Marketing to a luxury home buyer isn’t about convincing them to buy a home. They know what they want, they know what it takes to get what they want, and they’re ready to go. It’s really about why they should buy YOUR home. This buyer is often a move-up buyer, has definitely gone through the buying process before, and have maybe even gone through the building process before. This prior knowledge gives you room to educate them even more about your homes. Making sure you have the right content, the right process, and the right experience is what makes you the right builder for your luxe buyer.
High Expectations
From cars to clothes, these buyers are expecting the best when it comes to quality, experience, and design. They stay loyal to luxury brands and know that they can expect the same all-around quality from these brands every time they buy a product from them. They absolutely expect the same — if not a better — from their new home and the biggest purchase of their lives!
Considering these buyers are used to high-quality products and brands, they will be looking at your advertising, website, and even sales location with an extra close eye. Take a big-picture look at all aspects of your company and ask yourself, is it good enough? Are your ads and website showing off the absolute best of your product and design? Is your zoom background appropriate when you have virtual appointments with prospects? How about your actual sales office? When they use your pens at your office, are they branded or are they Papermate? While these details are small, they are what make all the difference when meeting your buyers’ expectations.
Since this buyer finally has the budget to create their dream home, they also expect to be able to make this home feel completely like their own. We created this campaign for Homes by Dickerson, a custom builder in the market, by tapping into their buyers’ mindset and understanding that they expect choices! Using trending but timeless design aspects and high-quality images from their houses, we created an online campaign that let the buyer decide, what does their idea of custom look like? This campaign made the buyer feel in control of not only the design of their luxury home, but also the building process.
Branding
Your buyers are spending $600k+ on their new homes, and you’re dedicating enormous amounts of time and energy to make every detail perfect for them. The effort that you’re putting into building your homes should be evident from the moment a prospect learns about your brand, whether it be from your display ads, social media, and especially your website. Wherever they look, they should instantly be able to recognize that an ad is yours — and this all comes down to building a consistent brand. Your brand should also act as a resource for your buyers. Be sure to include blogs on your website about design trends so that buyers are looking to you as a thought-leader in building as well as design!
One of our favorite redesigns we’ve done was for Classic Homes, a luxury semi-custom home builder looking to modernize and elevate their brand to match their buyers’ expectations. Their look used to be very traditional, which was in line with their past buyer, but with a new generation of move-up buyers comes new demands and Classic Homes needed a refresh to match.
High Quality Content
Before these buyers even walk in your door, they experience that falling-in-love feeling when they look at your content. Making sure that you’re investing in the best photography, video, and interactive content to accurately capture all of the details of your homes is vital. Sometimes photos may not even be enough for this buyer…giving them interactive tours of your previous builds can be the difference between you and the other builder! These buyers should be able to envision themselves living in one of your homes, so make sure they are professionally staged and photographed with up-to-date trends.
While we’re on the topic of the feeling you get when you look at an ad, Medallion Home, a luxury Florida-based builder, is one of the best examples of how you can feel what your life will be like when looking at their marketing. This campaign for their community, Aqua, uses lifestyle imagery to convey what their life could be like all of the time, not just when they’re on vacation.
Customer Experience
When this buyer demographic is ready to reach out to you, they have already done all of their research. They have purchased homes before, so they may even know what the building process is already like. How is your process different from your competitors? These buyers are coming through the door with design ideas in their mind, and you should be ready to make their Pinterest boards a reality. Throughout the build process, what are you doing to go above and beyond for your buyers? Is your design center state-of-the-art, highlighting all of the biggest brand names in appliances and materials? Are you extra communicative, sending out personalized videos and photos? If you don’t have the staff to make the entire sales process top-notch, be sure to have a good rapport with realtors so that they can work on bringing you the prospects, and your team can work on the relationship after they are ready to build their new home!
When you make an experience unforgettable, people will want to relive that day in and day out. They will remember the experience of picking out the paint colors, the process of designing their kitchen, and the way that your company was there for them every step of the way as they built their dream home.
