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The global architectural services market is expected to reach $391.97 billion by 2025. In order to stand out from your competitors, you need to have a marketing strategy in place. However, firstly you need to identify an effective target market to ensure your marketing strategy is not wasted on people who are not interested in your services. Once you have been able to identify your target market, you will then better understand them. This will help with creating relevant content, messaging and ads as part of your marketing strategy. By doing this, you should then start to see higher conversion rates.
Your target market is your ideal group of people who you want to reach with your marketing. These are the people who are most likely to use your architectural firm and usually have similar demographics and behaviours. You could base your target market on a broad category, for example their age. However, to get the best conversion rates, you should then look at being more specific with this group and break it down. You shouldn’t be afraid to be as detailed as you can with your target market to get the best results. Just because a person isn’t in your target market, doesn’t mean they won’t use your firm. They are just not your main focus in your marketing strategy.
You shouldn’t base your target market on a whim. An effective target market should be based on research. It should also be adapted as your firm grows and as you learn more about your current customers and if they differ to your ideal customer. Here are some ways architectural firms can identify an effective target market.
The best way to see who wants to use your architectural firm is by looking at your current customers. This way you can find out their characteristics and build out your target market knowing these are people who want to use your service. Depending on how much tracking you have set up, you could have a lot of useful data about your customers, or not much at all. You can’t have too much data. The more data you have, the more detailed your target market can be which will make it easier to target them. However, it’s important not to harm your customer experience in order to get data about them. All this will do is push them towards your competitors. The information you would like to have around your customers include:
Age - This doesn’t have to be an exact age but you should know whether your target market is 35 or 55.
Location - Where is your target market located? Ideally, this should be in areas that you operate in.
Social Networks - What social networks are they currently using? Is your firm currently on these networks and are you utilising them?
Interests - What do they enjoy doing?
You can get this information from your website and social media analytics. Google Analytics will tell you all about the users on your site; where they have come from, what pages they are looking at and if they have converted and on which page. You can also find out more about the user and their demographics to really get to know the type of people visiting your website. Social media analytics will help you to understand the types of people who are interacting with your social media content. This information can be invaluable to see what your current target market is.
If you have a niche market, thinking about this is a great way to identify your target market. Does your architectural firm serve a certain area of the country? If you only serve London and the Home Counties, your target market will reflect this. Does your firm specialise in a certain sector - ie. commercial offices or residential? If you specialise in commercial offices, you should then start breaking your target market down even more into areas such as industries, the size of the business and the job role of the person you would deal with.
What problems are you solving? What need do you meet? What desire do you fulfil? Asking yourself these questions will help you in identifying an effective target market. With the answers, you are able to see the type of people who would want to use your firm. For example, one problem you are solving is a residential conversion. The need that you meet is the need for an architectural firm to design the conversion. The desire you fulfil is using the latest design software so your customer can see a 3D model of your design and once signed off, suggesting suitable contractors to build the conversion.
As mentioned, your target market could change over time and this isn’t a bad thing. As you learn more about your customers and your business grows and service evolves, it’s likely that your target market will change. For example, if you currently offer services to residential and decide to expand to commercial offices, you will not be able to use the same target market and will need to create a new target market for commercial offices.
Identifying an effective target market is vital for the long-term success of your firm. Once you have a better understanding, you are able to tailor your marketing strategy to ensure you are targeting the right people. This will help to increase your conversion rates and ROI. Remember, the more detailed and specific you are, the better the results.
