If you're a home building marketer, you may have found that reaching new customers is more challenging than it seems. It's hard to come up with new home builder marketing strategies without the right resources. As a result, you may have difficulty putting together a marketing plan that allows you to reach your target audience without spending a fortune. You need a holistic approach for your brand to succeed.
Using the time-tested builder sales funnel, do the following:
- Bring potential customers to your website
- Turn them into leads
- Nurture them until they're ready to buy a new home
- Help them find the perfect home at the right price.
- Delight them with memorable customer experiences
Here are 5 Home Builder Marketing Strategies You Can Apply in Today's Digital World to Help Your Brand Stay Relevant in Any Market.
Each of these steps must have well-planned strategies and resources dedicated to them to be successful. It's essential to know the different media and marketing tactics included in each step, and the metrics you should use for measuring success and optimizing your marketing and sales funnel conversions.
Step 1: Attract Prospects to Your Website
Also known as inbound marketing, getting prospects to your website can be one of the most difficult and expensive stages for home builders to achieve results. It takes a lot of work to create (and increase) the right type of traffic for your company. With the right inbound strategy, your campaigns will drive quality traffic to your home builder website, blog, and landing pages.
Marketing strategies include Organic search engine optimization (SEO), Social media marketing, Paid search (PPC), Listing websites, Banner advertising, Audience scoring, Offline advertising, Content marketing, and Blog SEO services.
Primary metric is Impressions-to-visitors (%)
Secondary metrics include Cost per impression, Cost per click, and Total visits.
Step 2: Engage Visitors with Quality Content and Visualization Tools
Once you get prospective clients to your website, you must gain their trust before they will take the next step and start a conversation with you. Today's home buyers do their research before connecting with you, so your home builder website must be visually rich, with beautiful digital imagery and videos, otherwise you will lose them. Think of this as your 24/7 online model. Keep it current with an easy-to-update Content Management System (CMS), and consistently work to improve the quality of photos and home renderings.
Marketing strategies include Photo Galleries, Videos, Virtual tours, Rendering services, Interactive floor plans, Social sharing, Blog articles, Digital brochures, Custom favorites accounts, Registration forms, and Social media engagement.
Primary metric is Visitors-to-leads (%)
Secondary metrics include Total leads, Cost per lead, Marketing qualified leads, Sales qualified leads, Bounce rate, Abandonment rate, and Time on page.
Step 3: Nurture Leads with Timely and Relevant Follow-Up
Once a prospect has reached out to contact you, the speed of your response is critical. Every minute you wait increases the likelihood they go with another real estate option. You must design a follow-up plan for all different types of leads. For example, a "C-lead" that signs up to get your home builder email newsletter should be treated differently than a great "A-lead" that requests an appointment to tour a move-in-ready new home. This stage requires the most planning.
Marketing strategies include Follow-up workflows, Email marketing, Drip campaigns, 1-1 follow-up, Online Sales Counselor (OSC) Program, Live chat, and Phone tracking.
Primary metric is Leads-to-appointments (%)
Secondary metrics include Response time, Response rate, Open rate, Click through, Cost per appointment, Appointments set, and Appointments kept.
Step 4: Close the Deal with a Great Digital Experience
The home builder industry often relies on market demand to drive sales. But there are tremendous opportunities to create better digital experiences for customers that need help visualizing what their future home might look like. Don't just invest in online tools for the marketing department to use. Encourage the sales team to use them as well, since clients start their search online before they come to meet you in person. This is an opportunity to learn what their preferences are (e.g. favorite floor plans) and establish trust by incorporating them into your home demonstrations. Doing this will increase your conversions.
Marketing strategies include 3D interactive tours, Home & floor plan demonstrations, Virtual meetings like FaceTime or Zoom, Virtual design centers, Virtual reality, interactive floor plans, pricing tools, kiosks, and videos.
Primary metrics include Appointments-to-sale (%) and Percent of sales from digital marketing.
Secondary metrics include Cost per sale, Model tours, Site tours, Workups, Number of visits before contract, Contracts, Cancellation rate, and Closings.
Step 5: Delight Buyers During and After Construction
This step isn't always a part of the home builder sales and marketing funnel. But our goal in the industry isn't just to create sales, but also to create referrals. The future of your business as a home builder relies on this. Marketing your brand as a builder that cares sets an expectation with every customer that you will follow through after the client signs a contract. Your buyers need to trust that you will stick to your commitment to quality and delivery as you did when you initially sold them the home.
This step may be the most important one of all.
Customers want to see their homes being built, so delight them with frequent updates using construction update software. Not only will you sell more homes, but your clients will be more loyal to your company and will more readily refer your business to their friends and family.
Marketing strategies include construction update software, a home builder app, customer journey mapping, a customer portal, a warranty program, customer service, celebrations (like move-in gifts), and builder survey platforms.
Primary metric is the number or percent of sales from referrals
Secondary metrics include Net Promoter Score (NPS) / Willingness to refer your company, Customer satisfaction scores, Customer Effort Score
If you want to get real results for your hard work, then you need a plan for your business that includes all 5 areas of this home builder marketing process. And if you want to get your company ahead of the curve, ahead of your competitors, and be successful in any housing market, look to these 5 steps for marketing ideas to become a home builder guru.
Let us help you clarify what you’re trying to achieve and then execute a marketing plan that works.
Learn more about how your business can benefit from these home builder marketing fundamentals by contacting us below for a free consultation.
