As a home builder, you have a lot going on. You know that you need to constantly bring in new leads to sustain your business long-term. However, it can be hard to determine what marketing strategies work the best. In fact, most home builders who spend a large part of their budget on marketing have no idea what sort of return they’re getting.
There has to be a better way! And, there certainly is. We’ve created a simple guide to help you determine what marketing strategies will bring the biggest return on investment (ROI) for your company. Our knowledge is based on industry data that works for all types of home builders. Regardless of whether you produce 400 or 4 houses a year, these digital marketing strategies for home builders and general contractors will work great for you.
The Guide To Boosting Your Leads And Sales
Each home builder will have a marketing funnel to generate leads and turn them into sales. There are four main areas including attracting, engaging, nurturing, and closing. To keep things as simple as possible, we’re going to break down marketing strategies in each one of these categories.
ATTRACT
The stage of attraction is where most home builders spend the majority of their marketing budget. This stage involves attracting consumers to your website so that you can continue with your marketing funnel. Some common marketing tactics in this category include the following:
Paid Search Engine Advertising
Known widely as PPC or pay-per-click advertising, this type of marketing is offered by widely popular search engines like Google. The paid ads are found at the top and sides of the search engine results.
Social Media Advertising
Similar to paid search engine advertising, popular social media sites offer the same type of advertising opportunities. Some of the most popular social media sites to advertise on include Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Independent Listing Sites
Sites like Trulia, Zillow, and Move are some of the most well connected when it comes to potential home buyers. These sites offer listing opportunities for home builders. You essentially upload home model information, floor plans, and other relevant information to the listing so that visitors can get connected with your business.
ENGAGE
Once you’ve attracted prospects to your website, it’s time to focus on engaging them. This step of the sales funnel is where you start converting those websites leads to potential customers who want to communicate with your business about a possible home building project. It’s highly recommended to use visualization tools on your website to encourage visitors’ engagement with your site.
Virtual Reality Tours
This relatively new technology allows anyone with a smartphone to create a virtual reality view of a home. This display option is perfect for showcasing available home models and past homes you’ve constructed. Virtual reality tours are as close to a physical tour that one can really get.
3D Interative Tours
If you’ve been to any of the popular home listing sites, you’ve likely taken a 3D interactive tour through a house or two. This technology allows users to easily navigate from one room to the next throughout an entire home. The interactive tour provides a 360-degree view of each individual room throughout the home. 3D interactive tours allow home buyers to tour your model homes or even past projects like they’re really there in-person.
Photo Galleries
Being in the home building business, it’s very common for customers to want to see your past projects. It’s what helps them to figure out if you’re the right builder to meet their individual needs. You should be readily prepared for this need by having photo galleries easily accessible on your website.
It’s important that all of your photos be of the highest quality, and you include various perspectives that help to invite viewers in. These photos are a chance for you to really showcase your work through the past projects that your business has completed.
Interactive Floor Plans
One of the biggest obstacles that hold back customers from engaging with a home builder is that they don’t quite know what they’re looking for. When you offer them the ability to create an interactive floor plan, it allows the buyer to visualize and start to customize what they may want in their new home. This interactive process helps to make the customer feel more prepared to meet with you.
Interactive floor plans should be available with many different options. From the plan configurations to various room designs, the user should be able to fully customize their intended home features with this technology that your website offers. This process is also a major plus for you because it allows a tangible object where you can see what a customer is thinking without having to translate just their words.
NURTURE
While you may feel that by adding all the value above, your phones will be ringing off of the hook with new clients, that’s not the case just yet. In most cases, prospective clients are going to need a little bit more of a nurturing push to take the next step. This next step will either be scheduling an appointment or an on-site tour with your business.
Telephone Number
It may seem like a very obvious concept to have your telephone number posted on your website. However, many times home builders only include their phone number in hidden places like a Contact Us tab. It would help if you thought from the perspective of your website visitors. Your phone number should be easily accessible from any page on your website. It needs to be prominently displayed, especially when users are accessing your website from their mobile device
Directions / Maps
Again, it would be best if you thought from the perspective of your new client who is looking to set up an appointment. They don’t drive to your building every day, so they’re going to need readily available directions. Have your address clearly listed and ensure that it pulls up correctly in popular navigation sites like Google Maps and Mapquest.
