Build A Client Generating Machine For Your Architecture & Interior Design Firm

In this article I will show you how to never worry about where your next client is coming from I will show you how to turn your architecture and interior design website into a machine that prints and generates clients on demand, whenever you need more supply and as much as your practice can handle. The first thing that comes to mind is the quality right?

Maybe you've never tried to generate leads online, or maybe you have and the quality was terrible. They either ghost you or you get trash leads for low quality projects from clients that don't even value your work and effort. Or worse, you get leads that want you to design a tv cabinet for them. Here you will learn how to: 1. Get PAYING clients, not just dead leads. 2. Get clients that actually want YOU and ones that YOU want to work with. I am an architectural designer that spent most his career growing and marketing for a luxury interior design practice. So this is very personal to me.

Having been a self-taught marketer combined with my professional design skills gave me an extra insight in the market. I was able to speak and understand the designers language but also see the discrepancy in how services were being communicated to the market who is typically unaware or sophisticated in our craft. Why is this important?

Well, in our profession we kind of live in our own world that anyone without training finds hard to understand. As architects and designers, our craft revolves around making environments better for others, in a way, we serve the people. Yet unlike most industries, unless someone took a crash course in design principles, its rare they know what goes on in the built environment. This gap makes it hard for consumers to make sound judgements of what is a good design, how much they should spend, and who to trust. Which is typically the main issues that clients have when trying to choose the right designer for their project. After all, everyone is offering the same deal "I will build your dream home," So, how do you differentiate yourself?

Most importantly, how do we bridge that gap to find common ground with our clients? By doing so, we can not only create spaces that meet their needs but also craft beautiful environments into which we have tirelessly poured years of vigor and dedication into learning how to do. That's what we will dive into here in this article.

As you know, almost all architect and interior design firms rely on word of mouth, magazines, and those digital platforms that connect you with clients. Almost every architecture or design practice I see has no inhouse systems and funnels that give them a predictable way to print leads on demand using their website and social media.

So these are some core principles I applied to my company that increased our annual revenue by 50% every year in closed renovation contracts for midrange to high end projects. That's not "leads or inquiries" that's hardcore millions in cash profit and hundreds of completed building constructions that came purely from online marketing built in house. All tracked, all measurable to the last link and post that clients interacted with before hiring us.

Now before you rub your chin in suspicion as to why I am revealing our best kept secrets, Its because I no longer do marketing for our company nor do I run my own practice, I have always wanted to help educate architects and designers on how to better their efforts and now that I have fully pivoted into Ai I thought it would be great to share my experience in the hopes I can see this industry evolve.

Pioneering movements is what I do best, so here goes nothing.

1. Your Website Is Not A Business Card

Design Your Website Into A Funnel That Speaks Your Ideal Client's Language

Most design companies treat their website as a business card or portfolio. The use it to showcase their work and add contact details. Unless you hate money, this is the wrong approach.

Your website should only have one goal in mind.. to convert While clients will always ask to see samples of your work, and having a strong portfolio on your website is essential,

that is just one fragment of the macro of what your website should be.

Few designers actually have a website optimized to turn traffic into leads / clients. If you are not treating your website as a funnel you are actively doing your business and clients a disservice.

"Design Your Website Into A Funnel That Speaks Your Ideal Client's Language,"

Your clients want to learn about how your industry can help them without having to reach out to your directly. I don't care how "bespoke" or luxury you are. You need to make your website a value based platform that adds tons of value to your target audience and then give them the "choice" to reach out to you. Our company was a bespoke luxury brand, so yes this works.

This establishes authority and will bring you tons of referrals and organic traffic. You can re-design your website to be a funnel while keeping it aesthetic and authentic to your brand. The easiest way to turn your website into a funnel is by following this basic structure:

1. Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

2. Lead Magnets

3. Call To Action (CTA)
   

A USP paired with a CTA button on the homepage makes it very easy for people to contact you via the website. Having a strong USP on the main landing page (most important) that makes you standout from your competitors.

"This should communicate in one sentence what you do and the problem you solve for your ideal client."

Its the main hook point to let visitors who have never heard of you before know right if you're the right fit for them. Think of a 5-star restaurant. At first impression, before you even walk in, you can already tell how expensive it's going to be. No one walks into a 5 star restaurant when they are looking for a $5 diner burger. That's how you want your USP to be. It should communicate what you are about in one short sentence (3-5 seconds) and make the visitor decide if they should invest further into website. You also don't want to be so vague that it sounds like everyone else "we design your dream home" That just makes you a "me too" business.

And in a market that where the value discrepancy is not clear, consumer will just go for the most affordable price.

Your goal isn't to attract everyone,

It's to attract your ideal client and go after a small market.

Everyone monopoly started by solving a problem for a small market. Facebook was making social media for college students,

Amazon was an e-commerce store for buying books online,

You get the picture. So how do you get your ideal client?

