Marketing for planning consultants
A planning consultancy's record is public but scattered across council websites. We bring it onto your own site as case studies, and explain your services to the three very different clients who need them.
What does marketing for planning consultants involve?
Marketing for planning consultants means putting approvals and appeal successes where a prospective client can see them, and explaining planning in terms each kind of client understands. We build town planning consultancies a website with written case studies, service pages by client type, and visibility in search and AI-assisted search.
Planning is one of the few consultancy disciplines people actively search for, often at a moment of difficulty: a refusal, an enforcement notice, a site that needs promoting. Homeowners, landowners and developers ask different questions, and a consultancy that answers each clearly, with examples from the relevant local authority, is well placed to be found.
Key takeaways
- People search for planning help when something has gone wrong or a site needs unlocking.
- Approvals in the client's own local authority are the most persuasive evidence a consultancy has.
- Homeowners, landowners and developers need separate pages; they are not the same buyer.
How do planning consultants win work?
A homeowner refused permission, a farmer wanting to convert a barn, a landowner hoping to promote a site: each goes looking for a planning consultant, often after being told to by an architect or solicitor. They search with the name of their council or the type of application, and they want to know whether the consultancy has succeeded with a case like theirs in that authority.
Developers and housebuilders appoint on relationships and track record, particularly with strategic land and appeals. They check the consultancy's experience of the local plan process, of similar schemes and of inquiry work, and they notice whether the case studies are recent.
What does a client check before appointing a planning consultant?
- Approvals and appeal successes for cases like theirs, ideally in their local authority
- RTPI chartered status and the planners by name
- The services relevant to them: applications, appeals, enforcement, land promotion, certificates of lawfulness
- How fees work and what the first conversation costs
What should the website show?
- Case studies with the site, the planning problem, the authority and the decision, dated
- Service pages for each client type: householder, landowner and rural, developer and strategic land
- Pages for the difficult situations people search for: refusals, appeals, enforcement, Green Belt
- The planners, their RTPI membership and the authorities they know well
Project write-ups are drafted by us from a twenty-minute call with you and approved before anything is published. How the build works is on the website design section of our services page.
What do clients ask before they find a planning consultant?
Questions like these, typed into Google or put to an AI assistant. They are examples of the kind of thing people ask, not measured search volumes; your own Search Console data is what decides which ones the site answers first.
- “What can I do if my planning application is refused?”
- “Do I need a planning consultant for a barn conversion?”
- “How do I get planning permission in the Green Belt?”
- “Which planning consultants handle appeals in my area?”
Which approach suits planning consultants?
Consultancies with householder and rural clients sit on the residential track, where local search demand is real. Consultancies working for developers and land promoters sit on the national track.
Residential-facing practices
Architects, structural engineers and interior designers taking homeowner and small-developer work within a region
- Google Business Profile kept current, with a reviews approach that fits a practice
- Local-intent pages for the work and the area you actually want
- Google Ads management — search campaigns around the project types you want more of, spend paid direct to Google
National consultancies
MEP, structural, civil and specialist consultancies selling to developers, contractors, architects and estates teams
- Mention outreach each quarter — partner credits, LinkedIn tags, one trade-press pitch
- No Google Business Profile emphasis and no ads, because the intent isn't there
- Mention outreach every month, with a trade-press pitch each quarter
The detail of what each package includes is in the SEO and AI-search visibility section and on the pricing page.
Have you worked with planning consultants before?
Not yet, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. The websites we have built so far are for an architecture practice, a mechanical and electrical consultancy and an EV charging design consultancy. The method is the same for planning consultants: a site organised around completed work, credentials where a buyer looks, and reporting on what can actually be measured.
What does it cost, and what do you guarantee?
Every price is published. A website is £1,200 or £1,500, fixed, with the domain in your name, and there is no website fee if the site you have is sound. Monthly packages are £395, £595 and £895, each with a 3-month minimum.
We put 5 guarantees in writing, all on things we control: what ships in the first month, when a new site launches, and what the reports quote. We do not promise a ranking, an AI recommendation or a number of enquiries, because nobody controls those.
See every price and guaranteeProfessional bodies for planning consultants
Clients and search engines both look for membership and registration with the bodies below. We make sure your status is stated accurately on the site and matches your listing with each of them.
Questions planning consultants ask us
By answering the questions people ask when they need planning help, on pages written around those situations, and by showing approvals in the relevant local authorities. Planning has more genuine search demand than most consultancy work, but it still takes months for a page to be found and no ranking is promised.
Disciplines that work alongside planning consultants
See how your practice is described today
The free AI-search audit records what Google and five AI assistants say when someone asks for a planning consultant, and what a referred client sees when they look you up. If you're already in good shape, it says so.