simple. You must find the contact details of editors at local newspapers/magazines and must ask them if they would entertain articles related to architecture in their newspaper/magazine. Once you start publishing articles related to various aspects of architecture, it will help your architecture firm to be known by more people from your region which is important for getting more projects.
17) Adopt Advanced Technologies to Sell Even More
At a time when the competition is getting intensified in every sector, adopting advanced technologies can give an upper hand to your architectural firm to bag projects. While many architecture businesses are still reliant on showing generic models to their prospects, your business can use BIM (Building Information Modeling) and virtual reality to give a heavyweight impression of your business. You can also highlight the new technology features on your marketing materials to stand out from the rest.
18) Mark Your Presence on Big Gatherings
All events and gatherings which are likely to attract a big crowd can be utilized to promote your architectural firm. By sponsoring or co-sponsoring such events, the visibility obtained by your business can be increased many folds. You can also distribute your marketing materials or low-cost custom-printed merchandise at such events to make more people take note of your business.
19) Grow Using Positive References from Big Architecture Blogs and Portals
Search for the most popular blogs in the architecture niche and provide some free service to them in order to have them say positive words about your business. Once you have received reviews from them, you can proudly display, on your website and other marketing materials, that your architecture business has received positive feedback from big architectural sites. This will increase the trust of people in your business, which will translate into more clients.
20) Charity Can Prove Charitable for Your Architecture Business
You can provide some free service or donation to a few famous charities from your region. Since popular charities are well known among people and businesses, you can use their recognition profile to make connections with businesses and even to publicize your business. You can also ask key people from such charities to introduce your business to big real estate developers so that you can get more architecture projects regularly.
21) Grow With Free Project Cost Calculator
With the help of any skilled programmer, get a project cost calculator designed and integrated into your website. Since many people will use it to calculate the expected cost of their construction, you can promote your architecture services to them on the same page where your project cost calculator is located.
22) Make Niche Related Partnerships
Associate your architecture business with as many people and businesses who are closely related to your business. A good example in this category will be real estate builders as they are usually busy with some or the other new projects and can thus engage your architecture business for new projects. Another group of such potential partners can be real estate agents as they can refer your business to everyone who buys land through them for making some or the other construction.
23) Use Vehicle With Attached Construction Model to Advertise Your Business
Anything that is different gets attention from people. Using this principle, you can affix a good construction model of a building/house to your vehicle or vehicle owned by others to let these vehicles do the promotion work when they are on road.
24) Let Affiliate Partners Promote Your Architecture Services
Join any big affiliate network (Example: ShareASale) and come up with a commission plan per lead or per call along with mentioning the criteria for qualified leads. Since thousands of affiliates are part of big affiliate networks, your business can be picked up for promotion by many affiliates thereby bringing you new leads.
25) Pay Immense Attention to Online Reviews
Do you know that a major chunk of people read reviews before taking any product/service online? With the growing penetration of the Internet, people are using it for decision-making related to almost all kinds of products and services. Therefore, anytime people search or look for the name of your architecture business on Google and find positive reviews of it, they will become more likely to use your service or products. However, if they find negative reviews or no reviews, it can prove detrimental to your business as they will form an unfavorable opinion about your brand, which will ultimately result into the loss of potential clients. Therefore, ask for leaving feedback about your business/service to your customers or you can give them (customers) better reasons to leave feedback by offering some incentives.
We hope that this elaborate write-up on marketing strategies for architectural firms will give you the required methods to grow your business. For anything that is related to this content, you can contact us or can leave a line below.
