How to market an architecture firm when there are two of you
Describe the commission you would be glad to talk about next Tuesday. Project type, suburb, scope of service, and the stage you want to be brought in at. Then name who is most likely to introduce it: a past client, a builder, a town planner, another architect, or someone who finds you on their own. A practice this size needs that sentence far more than it needs a content calendar.
Say the studio does inner-Brisbane renovations for clients who cannot yet describe what they want. Your website should show how you work with an existing house and an unresolved set of needs. Leading with the one commercial concept you did four years ago because it looks impressive spends your best space telling the wrong story. Keep the project. Do not put it first.
Then agree how many enquiries you can assess while delivering current work. Marketing that produces calls nobody has time to return is a new source of guilt, not new revenue. Book the hour, decide who answers the phone, and make yourself easier to find after that.
$0 a month: use the relationships you already have
This assumes a website you can edit yourself and no new cash. Take one hour a week and spend it on three things: the service you most want to sell, one project that proves you can do it, and a plain account of what the first conversation involves. Say what the client should bring and what happens after they send the form.
Then list the twenty people who already know your work. Get back in touch where there is a genuine reason: a project finished, an introduction that worked out, a change in what you are taking on. Give them a sentence they can repeat. “We are taking on inner-Brisbane renovations where the brief still needs work” travels between people. A paragraph about considered responses to place does not.
Claim or correct your Google Business Profile, which costs nothing, and ask real clients for honest reviews as part of your normal handover. Keep a one-page list of live enquiries and their next step. A zero-budget plan has one hard limit: if the site cannot be edited or the contact form is broken, you either learn to fix it yourself or you find the money.
$500 a month: buy back the job that never gets done
Treat $500 as a ceiling, not a package. It will not buy writing, SEO and social management together, and a supplier who says otherwise is selling you a thin version of all three. Spend it on the one task that stalls every month: editing the project story you half-drafted, rewriting a service page, or a small block of website changes. You supply the substance and pay for the part you do slowly.
Batch the material. Photographs, credits, project notes and client approval in one folder before anyone starts. A writer who has to reconstruct the brief from eleven emails will spend the entire $500 doing that and hand you four hundred words. Ask what fits inside the ceiling, whether GST is included and how many rounds of changes you get.
You are also allowed to bank it. Three months of $500 buys a proper photography session or a defined website repair, which usually beats three unrelated small jobs. Keep the relationship work and the enquiry follow-up inside the studio. Nobody outside it can have the conversation a prospective client actually wants to have with the principal.
$2,000 a month: fund a programme, not a package
At $2,000 a month, buy a programme aimed at one obstacle. If the website works, that means researched guides, real improvements to the pages people already reach, and a monthly review you can read in ten minutes. If the website is the obstacle, put the money into a scoped repair or save it towards a rebuild. The budget does not decide the service. The bottleneck does.
Get the scope in writing: what gets researched, written, edited and published, who in the studio supplies the expertise, how long approvals take, and what happens when priorities move. Keep any advertising spend on its own line. For a published point of comparison, BeKonstructive lists Starter SEO at $1,400 plus GST a month, checked in September 2026. One supplier’s price tells you the shape of the market, not what your programme should cost.
Stay involved at the three points that matter: choosing the question, explaining the design reasoning and approving anything factual. A good supplier makes that easy to schedule and asks for forty minutes, not a Friday. A retainer that publishes generic architecture articles while your own services remain unexplained is spending the money without touching the problem.
What should an architecture firm spend on marketing?
There is no percentage worth copying. Price the work you need done, add your own time at a rate you would otherwise bill, and test it against fee income you can forecast. Most small practices settle on a figure they can hold for a year, which matters much more than matching a benchmark set by a firm of forty people.
Keep fee income separate from construction value. A percentage of your clients’ build budgets tells you nothing about what the practice can afford, and it is the number architects reach for because it is bigger. Count internal hours as well. If the principal spends every second Friday rewriting a supplier’s draft, the invoice is a fraction of what the work cost you.
If you want a number to track, work it out after you have set an affordable programme: marketing spend divided by fee income, calculated the same way every quarter. It is a record for your own decisions, not a target another practice should copy. Revisit it when the pipeline changes.
Frequently asked questions
How do I market my small architecture firm with no budget? Use the relationships you already have, improve the website text you can edit yourself, and show one project properly instead of thirty badly. Tell past clients and referrers, in one repeatable sentence, what you are taking on now. The cost is an hour a week that you have to defend against project work.
Should a small architecture firm pay for social media? Not until the website can explain your services and someone answers enquiries within a day. A managed social package is the easiest thing to buy and the hardest to trace to a commission. If you have good material and a clear destination, a short run of project posts is worth more than a monthly retainer of generic ones.
When should we hire marketing help? When a worthwhile task keeps failing to get done, or needs a skill the practice does not have and should not learn. Agree the output, the input you owe them and the review points before anyone starts. A single scoped job is a better test than a twelve-month retainer, and it tells you quickly whether they understand the work.
Where to start this month
- Write one sentence describing the commission you want next and who is likely to introduce it.
- Set the cash and the hours the studio can sustain for a full quarter, then stop debating it.
- Rewrite one service page and one project page using material you already own.
- Get back in touch with five people who know your work, with a real reason each.
- If you are buying help, commission the task that is blocking you and hand over a complete folder.
- Read your enquiry list at the end of the quarter and let it choose what you fund next.