Your Automated Offers

All right so now you've seen an overview of the marketing system, one of the things that is really exciting about this program that's gonna help you a lot is the automated offers and the fact that we actually help you set up the automated offers. We remove that digital wall that may have been standing in the way of you being able to market your firm more effectively. Now to understand these automated offers we have to go back and revisit this idea of the client demand pyramid. This pyramid that you see here on this video on the screen represents all the people in your market who could potentially have a project that you would work on. You can see that this might represent people from anywhere from three months that are ready to do a project right now all the way out to five years, this is the group of people.

Now down at the bottom of this pyramid most of the people in your market right now who are thinking about doing a project anytime in the next five years are in the idea gathering phase, they're just considering doing the project, they know they have some needs, but they're not to the point yet where they need to or want to talk an architecture firm, that's where the vast majority of your potential clients are at this moment. Now when we look at the market we generally find that about six percent are in the stage where they actually need specific advice so in this stage they might say, "Look, we need to know what's the feasibility of putting our project on this piece of land," whether it's a residential property or whether it's a multi-family property or commercial property. They're wondering things like will the parking allow this, what's the zoning, how much will my project cost, questions like that where they actually need the advice of an expert so these people will be about six percent of your market.

At the very top we have people or companies that are ready to hire an architect now, this is when you see the RFPs go out, this is when residential clients start calling around to different architecture firms because they are ready to move ahead anytime between now and the next three months ready to get started. Now what does this tell us? The reason why most architecture firm business development and marketing is ineffective is because most architects and business development people focus on this top phase right here where they're ready to hire an architect but look it's only three percent of the market. To multiply your effectiveness to be able to drive leads and to be able to fill up your pipeline for the future you need to have offers that address number one and number two.

Up at the top we have the offer would be hire our firm, hey here we are we do great work, here's our portfolio, please hire our firm. that's the offer that these people in this phase will respond to. People in the need specific advice phase they'll respond well to a diagnostic offer because that's what they want, they want some feasibility, they want some needs and options review, they want to know what are their options, what are the obstacles that might be derail, what do they need to be planning for?

Then at the very bottom the vast majority of people who are planning on a doing a project or will do one anytime in the next five years are in the idea gathering phase and so for them an educational offer's gonna be perfect because right now they're just gathering materials. they're gathering information so that they can move to the next stage and decide if they really want to do their project. Now as I mentioned before the error with most architecture firm marketing is that they only focus on this, well in this program we're gonna help you develop some offers that focus on this segment of the market and they will be wildly effective and we found that generally they're gonna increase the response rate, your success by anywhere from 10 to 1,000 percent so very exciting stuff.

Now when we talk about these offers let's go to the next screen and see what they are. The educational offers we call these a monkey's fist and if you don't know why it's a monkey's fist we'll talk about that in a later video. But the offers we give you we give you first of all is the ask the expert offer, now this is just a diagnostic phone call. What it is it's just a chance for them to hop on the phone with you and get the options for what their diagnostic will be. We could almost put this phone call as a diagnostic offer, that's sort of what it is. Secondly we're gonna set up this automated offer for you. When we say automated offer what we mean is this is called a landing page, sometimes we call them a funnel, it's a webpage where someone can go to to request some information from you, it's like your automated sales person. Just imagine having a fleet of business development people doing all of the work behind the scenes so you can focus on design and doing what you love, that's what these automated offers do.

The second one you see on the screen here is our project planning pack, this is a proven monkey's fist, it's an educational offer that we're gonna set up for you. It has minimal customization so we have a template all you need to do is drop in your information in here to make it yours. The second, this is another monkey's fist offer, this is a referral strategy that you're gonna learn more about later on in the program, the dream team directory, this is also an educational monkey's fist offer. Then lastly this would be a low commitment consultation offer as you saw in the previous video about the marketing system overview, also known as a diagnostic offer, you might call this the needs and options review. Once again they're gonna be able to get access to this and this is gonna do the job of selling them on your low commitment consultation. Here's the four automated offers that we're gonna set up with you and right now I'm just gonna jump over and let's just have a look at what these webpages actually look like.

All right so this is the landing page for the ask the expert automated offer. What is the ask the expert? Well you'll learn about this as you go through the training process. Basically the ask the expert call is you need to sell the value of having a phone call with you and that's what this page does. I'll just show you how we have this template set up here, obviously at the top we have a bit about you that you're gonna be able to customize and just drop in here. Further on down the page there's an area to show any places that you can publish if you have, if you haven't then we'll leave those out, a place to show some project images that could be clicked on and enlarged, a place for testimonials if you don't have these you'll just exclude them, and at the very bottom once again what we call the call to action offering people again to request this feasibility call. When someone clicks on this this is gonna open and they're gonna put their information in here.

