It’s a new year and that means it’s time for content creators all across the world wide web to forecast what the new trends and expectations will be for the architecture and design world! If you haven’t seen all of the posts, here’s one, here’s another on construction growth, here’s a color forecast, and well…here’s one about chunky knitting in interiors.

What does that mean for us? Will it be more of the same in 2015 or a brave new world? We decided to create a post about trends in architecture marketing also – but not in a “we’re predicting the future” kind of way. So, here are:

Five Architecture Marketing Trends that Won’t Change in 2015

  1. Your Marketing Will Require Time from Senior/Billable People
    Marketing for your firm can’t sit on cruise control and it can’t rest solely on the shoulders of ‘others’. Regardless of the size of your firm, effective marketing for architecture and engineering firms requires the involvement of senior team members with technical or design background. This is because marketing in 2015, just like in 2014, is not about a catchy headline and pretty picture, nor does it rely on proposals – it must come from authentic knowledge and expertise that is then packaged, presented and disseminated to a particular client-type.
  2. Chasing Funding Will Leave You Out of Breath
    This is a tough point to argue for many senior professionals. However, if the last few years of industry activity have told us (and our clients) anything, it has been that building a focused marketing platform on the basis of your expertise, your passion and your strategic goals is much more successful than chasing market trends and budget projections. The same will be true moving forward. This is not to say you should ignore market forecasts, but chasing a big budget all the way to a client that you’ve never talked to before is rarely effective.
  3. Data Is STILL Important
    Marketing decisions can no longer be made based on what used to happen or what we THINK used to happen. Perhaps one of the best things about marketing in 2014 was that the data got even better! SEO is more accurate and authentic than ever before. Increased online efforts mean increased metrics of everything. Advertising can be purchased for $20 and we can be sure that it’s seen by 1,000 people before we spend the next $20. Views, visits, followers, downloads, leads…pretty much everything we do can be tracked as we kick off 2015. The challenge moving forward for architecture and engineering firms is to continue to refine the data and make the connections between data sets more sophisticated.
  4. So Is Your Website
    We can’t talk about marketing, we can’t talk about data, we can’t talk about getting press, we can’t talk about referrals…without talking about your website. In 2014 we finally started to see a drop-off in firms and new clients saying, “We’re embarrassed by our website. It’s something we put together ten years ago just as a placeholder and it’s been limping along ever since.” The same will be true this year. Your website is crucial and DOES in fact lead to new business, help close the deal with referrals and much, much more. 2015 will continue to be more of the same – clients will use the web to inform their buying decisions.
  5. Competition Will Continue to Increase
    …but not really. Firms are trending smaller and a large number of professionals started their own firms/design businesses over the last five to ten years (for a variety of reasons – layoffs, lack of career advancement, design control). This trend will stick around in 2015. However, there are a few factors that make the increased number of firms irrelevant when it comes to your firm winning work. First, the more focused you are on the appropriate target market, the more clear the buying decision will be for your clients. Your messaging, your marketing, your portfolio and your SEO will all eliminate a majority of the clutter from being seen as legitimate competition if they’re all done in concert. Additionally, what we’ve seen in many of the new firms is a break from the traditional “architecture-only” service model. A lot of new architecture firms aren’t necessarily practicing architecture at all, but are looking to apply their expertise as consultants, property investors, industrial designers, etc. This means the concept of who is and is not a competitor has been completely reframed within the industry.

So what will it be for your firm in 2015? How will your marketing improve given the ever-changing landscape of the rest of the industry?