What are the best six channels to market your architecture practice?
Last week Facebook turned off the news in Australia.
It took everyone by surprise, and some Facebook users including hospitals, government departments and other business users found themselves caught up in the action, despite not being news outlets.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
This event underscored for me one of the truisms of modern marketing – that you should use a mix of delivery channels to communicate with your audience, and you should ensure that you OWN your connections to your future customers and clients, because you never know when a tech giant might cut off your access without warning.
Last week’s action was drastic, although it appears at the time of writing this on Tuesday afternoon as if it will be reversed.
But that doesn’t change the fact that more than 50% of architects who have completed my quiz said that social media was their favourite marketing channel.
What’s the problem with favouring social media?
Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash.
There are lots of ways that you can lose your connection to your followers on social media; and most of them well outside your control.
And last week’s actions clearly demonstrated that Facebook is only pursuing its own commercial interests; not the interests of Facebook users, or some lofty public interest; or the government’s or media companies’ interests.
We’ve seen before that social media platforms can and do change their algorithms, which has the unwanted effect of decreasing the visibility of your posts to your followers.
Or your Instagram profile might be “shadow banned”, because you use the same hashtags on every post.
Very occasionally. social media platforms delete profiles and pages without any warning at all (it happened to the Authentic Design Alliance last year), and it’s often difficult or impossible to have them reinstated.
Yes, that type of action usually happens only to individual users, but – as we saw last week – Facebook isn’t above taking widespread action that negatively impacts many businesses and their customers and clients at once, without warning.
So what channels should architects use in addition to social media?
To help architects navigate what is becoming an increasingly complex marketing landscape, I’ve created a Six Channel System for architecture marketing.
This system is built on the knowledge that architects have different marketing needs to most other businesses (because the risks/costs are higher; the lead times longer; your project delivery times longer – there are so many factors that set architecture marketing apart!).
Listed in order of importance from 1-5, the most suitable channels are:
Referrals
Email Marketing
Social Media
Publishing
Awards
And the 6th channel is your Website.
Channels 1-5 should deliver a constant and continuous stream of people – traffic, visitors, customers, leads – to your Website, where you can invite them to subscribe, and then start or continue a dialogue that is designed to lead to new clients and projects. The “peacock diagram” below illustrates the hierarchy and how the channels complement each other to raise awareness of your services, building on the “know, like and trust” factors that modern consumers expect, and turn prospects into actual clients.
The “peacock diagram” illustrates how the top five marketing channels should deliver traffic and prospective clients to your keystone channel: your Website. Graphic by Sounds Like Design.
How do you use the channels work to move potential clients towards your practice?
From this list of six channels - and depending on which sectors you work in, where you are located, what mix of project types you undertake, where your most profitable income stream is - you can choose the most appropriate channels and platforms that best suit your marketing and business objectives.
And the beauty of this system is that once you understand the role that each channel plays - and how it functions as part of the overall system - you don’t have to use all six channels. In fact, it’s more beneficial to pick two or three and master those before trying to manage content across all six channels.
For example, if you work mainly in public and commercial buildings, your future clients might be mostly on LinkedIn, so you’d prioritise that platform in Social Media. If you work mostly in residential, Instagram or Pinterest will probably suit you better.
From Social Media, you use a call to action to invite people to visit your Website, and subscribe to your Email list, so you can share Referrals with them via your Email newsletter. This is how you use the marketing funnel or customer journey to your advantage (for more about marketing funnels / customer journeys, click here).
That’s because Social Media works best at the top of your marketing funnel – to build awareness of your practice and services – and Referral, Email and Website (the channels you own!) are better suited to nurturing relationships in the middle of the funnel, to nurture leads into prospects and then clients, to win you new projects.
Once you understand how these channels work together in as part of a customer journey, you can prioritise your marketing activities to deliver the best bang-for-buck on your marketing investment.
The customer journey (or marketing funnel, see below) illustrates how strangers turn into prospects, then into leads, and finally into ambassadors for your services (because 71% of clients prefer a referral from a trusted source, according to the Institute’s Client Insights report, 2021). Graphic by Sounds Like Design.
Sounds Like Designs’ Marketing Funnel for Architects illustrates the way clients make procurement decisions. Graphic by Sounds Like Design.
And if this is all sounding like a foreign language – and that’s perfectly normal because architects don’t learn these vital skills as part of their formal education! – and you’re keen to learn more and master your marketing once and for all, I invite you to watch the CPD session I hosted for the Institute of Architects, where I explained my Six Channel System in more detail. (You can watch the recording here).
And if you think this system is exactly what you need in your practice - to attract and win more of the clients and projects you love working on - you may be ready to enrol in my CPD course, Architecture Marketing 360.
The course sets out the easy-to-learn and implement system so you can confidently handle your practice marketing in-house or delegate key tasks to external consultants.
You’ll earn 6 Formal CPD points and you can tap into my knowledge and insights in monthly Zoom calls and the learning management system to answer your questions as you learn and implement the system.
You can find out more about the course and enrol here.
Why did I develop the Six Channel System of marketing for architects, and then create a CPD course around it?
I’m so glad you asked!
I spotted a gap in your formal architectural education - because there is no Business Development or Marketing in the National Standards of Competency for Architects - which means that generations of architects have graduated from university and entered practice without any grounding in the essentials of running a thriving practice.
The process of winning new clients and projects is the lifeblood of any successful and profitable architecture practice, but it’s a process that has been shrouded in mystery, so that architects have relied on putting up some beautiful images of their work, and waiting for the phone to ring.
Consumer sentiment and buying habits have changed significantly since the advent of social media, but many architects still leave the process of attracting and winning new clients and projects to chance, which means that other service providers - who may be less qualified or suitable - are winning more of the marketshare than architects, because their marketing is more visible and compelling.
I realise that modern marketing can appear complex and overwhelming, and I know architects are busy and time poor, so I created a simple to follow system - based on the one you use to deliver a new architecture project - to make it easy to understand these new concepts.
And then I packaged that system up into a CPD course, to give you the fastest method of learning these vital skills that you missed out on, so you can win more of the clients and projects you love and build a thriving architecture practice
I really want architects to improve the way they market their practices and services, because I want you as a profession to win a greater share of the design and construction marketshare pie.
That’s how we’ll start to increase public demand for better quality built environments, and maybe start to tackle some of the #climateemergency design issues that represent easy savings for consumers and the planet.
On top of those lofty ambitions, I want architects to thrive - in their careers, practices and as a profession more broadly - so that you can earn more money, enhance your wellbeing and grow your influence to be able to spread the word that good design matters.
Will you join me?