Products & Services in Architecture Marketing Mix

The Product is the first of the 4 Ps of Marketing. The Price, the Place, and the Promotion are the 2nd, the 3rd, and 4th Ps. In a series of posts, we’ll discuss understanding how they fit the marketing for architects and architecture firms.

The “Four Marketing Ps” are tools to outperform competitors. The products and services are the most important as they define the offer and demand relationships. So, how you build your products and how they satisfy the market’s needs are key elements of commercial success.

In architecture marketing, we can’t forget that our clients’ goal is building, not doing architectural projects. Projects and architects’ services are their means. Therefore, potential clients subsume their decisions to their aim. They constantly ask themselves how a decision serves their objectives.

Marketing Mix’s Product as Future Building

So we should understand the product as the client’s goal, the future building. This is not too far from what motivates us, architecture. That’s why architects’ portfolios are so important. But our previous work can’t talk about itself. It doesn’t say how we help our clients fulfill their dreams and needs.

All selling techniques emphasize the benefits of certain products or services. Cars can take you from point A to point B. They do this quickly, safely, economically, and comfortably. Quick, safe, economical, and comfortable are benefits you gain from buying the car. All those benefits are solutions to different problems because going from A to B is slow, risky, costly, and uncomfortable.

What are the benefits of architects’ clients from building? What are the benefits of architects’ services? But, more importantly, what are the benefits of your architecture firm’s design and services?

At Marketing-for-Architects.com, we’d like to understand how architects attract clients through customers’ buying process, sales funnel, and investment cycles. All of those interpretations have to consider this duality of our clients, both in construction and architecture.

Marketing Mix’s Product Within Investment Cycles

Within the investment cycle, we can identify a few stages:

• Idea
• Land acquisition
• Design Brief
• Architectural design
• Building permit
• Builder Selection
• Construction quality control

Those are schematic stages. But, from idea to design brief, our potential clients go through a series of decisions regarding projects’ feasibility.

But, if the product is the future building, it gets the best contours after the design phase. Unfortunately, this phase follows the previous steps. Thus, most clients go through those preliminary phases without architects, although architects can provide the best guidance.

So, even if we understand the building as the ultimate product, our clients can benefit from architects’ services in the preliminary stages. They need our guidance, even if they are not aware of this.

Potential clients actively search for information regarding their future projects during the preliminary stages. They need data on costs, buildable areas, zoning and building codes compliance, land acquisition, etc. Architects should service these needs. So, architects’ services are one part of the marketing mix’s P, the product. However, creating services and content to fulfill potential clients’ needs is the entrance to the sales funnel.

Products in Sales Funnel

Selling our “products” is our business. But the duality of the marketing products is the opportunity for a sales funnel with a very wide entrance.

The architectural products (the buildings) are solutions to various problems. Houses are shelter solutions. Office buildings are productivity solutions. While people look for better housing or higher productivity, it is a chance for architects to show how they provide better houses and office buildings. This is the role of content marketing. This is how architects can get potential client’s attention, the awareness phase of a sales funnel.

But when potential clients look for information on specific building costs in specific areas, architects can either freely offer brute data or cost estimating services. Those new services, tailored for preliminary investment cycles, are the new „products”, the base for additional sales funnels, as other services for different other investment phases that are not design related.

Clients’ Buying Process – Products and Services

The clients’ buying process describes customers’ learning curve as they get closer to acquisition. Architects’ products, either as architecture objects or as specialized services, are subjects of this learning curve. As soon as potential customers become aware of their needs, they enter a research phase where they actively seek solutions to problems identified in achieving their goal (that of building).

Again, the architecture marketing mix’s products are both the buildings and the services that are solutions to their pain points. Their learning curve is asymptotic to linear design solutions and architects’ services. This is an excellent analogy because no matter how much they learn, they don’t design. No matter how much they learn about preliminary investment cycles, they can’t provide accurate cost estimates or design briefs.

Architecture Marketing Mix: Products/Services Duality

It’s not important what is the angle. Our potential clients pursue their goals to build as a solution to their needs. Their efforts can benefit from architects’ services, design and guidance.

Only a few clients are fully aware of how much architects can help. Most of them make uninspired decisions during preliminary phases and they try to impose them on architects. Architects’ marketing role is to showcase architecture as the product they are actively pursuing, and architects’ services as the only tools they can use.

If potential clients want apartment building for better living conditions, our marketing has to emphasize how our design leads to better living conditions. If their goal is to have an excellent return on investment (ROI), our marketing has to emphasize how educated decisions and quality design provide a better ROI.

After all, architects design splendid buildings and help clients building them. This is exactly what they want, to build as easily as possible successful buildings. Our marketing has to present both as valuable products and services to get those products. At some point, this is psychology as much as it is marketing.