Digital Marketing for Architects

Marketing for architects is not very different from marketing for other professions or professionals. An artist, interior designer, or chartered accountant all go through the same digital marketing techniques. What is different is your ability to create a unique approach to your business and your digital marketing campaign. Let me explain. As a small business company new to digital marketing, you will go through the same process of marketing your company as any other. The process includes creating a website, creating a social media profile, creating content for your website, distributing your content from the website to social media, optimizing your website for search, optimizing your website for Google Local Business, optimizing your social media accounts, and simultaneously creating PPC campaigns and social media campaigns. The process would be the same for all businesses. But as an architect, your approach or the way of integrating each of these processes into your business will vary.

As a small business owner, it is important to understand that digital marketing won’t give you 100 clients overnight or make you a millionaire by month-end. Digital marketing, like every marketing campaign, takes time and is an organic process. While some parts of the process can be quickened, they will involve spending money. You can spend money on PPC to get a few customers this week, or you can spend nothing and still get clients in the long run with organic marketing. We recommend both options running together. No business can wait a year for a marketing campaign to bring results. You need results as soon as possible, but you want to ensure that your organic campaign is running well so that you don’t have to spend money on marketing after a year.

What is Different When it Comes to Digital Marketing for Architects?

Your marketing techniques depend on two factors. One is the behavior of your audience. The second factor is your ability to create quality content persistently over the course of the next year.

Audience Research, Behavior, and Marketing

Let’s begin with audience behavior. Most people rely on search engines to find architects. Common searches are “Architects in [area].” Google results show the first section of the results displaying Google Business profiles which match the search term. The organic results follow. For some searches, the Google Business profiles appear after 3-4 organic searches. There are no AI results for these queries.

The Google Business Profile section lists local businesses in the area you mention in the search term. This is a great place to start your marketing. This section requires local SEO expertise and a Google Business profile to rank here.

The second most important section is the organic results that follow. Organic results can be achieved with on-page and off-page SEO. Your website should also be optimized for technical SEO. Rely more on topical authority as an architect to rank in these areas.

The third section is the ads that appear on search results. These are PPC ads, which are a great place to advertise your business when you are not ranking in the local business section or the organic results. PPC ads are a quick and effective way to reach a targeted audience easily with minimal effort. This could be a bit expensive in the long run, so ensure that you improve your local SEO and organic SEO while you are advertising on PPC simultaneously.

Social media is the next place where your audience can find you. Though they will not actively search for architects on social media, they will be looking for ideas on social media. Focus more on Instagram and Facebook for marketing your architect business. Post images of your work and create a profile that attracts people interested in architecture. Your focus should be on creating as many posts as possible, persistently and consistently. While you create content, also advertise on social media platforms. This ensures you have more visibility. Ads do cost, but you will be exposed to a lot more people interested in your services, not just those who already follow you.

Content Creation

You need content to market your services. As an architect, if you are going to rely solely on the projects you have completed to create content, you will fall short. You need to be creative and also consider educating your prospective customers to bring traction to your website and social media. Let me explain. As an architect, especially if you are just beginning in the industry, you may have a handful of completed projects before you start on your own. Your portfolio will be thin, and even if you are quite established, you may have around 100-200 clients if you have worked for a decade or so. If you have 100 customers, this is a good number, and you will be considered an established business. But when it comes to online presence, a website with 150 pages will stand no chance competing with a website with 1500 pages. Your ability to create good content makes the difference between you and your competition. The content should be consistently created for your website and your social media websites.

What Kind of Content to Produce for Architects?

Think about what your customers want to know. Think about the things your customers asked when you met them first. What material would be used? What would be the foundation depth? What kind of glass to use? How to reduce costs, etc. Create content around the most common questions people ask. For social media websites, it’s entirely visual. What impresses people? Think about beautiful architecture that was created, and these may not necessarily be yours but worth appreciating. Post pictures of buildings, interiors, landscapes, etc., that may inspire people to build something similar.

Putting It All Together

Once you have the content ready for your website/blog and your social media accounts, for at least a month, start scheduling them. The first few days are going to be definitely slow. Google will not recognize your website and will crawl it once in 3-4 days or even longer. So make sure that you only publish one article a day. After a month, you will notice that your website is crawled more regularly, often daily. Hopefully, you will have enough content to schedule for the second month by then. As for social media websites, post the content and test the performance of each post type. Every social media site has different post types. For instance, Instagram has reels, carousels, single image posts, etc. For LinkedIn, you have image posts, carousels, and articles. Find out which content type does better and what type of content performs well. Create more content of these types for the second month.

Barnacle SEO

Barnacle SEO/Parasite SEO are terms referring to ranking a page on third-party websites with your content. This could be a page on LinkedIn, Medium.com, Facebook pages, or any other third-party website which has the potential to rank your content easily. This allows your term, for instance, “Architects in Gujarat,” to show your websites and also other websites where you have created content on the first page. This is one of the common techniques in 2024 to garner more traffic for a search term from various sources and also gain brand identity.

Social Media Marketing

When it comes to social media marketing, picking the right social media platform for promoting architects should be considered after thorough research. Below is a list of social media platforms that can give you good exposure for your architect business. Remember that this is not the final list. Add the choice of social media platforms you want to promote on based on your skill sets and your strengths. Do not choose more than two social media platforms to promote on, as you will not be able to focus on all of them.

• YouTube: YouTube promotion for architects requires skills in creating videos, especially long-form videos. Consider interviews with people who are your clients or who own beautiful homes. Do a home/office intro. Visit different locations and explain things about architecture in each of the properties. This is a time-consuming activity and requires skill sets, equipment, and time. Nevertheless, YouTube videos create more value in terms of content for your visitors, and they will remain loyal customers once they are hooked on your content.
• Instagram: Digital marketing on Instagram has become very important in the past few years. Organically ranking for Instagram and being popular on any social media platform requires consistent content creation over the course of years. With most of your competitors already on Instagram for years, a new account will not drive in as much interest from the Instagram algorithm to promote your account to the front easily. Consider paid promotions by Instagram to get a boost during the initial few months to gain more followers to your account while consistently creating valuable content throughout
• Facebook : Facebook may be considered old and often seen as a platform for posting family pictures, but it can effectively promote your business, especially for brand building. If you are looking to build a brand in the architect industry, creating a Facebook account with a dedicated Facebook page for your business is essential. Regularly update your business activities on Facebook to keep your audience engaged, while also promoting your business through paid ads on the platform. Facebook ads, when done right, are relatively cost-effective and have the potential to reach over 60% of internet users.

Directory Listings

Many people overlook the importance of directories these days, but they often end up on them when searching for products or services. For example, if you search for architects, you might find Justdial in the top 10 listings on Google. Justdial is a directory. It’s essential to list your website on such directories. If possible, find directories specifically for architects and list your company on them. Listing on directories has multiple advantages. Apart from being able to display your name, address, and phone number, which helps with Google Local Business, a link to your website from these directories adds traffic and SEO value. Additionally, the direct traffic from the directory to your website provides extra benefits.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

For new websites, PPC may be the quickest option to drive traffic. Most businesses cannot wait months to see profits. Start with PPC by investing a small amount daily to generate leads, sales, and conversions as fast as possible. Consistently tweak your PPC ads and campaigns to ensure they don’t become stale and remain profitable. Hiring a dedicated PPC campaign or ad manager can be beneficial for this task. A professional may be required to help you manage PPC ad campaigns, especially if you are aiming for consistent positive results.