2.Know Your Target Audience

The first step to figuring this out is creating a client avatar.

Your client avatar is like an imaginary profile of your ideal customer.

Don't confuse your avatar with the customers you are currently getting,

But the customer you actually want

If you are first starting off, it can be hard to know who your customer is when you are still discovering your product market fit

But you have to start somewhere,

Create a file and give your customer an image representation of them, make it real, this is not an exercise? Do you hate money? If you do, skip this step, if you love money, create a file, give them a picture and a name

Then write down everything you know about them, How old are they? What do they do for work? Are they single? What is their networth? What are their hobbies, fears, inspiration, motivation, what keeps them up at night etc Then create a list of features and benefits that your business has that directly targets each of their concerns. A feature is: we use calacatta marble handcrafted by italian specialists

A benefit is: our homes last forever and never go out of style.

Once you have an avatar, you then right your USP that communicates your business main feature and benefit that is directly correlated to your avatar.

Once you've got an avatar and USP you are ready to create lead magnets.

As time progresses and you start attracting and closing more of your ideal clients you will learn more about them and can go back to your client avatar and refining and adding to it

And likewise going back to the USP and refining it further, this is like a flywheel effect Good avatar, good USP, good client, good lead magnet, more sales, more data, more optimization, better avatar, better usp better lead magnets, better sales etc etc.

So how do you create the ultimate lead magnet?

3. Build A Blog That Attracts Your Ideal Architecture & Interior Design Clients

The blog will be your bread and butter for this, Can't stress this enough, this is what was responsible for 60% of our success. Most companies just have a generic blog that they haven't updated in years.

They just use a blog as this little curiosity to search engines,

It's sad...

The blog is an active way for you to reel in clients from google and social.

the main function of the blog is to provide VALUE to your ideal client, Hence the term, Lead Magnet.

your main edge as a professional is that you have unique set of knowledge,

clients value your experience and will listen to a perceived credible source. By creating long form content that SOLVES problems for your ideal client, they will thank you by hiring you for their project. The success of the blog lives and dies by the problem you are solving,

if its a problem that is at the end of the buyer funnel, that will generate the most leads for you.

The key here is to find out what people are looking for by using keyword volume tools and seeing what keywords related to your industry people are looking for and then writing content that can rank for that.

You can easily hit top google search results for niche keywords and get tons of organic leads that translate to paying customers.

Replicate this same strategy for social media, curate posts and videos that provide value to your ideal clients and they will thank you by giving you money. How do you generate topics that solve your target audiences problems? The USP is your structure, when crafting any content, ask yourself if its related to your USP.

For example, if you are building luxury homes and you find out that your avatar is always curious about different quality of marble stone, Then it makes sense to write a good article on marble stone This way when they go online searching for information or doing research, your article will show up, They will read it and get tons of value which they will love especially since its coming for a certified professional designer in their field, In turn anyone researching marble quality is likely thinking of building their home, What happens after they get research? They will explore your website to see who you are and what other information you may have about luxury stones, builds, tips, systems, etc After they've gone through your content and basically got an entire luxury home building crash course for free, Who will they go to when they are ready to build? Well the person who just gave them all this invaluable advice of course After all you were the expert that built rapport with them through the piece of content

At that point all you need to get turn them from a reader to a lead is to have a call to action that is easy to get on the website Example of lowest hanging fruit is "free estimate or consultation" There's many forms of lead capturing,

The goal of the call to action is to get them to take action—whether that's placing an order, sending an email, or calling you—so that you now have their contact information and can begin the sales process.

On a side note, your lead magnet doesn't have to be a blog.

That has just been the most successful method I've had, and I like it because of how personal it can be.

Plus, having written word media content is great for search engines and ranking on Google and other engines.

And now, with large language AI models that can search the web, it will pool your information.

Additionally, with AI, you can feed the written content and create videos or audio using text-to-speech models.

The fabric of AI is natural language, so text data becomes extremely valuable.

That being said, any form of content that communicates value will do the job.

Whether it's long-form content, videos, email newsletters, PDFs, magazines, podcasts, etc.

Media is your form of communication. With long-form content, you can break it down into smaller highlights and pieces that are more digestible and native, making it easier to distribute.

Getting readers to visit your blog through social media reach, email, and ads. Now its time to turn eyeballs into dollars..

4. Generate Paying Clients On Demand For Your Specific Architecture & Interior Design Projects

Now that your website has content that speaks the client avatar's language and solves their problem,

they will want to reach out to you when they want to engage your services.

And they will reach out to you because you were top of mind and gave before you asked.

Remember, the architecture industry is prime for this because there are almost no architects speaking to their clients at scale through virtual media.

And the few that do are raking in tons of attention and, in turn, $$$.

