Marketers in all industries are constantly on the hook for ROI. That’s the nature of our job function. When it comes to social media for architects, engineers and contractors however, the calculation of such a financial metric is distorted and difficult at best.

First, you have to assume that your firm can assign a dollar amount to the “investment.” Often marketing staff hours are all dumped into one, large overhead bucket. Given that approach, mixed with the assumption that all social media will cost is time – there isn’t even a great place to start!

A second reason that ROI is difficult to nail down is that the “return” is normally based on leads or closed contracts. To be quite honest, rarely are marketers (to be read as a separate function from BD professionals) given credit for closing a new contract. It is generally much easier to assign the win to the referral, past performance or repeat business column. This is a mistake for a number of reasons but that’s another article altogether!

So, what can we do to measure up and show some sort of success for our time spent cultivating relationships through social media profiles?

1. Define success first!

Every principal is different and many marketing teams aren’t expected to go out and win business on their own. So when it comes to social media, have the conversation up front about what success is in the eyes of your team. It could be leads, email list sign-ups, web traffic, surpassing competitor benchmarks…any number of things.

2. What if success is still defined as closed contracts?

Set realistic expectations and clear parameters on what markets your firm’s social media will focus on. The only way to make an impact and PROVE that you made the impact is by eliminating the confusion on which leads came from which source.

3. More about benchmarks…

When it comes to successful social media, engage and interact with as many target clients as you can. This doesn’t always mean huge numbers though, and unfortunately managers that aren’t connected with social media may not understand why the Facebook page doesn’t have 2,000 likes yet! Benchmarking against some of your competitors can help show if you’re gaining ground with followers and set realistic expectations from management.

4. Seek ways to define your firm’s expertise in the market.

Social media is one of the most effective ways to share your expertise in a non-promotional way and that has a significant tie-in with what conference planners and publishers are looking for. Securing a speaking engagement at a conference of your clients is a huge win. Period.

5. Choose a problem to solve for your clients.

I’ve written about this approach a number of times. If you want to prove that you care about your clients, solve their problems. Investing your time and energy into developing an online resource or community that doesn’t start with your firm’s name is great for your relationships, but it also opens up a number of ways to define success by making a tangible difference in your industry.

I’m always very careful to point out that success is more than just a financial metric. Social media is a communications tool and communications efforts can have a number of goals. It’s important for you and your firm to determine what those goals are before assessing the success of your efforts.

In times like these, one of the first places many companies look to cut back is the marketing budget. This logic is flawed. (Yes, I know—we’re a marketing firm, so our perspective is a little biased. But hang on, and hear me out.) No matter how tough going things seems now, eventually things will improve, and the economy will recover. When that happens, clients will spend more freely—and you’ll want to make sure you’ve remained visible to prospective customers.

Also, because belt-tightening times inevitably mean that many businesses do scale back, you have an opportunity to capitalize on your competitors’ absence, putting you at a significant competitive advantage.

So, now that I’ve said my piece on why you shouldn’t cut, here are the ‘whats’: five areas within your marketing budget where you should absolutely not scale back.

1. Your Website: This one’s easy. Your website is your face to the world, and the first stop on any potential client’s list. First impressions are critical. Don’t skimp here.

2. Social Media: Currently, 84% of business-to-business marketers use some form of social media. It’s big, and it’s only going to get bigger. At the risk of sounding dramatic, social media is the future of marketing. Your business needs to be there, and you need to be active. (For more insights on the future of marketing, check out this great article written by Hubspot.)

3. Email Marketing: According to a study conducted by iContact, small and midsized businesses are allocating the largest chunk of their marketing budgets to email. Why? Well, for one, 59% of marketers perceive email to be the most effective channel in generating revenue. This area is a critical component, especially in relation to your company’s social media presence and its mobile marketing efforts. Growing your lists and accurately, effectively segmenting subscribers goes a long way in helping your company deliver targeted messages to the right audience.

