If you’re like most real estate investment professionals, you’ve probably given very little thought to scent or how it might influence your business. But emerging scientific studies, like those covered in recent articles of Psychology Today, indicate that manipulating scents might be worth a bit of inexpensive experimentation.
As the first sense that awakens at birth, the sense of smell has strong ties to memory and emotion, which makes it arguably the most powerful sense. Many theorize that scents can elevate moods, boost health and increase memory and recall.
Simple Strategies
You don’t need to dig too deeply into aromatherapy or essential oils to learn that peppermint in an office can increase productivity, floral scents have shown to increase shoe sales and casino gambling, and the smell of fresh baked pie during open houses increases home sales. Find a strategy that fits your needs and give it a try.
Start Neutral
Before you begin adding scents for your environmental experimentation, make sure you’re starting with a clean slate. Eliminate the sources of any offensive odors and create plans and procedures to address prevention strategies, including waste disposal and cleaning schedules. Masking odors may be tempting, but is ultimately self defeating.
Be Allergy Aware
If your choices will have the potential to impact a lot of people, for example considering a scent for hallways to calm and welcome residents to your apartment building, you’ll want to give some thought to allergies. You’ll want to stick as close as you can to natural smells and essential oils to minimize the odds of allergic reactions to your experiments.
It may take a bit more attention than buying a traditional air freshener, but you’ll be minimizing the risk for those who are allergic, asthmatic and those with heart and lung issues. In some circumstances, you may want to skip scent experimentation completely, like in clinical properties where a fragrance-free environment is ideal.
The effect of scents is neither universal nor sustaining. Not everyone is influenced by scents in the same way. Having more than one scent for a specific purpose or location will naturally cater to more people. Our brains filter out familiar scents in familiar environments, so scents don’t have a long term effect, unless they are mixed up.
Cycling scents throughout the day tends to be much more effective than a single scent in an office or work environment, whereas a single scent may be ideal for retail, restaurants and other commercial environments where clients come and go.
Will Scents Makes Cents?
Whether adding the sense of smell to the details that set you apart in the marketplace will deliver measurable results is debatable. It’s not always high on the list of priorities for the average real estate investment professional. However, It certainly costs very little to try and the results of studies tend to suggest there may be a positive, profitable impact.
Have you tried using scents in your office or during open houses at your properties? We’d love to hear your stories so let us know if you saw any positive results by leaving a comment below.
