The Complete Guide to offering CGI services to your clients
Real estate CGI services have been one of the most popular things in the real estate photography industry. Not only do they provide great benefits to customers, CGI could be bundled for upselling and cross-selling to increase revenue. This blog is a guide for you to offer CGI services to your clients. Let’s read to find out the details.
1. Reasons to offer real estate CGI services
One of the reasons why photography companies should start offering real estate CGI services is because of their potential for targeting high-value commercial residents. But continuing to strike the residential properties as we always do doesn’t sound bad. Why the shift in focus? You might wonder.
According to recent reports, the market has witnessed low inventory. Low inventory means there is a lot of demand from buyers and people who want to buy homes, but there isn’t enough inventory to meet the demand. Because there are more buyers than sellers, an imbalance occurs, resulting in a scarcity of available properties for sale. What does this mean for photography companies? There are fewer properties to shoot and market. In other words, there’s a “red ocean” market for residential properties.
When the old land is crowded, you may as well move to the undiscovered and promising new land. Shift your company’s attention to a blue ocean market with less competition. 3D architecture visualization services will be your closest buddies in this circumstance. How so? Real estate CGI services enter a new market with greater opportunities to sell and less competition. The blue ocean reveals itself in the number of properties to be presented in a photo-realistic manner in the new house construction market. Virtual staging comes into play when the property is finished but unfurnished.
On the other hand, the value of a CGI architectural visualization project is far greater than that of a house photograph. A single computer-generated image might cost anything from $250 to $1000. Thus, with CGI, the expected revenue from a single property is substantially larger. This service helps real estate photography companies increase revenue and discover other potential opportunities. For more information, check out our blog below.
2. How to offer architectural 3D visualization services for real estate?
Now that we talked about why you should sell real estate CGI services or 3D visualization services, let’s dive into how you can do that.
2.1. Find your customers
Like all other business offerings, first, you should start circling who you are selling to. In other words, who are your target customers, clients, or buyers of architectural visualization services?
Typical customers with demand for such visual products include home building companies, instruction companies, real estate developers, architects or architectural companies, and commercial and high-end real estate agents. A common characteristic shared by them all is that they are involved in marketing newly built, under construction, or under-planning real estate projects. Such projects and properties often require early marketing so they can attract funding, investment, and buyers. This is how your CGI services can come into play.
By the sound of it, you can tell this blue ocean market size is massive, and the addressable market for your business is huge. Still, you don’t need to target them all, just focus on one group or one persona and let the game begin there. Shortly, you should consider architectural rendering as a new market vertical for your business. That’s why you should be clear that clients who would buy 3D rendering services might not be typical real estate agents you are serving. We won’t delve into how you should approach them here but since you have had connections with estate agents, they could be your best friends to refer to someone who might need this.
Once you’ve found your customers, it’s time to understand what their needs are and how you can design your services to match those demands.
2.2 Define what your package looks like
Rendering itself is a suite of products that come in many forms. To serve your clients the right way, you have to define ways to package your offerings together. Before doing that or designing the architectural visualization package, you should know what elements are to be included.
Typical 3D services commonly offered by most real estate visualization companies are 3D Floor Plans, exterior architectural rendering (CGI), interior architectural rendering (CGI), exterior architectural video (CGA), and interior architectural video (CGA).
Compared to usual photography services, 3D floor plans created with 3D Rendering and Visualization Software are capable of showing all property details (living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, paint colors, and various interior finishes), including furniture in multiple styles. CGI (computer-generated images) are like photos, and CGA (computer-generated animations) are like videos.
Once you have elements, you can start bundling them together with the way your customers want or how you want to have them. You can build your packages based on smaller target niches such as residential and commercial real estate (restaurants, department stores, shophouses, and malls). We’ll talk more about how to leverage your package later.
2.3. Invest in sourcing (outsourcing) and production
If you want to market your organization as a CGI company or studio, you should invest in creating in-house capabilities to offer this service suite. A professional 3D artist team is quite expensive to invest in. Outsourcing to a 3D visualization company could be a great alternative in this case. However, there could be a lot of things to consider when choosing a 3D outsourcing company. When outsourcing, you can look for certain criteria that help you make decisions easily. Using a standard RFP template when scouting multiple service providers is a good strategy to save time and effort.