Clients want to hear from you. They don't know what they are missing out on.

So, by teaching them everything they need to know to alleviate the confusion, you build authority and establish yourself as the thought leader in the space.

And you improve things for yourself because, by the time they engage with you, they already know your jargon.

So, it’s crucial you make it easy for them to get in touch.

Don’t just have a "contact us" page.

Take the element of lead magnets to the call to action.

And have a call to action that is focused on the action that will convert them.

This removes the weeds from the shaft.

In eCommerce, a call to action would be "buy now" or "add to cart."

We make sure these buttons are big and hard to miss.

In service industries, it’s usually getting a free report, estimate, consultation, call, etc.

Make this easy to see and almost on every page of your website.

Remember, your website is built to convert, so don't get lost in just creating value.

At the end of each article or content, you want to give them a reminder to take action.

They will seriously forget if you don’t.

You also don’t want to come off as too salesy, as that will put people off or make them think that the information value you gave wasn't genuine.

It’s healthy to have at least 3-4 calls to action on long pieces of content or landing pages.

The last thing you want is for people to be scrolling up and down your page when they've decided to take action on your service.

They are fickle and will get distracted easily. After all, you are not in front of them. They will be reading this via a mobile device 90% of the time, so you can lose their attention quickly.

The main idea is making it easy to reach. You don’t want to go overboard. If the content and value hit the nail on the head, people will crawl under barbed wire to meet you and convert themselves.

But make life easier on yourself and make it easy for them to reach out to you.

Another side note on call to action is still making it in "their favor" to take action.

At this point, you've pretty much created an oiled machine that passively turns website visitors into leads.

The success will hinge on the keyword search volume and the relevancy of your topic.

It’s not always about volume, as some topics are low volume but high intent. So, traffic might be lower, but the quality is higher.

But once you've launched tons of content, you will begin to see which topics are hitting home with your audience, and that's when it's time to scale.

5. Advertising

   
   

Run ads when you find out what the best piece of content is that people are responding to.

This will allow you to generate as many leads as you want in a predictable manner.

Let’s say you found that the type of marble quality hit home for your target audience and was getting you lots of leads.

You can now 10x that lead volume by scaling organically or through online ads.

I love ads because it's a predictable and measurable way of scaling.

You take your best content and create a short version of it for an ad to drive traffic to that lead magnet by paying for targeted traffic.

This will increase how many of your target audience read the lead magnet and, in turn, become leads.

The thought process behind the ads is the same as the USP: you can't just launch an ad and hope you get conversions.

You need to make sure it speaks the client avatar's language and communicates the main USP tailored to that topic about marble stone.

Basically, the ad is to draw curiosity for those already looking into that topic and get them to click the ad to go read the article.

They will convert into a lead if the targeting and ad are correct.

Now, you are literally in a position where you press a button and print leads on demand.

And assuming you have a proper sales system in place to close clients, you will basically get paid to acquire more clients.

If you spent $100 advertising the marble stone article, got 10 leads, and 1 signed a deal worth $250k, you just made $25k-$50k worth of profit off that $100.

So then, you can just 10x the advertising spend to $1000 to make $250k profit, and so on and so on.

Of course, these numbers are rare, and likely it will cost you around $45-$150 per lead.

Unless you're a magnificent marketer, don’t let my numbers give you limiting beliefs.

But odds are, in industries with high-ticket services like architecture, you will typically have to pay more to acquire a single lead and more to acquire a single paying customer.

In the example I gave above, you are getting $10 per lead but $100 per paying client. Meaning, you had to spend $100 to get one paying client.

In my experience, we were paying around $2,500 per client, but that was still a 6-10x return on our marketing budget, so it made perfect sense to keep spending.

5. Have a proper lead qualifying system.

Time and time again, I've seen how many leads go down the drain because the person on the other end of the line,

whether by email or phone, has no idea how to communicate or take a lead that came from an online cold traffic source and qualify them to get them onto a consultation call or site visit.

You can have the best client with high purchasing power, ready to start a project, and lose them if the first touchpoint they have with your company is not aware of the psychology of a cold lead.

A key here when it comes to hot leads from online sources is to respond QUICKLY.

Don’t make them wait more than 24 hours to hear back from you, even if it’s the weekend. Timely, qualified responses will increase your closing rate by 30%.

This strategy made us millions and actually gave us high-end leads for bespoke full-scope renovation projects.

So yes, it 100% works. I guarantee that if you do this properly, you will turn your business into a lead printing machine.

I believe, as professionals, it’s our job to share credible information on the internet with the market. Clients want to hear from YOU, not marketers.

But very few professionals are taking advantage of the online landscape in a meaningful way.

And if you can generate an income while educating the market, then that’s the best incentive.

I hope this inspires you to take action.

Ask me anything,

Peace.