Just like casting a net when you go out to fish, Realtors use a wide-range of marketing techniques to attract the majority, but are they using the right bait to lure in that perfect sale and target buyers?
Chances are no. Open houses, website campaigns and newspaper ads can be a waste of time and money in this economy, if you’re not targeting the right buyer. A home in an older community on Long Island is going to attract a different buyer than one looking at a condo on the Upper West Side. So, how can you determine a target buyer?
Fact: Demographics vs. Psychographics
First look at the demographic profile, who is living in that neighborhood, what stores are in the area, can a home seller provide any clues, and why would someone buy the product (in this case a home)? By determining one or two types of buyers, a home stager can go into the space and create stories, rather than neutralize, to appeal to specific demographics. While creating a demographic profile made up of age, income, profession, gender and more it’s important to keep in mind the psychographic profile as well.
The psychographic information determines how the target market feels, what they want, what’s important to them and how they go about their daily tasks among other things. Psychographics determine what sports, arts, food, retailers buyers like to participate in. This information can help, what Matthew Finlason from HGTV’s The Stagers says, target stage a home by keeping a particular lifestyle in mind. Our company focused on this topic at Finlason’s advanced staging course. Lifestyle Merchandising, a term coined by the HGTV star, is a combination of researching, identifying and building a plan between the home, buyer and our company aesthetics. With this advanced designation as a design specialist, Stylish Stagers, Inc. can help target buyers.
Why is this important? When a Realtor or home seller shows a property focusing on the buyer’s wants and needs they not only solve the buyer’s problems, but they make them feel good inside, as if this home was made especially for them.
Function: Create Multiple Spaces
A dining room turned into a kid’s playroom. A second bedroom now houses an office. We’ve seen these types of rooms maybe in a client’s homes, or maybe in our own homes. You know the room that is supposed to be functioning as something completely different from how it’s set-up, that’s not appealing to buyers.
In Real Estate maximizing the square footage of a space and gets the most bang for your buck, that’s where functionality comes in. When a home is on the market a home stager can easily provide decluttering, rearranging or add furniture services to help increase the sale, however, it’s important to create two, three or even four defined functions within one space.
To figure out how to maximize the function of a room use target staging, by honing in on a buyer’s lifestyle. If the home on the market is a two bedroom geared for couples with a newborn and one partner works from home, based on the demographics, obviously an office has to be created, which could become the dual function in the living room. If not the sale is a bust.
Within the functions of those spaces it’s important to create moments, where a little girl can play tea party or show where a woman can sit down to finish her manuscript, or maybe it’s a man who wants to play cards with his friends. It’s these everyday moments that can transpire these functional spaces into the dreams of how buyers want to live.
Multiple functions means adding more furniture and accessories to the overall staging price, but that price could be returned to the home seller in ten-fold when a buyer discovers how efficient these hidden spaces are.
Once a home is target staged according to function, demographics and psychographics, it’s up to the Realtor to use that same research to target market to those specific buyers. For instance, rather than cast a net for a new family by doing an open house, think outside the box, where do young couples with babies hang out? Where do single women or baby boomers go? These simple questions can help hand over the keys to a client’s home faster.
Want to learn more about the home staging process? Grab a copy of Feel at Home: Home Staging Secrets for a Quick and Easy Sell where we go through a 10-preparation steps to make buyers feel at home when touring your property on the market. These are tried and true methods on how my client’s used home staging to sell fast. Have a home staging question? Contact us.
Happy Selling,
