home builder marketing

Marketing insights from photos of an expedition to Antarctica

Black and white photo of two sets of jagged rocks forming a saddle. Old fence posts in the foreground. Reminiscent of a moonscape. — *Deception Island – the caldera of an active volcano. Although taken in black and white, this photo accurately represents the starkness and other-worldly feel of the island.*

With even the smallest home builders moving heavily into 3-D photoreal renderings, virtual tours, and animations, I thought it might be interesting to revisit this post from a year ago. This update includes additional information on rendering and virtual reality (VR) tools, plus new images of the latest photoreal renderings, and links to virtual tours. This also is one of my favorite posts, combining my career with my favorite pastime – travel.

A bucket-list trip to Antarctica is one of the most incredible and inspirational journeys. Seeing thousands of penguins and other animals, yet not a single plant anywhere is mind-boggling. The football field-sized+ icebergs, especially the tabular varieties, are astounding. And the monochromatic landscape is other-worldly. I came away with a desire to take better care of our planet, a greater appreciation of finding peace in solitude (this place is desolate!), and the realization I can enjoy summer when the high is just above freezing.

Colorful kayaks and kayakers in water with floating bits of ice, and dark clouds overhead. — *Kayaking in Neko Harbor*.

Penguins surrounding bright orange duffel bags on a large rock, set on a rocky beach with snow in the background. — *The inquisitive penguins.*

I also gained some key marketing insights. A recent post, Rules of Engagement, discusses the powerful lesson we learn from penguins, who are the stars of the Antarctic show. They captivate visitors as they gather stones to build nests, guard their chicks, run en masse along the beach to dive for food, and shuffle around checking out us humans. Likewise, digital marketing tools, including Interactive Floor Plans, Interactive Site Plans, and Visualizers, play a starring role on builder websites and are integral to the new home journey. Captivating and engaging homebuyers, digital tools create strong emotional connections and lead to an increase in closing sales.

A lesson also came on the importance of color and texture and how it relates to visual marketing tools like renderings, virtual tours, and animations. Against a backdrop of grey and white, the most captivating photos include glimpses of vivid color, most often provided by humans. Pops of red, orange, and yellow on ships, clothing, and kayaks look stunning in the barren landscape.

Bow of a ship with red trim cracking a giant ice sheet. — *Cracking a massive ice sheet in Wilhelmina Bay. Note the power or red.*

An expedition team, wearing bright orange and yellow jackets, on an inflatable Zodiac boat cruising through water with chunks of ice — *Traveling by Zodiac in the Antarctic Sound.*

Colors from nature include teal from glacial ice; clear blue skies; orange, pink, red, and purple emanating from the stunning midnight sunsets; bits of orange and yellow on penguin beaks, necks, and feet; and an occasional rainbow. That’s about it! What really makes Antarctica so dramatic are the textures. Smooth snow, jagged rocks, fluffy clouds. Constantly changing due to weather, they overwhelm the senses.

A black ship with red and white trim next to a giant, triangular, blue-tinted iceberg. — *Our ship, anchored next to a massive, blue-tinged iceberg.*

Blue icebergs floating in front of a rocky mountain with snow. Clouds overhead, and reflecting in the water. — *Cool blue on an iceberg and purple-tinged skies add rare bits of natural color in Neko Harbor.*

Bright orange sunset over the ocean against a backdrop of grey clouds. — *The most color at any one time, a vibrant sunset, sometime around midnight.*

And that brings us to the importance of photoreal renderings, virtual tours, and animations in new home sales. Colors and textures appeal to everyone. They move and motivate us, playing an essential role in marketing strategies. Photoreal imagry brings colors and textures to your pre-built homes. It gives potential buyers a realistic view of your homes, often generating sales before a model is ever built. 3-D Renderings are the first place to start. We still see builder websites with flat, black/white stick drawings. Yuck! These in no way engage the senses like a proper photoreal rendering.

*Photoreal rendering for Winslow Homes – daylight.*

*Same elevation for Winslow Homes – a dramatic dusk shot.*

Even more engaging are virtual tours and animations. What’s the difference? Virtual tours, like the ones for DeLuca Homes and KLMR Homes shown here, are user-controlled. Viewers click into a room and then turn the image for a 360° view. Animations, on the other hand, are video tours. Both bring your “model homes” to buyers around the world. Virtual Tours tend to be the most popular as they are more cost-effective, and most users enjoy the hands-on experience.

*Invite your buyers to discover your homes with virtual tours. Click the DeLuca Homes kitchen to explore their Mayfair plan*.

*A stunning home with spectacular views. KLMR Homes Bellos at the Summit.*

People love to explore and engage. These are the reasons many of us enjoy discovering the world. When it comes to purchasing a new home, your buyers also want to personalize. By implementing digital and visualization tools on your website, you invite homebuyers to do all three. Contact Outhouse today to learn more about our interactive floor plans, interactive site plans, virtual tours, animations, visualizers, and renderings, plus our interactive kiosks, which incorporate all.

Clouds and a rainbow between two jagged hills straddling a channel with water. — *A rainbow – the perfect ending to a storm in the Lemaire Channel.*

As a successful home builder, you know that the home buyers in today’s world begin their home buying journey online. They are searching for homes and evaluating builders’ new home communities and floor plans via their websites long before they ever decide to make contact with a salesperson and visit a community.

