Selling green, sustainable homes requires an education process. And that education has to be on a sliding scale. Some homeowners may be making a first-time home purchase. Others are moving up. But they all have different priorities, which often don’t have much to do with sustainability.
This is why a comprehensive approach is so important. With the 2018 BUILDER concept project, Meritage Homes worked with the interior designer, the engineers, designers, and marketing team to show and teach buyers the value their new homes offer.
“Our energy-efficient building practices are really what sets our homes and communities apart from our competitors,” says Jennifer Mountain, regional marketing director for Meritage Homes. “When energy efficiency is done right, it matters more. It’s integrated into every facet of our homes, from how it’s designed to the way it’s constructed, making a Meritage home, on average, as much as twice as energy-efficient as a typical U.S. home of the same size.”
The interior designer for the reNEWable Living Home, Aundrea Brown, vice president of sales and marketing at Intermark Design Group, explains here how she thought about presenting these features of the home through the merchandising.
Mountain layers onto that approach with specific messaging that will appeal to the company’s target buyer and by putting metrics in place to make sure that the strategies are effective. This work extends to the 23 communities that Meritage Homes has in the Central Florida area.
She has her work cut out for her. Homes in the 23 communities are made to appeal to a wide array of demographics. The sliding scale of education goes from entry-level buyers to move-ups and beyond to the multigenerational buyer that the reNEWable Living Home targets.
The marketing group has metrics in place to understand where the buyers come from and what’s important to them, analyzing data from internal traffic surveys and tying that information to target buyer profiles. The Meritage research team also creates specialized surveys and hosts focus groups to find the right touch points or the right language to use to communicate the home’s sustainability features.
As Brown focused on communicating these messages via the visuals in the home like greenery that provides a sense of nature and wellness and the use of natural fabrics like cotton and twill, the research team has been gathering quantifiable metrics on how the messages are resonating. Mountain says Meritage’s strategy so far has had wild success. And, as always, location helps.
“The Estates at Parkside offers a rare opportunity to own a new home in a gated community in the prestigious Dr. Phillips area,” says Mountain. “Since opening for sale in winter of 2017, we have sold more than half of the home sites within the community. We will continue to leverage our unique selling proposition and plan to target consumers via email, direct mail, signage, web advertising and by partnering with key real estate agents in the area.”
See it all in person by planning a visit in January in Orlando. Register now.
