For a steady flow of clients who need your services, a variety of mass media (any form of media that reaches many multiples of thousands of potential clients…and NO, your website is Not Enough…) is necessary to deliver them to the front door on a more regular basis.  Otherwise, the refrain of ‘waiting in vain’ will be a familiar one.  Why is this the case?

Reason #1:
Unfortunately, most people don’t understand the importance of working with an architect and even fewer are actually thinking of working with one. There are a lot of misconceptions about our profession and most people don’t have a clear idea of the benefits of working with someone from our field. It is your responsibility to show them why they will benefit from working with you!

Reason #2:
Only a very small percentage of people needing the help of an architect will actually enter construction in a given year.  While finances are one major factor, especially these days, there are other readiness issues that prevent most from choosing ‘right now’ as the time to pursue major construction.  You won’t see these dismal statistics batted around in the architectural management or consulting world, because so few are willing to acknowledge them and when confronted, they have few answers to offer back to the inquiring architect who demands and needs tools to battle the odds and win.  This low number shows up in a variety of settings (urban, rural, US, non-US).

Reason #3:
If you combine the above two reasons and continue with just neighborhood-based marketing and regular networking, you won’t reach enough of a base of potential clients who are in the “ready” category in the immediate vicinity of your practice.

Need for a Sales Systems and Qualifying of Clients as Consequence of Mass Media:
While the good news is that mass media can generates enough response to create a steady flow of clients who are ready, it will also create a steady flow of potential clients who are NOT ready (at least right now).

Therefore the importance of a system with how one qualifies clients interacting with the practice for the first time and becomes critical to manage those clients who aren’t ready.  Otherwise, you’ll waste time, money, and mental energy and eventually give up and go back to hoping for the best because of those prospects that not ready to move forward at any time. 

Additionally, over a period of years, the ‘not-ready right now’ clients create their own source of more projects (another critical Architecture Marketing Systems Strategy—the creation of The New Project Annuity™).

Finally, one trap to avoid with mass media is to never forget the role it plays in the steady supply of projects.  If one starts believing that it can be eliminated as a practice expenditure, you’ll quickly find that once turned off, the projects dry up shortly thereafter.