It’s important to note down some criteria when looking for a 3D outsourcing provider. Portfolios or samples are a good place to see the provider’s work. Service quality, pricing, and project turnaround time are the key elements to know as well. Here are the steps you can follow for a smooth 3D Architectural Rendering Outsourcing process:
Step 1: Defining the architectural rendering project elements and creative briefs
Step 2: Getting in touch with your favorite or several rendering services
Step 3: Asking for the scope of work forms (which outline areas of 3D work)
Step 4: Determining the turnaround time and price, service level agreement including NDA and guarantees
Step 5: Defining the quality control requirements
Step 6: Monitoring workflow and communication with 3D artists
Step 7: Checking intermediate results and discussing them for reviews, corrections, and changes of mind
Step 8: Selecting the output format and approving the final project result
Step 9: Staying in touch for long-term collaboration
Check out the blog below for more related information.
Featured blog: Working with a 3D rendering company: The ultimate process
2.4. Define workflow and SLA with all stakeholders
Understanding the 3D outsourcing workflow will help you prepare better for the inputs to get the best output results. It will also help you to understand the process and therefore be more in control of the factors along the way. Every 3D rendering company has its own process for providing services to clients. However, a good real-estate 3D service should not just stop at having a clear workflow. They should go beyond that to support clients in the most effective way and ensure the output is produced at the highest quality.
Normally, the 3D outsourcing firm will send out the SLA, which includes input requirements. The input requirements are the list of materials you must prepare in advance. If you want to find out more about it, check out the blog:
Featured blog: 4 property 3D visualization inputs to prepare before outsourcing
Next, the company will send you the workflow description and the SLA. This helps you to know the ordering steps. An SLA is a contract between the vendor and the company that specifies the detailed level of expectations from the vendor. Paying attention to the amendment requirements will help you understand the process and what to prepare. Check out the Blog “3D workflow” to find out more information.
3. Ways to leverage your CGI service
3.1. CGI Bundling
One way to leverage your real estate CGI services is to bundle them with other services. Bundling comes with various benefits when it improves the efficiency of the billing and ordering processes. When you combine other suitable services into bundles with CGI, not only can you sell more, but you will also provide other value to the customers. That is upselling, which means selling a more advanced or premium version of the same product. They are still interior images but from different angles, or of the same room but with different looks and materials.
As an example, when you bundle CGI with a 3D floor plan, the property is described in detail regarding furniture materials and textures. Home purchasers may immediately determine the dwelling’s overall dimensions and how furnishings fit within the area. With the exterior, CGI can be bundled with CGA since it can grab attention on digital channels and show the surroundings. of the properties. From these benefits, you can totally upsell real estate CGI services and provide a valuable package to real estate agents. On the other hand, bundling can help cross-sell when you can sell more than one product and increase revenue. Still, wondering how CGI bundling can help your business grow? Check out the details in the blog below:
Featured blog: How real estate photography firms can bundle CGI architectural visualization services
3.2. Augmenting your core services with extra elements
Apart from bundling your individual services together, another way to create added value for your services is by providing additional elements that complement the whole work process. Think of that as a cherry on top to make customers enjoy your service more. A way that works for CGI services is to have a digital-furniture library containing samples of possible furniture, floor materials, wall colors, and every possible stock element.
Such a library allows your clients to collect, preview, and envision their project’s visuals quickly and easily. Eventually, that results in a better service experience and customer satisfaction. Architectural rendering outsourcing companies like Esoft offer white-labeled furniture libraries to enable clients to present their ideas easily to their end customers. If you are interested in knowing how it helps you provide better real estate scriptural visualization services for your customers, our case studies are here.
Featured case study: Digital furniture staging library customer—Fewer changes of mind, less hassle
Featured case study: A New York firm and their refined CGI services
Did our blogs provide you with valuable information about real estate CGI services? Check out Esoft’s 3D rendering services for more details.
Conclusion
Assisting potential buyers in envisioning themselves in the property is an important part of the selling process. By employing CGI to generate lifelike room settings, real estate salespeople may gain an advantage with prospective consumers who want to see what their future home may look like.