Lady checking out builder website. — An engaging website is critical to new home sales.

You know you need to have a home builder website that generates quality sales leads, and you also want to grow the number of qualified home buyers that visit your site.

You know it would be terrific to have a trusted partner agency to help you navigate the increasing complexities and options that are available in today’s digital marketing toolset. But let’s be honest. You are not an expert in digital marketing techniques and technologies, and you don’t have the time to become one. You are also working with limited marketing resources and can’t afford to waste money on selecting the wrong partner.

We all fear making mistakes, especially when those mistakes will cost us time and money. So how can you move forward with more confidence to find the digital marketing agency that is right for you and will help you sell more homes?

Here are some key questions to consider to help you evaluate a digital marketing agency that you are considering as a partner.

1.) Do they understand the home building industry?

There are a lot of agencies out there that are very good digital marketers but don’t have specific experience in working with home builders. Your local agency down the street may be very good at understanding the nuances of SEO, paid search, email marketing, and more, but do you want to pay them to learn the difference between a floor plan and an elevation, or between a model and an inventory home?

If you are looking for a partner who can help you execute on the tactical level, and will simply take your direction and implement it, then this type of agency may be a good fit for you.

However, if you are not sure what the best steps are to move forward online and you are also looking for strategic advice and guidance and an understanding of what others in the industry are successfully doing, then you will want a digital marketing agency who has not just worked with a few other home builders as clients but is also participating in industry events and sharing ideas on industry best practices.

2.) Can they explain the technical things they do in a way that you can understand and be comfortable with?

Just because digital marketing can be technical in nature, doesn’t mean that you must work with an agency purely on blind trust. It is important that you are comfortable with the direction and tactics that your agency partner is implementing on your behalf. While it is not necessary for them to train you to become a digital marketing expert yourself, they do need to be able to communicate the details of what digital marketing activities they are doing and why they are doing them and do that in such a way that you can understand and be comfortable.

These communication skills will continue to be important well beyond the initial sales discussions when you are deciding whether to work together. While fancy charts and graphs can look pretty and impressive, as the agency reports their progress periodically, ensure they will not just send a canned report but will explain the data and the implications of that report. With every report should come an understandable answer to the question: “Therefore, what’s next?”

3.) Can they describe their process and demonstrate that they understand where to start and how to get you where you want to go?

You feel like your business and the homes you build are unique and special, and they are. But usually, those differences, while important, are a relatively small part of the overall picture of what you do and the homes you sell. This means that an experienced agency is going to be able to see the commonalities between their clients across the services that they offer and define and create their process or framework for successfully serving you.

Having a process to follow does not mean that you will get a cookie-cutter service or that the solutions provided will not be customized to your needs. It does mean that you will get consistency in what they deliver for you and it demonstrates a deeper understanding of how the execution of digital marketing services can help you sell more homes, even when your homes are in a different location or target a different buyer demographic than someone else that the agency has worked with previously.

4.) Does the agency claim to be an expert in everything?

Confidence is great, arrogance is not. It is very challenging in today’s environment for a single agency to be an expert in everything. Be sure to ask where the agency draws the line of which services they will offer for you. For example, at Blue Tangerine, we recognize that we are not experts in helping our clients with their core branding or with logo design, so we have established relationships with several other branding agencies so that we can provide referrals if our clients have a need for those particular services.

5.) Will the agency clearly measure success in a way that you are comfortable with?

When working with your digital marketing agency, it is very easy to lose sight of the ultimate end goal, which is to increase qualified leads so you can sell more homes. This happens because agencies feel, often rightly so, that they don’t have the full control to be held accountable for that result. Instead, they want to focus on metrics like website traffic increases and specific keyword rankings. These are, of course, important metrics that need to be reviewed and will inform the tactical execution of your digital marketing plan and strategy. However, if you double the amount of traffic to your website or your website is now ranking number one for your favorite keyword phrase, and you still do not sell more homes, is that really success?

handshake — Trust between builder and marketing agency is key.

Bonus Tip: Most importantly, are they someone you can trust?

Regardless of how the digital marketing agency you are considering measures up with whatever criteria that you apply, at the end of the day, it’s all about trust. No partnership will ever be successful in the long term if both sides are not able to work together from a position of trust. While trust is something that takes time to develop, here are a few ideas of ways to determine if an agency is trustworthy even before you’ve started working with them:

Do they get back to you in a timely manner, the way they promised to when you filled out the form on their website?
Do they deliver a proposal or quote within the timeframe that they told you they would, or if not, do they keep you up to date with where things stand?
Do they have a demonstrated expertise by working with other home builders?
How do their existing clients feel about working with them?

At Blue Tangerine, we recognize that to be trusted as your digital marketing partner is both an honor and a responsibility. We’d love to earn that trust. If you are ready to start selling more homes, reach out today and let’s talk.

Submitted by

Mila Sorensen, Director of Marketing & Marketing Services
Blue Tangerine.

Blue Tangerine is your website design, development and digital marketing agency all rolled into one – from mobile responsive websites, SEO and PPC to email and social media, we provide full-service solutions to home builders, online retailers, and businesses.

How Photoreal Renderings & Virtual Tours Sell Homes