Dominate SERPs: Bury Bad News with Power Posts! | James Dooley

James Dooley: so if I am looking to grow a architect business what do you recommend

Kasra Dash: so if you've got an architectural practice and you're looking to grow I would first and foremost start with looking at lead generation companies okay so I would go over to fat rank.com that provide architect leads that you only pay on a back end and go through the qualification process if you get accepted then that's a great first start for you to get a consistent flow of inquiries coming through I would also go out to one or two other lead generation companies and then B Frugal make certain you're checking your return on investment and make certain that you you are the leads that you're buying that you are obviously converting him into paying clients um that would be my first play because you're going to get leads pretty quickly yes after that my next major player would be SEO and the reason why I want to do SEO is mainly for like branding purposes is but also to try and rank my own website to generate leads that I'm not relying consistently just on lead generation companies I want to try and generate my own leads as well then after that probably social media I would be trying to connect with potential clients that I want to work with and then you've got traditional marketing and PPC now for me I think they're a bit expensive and I don't think I would do it for an architectural practice yeah myself what would you do would you would you do like billboard ads tv ads radio ads any sort of traditional marketing or would you do paperclick

James Dooley: I would avoid traditional ads um PPC like what you just mentioned it can be expensive um obviously you've got the likes of like click fraud to worry about you've got your competitors clicking on your ads um and then you also have what I like to call Window Shoppers where they will just click two or three ads and they just won't even inquire um so if say for example it's costing you let's say 50 or 60 per click you've just burnt 2300 just on that every single day um so if you don't know what you're doing on that that's that's the obviously um the negatives obviously the pros we we should probably speak about the pros as well with PPC you can start generating leads um pretty instantly um what I would probably look to do if you are going to try to run PPC yourself is work on building a good negative keyword list I think that that's very important for any PPC campaign um and what I mean by that is if you are just bidding on let's say Architects um if somebody is searching for architect's jobs your your listing might actually um get shown up for that and you're not looking to hire anyone um but that that's just how how PPC works it's very much pay to win um so I would I would definitely avoid that um one thing that I would look to do is start to generate my own inquiries so like what you said at the beginning I wouldn't just look to only Outsource two let's say lead generation companies cuz in some cases I might get switched off or whatever the case may be I I I just want to focus on my own SEO as well so I'm generating my own inquiries I'm not ring on another platform to generate me the leads so I I would probably look to build out Pages um for example like single story extensions um 3D planning CAD uh planning stuff like that where I would look to actually get some architectural work from that something on that with regards to the cad drawings and the walkth through videos of what an architect can do something that's I would strongly recommend is getting copies of all of them images of what you've created and videos of the walk through now blur out who it is for what client it is and what location is and stuff like that start uploading those walk through videos onto your YouTube onto Tik Tok onto LinkedIn and onto other places because you want to try and rank those videos to do with certain keywords of what that drawing ring is so if someone is looking to have that kind of um for for their own single story extension or garage conversion or a loft conversion or any of those type of Works they can see you go I really like this walk through I'm going to inquire with that company it's the same with any sort of architectural drawings try to get those drawings put into place try and upload them try and get them ranking on places like Flicker and Pinterest and share them on Twitter and on LinkedIn and on Facebook try to get all those image rankings as well because it can be visual the not only that you could have a before photo an architectural plan and then an after photo and go I designed this and this is what got built yeah so I think for that for that reason I would s that's where SEO comes in as a mage play but leveraging social media to be able to supercharge your SEO efforts

Kasra Dash: yeah definitely so on on the social media side let's say you decide to go down the route of Facebook and and um Instagram is is doing those two so what I would look to do is is publish consistency so um don't think that if you just publish one um post you're going to end up generating tons of inquiries it's probably not the case it's probably going to take you about 90 posts um so a have that as as an aim let's say for the next 3 months you're like right okay every day I'm going to put publish at least a photo or a video or it could even be like a a quote for example um just to get your social media accounts active um so if for example you did ever get an inquiry as well it also does help with converting that inquiry into an actual paying client because in some cases people might um fill in your contact form but then actually do a little bit of research of who you are what you do and again if you just have that social presence online they'll be like all right okay these guys are trusted um so that that's another thing I would do and then the Google business profile as well so making certain that you are actually ranking your business profile so you're getting as many reviews to your business profile um so whenever somebody searches for let's say Architects near me you've got a much higher chance of actually ranking for that is there anything that you would do

James Dooley: so with regard to if any architectural practice is looking to grow and you are looking for a consistent flow of inquiries I mentioned obviously going to Fat rank.com something that's very important that kazra touched on then these different types of work and services of what you might be wanting to be an expert in so you've got like playground Architects so they design specific playgrounds what equipment's going in there what type of surfacing what typee of fencing if you're a playground architect come to us and and make sure you specifically telling those that information that you specifically want to be a playground architect or if you're brilliant at getting planning permission or extensions of houses then let us know that or if it's garage conversions Loft conversions seller conversions we need to understand that information and it's also very important for your own SEO efforts for you to start to understand your target audience of what you're trying to do and pigeon all yourself into not just being I'm an architect and I can do everything become an expert and a master in one or two specific areas that people go these are the car park Architects that you want to use or the playground Architects or the sports pitch tennis court type of Architects whatever it is that you might be looking to do right with regards to architectural service is try to Niche down I say that's a big important part if you're looking to grow an architect business

Kasra Dash: yeah you've also got like new builds bespoke Projects Home extensions and stuff like that so Pi pick pick a pick a sub industry within Architects and and stick with that I'm certain that a lot of you um Architects watching this will already know in the back of your head you're like all right yeah I I make M the most amount of money on new build projects um so you might want to say right all I want new build projects I don't care where it is in the country if it's Aberdine I'll do it if it's in London I'll do it just get me more of those and then we can actually start working together with you but if you do want a consistent flow of inquiries make certain to check out fat rank.com