Architecture Firm Marketing Excuses You Need to Stop Making

Attraction Marketing for Architects

Is your architecture firm attracting your ideal future clients?

A few simple steps can make it easier to attract more of of the clients and projects you want for your architecture firm:

1. Be specific about who and what you want to attract.
2. Focus on them and how you can help them.
3. Make it easy for them to find you. 

These three steps are the basics of successful attraction marketing. So what can possibly get in the way of making it work for your firm?

When we start working with our architect clients, we hear a lot of frustration about their own attempts to do more marketing or fuel their business development efforts.

Adding to those feelings is the long history of restricting architect firms from pursuing marketing activities. But those days are over. Architects are in danger of fading into the background unless they are willing to step forward and market themselves.

So let’s get past the hesitation and frustration. The problems we hear most often a related to some specific challenges and assumptions:

1. “I don’t know what marketing is working.”

Time for a couple of questions — Do you know where your five best clients came from? Just as importantly, where did your most difficult and least rewarding projects come from?

Whether you are just starting your architecture firm or about to celebrate 20 years in the business, it’s time to figure out what marketing and business development efforts work and what doesn’t.

You may even be doing something that works without knowing it’s the source of your leads.



When you take time to find out what works and what doesn’t, you can begin to deliberately do more of what brings the right clients to your door — and, just as importantly, stop doing the things that attracted the less rewarding projects.

3. “I just need to get more referrals.”

You’re right! But you really don’t want just any referrals.

Most of all, you want great referrals for the kind of architecture projects you love to do, with clients who value your expertise and talent.

Many architects tell us they rely on word-of-mouth for new business. So… how can you get more referrals for qualified prospects with interesting projects that fit your style and vision?

Get clarity on what you want to do and who you want to work with!

When you present your architecture firm with a clear purpose for a specific audience, you make it easy for others to make referrals that truly fit your firm.

4. “Marketing just isn’t predictable.” 

But it is predictable! The key is consistency and repetition over time.

One reason people feel like their architecture firm marketing isn’t predictable is because they can’t commit and often lack the resources to do it consistently long enough to start seeing results.

A typical architecture firm marketing campaign may take three to six months, or more, to begin showing results — and it’s not over then — the commitment is to take what’s working and scale it for a predictable stream of new business opportunities.

Once you’ve figured out what marketing efforts are working for your architecture firm, you can start doing more of it, more consistently  (and stop doing what doesn’t work) you will start to see a pattern of predictable success.

5. “I don’t think marketing will work for my architecture firm anyway.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” “I’ve already tried this.” “That won’t work for me.”

Further fueling those feelings is the long history of restricting architect firms from pursuing marketing activities. But those days are over. Architects are in danger of fading into the background unless they are willing to step forward and market themselves.

We understand the fear of putting resources toward marketing and not knowing what results you’ll get. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and avoid marketing altogether.

But is that the best decision for the growth of your architecture firm?

When you push past the uncertainty and excuses and commit to consistent attraction marketing activities, you will attract better clients.

And marketing doesn’t have to be difficult, overwhelming, or a time- consuming distraction from the work you want to do.

With a focus on solving the marketing challenges for our architect clients, we have developed a three-part system to help them with specific marketing activities at each step:

Step 1. Have a strategic plan and the right foundation in place.
Step 2. Demonstrate your authority as an architect in ways that reach the right people.
Step 3. Actively attract the right people to your online universe (your website) where you can make a connection and start a conversation.

First and foremost, marketing that attracts your best clients starts with a strategic plan and understanding who — and what — you want for your architecture firm.

When you take time to get clear on those fundamentals, you’ll be ready to apply the principles of attraction marketing to build a more reliable pipeline of new business leads for your architecture firm. Learn about Smart Goals to Grow Your Architecture Firm here.

If you aren't sure where or how to start, we are ready to help. It's what we do every day.

We love helping architects get more and better opportunities to design and create the spaces and places that shape and improve the communities and environments around us. 

At Archmark, we work with architects to help them build a strong brand foundation for business growth, establish authority to take a leadership position in their market, and create awareness that attracts more qualified leads for the types of projects that match their vision and focus.

We focus on how to build up your business, so you can focus on leading your firm. It starts with a free 30-minute architecture marketing strategy call to help you:

• Get clarity on why your current digital marketing efforts aren't working
• (re)Define your competitive advantage
• Discover insights into your ideal clients that you never would have thought of on your own

Find out how Archmark can help you. Schedule your strategy call today to see how we can help your architecture firm go even further.