How much time should I spend on business development and marketing, in my architecture practice?
When I was preparing my talk for the BoSP last month, the organisers asked me to provide answers to some commonly asked questions they hear from many architects.
Specifically: How much time should a small business be devoting to marketing in a week? And what are the highest priorities?
The thrust of the first question is self-evident: it’s all about time.
The second question revolves around your overarching strategy, or the quality of your activities.
And if you add one more question about budget or cost – a question such as: How much money should I spend on marketing my architecture practice? – you essentially have the golden triangle that dictates whether a project (and I mean an architecture project or your business development and marketing) will be successful.
Because whatever you’re working on – a new house, a major expansion of a school, a commercial fitout, your future client pipeline – the likelihood of success or failure pivots on the interdependent relationships between time, cost and quality.
This article focuses on the variable of time, as it relates to business development and marketing in your architecture practice.
(If you’re interested in learning more about cost, this blog post outlines some insights around budgets and marketing spend as a percentage of turnover. And if you’re interested in quality, or an overarching strategy, this article sets out my six-channel system of business development and marketing for architects.)
So: How much time should you spend on business development and marketing each week?
Obviously, there are several variables that will inform your response such as:
There are lots of variables that come into play when working out how much time to spend on business development and marketing in your architecture practice
how big is your practice?
how many staff will be involved in business development and marketing?
how many new clients and projects do you want to win each week, month or year?
what’s your current marketing budget?
how clear are you about your ideal clients and unique selling proposition?
finally, are you happy with your current content and collateral, or do you need to update your messaging to better appeal to your target clients and sectors?
So my answer to the $64m question about time is this: Don’t be too caught up on working out the “right” amount of time, but instead allocate a regular timeslot to marketing each week, and just start.
Start with your overall quality, or guiding strategy
It pays to establish your “quality” standards first, that is, to work out your overarching strategy. I suggest you choose a system, framework or approach that is easy to implement and that resonates with you – you might be interested in my six-channel system of marketing for architects – and then get underway.
Sounds Like Design’s six-channel system for marketing provides architects with a simple framework for business development.
The beauty of establishing your quality framework or strategy first is that you can share your goals and aspirations with your team, or with sub-contractors if you engage them. You don’t have to do everything yourself, because you can explain the strategy to others and delegate some of the key tasks and activities to them.
That frees up your time to focus on your key strengths and abilities – whether that’s networking with prospective clients, overseeing the concept design of new projects, leading your team and providing strategic direction where it’s needed; whatever your zone of genius is.
Setting your strategy gives you the ability to delegate, which means you won’t have to get bogged down in writing awards entries or scrambling to put together your social media posts each week.
Once you have your strategy in place and can delegate to others, you can allocate one hour’s worth of tasks per week in the first month to your team member. Then review the time, cost and quality metrics at the end of the first month. Examine your metrics and answer these key questions:
Which activities were beneficial in terms of raising awareness or generating new leads?
Which activities resulted in new clients or projects?
Which activities were a waste of time and money?
Once you’ve analysed your metrics for the first month, you can apply that new-found knowledge to help you reassess your priorities and inform your planned activities for the second month:
Should you allocate 90 minutes a week, in month 2?
Or will 30 minutes a week be enough?
The main thing is to commit to a certain quality standard – your overarching strategy and tangible goals – and then take small and incremental steps towards achieving those goals.
Don’t let overwhelm or confusion – or the desire to get everything perfect in your marketing before you release it into the world – keep you locked in indecision or paralysis.
The golden triangle: Time, Cost, Quality
Architecture business development and marketing require constant attention to achieve positive results and continuous improvement.
Once you have determined your quality framework or strategy, you can adjust the levers of time and cost, and chip away at your business development and marketing week after week, month after month.
Remember, business development and marketing are not set-and-forget activities. They require consistent effort, continuous awareness of what’s happening in your chosen marketplace, and ongoing analysis of your activities and results, to keep moving forward.
At a certain point, perhaps in month two or three or beyond, you’ll start to build a sense of momentum and your strategy framework will become self-sustaining. You’ll notice progress towards your goals and obtain clarity around which activities are the most beneficial and productive. In short, you’ll start to see the links between your business development activities and the new clients and projects that you win.
And that sense of momentum will propel you forwards; you’ll be able to focus on the key activities that best serve your stated goals.
What are your next steps?
I offer three services to architects, ranging from two-hour Acupuncture Sessions to the three- month Review + Reset consulting package.
If you haven’t explored my six-channel system, you can get a feel for how it works via the free Marketing Metrics tracking spreadsheet – and a video that describes how to use it – here.
If you’d like a short, sharp injection of architecture-specific expertise – to talk about any business development or marketing issues you’re grappling with – you can book an Acupuncture Session here. You can choose the topics we discuss, and tap into my knowledge, experience and connections to access insights that are customised for your practice.
You can enrol in the self-guided online program - Architecture Marketing 360: a CPD course for architects - and get started straight away, here.
If you’re interested in my consulting package, you can find details about Review + Reset here. (I have a waitlist for new Review + Reset clients, and that’s what I aim to help you achieve for your architecture business, too).
Lastly, if you have any questions about this blog post, or any of my services, please click here to email me. I’m always happy to hear from architects who want to improve the way they communicate their value to future clients.