Five key findings from the Institute’s Client Insights survey
The Institute of Architects recently released the findings of its Client Insights research, and the entire report speaks to the importance of great communications.
I’ve thoroughly reviewed the research results and hand-picked the findings that are most applicable to your business in relation to client communication and marketing.
Great communications are extremely important
“It’s important that they understand our needs.”
The survey asked respondents to rank the factors they believe are important regarding service and relationship expectations, and both of the top responses centred in communications:
‘They communicate effectively’ was the top-ranking factor (75% Extremely important; 20% Very important)
‘They respond well to my needs, anticipate well, and pre-empt problems well (including outside their immediate brief and scope)’ was the second highest ranked factor (more than 70% rated it Extremely important, 20% rated it Very important.)
The Institute's Client Insights research contains many findings that you can apply to improve your practice marketing and communications. Download a copy here.
2. Clients are concerned about three key issues
Luckily, it’s not necessary to gaze into a crystal ball to pre-empt your clients’ needs, because the survey asked them about their main worries in the question: ‘What’s keeping clients up at night?’. They responded:
Staying ahead of changing market conditions (47%)
Climate change and demand for more sustainable design (34%); and
Modern methods of construction driving change (34%)*
The survey also provides insights around how you can help them address those concerns, with clients indicating that they’d be most interested in design education around these topics:
Modern methods of construction (46%)
Technology (41%), and
Sustainability (36%)*
Hopefully these findings give you some new and valuable perspectives on what your clients are worried about – and keen to learn more about – either from your practice in particular, or the profession more broadly.
In light of these findings, do you think that your current communications and marketing messaging adequately demonstrates your knowledge and experience around your clients’ changing markets, perceived risks, possible pain points, common objections, likely opportunities and potential design solutions?
Or is there room for improvement in the way you frame your expertise around these issues?
More importantly, are you communicating with your future clients in language and terminology that they can readily engage with? Or is your specialised knowledge getting bogged down in jargon and archi-speak, which can be exclusionary and turn potential clients away from your services?
3. The best marketing channel is Referrals
One of the best ways to connect and engage with new clients is through your past satisfied clients, and the research confirmed my long-held view that the Referral channel is the most important marketing channel for generating new business.
The survey asked clients about how they preferred to choose an architect*, and the vast majority – 71% of respondents – nominated a referral from a trusted source.
53% said they made decisions based on their own sector knowledge and expertise, and 19% indicated they’d value a referral from a Project Manager. Only 10% cited the Institute’s list of members, with a further 10% nominating Marketing materials such as social / web / collateral.*
Referrals and word-of-mouth have always been a significant source of new work for architects, and the rise of social media has bolstered the importance of this channel.
You’ve probably heard the term “social proof” which includes reviews, recommendations, ratings, testimonials and publishing. It’s a new marketing buzz phrase and there are many ways that you can harness its power to:
a) capture client feedback about your services and projects, and
b) use that feedback in your marketing to speak to future clients.
If you don’t currently have a formal Referral system in place, now is a good time to implement one in your practice.
Because whether you’re working in residential, public, commercial or other sector types, the research findings suggest that the power of word-of-mouth is too significant to be ignored.
That’s especially true if your peers or non-architect competitors have effective referral systems – but your practice doesn’t – because you risk losing out on up to 70% of new business that is potentially generated via word-of-mouth.
Referrals is the number one channel in my six-channel architecture marketing system, and I use them in my own business. For example, this blog post that contains insights from some of the architects who completed my Architecture Marketing 360 CPD course in March.
4. Past clients are your best ambassadors
Survey respondents believe that is worthwhile to engage an architect, with 75% of respondents stating that using the service of an architectural practice represents good value.
Asked whether they would engage an architect again on a future project, the results were highly encouraging, with 69% saying they would be Highly likely, and a further 23% stating they would be Likely to use an architect again.
This finding confirms my observations that architecture is a complex service to explain to new clients, because it’s only once clients have completed their first project that they fully understand and appreciate all of the value that an architect can provide throughout the entire design and construction process.
So if most of your clients haven’t used an architect before, there are several marketing activities you can put in place alongside your Referral system to help you educate and inform new clients, without having to reinvent the wheel each time you start a new project.
5. Clients want more insights into their building users
The survey found that Post-Occupancy Evaluation is an area that has the potential to deliver great benefits to clients, their customers and building users, with respondents putting forward comments such as:
“Understanding our customers better by talking to them”
“We’re looking for Post Occupancy Evaluation but with skin in the game. Architects should invest in this to prove interest in knowing how the building performs.”
“We would like more information to understand the customer of the building – how the building performed in use after they finish and use this to influence the future design. Practices should partner with developers on research through investment linked to outcomes.”
There are several ways that architects can obtain user insights after projects are completed, such as full-scale POE studies; smaller scale marketing surveys; and even asking building users to submit their feedback via user-generated content on social media.
It may be helpful in the first instance to undertake some marketing surveys on past projects to draw out insights about the value you provided, to demonstrate to current and future clients that you are willing to jointly invest in POE surveys to inform future design projects.
In conclusion
It’s worth repeating this insight from page 20:
“Communicating the value of architectural services is a prominent barrier for practices in the architect/client relationship – not the cost of services alone.”
If you’d like to learn how to enhance the way you communicate your value to your future clients – so that you can build a pipeline of new projects – but you’re not sure where to start, or which marketing channels to use, or how they all dovetail together, my architecture marketing course provides the foundations you need.
Enrolments are open now and you can visit this page for more info and to sign up.
The course will help you to capitalise on the Client Insights report (and you can earn 6 Formal CPD points too), so you can connect and engage with your ideal future clients and win more of the work that you love doing.
Let me know if you have any questions about the course by emailing me via this link.
* respondents could choose more than one answer.