Basically the way this works is as an automated booking system that allows someone to request time to speak with you. The page that they would hit after they go to this page they'll be taken to a page that looks like this that we will integrate, if you decide to use us to set up the templates, we'll integrate it will your booking calendar and after they click on this then you're gonna want to have them fill out a short application so you can qualify them and know you're only speaking with people who aren't gonna be wasting your time. Lastly they're gonna be on a thank you page like this so that's the ask the expert automated offer page sequence.

Now I'm gonna jump over here, this is one of the monkey's fist which is the project planning pack template. Once again later on in the training we'll show you what we need from you in other words to be able to drop in your information and customize this and make it yours and set it up for your firm. Once again it works the same way, it's gonna request their information they can request it, and then on the thank you page right here something kind of cool happens which is they can download the PDF version, the digital version of the project planning pack, but then of course we're offering once again our ask the expert call.

Now ask the expert's sort of our internal thing that we call it, the internal phrase we use, but you can call this call anything right here we're calling it a project feasibility call or a next steps call, and so basically whenever someone downloads your monkey's fist we're always gonna be giving them the offer to hop on the phone with us because that's when someone qualifies themselves as a lead when they apply to speak with you and so when they click on that they'll go back over to a page like this where they can then select that. When we're talking about your automated offers these are what they are, later on in the training we'll go into more about the theory about why these are the way they are, how they work, et cetera, but I just wanted to give you an overview early on here in the program so you know what to look forward to.

All right so you have three options for getting your automated offers set up and I'm just gonna quickly review these so you understand what they are so there's no questions and you can choose the option that best works for you. Option number one is we set them up so they're gonna look exactly like the ones you just saw, there's no deviation from the templates, we just plug in you information into our proven templates, now the nice thing about that is that we know that these templates work. The second option is for you to get a Click Funnels account, I'm gonna explain more about that. Then the third option of course would be to have your own custom web development done, it can be completely customized.

Let's have a look at each one of these three options and the pros and cons of each. Option number one is completely free, here's the pros of that right there's no extra cost at least for the first 12 months. There's no set up fees, it's included in the program that we're gonna use our proven templates to get your automated offers set up and we're gonna link them up to some automated emails that go out and some notifications that go to you into our ... it's a pretty cool automated system.

The other advantage of that is that you get it done very quickly and simply instead of dragging it out and trying to work with someone else and trying to customize everything, you're up and running right away and you can move right on to the promotional strategies which is where you're really in the game. This is the quickest way to get in the game and you're not in the game until you have these automated offers set up so we want to get you there as quickly as possible, hopefully within one to two weeks so that you can start promoting your offer so we can give you some promotional business development strategies that work to bring in leads for the firm. The third advantage of course is that they're proven templates. We've worked with hundreds of architecture firms from around the world, we know that these work, and so you're gonna save the time and not reinvent the wheel.

One of the disadvantages is that there is an extra cost after 12 months, so it's included for the first 12 months. If you move on past the additional 12 months there is a service charge to basically keep those updated for you and keep those on our server, you can just write to support arcmarketing.org and we can tell you what that cost would be. It basically comes free with your design from accelerator membership so if you decided to extend your membership for another 12 months and get access to coaching and everything like that then of course there would be no extra cost for the automated offers to be maintained by us.

One of the other disadvantages of course is that you're gonna use our templates, we've made this simple because we truly believe that getting it up and getting it out there is more important than tweaking the font and moving the images three pixels to the left or three pixels to the right so there really aren't any custom modifications. We're not set up to be an agency, we're basically doing this because we think that it will help you get better results more quickly. One of the third disadvantages is that only we can update them so any updates need to go through us, of course we're gonna be here for a long time you can just write into us and we can make the minor changes for you but like I said there's not gonna be a lot of changes because we're not an agency.

Now here's option number two, you can get your own Click Funnels account. Click Funnels is the online software, it's basically it's a fantastic webpage builder that allows you to create totally custom webpages by yourself. Someone on your team could do it or you could do, it is dead simple and that's why we use Click Funnels. Actually we host all of your landing pages, we're using Click Funnels to build those in our own Click Funnels account which is why you don't have to to pay for it because we're paying for the charge to actually run the service.

Here's some of the advantages, you can use our template. We can actually give you a share link that will allow you to instantly pull up all the templates, you don't have to redesign them from scratch, all you have to do is jump in there and customize them and I'll show you in a minute how that's gonna work. Once again you can modify them 100%, you can customize them and make them truly your own because you have access to your own Click Funnels account and again you can update them whenever you like. You own this information, we're not gonna support it, and another pro is that it's a very small additional cost. There is an additional cost but it's a very, very minor and then you can create additional landing pages so you can create as many landing pages and offers as you like.