You should also have photos available for your on-site area. This way, people can preview your location, so they feel more comfortable about finding you. Be sure to list other essential information like your hours of operation.
Email Links / Website Forms
Many first-time communications are going to be through less formal methods like emails and submitting website contact forms. Fewer and fewer people are actually picking up the phone to contact businesses. You need to be ahead of this curve by offering an easily accessible email address and customized web contact forms.
Most web contact forms will give your customers the ability to write out a message to you, such as requesting an appointment time. Your customers can actually schedule a real-time appointment online based on your sales agent’s calendar in some more advanced contact forms. Both emails and your web form submissions should be answered within minutes from your staff members to ensure that you’re able to keep a potential lead.
Live Chat
A commonly overlooked tool in the home building industry is using live chat on websites. A live chat essentially allows your prospects to easily engage with your business to get questions answered and to schedule appointments. This chat is an easy option for busy persons who want to connect with your business to get a quick answer to their question.
CLOSING
Once your customers engage with your business, and you work to nurture that relationship, you can drive them closer to the step of closing. Closing is simply the step where home buyers sign that contract with you for building their new home. When your business invests in making the closing process sleek and simple for your prospects, they’re more likely to reach the closing stage.
Tablet / Computer
In the 21st century, home buyers are no longer expecting to sit down with a home builder and craft a blueprint on paper. Rather, they expect technology to play a key role in speeding up and simplifying the entire closing process. Your staff members should be very familiar with using a tablet or computer to easily showcase photos, plans, and other building options for prospective customers to see. People want tangible pictures so they can craft the look of their new home in their minds.
Interactive Sales Centers
When customers visit your on-site premises, they should be greeted with interactive sales centers. These can be guided by a sales professional or meant to be self-guided while the client is waiting for their appointment. These interactive sales centers include touchscreens or tablets where the user can view designs, photos, materials, and so forth to get a better idea of what they may potentially want in their finished build.
This sales center can make the process of constructing a home easier than ever for home buyers. Instead of having to provide tons of physical material samples, buyers can see various products via a smartscreen. Suddenly, designing their new home becomes more like a game that they enjoy instead of a frustrating burden.
Sales Videos
If you walk into most home builder’s on-site locations, you’ll likely find video screens showcasing sales videos. These videos are a prominent closing tactic that still works well today. Your sales video should include offered home models, community amenities, and so forth. These videos are a great way to introduce customers to your building options as they visit your on-site facilities.
Interactive Tours
If you don’t have a large on-site lot where you have multiple items to showcase clients, you should be offering interactive tours. These tours can allow prospective clients to view your home model options from room to room alongside your sales associate. Your staff members should be very proficient in utilizing the interactive tour technology, so they can easily provide customers with a real-life view of what particular aspects of a home would look like.
Lead Generation For The 21st Century Home Buyer
Homebuilding, just like any other industry, has changed over time to continue to meet the ever-evolving needs of consumers. As you have discovered, home buyers are no longer happy with the traditional sit-down meeting where they discuss what they want while trying to picture it all in their heads.
Consumers are demanding more technology integration to be satisfied with a home build. They want the ability to access plans, options, materials, and designs at their leisure. They want to control their research and feel empowered to make decisions about their future home investments.
As a home builder, you need to constantly evolve with your customers so that you can continue to move them through the stages of your sales funnel. From attracting prospects to closing on the deal, there is an abundance of marketing strategies that need to be successfully implemented to remain a top player in your industry.
Seeking Out Professional Marketing Assistance
If you’re like most home builders, you understand the lead generation information that was presented above. You may have actually incorporated some of these strategies into your current operations. However, you may be wondering how you can implement the rest of these strategies, or you just may be so overwhelmed with information you just don’t know where to start.
Lead Gen Builders is a marketing agency that can help. We take a specialized approach by first evaluating each home builder’s individual situation and budget. Then, we’ll craft a unique marketing approach to suit your business’s capabilities, processes, and systems. Our one-on-one approach allows us to successfully improve your messaging, online presence, and conversion rates with consumers.
Be sure to Schedule a Free Website Audit Review to get started on your new journey of enhancing your customers’ experience and boosting your overall sales.
