The Incredibly Mysterious World Of Architect Marketing Math

My daughter Holly is eleven. I ask her ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

‘Something to do with math,’ she replies.

‘What about a marketer?’ I ask.

‘Nah’ says Holly, ‘Too much English, not enough math’.

‘Actually Holly, the type of marketing I teach is a LOT about math.’

When members do OUR type of marketing properly, they need a dashboard to measure their stats.

Just like driving a car, you need to be monitoring a set of performance indicators as you roll your business along the road.

Because you are only making two types of offers, in our marketing this is simple. The first offer is some problem-solving information. For example: ‘How to get council consent for a renovation in Wellington in under six weeks’.

If you make a useful educational offer (we call this a Monkey’s Fist), then you either get requests for the information or you don’t. Plus, anyone who does request your information is giving you permission to send your stuff.

This is important – you now have PERMISSION to communicate with them. AND they have raised their hand to say renovation is a topic of interest for them. Follow-up is important.

Who might want to know the local laws about council consent?

Quite possibly a homeowner looking to renovate their home. This Monkey’s Fist is the bait to catch the fish.

Let me explain.

So let’s say you spent $50 for an ad in the local newspaper and $50 for an ad in the local school newspaper. You have spent $100.

Imagine you get 5 people in total request your useful information: ‘How to get council consent for a renovation in Wellington in under six weeks’.

Two enquiries come from the local newspaper and three from the school newsletter. That means your cost per lead is $20 – total cost ($100) divided by number of leads (5).

Then let’s say you follow up with a phone call to each person who requested the free Monkey’s Fist. You asked for their email address and their phone number when they ordered their information.

You discover three of the people are serious about renovation and two are not. You offer all three a ‘Needs and Options review’ service for $500. This is a pre-design service, designed to reduce assumptions and therefore risk. It is also designed to identify the best options before any architect follows through on a specific design.

This service is often done for free by non-Architect Marketing Academy members for three reasons.

1) They are too scared to ask for money and think people won’t pay for research
2) They think free work upfront means they will get the design work
3) They don’t have their pre-design service OFFER well described and well packaged, and so have nothing valuable looking to present

Unfortunately for many architects, giving away free IP and research reduces credibility, and ideas get stolen and used by other architects.

Academy members know better.

Back to our story…

Two of the people take you up on the Needs and Options review. One month after doing the Needs and Options review, one couple decides to go ahead with the renovation.

Now you have another figure to calculate – the cost per client. Fortunately, this is pretty simple. You spent $100 to get 5 leads, which resulted in 2 Needs and Options reviews and one client.

Your total cost for the campaign was $100, so your cost per lead was $20 and your cost per client was $100.

In other words, you bought one client for $100. If you could buy clients for $100 how many would you buy?

Consider this, because you sold two $500 Needs and Options reviews, you were actually making a $900 profit to win your client. 2 x $500 less $100 (ad costs).

Isn’t this so much better than traditional marketing?

Holly looks at me and says: ‘I can do marketing math Dad – it’s just adding and dividing. Does everyone do marketing like this Dad?'

‘Actually, Holly, hardly anyone does this – most business owners don’t even know how to make an offer that can be measured,’ I respond.

‘You should teach them, Dad,’ suggests Holly.

Good point Holly, I think I will!