One of the disadvantages is there is a small extra cost, of course this cost is minuscule when you consider that this is gonna be a primary business development tool for you, $97 a month for their basic plan. Another disadvantage is that your team does it, well what's the disadvantage of that? It's gonna take longer because they don't exactly know what they're doing instead of our team getting it up quickly now you're having to figure everything out and there's a little bit of a training curve involved with that.

The third disadvantage of course is that we don't support it because it's not on our server, it's in your account, you're gonna have to deal directly with Click Funnels and to figure out all the technical integrations which isn't that hard, they have great tutorials, but we're not gonna support those webpages. What we will do is we can provide strategic advice and consulting on the languaging and messaging that you use. If you're wondering if the wording you're using is right, if the layout's gonna work well, that's something we can give you feedback you just show up to the coaching calls Rich and I will take a look at that.

Right now let's hop over and just take a look at, I'll show you what Click Funnels does and how easy it is to modify it so you can get an understanding for what this option would mean for you. All right so let's hop into Click Funnels really quick and I can show you what it does and how easy it is to use so you can decide if this is something that you're gonna want to sign up for and do on your own. There are a number of services out there that allow you to quickly make a webpage but the reason why we like Click Funnels the best is because it is focused on marketing and leads which is in my opinion is one of the top reasons to have website, the other one being your branding, your messaging, and your content but one of the most important things about having a website is the sales process that your contacts will go through and that's why we like Click Funnels.

This is just an example of the ask the expert template so this is what we will use to customize for you and obviously we'll drop in your information into all these placeholders. There's more instructions later on in the training about that, but I just want to show you how easy this is to modify. Let's say for instance you just wanted to change the wording here at the top, you simply click and you type something here we can say ... all right you can type whatever you want. Now of course we don't recommend a free consultation we recommend something like a feasibility call but I just wanted to show you how this works.

Right here you could ... obviously this is how easy it is to drop in a picture, you just click on the template, you come in here, and then you can add any picture that you want to add to that, just like that. All right any of these texts you can modify these, if you want to add a new element to the page once again it's very simple. The way that Click Funnels works is you can just add elements and so let's say we want to have a picture underneath this so we'll just add an element, come over here and we'll add an image, and then we can click on this and we can choose an image that we want to add. Let's see if we can drop this image in there. Okay so that is how we quickly build the webpage and you can see it's pretty easy so that's Click Funnels. Once again if you want to sign up for your own Click Funnels account we can import all of our templates into your account and then you can very easily, quickly customize them to work with what you want your branding to be and your particular style. All right so that's Click Funnels.

Here's option number three which is custom web development. What's the advantage here? Well it's completely done for you, you don't have to to take time away, you can focus on what you do best which is architecture and have someone else like a web developer who's a pro at that focus on what they do best so excellent option. You have 100% custom modification, it doesn't need to look like the offers that we've developed, you can do something completely customized that completely matches your own brand, and has more of the look and feel that you want to have representing your firm. Then lastly you control it so you're dealing with the web developers yourself and in the future you have 100% access to your own information, it's not hosted on our servers, and you can have as many landing pages or do whatever you want, it's 100% customized.

In addition you also have tighter integration with your website, with the option where we do it for you we can put a button. What we recommend you do you put a button or a link on your site that then would link to the automated offer we'll set up for you. With this option you can actually integrate it with your website so it actually becomes part of your website and you can have for instance on the homepage you can have what we call an opt-in form directly there on the homepage or you can do other things like that. We can teach you how to do that and give you the instructions for doing that if we set up your templates but of course if you go with the custom web development then the sky is the limit.

Some of the disadvantages, it's a higher investment but I think it's a good investment because you're focusing on what you do best which is architecture and letting someone else focus on what they do best which is create landing pages and funnels. Once again if you're creating something from scratch we have no guarantee that those templates are gonna work or that your market's gonna respond to them so you're sort of reinventing the wheel if you're gonna go a different direct than what we have already provided.

This is the third option, custom web development and if you're really concerned about the look and feel of things then you can go this route, we don't recommend you do because what we find is that taking action and getting your offers up quicker is worth much more than trying to customize and tweak every little thing. You don't want to get caught in the trap of analysis paralysis where you don't take action because you're tweaking things and we see this happen much too often so as Richard loves to say, "Good is good enough," and so that's why we recommend option number one or option number two if you want to have control over everything.

If you have any additional questions you can just jump on the coaching call and ask us about the automated offers or you can send in a question to support at at arcmarketing.org. That's it, I will see you in the next video.