Marketing

In comparison with many businesses, architects’ clients are a particularly diverse group – they can be practically anyone, any group or any business. You could even be your own client. It can therefore be a difficult group to target, but it is essential to do so if you are going to spend what will be a very limited marketing budget wisely. In establishing your business plan you will have decided to concentrate on certain sectors, and they will be your main focus, but there are also some other basic ways in which you should make yourself known.

In addition to adopting a broad-brush approach, you need to target specific areas that your intelligence gathering has indicated will be likely sources of work. Ensure you have enough information about the sector, or possibly subsector, to make yourself incisive and useful to a client and to show them that you can be of practical help. You are in the business of selling them a problem-solving service; you need to persuade them that the skills you have on offer are a close fit for the ones they believe they need.

Clients will be interested in whether you have or have access to the resources necessary to supply their needs. A good track record may be enough to satisfy them that you can handle their project, but you might also be expected to show that you have a team of staff, consultants and possibly suppliers and contractors readily available to realise their vision. The expectations of clients and the reality of resourcing projects are frequently poles apart, and this can be a significant problem for new and small practices. You may have to find ways of creatively responding to this in order to persuade clients that your modest size practice can deal with their modest size job, even though it is very large and very important in their eyes.

Marketing: the inexpensive basics

Beware of corporate brochures. These cost large sums of money, date very quickly and are difficult to know what to do with. Most clients will be able to get everything they need to know from your website. You can always produce a postcard to act as a physical reminder or advertisement for your website – it is much cheaper to produce than a brochure.

Websites are critical in the selection of architects by potential clients. As well as being a form of advertising and promotion they are a source of information about the practice: clients and their advisers use websites extensively to vet architectural firms and draw up shortlists. Ensure that your site is not only attractive and easy to navigate, but that it also provides the information that clients might be looking for, and in an easily printable form. The content should be there for the clients – not for you.

Sending out targeted mailshots and cold-calling is always a possibility, but targeting should be fairly precise and any leads need to be rigorously followed up. It is likely that there are better ways to expend your energies pursuing work. The story with regard to advertising is similar – do it for the goodwill and for keeping the practice in the public eye, but do not expect it to show immediate payback in the form of worthwhile work. A three-year time lag between publicity and any resulting paid work is considered an approximate norm. Always put yourself in the shoes of the recipient of your mailshots/calls/advertising and imagine what would convince you to appoint someone you had never heard of before.

Respond to advertisements placed in the architectural press and elsewhere from clients looking for architects. They may not happen very often, but can be very well worth pursuing, particularly if you fit a particular age or geographical requirement and can act immediately. But do not hold your breath for a successful or immediate result, and avoid excessive investment in preparing materials.

All marketing data support the notion that your best customers are the ones you already have – so look after them and ensure that you continue to give them a good service long after their project has been delivered and they have paid their final invoice. Almost all happy clients will return in due course with more business. They are also your best sales force – they can recommend you to a wide range of their contacts and provide useful references and reassurances to future clients. Cherish them.

Publicity materials

To help you in your marketing effort you need evidence that:

• you are who you say you are
• you have qualifications, experience and a track record
• your practice matches clients’ aspirations.

Such evidence will help to provide reassurance to a client that the risk they are considering taking on in appointing your practice is minimal. It can take many forms: from yearly accounts and details of insurance to glossy photos of previous projects and glowing testimonials. You need to have it ready to be assembled into a format that meets the requirements of the moment. The same material, in different forms, will be needed to do many different jobs, from providing copy for magazine articles to filling out complex prequalification questionnaires (PQQs).

Overcoming procurement barriers

A constant concern for new practices is how to obtain work from mainstream clients, particularly those in the public sector. New procurement systems, attitudes to risk avoidance and the common requirement to demonstrate extensive prior experience with similar projects all place considerable barriers in the way of winning such work. It may take time and commitment to gain such work, but it is not impossible – even for the very smallest of practices.