4. Mobile: As you’ve likely noticed, everyone has a smart phone these days. Last year, mobile ad spending rose by 62% , reaching $6.4 billion. This area is growing faster than almost any other digital effort. If you want to make sure you’re reaching customers in today’s constantly connected culture, mobile marketing is key.

5. Analytics: It’s all about the numbers. Research shows that spending on marketing analytics is expected to increase 60% by 2015. If you’re not collecting and analyzing the data, you’re not getting the most out of your marketing dollars. And you’re likely missing out on a ton of opportunities.

So, there you have it. Those are our thoughts on how to get the most bang for your buck, even in tough times. What do you think? What areas are on your own not-to-cut list? Let us know in the comments.

By: Bethany Nguyen

Before the hate-mail starts pouring in from professionals of all disciplines, let me provide a disclaimer and then follow up with some explanation.

Some firms DO need to redo their whole website. Seriously, there are some bad ones out there from a functionality, design and marketing point of view. The rest of this post is not for those firms.

I may be biased, but one of the best aspects of offering marketing services beginning with strategy development and carrying all the way through to execution and monitoring is that we focus on the big picture, not just the completion of a project. We also don’t have a vested interest in providing one service over another – we just want to achieve a goal, your goal, in the most efficient and effective way possible. Depending on your goal, the answer for every problem or new need isn’t always a start-from-scratch rebuild. There are other options, like…

Facelifts – You might be getting tired of the way your site looks. Most A/E firms do after a few years. If your site is built on a sound platform (like WordPress or another CMS), it functions the way you’d like it to, and is performing well with regards to SEO, you might just need to do a “reskin” or fresh design. Depending on how things were built in the first place, a redesign doesn’t have to mean an entire new back-end, and a reskin can literally save you thousands of dollars.

Additions and Renovations – Occasionally websites launch and then after a year or two the team says, “I wish we would have included our Twitter feed.” Another common example for architecture firms or contractors is when the portfolio section misses the mark with dated navigation or poor SEO. Now, it isn’t always seamless for a new vendor to get into existing code and make improvements, but it’s possible. Enhancing an existing site by upgrading interactive features, adding forms or building up valuable content is a definite option when the overall look, feel and functionality of your site are still making you happy.

Repairing the Foundation – A less common option (and perhaps the least popular option among the design community), is the rebuild of a website on a new content management system while keeping the existing design the same. The bottom line is that sometimes sites aren’t built with the admin in mind or the capabilities of the in-house team change. Instead of starting over with fresh information architecture and going through the design process for a website, it can be just a matter of moving from one platform or CMS to another and increasing the admin’s usability. Your website is much more than a visual representation of your brand, and there are times when everything behind the scenes needs an overhaul, but the design still stands.

The takeaway for us is, there are always options! Often, it is in the best interest of your firm to take a clean cut at a website redesign with all the new bells and whistles. But one size doesn’t fit all, and occasionally architecture and engineering firms need a little more flexibility in the approach to web upgrades.

Enjoy her post…

As a marketing professional I am constantly amazed by the vast amount of time and energy organizations put into developing marketing materials and tools only to spend little time considering who they will send them to. Hundreds of man and woman hours going into designing the company brochure — that sits in the storage room. Committees that get formed to design and create content for a company e-newsletter — and no thought as to whose inbox it will be delivered to. Regardless of your type of organization — corporate, nonprofit, government — and regardless of your expertise — legal, advocacy, political, policy, trade, business development — the key to success for your marketing effort, will be your list.

It’s all about the list.

Who is on your list? How did they get there? When was your list last updated? Who maintains it? What do you to do grow it? How is it segmented?Often businesses treat their contact list as an afterthought, a collection of names and numbers to glance over once the quarterly newsletter is ready to send out. It’s is by far the least glamorous activity in marketing – list management. Yet nothing matters more. Success is all about the list.

What’s the big deal about the list?

Regardless of the role you play within your organization –member recruitment, external relations, media relations, fund development, marketing, sales, government relations, social media –all rely on tracking key contacts and developing new ones. All rely on a LIST!

