You’re a smart person. And you’re a stickler for style.
That’s why you became an architect. You love to see form meet function.
Because building a home is such a personal experience, not to mention expensive, you want people to view your architectural firm as a professional outfit worthy of their attention.
The last thing you want is for people to think their place will be designed by Frank Gehry on his (hungover) off days.
Therefore, your online presence needs to look as professional as your business is.
Are you missing out on clients?
You might be actively sharing your designs to Facebook. Perhaps you even share them to Instagram regularly.
But did you know that, with a well-designed, practical website, you could reach at least two other marketing channels?
Here’s how…
What can you do with your architect website?
When you have a great website, and you use it correctly, you can reach prospects and clients through three channels—social media, search engines and email—from a single place.
Say you’ve just completed a new design and the client signed off, happy as a hermit crab.
Your normal workflow for marketing your work is to share the design to Facebook.
Here you get some likes and shares. Maybe even a comment. “Wow, what a design!”
And then your post dies a quick death and gets chucked into file thirteen.
Tests show that a Facebook post has the lifespan of a skyscraper built with broken styrofoam cups. (That’s intentional, by the way. Facebook’s business is advertising. You’re not helping by not buying advertising.)
But using your website, you don’t have to worry about vanity metrics like likes and shares because you’ll be reaching more people than simply those who waste their time on “social” media.
Here’s how.
Email marketing
Email is as old as a Frank Lloyd Wright design.
And as reliable.
It’s still one of the number one ways to reach fans, despite crowds of people dissing it and trying to dissuade the use of it.
Email won’t die soon.
When someone likes your Facebook posts, how much effort do they expend to do so? It’s the click of a mouse or the tap of a screen. There’s nothing to it.
But when they sign up for your email newsletter, they’re telling you they’d like to enter into a more personal relationship with you. They’re entrusting you with something they know you won’t abuse.
That’s why it makes sense to use email for marketing.
We set up your website with a newsletter system that allows you to reach email subscribers who sign up for your news.
Remember, to reach them, you don’t have to create email newsletters manually. You just keep posting your architectural masterpieces to your website.
Search engine marketing
Search engines are fantastic for finding architects.
When you’re looking for something, what do you do? Do you search Facebook? Or do you get onto Google and pop in your search words there?
Chances are, you’re using Google. You might be using voice search, but you’re still using Google.
That’s why it’s important to make sure you’re findable on Google.
You don’t want people heading for the search giant, punching in search terms like “architect near me”, “architectural services”, “architectural firm”, “draftsman” or other related queries and your competitors all show up to the party, leaving you out in the cold.
You want your name to feature for those services.
And the only way to do that is to start with a good website, which’ll form the foundation for the rest of your online marketing endeavors.
From there, you build on your foundation with content that speaks to prospects and clients.
This you do by adding your latest projects.
If you show website visitors how you created masterpieces for people like them, you’ll give them reason to contact you.
But if the idea of creating content sounds unattractive to you because it may take up too much time or is something you simply don’t think you can do, don’t stress.
We offer a content creation service current clients consider a serious painkiller.
It works like this: they send us their project technical details as well as some pics of the project, and we post it for them.
They look professional and give Google ample reason to consider their websites worthy of better rankings.
Emails
Are you still using a Gmail email address?
It doesn’t look professional. It’s like sending your client a proposal written with crayon.
Get a website and set up as many email addresses as you like, your hosting space being the only limit.
It makes your architectural firm look far more legit.
Analytics
We set up your website with Google Analytics. And if you want access, you’re more than welcome to it.
But you can opt for a beautiful weekly report that shows you which keywords bring people to your website, and which pages they visit.
If you don’t know who visits your website, what they do there and where they’re coming from, it’s like you’re drawing a home on a piece of toilet paper with an eraser.
But there’s more analytics included.
Your website also tells you what people search for when they use the website’s search box.
This is a tremendous help in figuring out what content to add to your website next.
For instance, if someone lands on your website and searches for “cost of drafting” (lacking a better term), you know you can quickly hammer together an article about your costs. You don’t have to mention what you charge, but using those keywords, you can construct something that’ll get people interested in what you have to offer.
Mobile friendly
Your architectural website looks good on any size screen.
This is a must in our day and age.
You don’t want visitors pinching and zooming to see your poetic words and pictures. It must be a good experience.
Cost
Since you’re getting a premium blank canvas to start your designs on, you’d expect to pay the price of this insanely expensive personal tool.
Depending on your needs, you might pay quite a bit.
But if you make back your money and more, does it matter if the package is expensive?
Conclusion
Woo prospects into doing business with you by getting a professional website that looks good and works well.
It looks great on computer screens, tablets and mobile devices and best of all, it lets you connect with clients and prospects on three platforms: email, search engines and social media.
Book a consultation to get a marketing package that’ll help your architect firm excel online.