Marketing ideas

………I thought that architects weren’t allowed to advertise?

And they aren´t. However, a web page is always a good alternative…

plus the golden pages say that they are the best way to advertise and most if not all firms are in there even noticed quite a lot of (01) numbers in my 07/09 (culchie)golden pages

I would personally view a webpage as advertising.

as far as i know architects are not allowed to advertise speculatively, ie. go hunting for clients. this is different to having information on your practice available for the general public to see- which is what a website is.

We know that, Cajual….
We are only thinking about the goals of advertisement and on the ways you can do it in “legal” ways.
I once saw a webpage of an irish architectural firm (not saying names here) with price lists!!! How can this be possible ?!

Dunno about inexpensive… but I’d sponsor this site

I get 3-5 emails per day looking to work here on work experience from college or as a graduate… mostly from europe – scandanavia and italy mainly….

I also get another 3/4 email queries a day looking for brochures of our work….

people seem to assume that this is run by an architectural practice

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

Dunno about inexpensive… but I’d sponsor this site

I get 3-5 emails per day looking to work here on work experience from college or as a graduate… mostly from europe – scandanavia and italy mainly….

I also get another 3/4 email queries a day looking for brochures of our work….

people seem to assume that this is run by an architectural practice

Is it still the case that Architects cannot advertise, a firm in Limerick have a very large profile ad in this weeks local press? Also in times like these aren’t Bona fide archtiects going to lose out on work to the Architectural design type companies if they aren’t given a level playing ground? Whats the thinking behind such a daft rule?

Architects may advertise.
The thinking was that it was “unprofessional” to do so. There is an argument that advertising doesn’t benefit the consumer or promote competition. I read somewhere that 20% of the cost of a car (in the UK about seven years ago) went on advertising. Look at all the full page ads for solicitors in the Yellow Pages. What do they cost? €50k? €100k? Who actually ends up paying for them and do they promote justice? And if you’re a brilliant young solicitor starting off, is it fair that you have to compete with the guy with the full page ad?

@zelemon wrote:

Is it still the case that Architects cannot advertise, a firm in Limerick have a very large profile ad in this weeks local press? Also in times like these aren’t Bona fide archtiects going to lose out on work to the Architectural design type companies if they aren’t given a level playing ground? Whats the thinking behind such a daft rule?

curious as to which paper the ad is in. Checked the Leader but nothing there.

Marketing covers a great deal — even the naughtier things marketeers do like demarketing, pressure promotion, negative comparison, etc. 😮

But I’ll assume that you just want to make people who are potential customers of your small practice aware of your existence, capabilities and working style. :p

I accept that doing pro-bono work for a real-life working (or even non-working) person would probably be counterproductive : other people in similar or worse situations would entertain hopes of the same deal; while those clients of yours who’d paid the full whack (proudly but with strain) would feel that they’d effectively subsidised your pro-bono client. 🙁

One thing that would bring you in touch with ordinary people, from labourers to tradesmen, engineers to entrepreneurs, dishwashers to publicans is a local voluntary restoration project.
All on these projects would be giving their few hours in the summer evenings for the sake of restoring their village castle, Carnegie library house, old parish hall, etc.
The Tidy Town organisations also could often badly use an architect’s advice, I feel.

Sure, many of the volunteers would not be takers for your services for a while.
But it’s often what people say about you to others that brings in the new custom, not so much what you say yourself. 😉

It’s long established that big project jobs would have a large sign board near the front entrance showing the main contractor, sub-cons, arch, civ eng cons, mech & elec cons, etc.

Could you not have a smaller – yet attractively designed and visibly printed – board by the entrance to small jobs, like houses, refurbishments, etc ?
Naturally you’d need to include the builder as well (unless he wanted anonymity:rolleyes:) but that ought not be a problem.
Anyone admiring the design work and curious who did it can see without trespassing, calling or asking around.

Biggest problem with architects’s services is that they must mostly be paid prior to mortgage approval.
That’s the hitch for so many people. It’s a lot to take from one’s savings in one go.
Were they payable after the approval then they could be included in the house loan.
But with few people currently in jobs secure enough to justify an architect’s application for finance to pay them, it is hard to see this being a solution.

If a person goes to an architect and says “I want to pay no more than €70 /sq ft for this house”, the architect may well be able to achieve a good design and even get his own fees from this figure.
But the planning process period and the obvious need for cash flow to sustain their office forces the architects to demand payment as it accrues.

Maybe the architects themselves may have a solution to offer on this crux.;)
It is most acutely in their own interest to do so, even though all of us will see the benefit of a better designed built landscape . . .