Sam Watson of The Agenzy is Gen Z, and he is not impressed by your digital marketing strategies. What do young Zoomer professionals working with architectural clients, fresh on the scene, have to offer old heads like us? New ways of thinking, technical savviness and fresh confidence? Let’s hear him out…

I’m Sam, I’m Gen-Z, and I think your marketing is boring. Like… seriously boring.

My business, The Agenzy (a Gen-Z led marketing agency) has worked with many award winning residential architects on their social media. This often leads to an unlikely mix of minds; us, creative marketers in our 20s, and our… ‘more experienced’… architect clients. Initially, they don’t always see the potential of maximising their online presence, so we hear the *same* statement, time and time again:

‘We get most of our business from referrals’

Even reading it gives me the heebie-jeebies. And the worst thing? I’m sure that many of you reading this article would tell me *exactly* the same thing. Reliance on referrals as the sole source of new business is problematic for several reasons.

Referrals are unpredictable. Tying business growth to the activity of your client network is never a good idea. ‘Feast or famine’ referral cycles cause your workloads to fluctuate wildly, and cashflow, project management and staffing soon become hard to keep control of. Any marketing strategy that’s inconsistent… is a bad one.

And because your clients are referring similar projects, who are in turn referring *more* similar projects… you never get to really diversify your portfolio. You’re left with limited market reach, where you’ll end up struggling to expand into new project types…

Read the full article here.