Home builders have a wide array of digital marketing techniques at their fingertips. From social media marketing and landing pages to PPC campaigns, contests, and more, there are many strategies available that can help bring potential home buyers to a website and then convert them into a registrant.
In this article, we’re going to focus on visual content and take a closer look at the importance it can have to the online success of a home builder or developer.
Why Home Builders Should Prioritize Visual Content
If you’re in the home building or development industry and aren’t utilizing visual content, you are missing out. Home buyers want to see their potential new home and neighbourhood. Both interior and exterior visuals can get people excited and might just convince them to register.
To put it simply, visual content is everywhere. The eyes are naturally attracted to the visual elements and then held there with help from engaging movement, audio and information. In fact, a series of surveys conducted by Forbes in regard to how executives embrace and utilize visual content showed that:
- 65% of business executives surveyed had visited the website after watching a video
- 59% of senior executives would choose to watch a video over reading an article, when given the chance[i]
So, what exactly counts as visual content? Here at IMP Digital Marketing, we put a large emphasis on:
- Photos
- Videos
- Infographics
- GIFs
Quick and engaging, this visual content can help relay information to users effectively. In fact, we find that Google tends to rank pages higher that have a variety of visual content compared to those that don’t. For a home builder, we would suggest including a variety of creative photography, fun videos, aerial imagery, architectural 3D renderings, and even virtual tours.
Guidelines for Visual Content
Is it time to collect, create or utilize visual content? We highly suggest following the following guidelines:
Authentic
Visuals of the interior and/or exterior of the homes being built in your development should be appealing, but also truthful. Natural lighting and staged furniture can help to complete a room, improving the aesthetic for the visual, without falsifying the size or features of the home. Your registrants deserve an accurate preview of what their future home looks like or could look like.
Relevant
Give your audience what they are looking for. Pictures of dogs and funny videos may be entertaining, but they aren’t really relevant to your audience. Relevant visual content might include home care tips, landscaping guides, information about the houses in your development, or a site map.
High-Quality
Visuals that are grainy, choppy, incomplete, or low quality, in general, are not ideal. Not only will your audience likely exit and move on, but it can also tarnish your brand. As a rule of thumb, ensure all visuals are bright, in focus, complete, and stabilized. If your content has audio, ensure that any background noise or music is low, and that the person speaking can be heard clearly. We always recommend using a DSLR camera or a smartphone with a good camera.
Context
Your visuals should always be self explanatory, but in the case that they aren’t, we recommend including a title, headline or caption to help the user understand what they are looking at.
Brand Personality
All of your visual content should be contributing to and actively representing your brand. This includes tone, logos, colours, font, information, location, audio, and messaging.
Consumability
One of the most-appealing benefits of visual content is that it is easily consumed. To ensure this, keep videos and text simple, short, engaging, and concise.
Content Creation with IMP Digital Marketing
Want to learn more about how visual content can help improve the digital success of your business or company? Get in touch with our team of digital marketing experts today. With over 20 years of industry experience, we can help you take your online presence to an entirely new level.
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[i] Forbes Insights | Video in the C-Suite: Executives Embrace the Non-Text Web. Retrieved from: https://images.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/Video_in_the_CSuite.pdf. Accessed: 2019-01-24.
