Podcast Summary: Marketing for Architects

The interview provides an in-depth look at the specialised field of marketing for architects. The discussion covers the unique challenges and considerations involved in marketing architectural services, including the need to communicate complex design concepts to diverse client audiences, the shift away from "star architects" towards more collaborative practices, and the importance of strategic marketing planning for small architecture firms. The interviewee, Susie Lober, shares her background in transitioning from an administrative role in an architecture practice to becoming a marketing consultant specialising in this niche area.

Key points

  • Architects must balance creative design with practical constraints and the needs of various stakeholders, making marketing a complex challenge.
  • Many small architecture firms lack in-house marketing expertise, so Lober provides strategic marketing planning services to help them identify their ideal clients and develop effective marketing tactics.
  • Word-of-mouth referrals are common in the architecture industry, but Lober advises firms to take a more proactive, multi-channel approach to stay top-of-mind with potential clients.
  • Bid writing and getting on pre-approved panels are important marketing activities for architects, as they compete for public and private sector projects.
  • Lober's role as editor of a local architecture magazine provides her with unique access and insights into the industry.

 

Podcast Transcript: Marketing for Architects

Transcripts are auto-generated

 

Kiran Kapur (host) (00:01):
Hello and welcome this week. We are in a fascinating, very niche world of marketing, which is marketing for architects.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (00:08):
This is an area where there's been a real shift over the past few years as well because we've started to move away from what used to be known as the stararchitect, AJ, or Foster, or Rogers, to a much more inclusive and collaborative environment.

Kiran Kapur (host) (00:26):
I'm very pleased to welcome Susie Lober, who is a marketing consultant specialising in marketing for architects. Susie, welcome. Now, your company is called Lo Marketing, and I have to ask how that name came about.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (00:40):
Thank you for inviting me to be here, Kiran. Lo Marketing comes from the old English word lo L-O, not L-O-W, which means to draw attention to good things, which is what I try and do. I also think that L-O can stand for little and often, which is often a guiding principle of how I like to work with architects in that often successful marketing is not about the big moves, but it's about consistent effort over time. So that little and often approach also happens to be the first two letters of my surname. So Lo just worked on a number of different levels.

Kiran Kapur (host) (01:22):
Brilliant. Now before we get into the details, let's just discuss what we mean by an architect or an architectural firm. So, can you just explain that so we've got a context.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (01:33):
So architects, design spaces and places, often that is buildings, but it can equally be master planning of a whole city. It could be involved they're involved in large infrastructure projects, right down to small house extensions. So architects get involved in a lot of different built environment projects

Kiran Kapur (host) (01:59):
And presumably the architects come up with the design and the plan, but they're not going to be physically building it. That's when you hand that over to a builder.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (02:07):
That's right, yes

Kiran Kapur (host) (02:08):
Okay. So just so that I can picture an architect at work before we get into the marketing side. So an architect is going to be trying to understand what the client is looking for and then be able to visualise that in a 3D way, but also understanding all the practicalities.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (02:28):
So with architects, they have to work with a huge amount of constraints. They will take the constraints of a site ,of a problem or an issue that a client is having, whether that is a school that wants to provide a better learning environment, whether that is a hospital that needs to expand, whether that's a new office building that wants to attract new staff, and they will take on that problem for whoever the client body might be and try and come up with a solution, which is usually a building to solve that problem. And they have to be aware of all sorts of different constraints from building regulations to health and safety. They have to know about construction materials, they have to know about construction methods. So there's a lot of different skills and expertise that an architect will need. And often they are leading a team of other consultants. So they'll be working with a quantity surveyor, a structural engineer, a services engineer, perhaps a landscape designer, all these other disciplines which come together for a construction project.

