A question that comes up all the time: Where do I start marketing my architectural firm?
Well, there are two answers — one that deals with the big picture and the other “standard” marketing reply.
1. Envision Your Big Picture
Where and how you start marketing depends on your goals. What do you want to achieve?
If you have big aspirational goals — maybe you want to double your business in the next 6 months — the marketing strategies you embark on are going to be different than if you just want to grow your business by 15% in the next 12 months.
2. Identify Your Niche(s)
Once you work out what you want to achieve, any marketer worth a grain of salt needs to ask you: What is the niche you want to focus on?
With good marketing, you can’t be all things to all people.
Here in New Zealand, we’ve got the Shotover River. Take a look. You can’t control the whole river, but if you want to control a certain area, it’s possible.
Build a bridge across here, or set up a little fort, or catch fish from a specific spot. But you can’t go fishing from the whole river … because it goes for miles.
You need to niche. The biggest mistake people make: Seeing their product as being for everybody … which is not true unless you’re selling soap, deodorant or toothpaste — fast moving consumer items, mass products that everybody buys.
Your service is for a small subset of the world. When you know who they are, take a very small subset of that subset.
You need to be saying the right thing to the right people. As you know if you’ve ever been married or had a partner, it’s easy to say the wrong thing. You’ve got to have the perfect match.
The target audience you find aren’t necessarily the only people you will supply to. It just means: One set of messages per market.
That’s how we do it in marketing. We don’t try to have one message to the whole world because that gets diluted too quickly and you might as well be floating in the sea.