A solid, up to date, complete list of contacts ensures a reliable audience for your message. Reaching out to a known audience is the only chance you have to be successful and meet your numbers. All other marketing activity is random at best. The time and attention you spend on cultivating your list –current contacts AND new ones –is the key to your success.

It’s all about the QUALITY of the list

So you have a list, you say? Is it any good? Do you even know? How often do you review it? It’s important to make the list a part of your organization or department’s weekly routine. Someone should be assigned the responsibility of tending to it, keeping it updated and relevant. And once you have a master list, it should be broken down into relevant sub-lists based on your business goals and the types of communications you intent to send. Current clients are on a different list than prospective clients. Your media contacts may need to be segmented by issue areas. It’s fine if people overlap and exist on multiple lists, but you need to have the ability to send targeted communication to your contacts that will be relevant to their own interests. Otherwise, they will ask to be taken off your list!

Flex the list

Once your list is in order it’s time to use it. Determine a schedule of communication activity and the types of content the members of your list will find most relevant. Then get to work being a resource. We’ll be writing more on content in the future –that’s not the point of this post. The bottom line is figure out how to best put your list to work for you. How often to use it and with what targeted groups.

Grow the list

Once you’ve started using your list you will start to see its value immediately, so the next question is how do you grow it? Every day, every week you should be adding potential clients and other “important contacts” to your list to expand your reach and the number of people who are exposed to your smart thinking and solutions.

And remember to remind yourself and your team regularly – it’s all about the list.

Of course, the tool is not an overnight rocket to widespread awareness for your firm. Over time though, with consistent interaction, more and more people will find your designs, interact with you and begin sharing your work.

Here are four ways to utilize your Houzz profile:

• Use it for project inspiration. The “ideabooks” feature can be really useful from a billable standpoint, all while building your audience. Search through Houzz for ideas and inspiration when you’re looking for design solutions, finish ideas, unique entry ways, whatever.
• Provide clients with more visuals. You can actually take this one step farther by using ideabooks FOR your clients. As you’re trying to sell a design or particular finish selection, you can create an ideabook just for that project and share the ideabook with your client to get their feedback and help paint the picture for them.
• Interact via discussions. There are plenty of great discussion threads that can build your audience and credibility. Don’t be afraid to answer questions.
• Continue to build the photo section. Put as many recent residential projects on there as you can and include descriptions. People search for things all the time and will begin asking you questions about certain products used, etc.

The fallout from an active Houzz presence can also include earned media, which is an added bonus in the social media world. With their own content and editorial team, Houzz actually recognizes popular designs/photos, features them in the blog and gives awards out annually. Increased mentions and attention turn directly into more web traffic and awareness for your firm. As with any successful online or social activity, it’s crucial to monitor and track as much of that success as possible with your web analytics.

Happy Houzzing!

1. Follow more target clients than peers

It’s easy to get caught up following other people that like the “same stuff” as you, but instead of keeping a stream of only architects and architecture firms, look for connections with your clients and their peers.

2. Read and interact with your clients’ trade pubs

If your firm practices commercial or retail architecture, identify trade publications that your clients may read. Following more of those types of accounts will make you a more valuable partner to your clients.

3. More fun, less funds

Don’t think about making money with every blog post or tweet. Have fun, share a little personality.

4. Try chatting after 5 pm

Connecting with clients on a personal level sometimes requires sharing or tweeting when you’re not in the office. We’re not talking about answering work email here, just remember that your clients care about their business even when they’re off the clock. Chime in every once in a while with a share or RT after 5.

5. Integrate your approach

Your website and your social media profiles aren’t two separate entities. In fact, they’re more like two stories in the same building. Make as many connections between your social media and your website as you can.

6. Monitor your web stats

If you don’t have Google Analytics (or something comparable), get it immediately. Knowing your most popular content, common search terms and traffic sources will help you create relevant future content.