Kiran Kapur (host) (03:47):
Brilliant. So I've got the view of lots and lots and lots of stakeholders and a massive different levels of scale of projects.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (03:56):
Yes,

Kiran Kapur (host) (03:57):
Thank you. So how did you end up specialising in marketing for architects? Because you're a marketer who's discovered architecture rather than an architect who discovered marketing, I think.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (04:10):
Yes, yes, that's right. That's normally the first question on my opening line is "I'm not an architect but," because a lot of people assume that I'm an architect. My degree was in history. Even when I was doing my degree, I had an interest in marketing and advertising and sales and how that world worked. And I did a few work experience with different agencies. And then on a gap year, I got an admin job in an architecture practise working as what was known then as a team secretary. So supporting a huge team who were delivering a multimillion pound regeneration of a former bank in the City of London. And that really got me interested in architecture and the whole process of seeing that project from being on the drawing board onto the construction site to being realised, got me really interested in the whole process of architecture. And I enjoyed working with creative people. And then when I returned from my gap year, I went back to the same company fairly quickly. Their marketing person left and I stepped into the role of marketing coordinator. So that was my first introduction into that. And then I studied for my CIM qualifications whilst working within a practise.

Kiran Kapur (host) (05:34):
So one of the things that intrigues me is: are there specialist skills that you need when you're marketing for architects that you don't need in other sides of marketing?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (05:43):
Having an understanding of how architecture works really helps you are marketing a professional service, not a sort of fast moving consumer good. So the approach is quite different. Architecture projects tend to be very long-term. You are very high value, and so you're seeking to build relationships with people. I'm really interested in that space where you can take lessons from consumer marketing and apply it to professional services. I think that's a really interesting thing to do, but it is quite different in the approach.

Kiran Kapur (host) (06:23):
I suppose one of the things about an architect is trying to work out what the product is because it's not a finished product, it's a design.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (06:35):
That's a really, really interesting question and one which I think we struggle with quite a lot because in one sense you are marketing a service and you're marketing the relationship of the people providing that service, but to an extent, you are also marketing an aesthetic, look, what's that end building going to look like? But most of the time it's less about having a certain look of a building and it's more about solving a problem. And so most architects don't come with a signature style of saying, "I'm going to design it in this specific way, this specific look". They seek to solve the problem of the client and listen to the client. So it is more of a service, I think, than a product.

Kiran Kapur (host) (07:27):
And that also makes it quite difficult, presumably when you're trying to explain to the client what they are going to get at the end of it. Now I can imagine if you are designing something for, I dunno, a big building and you're dealing with a lot of other professionals, they get it. But I can imagine if you're doing something for a school, then you are trying to sell the architectural idea to the head teacher and the board of governors, many of whom may never have worked with an architect before. So that must be quite an interesting marketing challenge in itself.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (08:00):
Absolutely. Design communication is a huge part of what you are helping architects with. Architects tend to be naturally very good communicators, but sometimes you can get head up in a world of quite complex language and technical detail and simplifying that down can be quite important. As we touched on earlier, there's a huge range of scale for architects to deal with. So sometimes architects are dealing with very informed, educated, professional clients, developers who do these projects day in, day out, but frequently they'll be dealing with clients for whom this is their first ever construction project, whether that is a domestic client or whether that is a group of stakeholders who are trustees for a charity or as you mentioned a school. So they've got to be able to communicate their design idea, the design concept and their process across a whole different range of client types.

Kiran Kapur (host) (09:07):
And do architects specialise in the different types of clients or is it done by a different type of project? Or do architects just do everything?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (09:18):
That varies hugely. So some architects will specialise in residential work. They'll only do residential work and they will do it probably specialising maybe for homeowners and small developers. Larger practises might be trying to talk to a number of different audiences all at once because they may do everything from airports to schools to blocks of flats, so they might have a range. So there's no one clear simple answer to that question. I suppose

