SEO

architecture 1

Considerations for Marketing Your Architecture Firm

Considerations for Marketing Your Architecture Firm 1700 537 Shout Out Studio

You’ve worked hard to build your firm’s reputation in the architecture industry. But now, you may want to enter a new market—or simply grow your business. As competition increases, you may be finding it harder to rise above the noise. 

Whether your key challenge is attracting the right types of clients, closing sales, growing a new line of business, entering a new market, or moving into a niche, strategically marketing your architecture firm can help get you to where you need to be. But, like with the spaces you design, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Let’s explore a few areas of opportunity where you can get more from your marketing.

Branding


Branding vs. Marketing

If marketing is the what and how, branding is the why—why you exist, why clients should believe in you, why first impressions lead to RFIs and RFPs. Brand is more than a name or logo; it’s the firm’s values, philosophy, positioning, and promise–the foundation upon which effective marketing is built. 

For architectural firms, a clearly defined brand that accurately reflects the people and purpose behind the work can fuel marketing communications and attract more of the right kind of client partners. Brand perception may feel abstract, but the results are quite real.

A recent BCG + Google study revealed that “companies with strong brands show a
74% higher return on their marketing investment,and hold a 46% larger market share,
than weaker brands.”

The case for strong branding is clear—it helps connect with your clients emotionally, can create clarity for your internal team, and, most importantly, gets you recognized by potential customers.

SEO


Be Where The Search Begins

More than 60 percent of all B2B relationships begin with an online search. Do you know where your firm ranks in Google’s search results? Pull up an incognito tab in Google and search “architecture firm” and “your city.” If you aren’t on the first page, there’s marketing work to be done, and that work begins with the right SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. A marketing partner can create a customized plan that considers all of the factors that influence SEO ranking including content, links, domain authority, and more. Improving your ranking for searches related to your firm’s services can help drive high-quality leads at certain points in the decision-making cycle. 

Important Note: Marketing is not a one-time thing you do–it’s a long game. It doesn’t happen overnight or with the click of a mouse. It takes sustained effort to see results. For sustainable growth to occur for your architecture firm, you have to keep your marketing engine running. But the good news is that you don’t have to waste time on tactics that won’t be effective. 


Let’s work together to craft a
custom marketing plan!

content


Build an Audience

So where can you build your audience? The better question is: Where should you build you audience? The answer to that will depend on your brand positioning, target audience, and many other factors. Maybe Architectok needs another star. Then again, LinkedIn tends to work best to engage B2B audiences. Choosing the right social media platforms to engage your unique audience and drive them to your website is essential. 

You may be wondering if your firm needs a social media presence. Regardless of how you feel about using it in your personal life, when you look at it through a business lens, it’s valuable, as 40% of B2B buyers use social media to help inform their purchasing decisions, according to a recent Gartner Digital Markets Insights.

While your business won’t be a fit for every social platform out there, the visual nature of your business makes social an ideal place to give your audience the first look at a new design and to show off your completed projects. Building your audience, learning what resonates with them, and doing more of it is how to nurture your audience and move them closer to contract.

design


Educate Your Prospects

If your architecture firm is like most, at any one moment in time, about 90% of your prospects are in the information-gathering stage. We know that, from years of marketing research, this is the most critical time to engage your prospectand not with a hard sell. 

Most architects don’t long to be salespeople in addition, but one thing we find that many architects loveand are usually really great atis educating. Audiences love to hear architects discuss their philosophy, their process and share details about the projects they have brought to life. Digital marketing can bring these personal stories to the masses and promote your firm simultaneously. For architects resistant to appearing on social media, it may require a simple mindshift from thinking of marketing as selling to thinking of it as educating. This shift has made the difference for many architects who struggle with the “s” word (selling). Marketing is educating! Say it with us!  

Now that you have your educator’s hat on, think about the questions that your prospects have while gathering information online. What can you teach themthat they want to knowthat could make your firm stand out? That information can form the basis of your firm’s new content (articles, videos, social media posts, blogs, etc.). If done correctly, all of that educating will drive new traffic to your website, increase your rank in search results and land you more of the right kind of inquiries. 

Just by sharing the information prospective clients want to know (and some things they haven’t thought of yet), you will have gotten them to your website, where the right conten

Marketing Your Architecture Firm


Wow Them with Your Website

Your website should accurately reflect your brand and your work and encourage prospective clients to reach out for a conversation. It’s important to note that the nature of your business carries higher expectations for the website experience. Much like successful architectural design, the website should strike the right balance of form and function, and the quality should align with the quality of the work you produce for your clients. It’s an opportunity to translate your firm’s brand values to digital.

