Floor plans are a crucial part of marketing a property. A survey by Rightmove revealed that real estate ads with floor plans generate 52% more clickthroughs than ads without, whilst around a third of buyers would completely ignore an ad with no floor plan!
So how can you make the most of them?
In the past, a floor plan simply meant a blueprint of the house’s layout. Not any more. The technology now exists to give your customers a fully immersive visual experience of the space you’re selling.
This can give you a real edge over your competition.
Why?
Because the most important thing to your customers is whether or not they can picture themselves living in the space you’re showing them. There are more options than ever before to bring your properties to life.
With 3D house plans, virtual and augmented reality options and smart social media marketing to capture the attention of your target buyers, you’ll soon see the impact of going the extra mile to let your customers take the ultimate tour of your properties - before they've even left their homes!
Here's how you can use these methods for maximum impact.
1. 3D House Plans and Virtual Tours
A few years ago, the best option you had to show a walkthrough of a home was to take a video or do a Skype/Facetime tour for your customers.
This is still a quick and easy option in a pinch, but 3D tours are a step up as they allow would-be buyers to see exactly what they want. They can zoom and rotate to see the property from any angle. No shaky cam, no background noise, and they can spend as long as they like there.
The most effective way to offer 3D tours is to provide a virtual reality option as well. This will provide the most immersive experience possible (second to actually viewing the home) and your customers will really appreciate the time and effort it saves them.
Looking for a new home can be exhausting, but with a VR tour, buyers can step into your properties without even leaving their couch!
Other benefits from a customer’s perspective:
- No need to set aside a whole day to look at properties - they can view periodically when they have a spare 15 minutes
- No travel is needed, saving them money and gas bills
- No wasted journeys for properties that they dislike immediately - they can just click out of the tour and into the next one
With our Hommati app, the 3D option can be accessed with a few clicks, and the VR mode only requires a smartphone and a VR headset (a cheap cardboard one will do - no advanced tech needed). All your customers need to do is click the “VR tour” option on any of our 3D tour pages and they'll be right there!
2. Use Social Media to Reach the Biggest Market
The millennial generation is reaching the age where many are getting ready to buy their first home and they now make up 44% of the market.
Most younger people are used to using technology like virtual reality, augmented reality and 3D modeling (how many millennials grew up making their own houses on The Sims!?) so they’ll respond well to the other marketing methods on this list.
77% of US adults have said that they want to see VR used in real estate ads and in 2017, 45% of millennials made offers on houses they'd never seen in person!
As first time buyers, they’re also likely to be feeling a huge mix of emotions. Giving them the choice to see as much as possible and deliberate the decision before they make a trip to see the property can give them much-needed reassurance.
What are some other ways you can appeal to young audiences?
The most forward-thinking realtors are using social media to appeal to millennial buyers.
Some ways to do this include:
- Using Facebook Live to live-stream open houses (you can also answer customers' questions via the comment section)
- Creating animated social media ads that show a short "taster" from your virtual house plans
- Using Pinterest and Instagram to feature your floor plans
Once you have great content, there are also some effective ways to grab millennials' attention on social media.
Pay Per Click Marketing
Using Pay Per Click to filter by demographic is a really cost-effective way to fine-tune your messaging to your target audience. PPC works by placing ads on social media that are only shown to certain people based on criteria you decide.
You can make your selection as broad or as narrow as you like and can adjust your filtering in real time whilst the campaign is still going. This means that you can iron out any errors and zoom in on the audience most likely to be interested. And you only pay when someone clicks on the ad!
User Generated Content (UGC)
UGC is anything that a customer shares online, like photos, reviews, videos, etc. and it’s an excellent way for businesses - including individuals - to generate trust in new customers.
How can you get people to create content for you? Reach out to customers and ask!
You could also combine this with a referral scheme by giving them a code to use, along with an incentive like a discount or competition draw.
3. Integrate Augmented Reality Into Your Marketing
What are your current marketing methods? Do you still use business cards, flyers, and other physical materials? In our digital age, these aren’t yet obsolete, but they won’t do on their own.
Research by the National Association Of Realtors has shown that people are buying through real estate agents more than ever before (a trend that has been steadily rising for the past 20 years) but at the same time, the internet accounts for more than 50% of leads that convert to successful sales - with referrals from agents only at 28%. This number is only set to rise more with millennials taking over the buyers’ market.
This means you need to be digitally savvy to compete with the 1,368,530 other real estate agents in the US! So how can you stand out as someone with something unique to offer?
Enter augmented reality.
With the Hommati app, you can use AR to make your business cards interactive and introduce homes to your customers before you meet them in real life. All they have to do is scan the card with a phone to play your video. This is a great way of achieving a human connection with your buyer before you meet them, giving you the edge over agents who use only online ads and business cards.
The future potential of AR is huge and is set to explode in the coming years. Imagine being able to show your customers what their space will look like with different colors, different furniture and more!
Get in on this trend now and be the first to see results.
4. Virtual Staging
Excellent quality photographs are absolutely crucial to selling your property. Great images can sell your property 32% faster than mediocre ones.
But hiring a photographer is expensive, and going to the site to style and restyle it to appeal to different buyers is also expensive and time-consuming. What can you do?
Virtual staging is an excellent solution.
If you don’t know what VS is, it’s where you digitally add extra elements to online photos, like furniture, rugs, and accessories.
Right now, you may be thinking “Oh yes. I’ve seen that online and it looks awful.”
That’s bad virtual staging making itself known. Good virtual staging is unnoticeable. To be sure of getting the results you want, make sure you use a trusted provider.
VS is a great option for:
- Empty properties
- Homes with outdated furniture
- Homes which are still occupied by the current tenants
- Small budgets - VS is much cheaper than conventional staging!
- Staging the same room in lots of different ways to appeal to different buyers or show different potential uses
83% of agents say that staging makes it easier for their customers to imagine themselves in the property, so don’t overlook this powerful tool for grabbing their attention!
5. Get Creative!
Now that you know some of the most effective ways to engage potential buyers, how can you use these in a way that creates the maximum positive experience for your customers?
Get creative and make it fun.
We mentioned earlier that buying a house can be exhausting. Luckily, with all of this technology, you have the opportunity to not only give your customers maximum control over their house-hunting experience but to also make it enjoyable too.
You could host virtual open house tours, Skype and Facetime walkthroughs where you provide a guided commentary on each room.
How about placing some fun or quirky objects around the property during your styling? This will be a talking point and make customers remember the place.
Make Your Customers Feel at Home
Everything you do when selling a property should be geared towards making your customers feel at home in the space where they stand. This is a journey that begins long before they cross the threshold and how you cultivate that journey matters immensely!
Using 3D house plans and VR tours gives your customers the chance to spend time on the parts that matter most to them, whilst reducing the time wasted on travel.
Social media marketing can warm buyers to your particular brand as a real estate agent and AR can help you to establish a human connection with your customers from the very beginning.
Intrigued, but not sure where to begin? Why not create a FREE account with us and start seeing the value that forward-thinking technology can bring to your real estate business.