Kiran Kapur (host) (09:54):
That's fair enough, but that's what makes the marketing side of it. Really interesting. So we talked about design communications. I'm very interested in the branding side in architecture because when I was thinking about this podcast yesterday, I was trying to think of architects that I have heard of and you end up with Anish Kapoor and Norman Foster. I mean it's certainly in my case, I'm sure there are many others, but so those are individual architects with their own personal brand, but that's surely not how the whole profession works. There are many, many, many other specialist architect companies. So where does branding fit in?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (10:34):
Yeah, I think this is an area where there's been a real shift over the past few years as well because we've started to move away from what used to be known as the 'starchitect'. The star architect, where you would have AJ or Foster or Rogers leading a project and you wanted them to be designing the project, to a much more inclusive and collaborative environment where a lot of the biggest firms now are owned their partnerships. They've got a series of different people working for them, and that's just as much the case with Norman Foster's practise where I used to work. They're a massive team. Obviously Lord Foster is not going to be working on every single project himself. So there's a huge team. There's different groups, different studios, different. So it's not just led by the kind of branding of one individual anymore.

Kiran Kapur (host) (11:36):
If you were advising an architectural company, and let's say this one specialises in residential, just to make it a little bit easier, and I know one of the things you do is strategic marketing planning, it's one of the skills that you bring. How do you go about helping them do that?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (11:52):
So of the services I offer as a consultant is I will come into a practise and help them build out a marketing strategy because the majority of architecture firms, the vast majority of architecture practises certainly in the UK are sole practitioners or small companies with less than five people, and they don't have the resource to have an in-person marketing person. They're not taught that as part of their architecture degree, they might have a minimal understanding of how to actually win work and win projects. So one of the services that I offer is that I come in and I help them to create a marketing strategy, and I do that in a very simple four step process where I take them through the first session is all around the where are you now? Where does your work come from? Who are your competitors? What's the marketing landscape?

(12:51):
What marketing have you done previously? We'll do a marketing audit, all of that stuff. Then in the second session we look at where are you going? What would be your ideal clients, your ideal projects. Then in the third session we look at the gap analysis of how do you get from where you are to where you want to be? And then in the final session, I present back to them, right, this is what I think your strategy should be, and these are the marketing tools and tactics that I think you should use. I think a common challenge for a lot of professionals who are not trained or have a minimal understanding of marketing is that they just jump straight in on tactics. And so they think, okay, right, we think we should be doing social media, or we need to redo our website, and that's the problem that they might come to me with. And then I'll encourage them to take a step back for this residential practise. For example, instead of jumping straight in with should you redesign your website or do you need to do some direct mail campaigns? I'll encourage them to take a step back and have more of a strategic overview of where they're going.

Kiran Kapur (host) (14:02):
And I was really interested that the majority of practises are obviously on the smaller end of companies. And so I suppose I'm intrigued by what you find that they need to change. So I can understand that yes, everyone ends up going the tactics. All marketers get asked, "I'm thinking of doing some work. Do I need to be on this TikTok thing?" I think we've all had that one. So where do you tend to find you need to encourage them to think

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (14:35):
They need some encouragement to really understand where the work is coming from and to actually put systems in place to think about understanding their audience better, understanding their potential client markets better and how they can talk to them. So often as part of that process, I might, for example, conduct client interviews on their behalf so that they can get a really strong understanding of where their strengths and weaknesses lie, as opposed to just basing it on assumptions.

Kiran Kapur (host) (15:10):
And yeah, assumptions are always the big problem for marketers. So the other thing I'm very intrigued by is how people choose an architect. So if you're a big developer, you know how it works. If you are a school and you are a head teacher and the board of governors has decided that they are going to have a new block or whatever it is that you need, how do they go about finding an architect? This is always the biggest issue with professional services, isn't it?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (15:37):
Yeah, absolutely. And again, there's a lot of range there as well, because taking the example of a school, which will probably be public sector funded, but of course it could be a private school as well. So say if it was a public sector school, they will have restrictions on who they can approach and how the money can be spent. So those sort of projects are run by frameworks. And so architects have to apply to be on a department for education framework, and then the schools can only go to certain frameworks in order to procure an architect. So that's how that would work. With private sector projects such as private developer or a homeowner, obviously they've got a lot more freedom to choose the architect however they want to. Often people will say, well, it comes through word of mouth, it comes through referrals. You'll ask your neighbour, who was your architect or who did you use for this project?