7. Email can be social

Email marketing doesn’t stop with an open. Integrate your emails with social media platforms and consider repurposing email newsletters for blog posts.

8. Go beyond the big name tools

Start looking for blogs or online social communities that are more related to your clients and less generic. Houzz is a great example of a tool residential architecture firms can use with a much better impact than Facebook.

9. Solve a problem

If you want to prove that you care about your clients, help solve their problems when you aren’t getting paid. Creating a LinkedIn group for your clients to converge and converse can help them solve challenges while building your understanding of what your clients need.

10. Purge

If you’ve been active on Twitter and Facebook for a while, you’ve probably amassed a long list of likes and follows. Some of them are fantastic, while many may just be clogging your feed and distracting you. Twitter lists help organize your feed, but nothing is as easy as just plain deleting people. Don’t be afraid to clean up your accounts every once in a while.

One thing I see entirely too much of is completely useless homepages. Literally, the face for what could impact 97% of your client’s decisions is a barren wasteland of a screen with a cleverly placed firm name…maybe an address if you’re lucky. Fifteen years ago, as businesses were clamoring to “just get something up there” this might have cut it. But today, it’s a shot in the foot to architecture firms everywhere.

Regardless of where your architectural sensibilities fall on the form/function debate, your website doesn’t have to prove your point. Your homepage has a few seconds to impress people (to be read: potential clients) and convince them to hear or read what you have to say about design. USE IT. Here are five reasons why your homepage might not be doing its job.

• The majority of traffic to your website starts at your homepage, unless you’re doing a great job with custom landing pages and marketing campaigns for your architecture firm. Keep in mind that likely 40% or more of that traffic “bounces” immediately from the first page they see. Translation: 40% of the people that came to your website saw your firm name on a blank page, then left.
• If you have a one HTML page website with a bunch of Flash embedded circa the 90′s/early 00′s – you can likely assume that search engines see one page with very little (or no) info about your firm. That’s pretty much killing your firm in the SEO department.
• Thumbnails alone don’t cut it anymore. There’s nothing wrong with using the images themselves, but if your homepage is 95% empty with a few images on the screen – the impact of those thumbnails has been diminished significantly by current monitor resolutions/sizes.
• You may be unconventional, but most of your visitors probably aren’t. They need things like links back to your homepage and consistent positioning of nav. Hiding your navigation or making it difficult to stop a swooshing, sweeping, portfolio to see one project description won’t help even the most creative of clients realize how much they like you.
• Last, but not least – don’t make people wait! If you have a Flash (shudders) or heavily scripted homepage that takes a few seconds to load for you, assume it takes much longer for a first time visitor to your site. This is because, depending on how your site is built, certain aspects are saved or cached to speed up your browser’s load on the next time around. Compound that with the fact that all of your homepage content is contained in that fancy animation and you have potential clients looking at a blank screen for several seconds.

The dirty little secret is that every project isn’t making the cut for the next issue of (insert coffee table design magazine of choice here). In fact, MOST projects don’t make the cut and most firms don’t have a Hadid, Pei, Wright, etc. at the helm. And guess what, that’s ok!

To be enjoyable, fulfilling, marketable and highly successful, your work doesn’t have to be sexy. Well, at least it doesn’t have to be considered sexy by EVERYONE. It has to be considered sexy by your potential clients and more importantly by you. That means that you’re not trying to compete with the museum design firm down the street to win the next warehouse job, even if they’re going after it against you. You just have to share your value, your skills and your experience in language that the client understands and needs to hear. You have to solve the challenges they have, not wow them with a bunch of stuff they didn’t ask for.

Mechanical and Electrical Engineering firms often get caught up in this as well, assuming that there isn’t much of a story to tell in their work beyond a few bullet points with square footage and technical info. That’s just not the case.

The story is there, and it’s what your clients and partners need to hear to select you for the next project. It’s explaining your project scope and effort as a series of challenges that are similar to the ones they are likely examining in the next project RIGHT NOW. It’s being bold enough to use targeted, client-specific language that may alienate others but will set you apart as an expert in their project. It’s realizing that a photo and description of a huge data center or server room may put some people to sleep, but will impress the clients that have been trying to solve their uptime challenges for months now.

