Nowadays, modern architects use visualization, rendering, and virtual reality to communicate design plans with their potential clients and prospects. Offering visualization is the best way to generate buy-ins. With the visualization industry being so highly competitive and overcrowded, virtual reality, rendering, and visualization are something of a near commodity.

Renderings and visuals are supposed to engage and excite the clients and architects are expected to produce outstanding imagery in a timely manner and at the most affordable prices. Now, creating visuals that easily beat competitors isn't as easy as it sounds. This is where we encounter a dilemma.

The architectural design can be the best of the best but without a proper effort to sell it, no client will buy it. With all that in mind, it's important to deliver visualizations that actually sell.

Of course, to be able to sell your visualization, it has to be impactful and stunning in order to lead to fewer revisions and clearer communication. Make the process of your architectural visualization smoother with heightened quality.

Understand the Goal Clearly

Before you start any visualization project, you have to be clear on what the main goal of your project is. The needs of your client play the most important role in determining the focus of the visualization.

Every architect should be using visualization for the sake of projecting a positive sense about every new development that takes place to create intrigue and convey an idea. In the end, the long-term goal of the project is what drives the type of visualization needed. The best thing to do it is to divide your architectural design into three categories:

● Conceptual visualization

● Architectural visualization

● Marketing visualization

Conceptual Visualization

Conceptual visualization is a rough way to demonstrate or present a project idea. It's photorealistic in nature and is an excellent way to gain buy-ins from your clients before you move on to the next design stage where you’ll determine the intricate details of the project.

Architectural Visualization

Architectural visualization helps you convey the exact design with all the elements included. Architects use this visualization to convey plans and make design decisions with their clients as these details are essential to the final visualization.

Marketing Visualization

When building a project, each architecture company has an overall marketing campaign that is supposed to sell that project to the highest bidder. Marketing visualization is a key element of that campaign as its main goal is to raise positive client awareness, educate them, and generate excitement for a landmark project.

This is where the overall aesthetic and finish are being added to the final product. To be able to sell a project, you must first determine the general idea in order to refine the client's intention. This isn't an easy thing to do as clients have really high expectations when it comes to their ability to visualize the design architects create.

The best way to sell a project is by creating a visual representation of a model that clients can explore and see with their own eyes. With all this in mind, here are a couple of good ways to use visualization for marketing purposes.

1. Win your clients over by offering visualization

We already mentioned the high expectations that clients have when it comes to buying a project from architectural companies. A lot is at stake so you have to be tactical. If your client can visualize a project, it will be much easier to sell.

They want to know what they're paying for so explanations and 2D drawings simply won't cut it. Visualization is what sells projects simply because 3D modeling is the best way to show your skills, but most importantly, to show your clients exactly what they're paying for.

2. Visual communication is what sells

Offering visualization brings some very useful benefits your way. When you're selling a product, your success depends on the ability to communicate with your clients. Offering just a dry description isn't going to be enough.

Your clients benefit the most when you throw in some visuals. The reason why this is so is that visualization allows you to thoroughly explain each step of the project during your presentation.

That way, you’ll be educating your clients which is extremely important for generating buy-ins. If you manage to ensure them at the early stages that you're on the right path with your project, your chances of selling suddenly increase.

3. Visualization allows you to find design flaws

It's much easier to convince your clients to buy your design if you can point out some of the design flaws that might cause major issues when actually realizing that design in reality. If you can assure your clients that they can avoid such mistakes, which is a real money-saver for them, there are no doubts that you'll be able to sell.

3D visualization is, in fact, an accurate and precise representation of how one design will look in real-time. Your clients can clearly see how their ideas will look like in reality, but more importantly, you're also giving them a chance to give their input.

Spotting issues at this pre-build stage will help you seal the deal, not to mention that it's also a great opportunity to show your expertise and knowledge in order to impress your clients. Remember, visual communication is everything in the architecture world.

4. Visualization allows for multiple concepts

Perhaps the best way to use visualization for marketing purposes is by offering multiple concepts to your clients. Offering just one concept may or may not pass but coming up with multiple concepts is a totally different thing. Both architects and clients have concepts of their own and each concept shows different options.

Doing this traditionally would take tremendous effort and time, which means that it wouldn't be cost-efficient. On the other hand, visualization allows you to develop multiple concepts with ease and in a timely manner. On top of all that, creating a range of concepts will show your clients how professional and serious you are when it comes to your work.

Clients usually expect one or two ideas, but going with three or four or even more will surely help you generate buy-ins. The power of modern technology allows you to use great 3D visualization software to apply any changes quickly and with ease. Your clients will appreciate these efforts.

5. Visualization allows you to promote your projects

When you're thinking about marketing, the first thing that comes to mind is the main goal you want to achieve. Since you're in the architecture business, you want to get the most exposure for your project to be able to sell.

So, visualization can help you get as many eyes as possible on your services. Clients who need architecture services will appreciate a 3D model portfolio where they can get a clear picture of what they can expect if they decide to hire you. Additionally, all social media networks support 3D models, renderings and visualization.

Showing off full 3D models on your website is one of the best ways to use visualization for marketing purposes. In fact, it's safe to say that visualization is what will make clients choose your services over your competition.

6. The ease of distribution

Visualization offers one of the greatest advantages that you can benefit from: thanks to cloud computing, you can easily distribute your 3D modeling anywhere in the world. You can share your visualization with clients all across the globe in mere seconds and allow them to experience your ideas with a few clicks of a mouse.

This is also a great way to significantly improve your project flow and bring dead time to a minimum. If there's one thing that clients hate the most, it's dead time and waiting. So, to keep everything running smoothly, you can easily distribute your 3D models when and where they're needed. This is a very important thing that clients take into consideration when they're thinking about hiring an architect or a company.

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So, as you can see, visualization is a great marketing tool that allows you to take your marketing campaign one step forward and ensure successful buy-in generation. They are most excellent at impressing clients and helping you find your targeted audience with ease. Visualization allows you to impress your clients and it makes advertising your work much easier.

It can open a lot of doors to all sorts of great opportunities if it's used the right way. In most cases, visualization is what will help your clients decide on hiring you over your competition simply because it's much easier to get a project approval and start charging for your services when a client is convinced in your work.