Kiran Kapur (host) (16:41):
So you mentioned word of mouth, and this is one of the big problems for marketers. We all talk about word of mouth being really important, and then we go, oh, but how do we control that? So you've got an architectural firm in front of you, they've called you in as a consultant, and they go, yeah, but all our clients come from word of mouth. What do you then advise from there?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (17:01):
What I'd probably start by saying, well, that's brilliant because it shows that what you're doing is you're doing it well and your clients are happy to recommend you and refer you work, which is brilliant. So firstly, congratulations on that. But secondly, it's a very reactive environment to be in. If you are relying on word of mouth, you're sort of just sitting there waiting and hoping that the phone is going to ring or an email is going to land with your next great project, you don't have much control there. So what I would hope to work with them on is how they can bring a little bit more control into that environment. So really looking at, okay, well who are those key individuals? Are there repeat referrers that we need to build relationships with? Are there other things that we can do to ensure that you are staying top of mind?

(17:54):
So at the point when somebody wants to make a recommendation, you are the architect that they think of. Are there other things that we could develop, other tools for advocates that we could create that will help amplify that word of mouth? Because I think that the marketing environment now is so complex and opportunities can come from so many different areas. It's not just as simple as a referral. It's actually, well, they saw your architecture signboard somewhere, they also had your newsletter, and then they saw that post on LinkedIn and then you met them for lunch. And all of those things come together that lead to that one moment where they recommended you for a job

Kiran Kapur (host) (18:39):
And that's always the problem, isn't it, that we get caught up basically. Back to your idea of getting caught up in the tactics that we get caught up in the idea, well, that means I have to take lots of people out to lunch, which might be a nice thing to do, but may not actually be the referral, or bring that referral about.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (18:55):
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Kiran Kapur (host) (18:57):
Do you find when you're dealing with clients, there's a light bulb moment that they suddenly go, "oh, that's what I needed to do"?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (19:02):
Quite often there is sometimes there's several and sometimes it's really about reassuring clients that their gut instinct is right, and just giving them increased confidence in marketing. And that's often what clients need and that's often what really helps with the client interviews as well, is to give them that reassurance of where their strengths lie.

Kiran Kapur (host) (19:34):
And one of the other things you mentioned, and I suddenly thought this is a whole other area of communications, is you mentioned that architects often have to be on a pre-approved panel. So presumably that means there's a fair element of bid writing and getting yourselves on those approved panel. Is that also seen as part of comms and marketing or is that seen as something totally different?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (19:56):
Largely with an architecture that's seen as part of marketing, there's a lot of blurred edges around marketing for architects. So you tend to get publicity, bid writing, communications, everything sort of all rolled up into one, which on the one hand can be fantastic because it gives you exposure to lots of different things. On the other hand, of course, that can be challenging. In my early career when I was working in-house for practises, I spent an awful lot of time bid writing. That was a huge amount of what I did. I do a lot less of that now as I'm working outside organisations at a strategic level,

Kiran Kapur (host) (20:45):
I have to ask, is bid writing as boring it sounds, or can it have its exciting side?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (20:51):
I always quite enjoyed it. I think maybe that's the geek in me that I quite like answering exam questions. There's something quite challenging, but it can be enjoyable. Yes, there's sort of thinking, okay, well this is the experience that we have got. These are the projects that we can work with. How can we use that to help us answer the question that we're being asked? A lot of it is quite boring and box ticking and do you have a all very important stuff, but a lot of it will be, have you got a health and safety statement? Can you provide this certificate and that certificate? But all of that you can streamline and get quite quick and efficient at. But when you get into the nitty gritty questions, they can also be quite revealing about what clients are really looking for and what they value.

