6 Top Public Relations Tips for Your Architectural Firm
Last update: 3 October 2023 at 03:29 pm
3.00/5The success of any firm boils down to attracting the right client to the business. And to do so, investing in solid marketing strategies is inevitable.
Not only does marketing help in establishing a strong presence in the architectural marketplace, but it also makes you capable of rubbing shoulders with the more high-paying clients.
Establishing a PR strategy that syncs seamlessly with your architecture marketing plan is crucial. It helps in making a great first impression of your brand on prospective clients.
What is the need for PR in architectural firms?
In architectural firms, strategic public relations give the visionaries chances to display their accomplishments seamlessly.
PR can be anything from how a call is answered to publishing your thoughts online or in magazines. Anything that you might put out for the public to see is PR.
The mediums of PR, including print or online, are where you present your work for people to judge or to make connections in your area of expertise.
For instance, your in-house team might work hard to develop designs that engage, inspires, and exhilarates potential clients. A good news article will capture the essence of this hard work and put it in front of prospective clients.
Compared to the various companies in the building industries, architects are always on top when it comes to imagination. PR will help portray the work you have done with full description and images, helping you create trust, loyalty, and brand image.
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Find an agency!Positive impacts of PR on your architecture firm
As mentioned above, PR is the art of manipulating public opinion through information distribution and management from an organization or individual to the general public. In this world where global connectivity is appreciated, PR helps in developing routes to business survival.
Listed below are a few reasons why PR may prove beneficial for your architectural firm –
Manage brand reputation
A good brand reputation is essential for any type of business, including the architectural industry, and public relations strategies help in managing just that.
The job of reputation management PR is to reduce negative information about your brand from the internet. For instance, removing bad online reviews and testimonies, write-ups, or responding to customer feedback.
Continuous communication and proactivity are key to successful corporate PR brand management.
PR can assist you in addressing negative publicity on time and effectively, which in turn can help protect your brand’s reputation and build a positive image for the company.
Achieve organizational goals
While there are many uses of PR, most importantly, it helps with seamless communication with your customers and new clients.
Many organizations allocate a dedicated budget to PR, stating that it is the most crucial communication channel to attain organizational goals. And this is what you might do when facing strategic issues or challenges with the organization.
Besides helping you communicate with all your stakeholders like customers, employees, and shareholders, PR makes communication with media easy, too.
Creates and retain brand image
PR is the most common aspect of the marketing strategy, given it helps in effectively reaching new audiences while creating a positive image of the company in the marketplace.
A good brand image is imperative to run an architectural firm, and PR helps in creating just that.
PR can help you gain an edge over your competitors, build customer loyalty, encourage word-of-mouth marketing, and more. It can also help generate publicity for the services and products you offer, thereby helping you increase your sales.
Remain up-to-date with trends
There are new trends making their way into the architectural industry regularly. If you aren’t aware of these trends, you might lose huge benefits because you won’t able to include those in your offerings, services, or marketing strategies.
Thankfully, with architecture PR, you can stay up-to-date with the new, emerging trends. Your PR agency would be able to analyze new trends and help you adapt to these changes with effective communication.
PR is essential to stay on top of the market.
Top 6 PR tips your architecture firm needs
By now, you might know the benefits of promoting your architectural firm’s work through all possible mediums including word-of-mouth, networking, and social media. However, you will only yield positive results if all the right steps are followed.
Attracting the right set of clients requires more than just an understanding of PR. It requires you to be creative and witty with your ideas, too. Here are some effective tips that might come in handy in making the most out of architecture public relations strategies –
Establish a strong brand presence
In order to make your architecture firm really noticed, your brand will have to be present on all the right platforms. Same way, you will require targeting the right audience using a variety of advertising strategies.
A well-designed website is a good starting point. But to showcase your firm’s uniqueness, you will require investing in other advertising mediums, including social media, press releases, blogging, print publications, and newsletters.
Besides using a myriad of platforms available for you to market your firm, you should be willing to get up close and personal with your brand’s story and history, too. This means you will require communicating with your potential client in a way that reverberates with them.
