Effective Strategies for Communicating Your Firm: Plan Wisely

For our featured guest post this month, we welcome Kirsten Sibilia, Principal of Dattner Architects, a New York City firm known for design excellence and civic engagement. A vocal advocate for the value of design, the power of the built environment, and the importance of sustainability, Kirsten has dedicated her professional career to supporting the practice of architecture. 

By Kirsten Sibilia

Articulating your firm’s mission and vision is the starting point for any communications strategy. Your mission speaks to where your firm is today; it synthesizes your values. A vision statement projects where the firm wants to be in the next 5 to 10 years; it is aspirational and focuses on what you want to be known for, the firm you seek to become.

To be meaningful, your mission and vision should both be short statements crafted with sufficient specificity. These are internal resources that will guide your communications program and help you shape the messages that attract the type of work you want to do. For example, your firm may want to offer a broader range of services including program management, become a leader in a particular sector, or, perhaps, get international design commissions.

To be achieved, each of these goals deserves a strategy that includes communications, marketing, and staffing – and sometimes operations. With regard to communications, the messaging, the packaging, and the outlets that will support each goal is different. The vision of the firm’s future will inform pitches made about market trends, a specific project, or an organizational change; emphasis may be placed on one area over another. Each story can build upon each other to develop an understanding externally of the strengths you are trying to promote in your firm.

Whatever your goals, consider the broad range of tools available to your firm, including traditional media, your website, blogs and microblogs, Facebook and Instagram, e-blasts, etc. You can use each of these tools to strategically convey your message and express the values that define your approach, your expertise, and your culture.