In this industry, proof points are important. Your website is the ideal place to showcase large, quality images of your work, speak to process and approach, as well as highlight the talent behind the output. An experienced marketing agency will ensure your website not only reflects your brand, but is also user friendly, visually appealing, and informational.


Choose The Right Partner

In the end, marketing is just like any other aspect of your business: it takes time, effort, and resources to succeed. That said, the rewards of successful online marketing can be great. The right marketing agency can help you boost your brand, grow your business, and generate leads to change the trajectory of your architecture business.

Whether your marketing team needs support or you are the marketing team, a highly skilled, knowledgeable marketing partner can tailor a custom strategy to your firm that aligns with your business goals.

Let’s discuss how we can create a tailored marketing strategy together. Contact us.

group of people sitting around a conference room table talking about SEO

Understanding SEO, What Senior Executives Need To Know

Understanding SEO, What Senior Executives Need To Know 1440 773 Shout Out Studio

If they haven’t already, someone is going to tell you, “We need to spend money on SEO to improve our search rankings on Google.” There are a few things you need to consider when that happens.

Understanding SEO; in a nutshell, SEO does two basic things. First, it ensures that your website can be seen by search engines and technically matches what those engines expect to find; the technological crossing of T’s and dotting of I’s.

It’s the second SEO function that people are usually more interested in— : achieving higher placement in search engine results.

Understanding SEO

What really helps boost Google rankings is not SEO–it’s content marketing!

When businesses want better search rankings, they usually look for a quick fix. There isn’t one. The only way to get the Google placement you want is to consistently create valuable content with which your target market regularly engages.

That means, to achieve better Google rankings, you must commit to regular, ongoing content creation like blog articles, social media posts, and publication outreach. That commitment means you must have—or find– the resources to sustain it all.

This is where SEO really contributes to its own success. It provides answers to the following key questions: What content does my target market want? What relevant Google searches should include my company in the results? What searches are my competitors capturing? And what content will it take to “out-Google” them? SEO research can give you those answers and more. It’s the have-to-have tool to inform your content strategy.

Successful content marketing involves incredibly detailed planning.

Effective research is the key, but it takes the right software, clear goals, and the know-how to analyze the data and make a plan to achieve the results and better rankings you want. The right tool (we use SEMRush) in the experienced hands of the right team can take you where you want to go, delivering both upfront research and follow-on analytics.

Through research you’ll learn:

  • Phrases/words your potential customers use to search for your product or service.
  • How many frequently those keywords/phrases are used, in each search engine, in your country, state, and/or city.
  • The competitive landscape for those keywords. You can bet there are others who are intentionally or inadvertently drawing traffic by using the same words you are targeting. Which words/phrases are less competitive? Let us tell you.
  • Which keywords are your competitors using and how to best co-opt them for your purposes
  • Which keywords have the highest probability of leading people to your website?

Like content creation, effective SEO research is an ongoing process of discovery and analysis. Trends will emerge over time, and with the right resources in place, your position in Google’s results will improve. (By the way, if you’re into techno-lingo, they’re called SERPs: Search Engine Results Pages.)

Optimizing the content you create is also a must to improve search engine rankings.

A lot of technical details matter here – where your keywords fall on a page, how many times they are used in an article, more specifics than you could possibly keep track of — and they’re all important. Once again, the right tools allow us to guarantee that all content is optimized for every page, blog article, and image on your website.

Understanding SEO

A brief message about Organic vs. Paid Traffic, or Content vs. Ads

Ads, particularly promoted posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram ads, or Google ads, should absolutely be included in your content marketing strategy. Just remember that they have little-to-no shelf life. The second you stop spending money on them, they disappear.

Great content, however, can have an incredibly long shelf life and will continue to draw search engine traffic for as long as it is on your website. Knowing this is essential to understanding SEO and how it works.

While Google Ads can be a shortcut to the top-of-the-page it just will not perform as well as organic in terms of CTR (click-through rate). With 80% of all searches on Google leading to a click on pages one, two, or three, that means all those Google ads are fighting for the remaining 20% of traffic.

My final comment on organic versus paid traffic depends on the users’ intent. When people go to Google, they search with specific intent. Conversion rate data show a big difference between ad results (1.5% for B2B) and organic content results (2.6%). That difference translates to a 73% better conversion rate for organic traffic.