For instance, what you think as an architecture may not match your client’s thinking. Having a reliable PR strategy in place that caters to your client’s individual needs while sharing your brand’s good story can go a long way. This will also help retain and attract the right new clients for your services.
The notion is to position your firm as a thought leader or forerunner in the architecture world. Even though your clientele might differ a lot, in the end, they may all need the same thing from you. They need to know that they have hired the right firm for their architectural design needs, with an excellent market presence. You convince them of that and a lot more.
Hire an excellent photographer for media relations
Without visuals, you may not be able to convince your clients about your competence. Hence, it is important to have a professional hand who can help you capture your skills and expertise at work.
A professional photographer can help you put together excellent visual material that you can present at media relations gatherings, meetings, and while networking with clients.
The best thing about a visual portfolio is that it helps in keeping your story forward without you having to specify the same. In other words, visuals show people how great your work is and how competent you are in the field.
Besides helping you attract new clients, an independent photographer can help you with digital marketing on numerous platforms. In short, your investment in architectural photography will pay for itself. Just ensure that you hire a professional photographer who has a good knowledge of working with architecture.
The importance of networking
It is common to see architects having in-depth technical knowledge, but when it comes to conveying this information in an interesting or articulate manner, they lack the expertise.
With architecture public relations, you can create a myriad of opportunities to communicate with your community effectively – perhaps a little investment in public speaking training can go a long way.
Even though digital communication is at its peak, people still prefer engaging face-to-face for interior design. Your clients might want to hear what your suggestions, thoughts, ideas, etc., are directly from you to establish trust. Public speaking, media opportunities, and other mediums can be used to keep your thoughts in front of your clients easily.
By conveying your past projects or new concepts in an alluring manner, you will need only half the time to network and land the same amount of new projects or clients. If your entire team possesses this skill set, imagine how many excellent business opportunities you can land.
Think like a media professional
In this digital era, investing in both traditional media strategy and digital media coverage is crucial. From print media to website, blog coverage online, print magazines, and more – they could all help in gaining more credibility for your firm.
Don’t forget to get on the target customer’s mailing list to constantly remind them how your brand looks, what you do, and how they can benefit from working with you.
Keep in mind, when compared to print publications, digital coverage has a longer shelf life and can be shared with endless amounts of people through various platforms across geographical locations.
Creating and maintaining a pleasant relationship with the media by providing them with vital information on industry happenings, quotes, and details of the new changes in the fraternity will be appreciated immensely.
Working with a reliable PR agency can help you contact relevant media at the right time. Also, don’t forget to use Twitter to reach the right influencers and publications who passionately talk about the news of your industry.
Analyze the usage of social media
One in three people worldwide uses social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc. This means you have an immense opportunity to promote your firm on these platforms.
However, you can be selective of which platform you actually want. This way, you can maximize the effectiveness of the platforms you use and prevent resource wastage on social media sites that do not support your firm’s goals and objectives.
Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are the most potent visual platforms for architecture social media. But LinkedIn is the strongest candidate for your business-to-business needs.
It can also allow your design firm to appear as an industry expert. Irrespective of which platform you choose, all of them are capable of showcasing your awards, people, and completed projects through high-resolution images and videos.
Remember, it can take a lot of time to create the content. Thankfully, there are ways to maximize your channels and use the number of services available to optimize and streamline your brand’s social presence.
- Linktree helps in optimizing the Instagram bio. This means you can place relevant information and links in your bio section, allowing users to access them easily.
- To plan ahead of time, you can use Hootsuite. This impressive platform makes it easy to develop and schedule your post for an entire month and even manage multiple accounts simultaneously with it.
- Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn allow you to make sponsored posts about specific properties, projects, or thought leaders so you can easily target audiences that aren’t a part of your social media network or following. You can create a modest budget for each campaign and geotarget them, thereby helping these posts reach specific professionals, geographies, and industries easily.
Getting your architecture public relations started
While it is evident that PR strategies help in reaching your target audience, building credibility, and encouraging customer loyalty, you must know that no two PR strategies will appear the same.
It is best to work closely with your service provider to determine the unique goals and objectives and potential client pool of your architectural business. A reliable service-providing PR agency will help you better strategize architecture public relations around those key business opportunities.
