You understand the journey. Your road map shows where you started from and where you ’re going. Using woman-centric home plans, you ’ve built the right product to get you to your destination.   Now it ’s time to step on the gas!

Every customer touch point – and there are many more of these than initially come to mind – presents the opportunity to create awareness of, understanding of, and preference for your woman-centric approach.  Getting your key messages exactly right and consistently communicating them at every level will distinguish you from others building homes in your market.

BRANDING
Working with Design Basics on this approach means you have the opportunity to license the Her Home ® or Woman-Centric MattersSM brands on a limited, market-exclusive basis. Tying into these branding opportunities helps you firmly establish and accurately communicate your market position in the minds of prospective buyers.

Communicating Your New Identity
How do prospective buyers first encounter your brand?

SIGNAGE
Some studies suggest that up to 1/3 of prospective home buyers initially discover a homebuilder while driving around looking at homes for sale. Though it ’s obvious they ’re looking at new homes or available homesites, the often-overlooked yard signs present a great opportunity to plant your company ’s name firmly in their minds.

Builder yard signs typically include the builder name/logo and phone number– essential information, to be sure.  But why stop there? Incorporate the Her Home or Woman-Centric branding message, and you potential buyers in a unique way. Whether installed on a vacant lot or in front of a home under construction or a finished model, Design Basics 33" x 44 " color rendering yard signs catch the attention of prospects and introduce the woman-centric Livability At A Glaance ™ floor plan presentation.

Your company vehicles can be thought of as mobile signage. In addition to your name/logo, they provide another opportunity to incorporate your woman-centric message. Builders with showrooms and/or corporate office spaces can add the unique branding messaging to their exterior signage to intrigue passersby.

MODEL AND SPECIAL EVENT HOMES
If it’s true that 40% of first-time model home visitors have not already formed an impression of your company prior to their visit, it ’s essential they depart with a favorable and memorable view of you and your homes. Do you use the garage in your model home as a sales center?   What would a woman-centric sales center look like? Design Basics approaches sales center design with the same objective that we use in designing the homes themselves – delighting home buyers.

Inside your model homes, the woman-centric features come to life…for some buyers. We Ysay “some buyers” because others will simply not notice (and therefore not appreciate) various woman-centric aspects of your home. For example, your model may present an excellent rear foyer entrance from the garage. While buyers “ooh and ahh” over its drop zone and walkin closet, they may totally overlook the point that they’re not walking through a laundry room when entering from the garage. Design Basics can suggest and create strategically placed discreet but powerful signage to call attention to these woman-centric attributes.

Because of the number of visitors, a Parade of Homes entry or similar specialevent home presents additional opportunities to get your branding and message in front of the public. But that large amount of traffic through your home also means you will have little time to speak individually with those visitors.

The interior signage previously described will be important, along with whatever literature or handouts these visitors take with them as they leave. Again, crafting exactly the right message is key. Also consider the“ save-ability” of your handout. Most builders’ handouts that actually make it into prospective buyers’ current homes end up in the trash. Why? Because they are designed from the builder’s perspective.

It’s pretty easy to throw away an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. But giving buyers interesting stories and advice – as well as information about your company– will make your literature valuable and give it a shelf life. In our admittedly biased viewpoint, providing copies of Her Home magazine “Compliments of XYZ Home Builders” drives home the woman-centric perspective. Even better, Design Basics can inexpensively produce custom versions of Her Home, just for you! (See example below.)

CREATING BUZZ:
The woman-centric approach to designing and building homes is newsworthy. It’s a great story. And people love to tell stories. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing that exists. And according to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association,

“Word of mouth advertising is a natural fit for women. Women are more likely to ask opinions from people they know and trust before buying a product or service.”

A woman-centric home starts conversations.  You’ve given the folks who tour your model or Parade homes something interesting and fun to share with others.  For the same reasons, it’s a great story for the media to pick up on. And stories have more impact than “information.” We hear information and it resides in our left brain – the rational, logical side. Stories reach our right brains, engaging our emotions, making them both more memorable and easier to re-tell.

From traditional public relations efforts directed toward the media, to creating buzz-worthy events for outside real estate agents or prospective home buyers, Design Basics can help design and execute efforts directed toward the media, to creating buzz-worthy events for outside real estate agents or prospective home buyers, Design Basics can help design and execute efforts to make your business the talk of the town.

ADVERTISING
Does your current advertising stand apart from other builders’ ads? Does it intuitively connect with female home buyers?  Are you even reaching your best prospects? In our opinion, most builders’ ads, like their web sites and their yard signs, are bland and “me too.” If prospective buyers couldn’t tell the difference if your logo was replaced with that of your competitor’s, most of your advertising dollars are being wasted.

From the yellow pages to newspaper ads, billboards to radio and TV commercials, builders who take their woman-centric message to the marketplace differentiate themselves and become more relevant to women home buyers.

Delia Passi Smalter, author and president of Medilia Communications reports...

“Women recognize by a 3 to 1 ratio companies, whether large or small, that market to women. And by a 7 to 1 ratio, women will go out of their way to do business with these companies.”

So, if women are the primary decision makers in the vast majority of new home purchases, and women will go out of their way to do business with builders who take a woman-centric approach, the final steps are to create compelling ads and select the right media vehicles. Here again, Design Basics ’ award-winning marketers are applying their expertise on behalf of local builders taking this woman-centric approach to create and place ads that disproportionately increase the number of prospects and help convert them into buyers!