The End Game, Understanding SEO

Many executives and their well-meaning advisors misunderstand where and when to fold SEO into the marketing mix. While it plays a valuable role in effective marketing planning and execution, SEO is not some magic silver bullet guaranteed to get you the highest search engine results. SEO is part of the puzzle, a tool, for defining the correct content in your overall marketing strategy.

Interested in a cup of coffee and a conversation?

Every client relationship we have started with a simple conversation, usually over coffee, we love to brainstorm and answer questions. If you have any please let us know…we’ll spring for the coffee.

4reviews

Local Search & the Link to Online Reviews

Local Search & the Link to Online Reviews 1920 703 Shout Out Studio

For most companies, it’s not so much a question of if managing your brand’s online reputation is important; it’s more a question of “where does online reputation management fall on my list of priorities?” It’s a fair question. To which the answer is, while there are many facets to reputation management, the best place to start is the area with the greatest opportunity.

leavingreview1

More than 10 billion searches are conducted on Google every month. That’s a monster number, and many of those searches involve someone looking for a particular type of business or service. In fact, 92% of consumers regularly read online reviews to learn about a business,1 but here’s the catch; 94% of people only look at the first page of Google search results. 1 It’s easy to see just how crucial that first-page ranking can be, and therein lies the opportunity–on the first page of all those local searches.

Consider this scenario. It’s a Friday evening, and you’re craving sushi but want to change it up from your local go-to spot. You search online, “sushi restaurants near me.” Essentially your goal is two things: determine what’s near you and what’s good.

An ad appears and a few initial listings. Instinctively you start scanning the listings to help make your selection. You start at the top browsing ratings and reviews, likely the pictures too. You notice Akai Hana with 1,102 reviews and a 4.7 rating. Good, right? You scan a few reviews and see someone recommends Sukiyaki, and you’re sold at that point. Problem solved, dinner ordered. What you didn’t notice, had you kept scrolling, was restaurant X with only two reviews and a 3.0-star rating. And that’s not uncommon.

There are several reasons for the search results you receive, but research suggests online reviews are now the second most important factor for local rankings.2  Much like fresh content is vital for SEO, so are reviews. Search engines factor in your review profile (including quality and quantity) when calculating where your business will show in the search results. Obviously, the higher the rating out of 5 stars, the better. What most folks don’t expect is that your reviews need to be recent and high volume as well, especially in comparison to your competitors. “When you acquire [reviews] regularly, they provide a constant influx of fresh content for the search engine spiders to digest.”2

leavingreview

More than ever, consumers are looking for signals of trust, and what people say about your brand builds credibility. Often, companies fail to cultivate their good reviews and what remains online as a representation of the business are those few negative experiences. Train staff and team members to ask customers in-person. Provide links on your website, email signature, newsletters, thank pages, or on receipts. You can even ask for feedback on social media.

Want to continue the conversation on customer feedback? Reach out to learn more about our review generation process.

Untitled design 12

The Incredible Power of Online Reviews

The Incredible Power of Online Reviews 1920 950 Shout Out Studio

Everyone has a story about online reviews; some are good and well, some aren’t.

So before we take a deeper dive, let’s go to the board for a few stats.

  • 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses – Source
  • 94% of consumers read online reviews; they trust reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family
  • 89% purchase within a week of visiting review sites and 29 percent will do so within a day
  • 82% of consumers go to review sites because they want to buy a service or product
  • 80% of consumers will reverse a purchase decision based on negative reviews

Reviews matter…

Blogimage2

Negative Reviews

Once a negative review is in place, no matter what anyone tells you it is virtually impossible to get it removed unless you can demonstrably prove it is fraudulent. We actually had this happen and someone we had never done business with, or even heard of, left a negative review on Google. No matter how much we went through Google customer service, they deemed it a legitimate review and would not provide any relief. We wound up having to write a response to the reviewer saying “…we don’t recognize your name and have no record of doing business with you. Please contact us so we can address this for you.” They took it down without discussion.

Negative reviews have a direct impact on the bottom line. Here are some specifics.

Effectively the only way to manage bad reviews is to get in front of them. By this, I mean to identify potentially negative reviews and respond to the customer/reviewer before it is published. It can be done, and we can discuss that later.