Some people like glasses, some like brunettes, some like surfers, some like librarians. Whether your portfolio represents the sports car or the smart car – your clients will think it’s sexy if you position it right, and you’re talking to the right clients.

The DC rankings are here. View the rules here.

I love a good competition as much as the next person, I really do. But after numerous requests to vote for companies in a social media contest (many that use social media poorly), I have to ask “why?”

If you just started a Facebook page, have a dozen or so followers on Twitter and have a blog with ten or fifteen posts…why enter a social media contest? Why not get your “sea legs” and find your voice a little bit before entering a competition? Why not spend additional time building connections with your audience, friends, fans and followers?

I don’t want to take away from some of the awesome firms and businesses in the competition – there are some great ones. But as marketers, we tout the use of social media to build connections, to enhance dialog with our clients and potential clients, to build our brands…and much more.

Furthermore, we often seek to shift the focus away from fan counts, ROI (as it relates to direct sales) and other short-term metrics to emphasize the long-term value of our web presence and client loyalty.

Can we accurately say “it’s not about the number of fans” to management in one breath, while pleading for votes and fans in the other?

I believe strongly that the practice of social media is about the quality of interaction, not the quantity. The award or reward comes from your clients’ feedback and the additional dialog you can develop with industry professionals, not from a promise of exposure for your social media accounts to a mixed bag of readers. What makes sense for a small residential architecture firm does not makes sense for a large commercial contractor – or a restaurant, IT consultant or a membership association for that matter.

30x30x30 – Student Design Competition: Architect’s Workstation of the Future

This competition “takes me back” to architecture school. It poses a fantastic challenge for students from six area universities to create an architect’s workstation of the future with some very specific design criteria.

• 30 Sq. Ft: The installation must fit within a foot print no larger than 30 square feet, with a maximum dimension of 5’- 0” in the smaller direction – a challenge in the judicious use of space.
• 30 Dollars: The mock-up submission must cost $30 or less to create – a challenge in the re-use and re-purposing of materials.
• 30 Miles: All materials used in the installation must be sourced within 30 miles of your school campus – a challenge to be local.

The entries will be judged on the Convention floor.

Could Be: The AIA|DC Awards for Unbuilt Architecture

This year is the fourth year of the AIA|DC Unbuilt Competition. The winners of this year’s competition were announced last month and are now on display in the exhibition Could Be: The AIA|DC Awards for Unbuilt Architecture at the District Architecture Center’s SIGAL Gallery. The awards recognize and celebrate projects that have been prevented or delayed from realization, as well as concepts that are entirely theoretical.

The exhibition includes winners from the previous three years of the program as well, and is organized by the National Building Museum and presented in partnership with The American Institute of Architects, AIA Legacy, ARCHITECT Magazine, Hanley Wood, the Washington Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA|DC), and the Washington Architectural Foundation. Award winning projects will be displayed at the District Architecture Center’s SIGAL Gallery until June 30th, so make your way off of the convention floor to go take a peek!

2012 Constance Whitaker Maffin Memorial Competition

The Washington Architectural Foundation and the Constance Whitaker Maffin Foundation will present the 2012 Constance Whitaker Maffin Memorial Competition Award to a student from Phelps Architecture, Construction, and Engineering (Phelps ACE) High School during the convention. Students from the DC high school, their families and faculty will attend the award ceremony, and competition entries will be on display prior to the awards ceremony.

This competition required students to design an outdoor performance space on the Southwest Washington waterfront. The overall goal of the competition is to raise awareness among students about the built environment and public space. The competition also provides students experience in planning and design, motivates them to use analytical skills and creativity in problem solving and inspires community action.

The 2012 Constance Whitaker Maffin Memorial Competition Awards will be presented at 3 PM on May 18 at the AIA|DC Salon, Booth 2627.