HOW TO USE THE IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE TO SELL HOMES FOR MORE
CLASSIC APPROACH
Ask any entrepreneur and they will tell you marketing is critical to selling anything, but you already know that. Ask them what goes into marketing and they will tell you that targeting the ideal customer, solving their problems and branding are all part of the magic formula for success.
But, you’re not selling widgets. You’re selling real estate, homes, places where people live, so the formula doesn’t apply.
Well, I challenge you to consider how this proven marketing approach can be applied to real estate.
THE IDEAL BUYER
Let’s start with the ideal buyer… Do you think every home is the ideal home for every buyer? Of course you don’t.
And buyers agree. They are looking for the best home for them and creating a profile for the home they want to buy. According to the National Association of Realtors Research Group’s 2023 Profile of Home Staging, “81% percent of respondents said that buyers had ideas about where they wanted to live and what they wanted in an ideal home.”
Good seller’s agents know that they must determine for whom each listing is ideal. Who has the features of this home on their wish list? What kind of person will be attracted to this home like a magnet?
HOW THE PROS ROLL
Professional marketing teams go so far as to create actual profiles of the people they are targeting to use as a guide for every marketing decision they will make going forward. Look at GAP, Banana Republic, and Old Navy. They are all selling clothes but to different people. Put very simply, GAP is for the hip, Banana Republic is for professionals and Old Navy is for families. But, to drill down on who they are selling to, companies take it much farther than that. Sales teams will create characters with a story around them — what do they do for a living, what are their likes and dislikes, what do they do on weekends, who do they live with, do they have pets? children? And, it goes on and on…
These personas inform decisions on product design, packaging, the look and feel of stores, the entire customer experience, and even operations. Shrewd businesses determine what their ideal customers care about and structure their operations to deliver to those customers at every touch point.
DESIGN FOR AND MARKET TO YOUR IDEAL BUYER
Can this approach be effective in selling real estate and how does one apply it? Well, we believe that trying to make a home appeal to everyone is a mistake. This approach comes from the age of beige, where people just wanted clean homes that didn’t show other peoples’ clutter. But, these days, presenting beige and white boxes is not enough to make buyers fall in love. And we want buyers to fall in love because that’s what makes them pay top dollar. Buyers fall in love when they feel the house is specifically for them. So we need to design it for them and present it to them.
We argue that if time is taken to consider who the ideal buyer for a home is, the rest becomes much easier. We need to think about how our ideal buyer will live in the home, how they will use each room, what features they will be drawn to, and which features won’t appeal to them - emphasizing the former and de-emphasizing the latter.
Then we need to package the home for them and speak their language. Do they use social media? Do they care about eco-friendly features, or it is more important to them that there are good schools nearby?
WHO IS THE IDEAL BUYER?
How do we identify the ideal buyer? We can do this by looking at the neighborhood and considering what’s happening in it. Who is moving into the neighborhood? What changes have happened over time? Is there a particular type of architecture in the neighborhood that appeals to a particular demographic? Is there something in the neighborhood, like a farmer’s market, a mall, a university, a dog park, a beach or lake, a park, or hiking and biking trails that attract certain people?
Having identified who might want to live in the area, we can evaluate the home and consider how to present a package that will speak to those buyers. We can do so with staging and marketing. The way we talk about the home and its features, the social media and other channels we use for marketing, and the aesthetic and decorative objects we choose for the home will be dictated by the buyer we have identified.
Our aim is to form the connection between the product (the home) and the ideal buyer.
USE A HOME STAGER
Your stager is your partner in this process. Trust your stager. A solid stager knows design trends, understands various aesthetics, who they appeal to, and how to achieve them.
If you follow the approach above, I bet your buyer will develop an emotional attachment to the home that is stronger than what they might feel for a white box. Or, they might even feel more passionate about the home you have presented than they would for a home that has their wants on paper, but that doesn’t speak directly and uniquely to them.
