Jonathan is the Chief Digital Officer CDO at Marketshare, Inc. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, California. Marketshare, Inc. has been helping builders with all things marketing for over 35 years. Email: [email protected]

As a builder, there are a lot of things you need in order to have a successful business and drive sales; you need to build quality homes that people are excited to buy; you need to invest in the right marketing platforms; you need a talented sales team to walk potential buyers through the home-buying process.

But there’s one area that many builders overlook that can have a huge impact on sales, and that’s great graphic design.

Having the right graphic design partner and design strategy can go a long way in building intrigue around your properties, marketing to your audience, and driving sales and revenue for your building company.

Let’s take a look at how great graphic design can drive sales:

Strong Branding = Strong Sales

An important aspect of any business, including building, is having a strong brand. When customers interact with your company, they need to get a clear idea of who you are, what you stand for, and what they can expect from working with you. And those are all answers that come from your branding efforts.

A huge component of strong branding is strong design. The best brands bring their brand story to life through visuals and graphics like their logo, website, and marketing materials, and if you want the same kind of brand presence, you need to do the same.

When it comes to strong branding through graphic design, you want your designs to be:

• True to who you are as a brand
• Visually appealing
• Consistent across all platforms

If you’re just launching your building business, work with your graphic design partner to create the basic graphic assets you need to launch (like your logo, brand color palette, and website design). If you’re reevaluating your current graphic assets, talk to your graphic design partner about your branding goals and brainstorm ways to bring that vision to life through your designs.

When you have a strong brand – and you communicate that through your graphic design – you’ll build a strong connection with potential buyers. And that connection will result in strong sales.

Garner Buyer Interest Before The Build

Another way that graphic design can help drive sales is by garnering buyer interest before you even complete your build.

So, for example, let’s say you’re about to break ground on a new property and you expect it to be 12 months before the homes are move-in ready and available to show potential buyers. If you wait the full 12 months to start generating interest in the community, you’re going to have a lag in sales. Selling property takes time, and if you wait to start engaging with clients and generating buzz about your community until it’s finished, you’re going to face some slow months and struggle to get your community off the ground. But with the right graphic design, you can start getting people excited about and interested in your properties before a single home is finished.

Instead of waiting for your homes to be up and ready to show, have your graphic design partner create a mockup or 3-D rendering of your property that paints the picture for your customers of what it will look like when it’s completed. You can use this design in your marketing materials or for meeting one-on-one with potential buyers. Having a well-designed visual representation of your property before it’s actually build will help your sales team get a head start on building interest in the community – and closing sales – long before the community is move-in ready.

Build Trust With Your Customers

Buying a property is one of most important and expensive decisions most people will make in their lifetime. And in order to make such a large and significant purchase, they need to do business with a builder they can trust.

Once they meet your team and get an understanding of who you are, you’ll have the opportunity to build trust face-to-face. But you’ll never get to that point if they don’t trust you from the first point of interaction, which is usually through design.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes: if you were looking for a builder and you went to their website only to find a sloppy, outdated mess, would you trust them to build your home? Or if you got a marketing mailer from a potential building partner that was unbalanced, dated, and poorly designed, would you be likely to follow up and inquire about their properties?

You only get the opportunity to make a first impression once, and for the vast majority of your potential clients, the first impression will be based on your design assets. It doesn’t matter if you build amazing properties; if the first thing they see when they encounter your company is bad design, they’re not going to trust you. And that’s going to hurt sales.

But when you invest in quality design that matches the polish and professionalism you bring to the building process, you’ll immediately come across as trustworthy, which will make potential clients far more likely to engage with you. And the more clients you have reaching out to learn more about your properties, the more opportunities you have to sell.

There are so many factors that go into successfully selling properties for your building business. But when it comes to driving sales, don’t discount design. A little effort and a little investment into the right graphic design partner can have a huge impact on how you’re perceived in the market, generating interest in your properties and communities, and driving your sales numbers.