Architecture is one of the few professions where the marketing material and the work product are almost the same thing. A prospective client wants to see buildings like the one they are planning, in a context like theirs, and to know what it was like to work with you. Almost everything else on a firm's website is decoration. The firms that do well online are the ones that publish their projects properly and can be found by the specific type of work they do.
Publish every project as its own page, with the specifics
Building type, size, budget range if you can, site constraints, procurement route, the problem and what you did about it, with proper photography. Firms typically have this material in a folder and publish six hero images with no text. The detailed version is what a client searching for a school extension in a conservation area actually finds, and it is the cheapest asset an established practice owns.
Be findable by building type and by constraint
Nobody searches for an architect in the abstract. They search for somebody who has done a listed building conversion, a passive house, a care home, a school extension, a change of use, a basement in a tight urban site. Those are the pages that reach a client with a live project, and they are usually the ones a firm has not written because the work seems obvious from the inside.
Photography is the single largest quality signal
In a visual profession, badly photographed good work looks like mediocre work, and the difference in cost between a competent architectural photographer and a poor one is small relative to the fee for one project. Budget for it per project as a matter of routine, secure the usage rights in writing, and store the originals somewhere you control.
Public and institutional work is procurement, not search
Framework agreements, prequalification questionnaires and tender responses win that work, and search's job is to make your capability and past performance verifiable when somebody checks. If that is where your revenue comes from, the site should carry the material a bid evaluator would look for rather than a consumer-facing pitch.
Describe what working with you is like
Clients commissioning a building are anxious about cost certainty, timescales, how changes are handled and who they will actually deal with. A page that answers those plainly, including a realistic fee structure and what happens when the budget is exceeded, differentiates a practice more than another gallery does. Very few firms publish it, which is precisely why it works.
Questions people ask about marketing for architecture firms
What should an architecture firm publish first?
Project pages with real detail: building type, constraints, procurement route, the problem and the response, properly photographed. The material already exists in your files and nothing else matches how clients choose.
How do clients actually search for an architect?
By the thing they are trying to do, a listed conversion, a passive house, a school extension, a change of use, usually with a place attached. Pages named for those reach clients with live projects; a general services page does not.
Is photography worth the cost?
Yes, and it is the cheapest large improvement available in a visual profession. Badly photographed good work reads as mediocre. Budget it per project, secure usage rights in writing and keep the originals.
Does search win public sector work?
No, procurement does. Search makes your capability and past performance verifiable when a bid evaluator checks, which is a real job and a different one from generating enquiries.