In a study conducted by BrightLocal they found that a single negative review can cost a company up to thirty customers, and in a similar study Moz found that three negative reviews can drive away up to fifty-nine percent of customers. Eighty-Six percent of people will hesitate before purchasing form a business that has any bad online reviews.

blogadcropped2

Positive Reviews

Online reviews drive local traffic. Ninety-Seven percent of consumers use the internet to find local businesses, and three in four people who use their smartphones to search for something nearby end up visiting a local business within a day. While traffic to retail businesses is down fifty-seven percent in the past five years, the value of every visit has tripled.

Grade.US found that happy customers tend to share their experience with up to fifteen individuals, and when you get those good reviews, they actually add to your revenue stream. Companies experience a revenue increase of between nine and twelve percent with a one-star rating increase on Yelp. Sixty-eight percent of customers will leave a review when asked.

And finally, negative reviews are not all bad, seventy-two percent of B2B buyers say negative reviews give depth and insight into a product or service offering, and if handled correctly they provide a great opportunity for a response that demonstrates your company’s values. Over seventy percent of consumers who have a problem resolved satisfactorily will buy from that business again.

Blogimage1

The Formula

So there are a few basics you need to achieve.

  • At least a 4.0 rating on the respective platform with a minimum of 40 reviews per platform
  • Current/fresh reviews that have been created in the last thirty days
  • Respond to every single review your organization receives, good or bad.
  • Embrace customer feedback as a core value for your company, listen, learn, improve, and prevail.

The Way to Get There

There are a lot of ways to engage customers and manage reviews. We prefer a system to do such and bowline that this approach provides a simple and effective manner to engage customers for feedback. The platform we use allows businesses to leverage positive reviews and mitigate potentially negative ones across up to severely review platforms.When integrated into ongoing communications efforts, it can drive significant change to an organization’s online ratings.

…and finally

One final comment to consider, reviews count for 15.44% percent of your Google SEO…and it’s growing. – Source

How User Experience Can Affect Pagerank

How User Experience Affects Page Rank

How User Experience Affects Page Rank 1920 703 Shout Out Studio

This year marks a shift for what factors in on-page optimization are most affective for search engine rank. Some of the items have been closing in from a distance for a few years now, but 2015 has allowed them to take shape. Google (and Bing and Yahoo) are taking a more holistic approach to how your pages and sites are ranked. Investing in their user experience has become increasingly important, if not the most important factor, for making sure your potential clients, customers, and audiences can find you.

What factors indicate a user’s experience?

  • Site speed – Users want a snappy site. The top ranked sites load in 2 seconds or less, and most users will leave after 3 seconds. Tools like GTMetrix can help you analyze how quick your site is loading, and what factors may be slowing it down. Upgrading server technology, using a CDN, and optimizing images are just a few of the ways to increase response time.
  • Security –  If you have an e-commerce site, or are exchanging sensitive information, installing an SSL certificate is a necessity. Adding encryption will help gain your clients and customers trust and confidence.
  • Responsive – No surprise, but mobile usage is on the rise. Search engines not only rank pages optimized for mobile higher, but decreases the rank for any page that is not responsive.
  • Topics – Users are no longer just searching for keywords. Were they ever? They want answers and solutions. Providing that information to your audience is a great way to see your rank increased. Things like proof and relevant terms have becoming increasingly evident on top ranked sites.
  • Images and Videos – Content that includes original images and video is more dynamic and more likely to be shared via social media. Don’t miss this opportunity to make an impact.
  • Readability – Font size matters. Sites that used consistent font size across their pages were ranked higher. Information structured using bullet and number lists also help users digest information.
  • Interactive elements – Top ranked sites also use buttons, graphics, and streamlined navigation to help guide their audience and structure their content.
  • Contact – Including a Contact and About page signals to search engines that you are authentic and interested in engaging your audience, clients, and customers.
  • Time – Bounce rates and time spent on a site are indicative to search engines to the relevance and usefulness of your content. Longer visits mean higher ranking. High Bounce rates can lower rank.
  • Social signals – Social signals continue to be important. Facebook being the biggest indicator followed by Google+. Backlinks from social media are considered trusted links and highly prioritized by search engines.
  • Ads – Including too many ads, or having ads above the fold of your site can now hurt your rank.

Thoughts on these new trends? It seems a departure from SEO strategies of the past. Keywords and URLS continue to lose their punch while qualified content and social media continue to gain steam. I appreciate the twist. I like it because it allows sites who take care of their audience and users to rank higher than companies who have just learned how to play the page rank game.