(21:45):
One of the key challenges for architects is really that you often get stuck on this point that clients, they want you to know. They want to know that you've done this exact project before and they want you to present that you have built, I don't know, three conference centres that were valued at 10 million pounds completed in the last five years within this geographic area. And you look at it and you just think, well, nobody's done that. This is impossible. And sometimes clients can be quite narrow minded in that sense that they're so focused on, well, we want to be absolutely sure this is a lot of money we're spending. It's going to be a long-term relationship over many years, so we want this in a safe pair of hands, so we need someone who's done it before. But of course, that can be really limiting and not at all necessary because any architect will probably have the skills to do a project which is outside that very narrow specific requirement. So helping architects to address that challenge and think about what are the transferable skills? We haven't designed three conference centres, but what we have done is we've done a lecture theatre that had these different challenges, or we've worked on a listed building that required conversion, and that's relevant. So you have to work with them to find the transferable skills.

Kiran Kapur (host) (23:17):
Yes, that's really interesting. And I can see from a client perspective, yes, there is that sense of have you done it before? Prove to me that you can do it. Yes. But yeah, I could see that also that you could end up being quite unrealistic. So one of the other strings to your bow is you are an editor of an architect magazine, which I had a lovely time yesterday having a look at.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (23:43):
Thank you. Yes. It's a bit of a sideline passion project. When I first set up low marketing, which was almost 10 years ago now, I had left working in London and was back in Cambridge and had a baby, had been out of things for a little while, and I wanted to reconnect with the architecture world and particularly locally, what was going on, what was happening. And so I volunteered to become an editor of the Cambridge Architects Association magazine. And it has been wonderful. It's such a great publication. It's such a great thing to be involved with. I've met lots of lovely architects through doing it. I've made some firm friends, met several clients through doing it as well. And it is great because it also gives me the opportunity that if there's an interesting project or something happening, I can just pick up the phone and say, oh, I'm the editor of this magazine. I'd really like to come and see this building. Or Could you tell me more about this? So it's been an excellent tool for being nosy and opening doors. And it's a very small niche publication, but it's incredibly well received. It goes to all the bursa of the Cambridge colleges. It goes to all the big developers, it goes to all the local chartered architects. They get a free copy, and it goes to all members of the Cambridge Construction Forum as well.

Kiran Kapur (host) (25:13):
And what I loved about it is you've just explained how it's a part of your portfolio of projects that you do. But yes, I can see it's a very niche. And I think, again, in marketing, we sometimes forget that to be really successful actually just finding the right audience. And that audience may be very niche, or it may be someone like me who's just crawling over it and actually having a lovely time looking at the different types of buildings and going, oh yes, I've driven past that one. Or that's really, I was looking at one of the local awards that were given out for architects, and I just thought it's a fascinating read for a non-professional. So I can well imagine if you're in this professional area, you can really get a lot of detail from it.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (25:58):
Well, thank you, Kiran. I'm so glad you've enjoyed it because that's really important to us that the editor, the editorial panel, is that we are really there to promote the value of good design to everybody. And of course, that is one of my favourite things about working with architects is you get to see and visit and experience some exceptional, beautiful spaces and buildings, and it's so lovely to be able to do that.

Kiran Kapur (host) (26:26):
And let's give a plug for that website. So it's cambridge architects.org?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (26:30):
That's correct, yes. And you can subscribe for free to the magazine. So yeah, there's a link on the website.

Kiran Kapur (host) (26:37):
Brilliant. If somebody listening to this is thinking, this is a really interesting area of marketing and I'm really now intrigued as to how one could get into this area of marketing, would you have any suggestions?

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (26:50):
It's a great area of marketing to be in, and I'd firstly say just feel free to get in touch with me. I'm on LinkedIn, Susie Lober, and I'm very happy to answer questions and talk to people about it. There's also a great community group called Buildup who are also on LinkedIn, which is a group of marketing professionals that work in the built environment, and they're also very open to answering questions. I think it does help to start off sort of in practise first to really get an understanding of the area. So I'd probably look for opportunities within a practise or within a consultancy first and go from there.

Kiran Kapur (host) (27:38):
Sorry, the LinkedIn group you said was builder? Build up, build up. That's fantastic. Susie, thank you so much for talking about quite a niche, but very fascinating area of marketing. And I know from meeting you in person how passionate you are about this area, and you've definitely brought that across in the podcast. So thank you very much indeed for your time.

Susie Lober, Lo Marketing (28:00):
Thank you.