 

Page rank data from search metrics

Mobile Site

Google Makes Mobile Site Mandatory

Google Makes Mobile Site Mandatory 1920 700 Marsh Williams

Well it’s now official. If you don’t have a website that is mobile friendly you’ll be harder to find on Google.

After months of proclaiming the importance of having a mobile website, Google has finally implemented their changes that make a mobile site mandatory as part of a company’s SEO strategy. Up until last week, Google operated on the honor system allowing companies to just say their site was mobile friendly, but no more. Now Google is the sole arbiter of this issue and no longer will just take a company’s word for it.

So what’s the impact?

Effective last week searches from a smartphone will include the term—mobile friendly—in the results. By including this tag Google is betting that companies will work to make sure their site is verified as mobile friendly: that’s the carrot. There is also a stick, as the new algorithm rolls out over the next several weeks, sites that are not defined as mobile friendly will be dropped down in the search engine results list. While this is not stated specifically it is pretty much guaranteed it will happen.

However there is a silver lining here. The days of having to have a separate website done in mobile format are behind us. Many content management systems, like WordPress offer a 2-for-1 capability. Any site constructed with these tools should be set up to be “responsive.” This means that you can have one website which automatically reformats for the device being used to view it, meaning there is no longer a need to have separate desktop and mobile websites.

If you’d like to know how your site ranks use this link and enter your domain name.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

If you need other reasons to value a mobile website consider the following:

  • Mobile traffic leads the Internet
  • Companies with responsive design websites reduce their bounce rate by 11% on average
  • 66% of all email is opened on a mobile device, think what it means for a client to open an email on their smartphone and not be able to read your website when they click there.
  • In a 2013 survey Google reported that 90% of executives used their mobile devices for research and 34% said they abandoned sites that were not responsive
dictionary

Digital Marketing Terms Defined

Digital Marketing Terms Defined 880 461 Shout Out Studio

If you’re new to digital marketing, you may find yourself in a world full of unfamiliar acronyms and jargon. It can seem intimidating, confusing, and even exclusionary. But, most of the time it’s a way for marketers to communicate with each other in the most efficient way possible. Knowing some of what it means can help you as your company enters a digital marketing venture. Below is a list of commonly used terms you will come across in digital marketing, and what they mean. By familiarizing yourself with these terms, you can feel confident moving forward with your companies marketing goals.

B2B:

Business to Business refers to business interactions that occur between two businesses. It is the way goods or services are exchanged between two companies. This is usually part of the development or manufacturing of one company’s consumer goods.

B2C:

Business to Consumer is similar to B2B. A business to consumer transaction is when a consumer buys a final product or service from a company for use.

CTA:

A Call to Action is a something on your company’s website that grabs the attention of a viewer and invites them to view another part of your site. It can be something like a banner or button, such as a “Learn More”  button at the end of a paragraph, inviting the viewer to continue reading. In other words, it is a lead or a prompt.

Bounce Rate:

This is the percentage of people who visit one page on your site but leave it without visiting any other page. It is better to retain a viewer’s attention and get them interested enough to visit more of your site.

Blog:

A blog is what you are currently reading. For a business, it is a chance to self-promote. You can put out original content, create site traffic, and grab the attention of potential clients. It’s a good way to interact with your audience by starting a conversation.

Brand: 

In marketing, a brand does not just refer to your logo or tagline. It is identifying what you want the target audiences’ perception of your company to be, and how your company’s voice reflects that image.

ROI:

Return on Investment basically comes down to getting the biggest bang for your buck. You want to see results, and developing a strategy geared towards providing ROI (Return on Investment) is the first place to start.

SEO: 

Search Engine Optimization is the visibility of your site in a search engine’s “natural,”  or unpaid, results. The better your site’s SEO is, the more views it will get from this “organic”  traffic.

SEM:

Search Engine Marketing is the promotion and SEO development to increase site visibility.

UX:

UX is an acronym for User Experience. In terms of digital marketing, this is the experience your visitors will have when they visit your site. User experience takes into account the actions you’d like the user to take and the information you’d like them to obtain. The more they enjoy that experience, the more likely they are to spend time looking at what you have to offer.

While this is not a complete list, it can give you a better understanding of what’s being discussed in digital marketing. In the fast-changing culture of the Internet, and therefore digital marketing, it is nice to have a base of reference to lean back on.

Photo Credit: MrPhilDog

© 2024 Shout Out Studio, LLC
Skip to content