Home Builder Marketing: 7 Proven Strategies to Get Leads
Marketing, especially for home builders, has completely changed over the past year. Creating a cohesive, online presence is more important than ever before, and that may mean a shift in your team’s marketing strategy.
Read on to learn how to leverage these home builder marketing ideas to gain more leads.
1. Expand Your Brand
Before delving deeper into home builder marketing tips, let’s start with expanding your brand. You probably took the time to brand your website, pamphlets, and signage with the same colors and logos. As you expand your brand to other outlets, like social media platforms, you want to keep that consistency.
It may seem basic, but keeping your brand consistent across all social media platforms helps clients and potential clients easily identify you. You don’t want somebody picking up the wrong Instagram account or missing you altogether because the profile picture or posts don’t align with your website and other marketing materials.
Remember, when expanding your brand, consistency is key! When starting up with a new social media platform, try using this mini-checklist to keep your new account in line with the rest of your branding.
- Account name
- Logos
- Fonts (when applicable)
- Color schemes
- Tag lines, messages, catchphrases, and hashtags
2. Search Engine Optimization
You don’t have to become a search engine optimization (SEO) master to see the impact it can have on lead generation. However, it’s a good idea to understand the concept and how to apply it to everything you do online.
SEO is a long-term investment in lead generation because it takes time to build and achieve results. It’s not something you want to ignore, because the longer you take to adopt a strong SEO plan, the longer it will be before you see results.
There are several factors to consider when creating your SEO strategy. The important part is regularly dedicating time and effort into SEO until you address all of these factors, and then keep going.
A Quality Website
Start by evaluating your website. Even if it looks incredible, it is useless if it’s not functional or misses some critical SEO elements.
- What do your potential clients see when they visit your website? It should be intuitive to use, easy to navigate, and attractive.
- How fast does your site load? Site speed matters and you want pages to load in two seconds or less to avoid losing visitors.
- Does your site work? Fix broken links and improper redirects to make sure everything runs properly. A proper site structure helps with your user experience as much as with SEO when web crawlers read your site.
- Do you have videos? Consider a tour of your model home or a build site.
Deliver Consistent, Valuable Content
If you haven’t added a blog to your website already, it’s time to start. Blogging is an important content marketing strategy that delivers valuable information to your clients and potential clients while appeasing the web crawlers.
You don’t have to deliver daily posts or go overboard with the long-form articles. However, it would help if you tried to post two to three times per week to keep your site recent and relevant. Don’t forget to mind your writing and grammar!
Get Your Google Maps Listing
Google is a monster on the internet, and you want to be everywhere; you can score a listing, including Google Maps. It’s possible that your business already has a listing and all you have to do is claim it. Remember, Google gives preference to local businesses, so you want to be visible for your area.
Ask Customers to Leave Reviews
Even a handful of solid customer reviews can boost your Google rating, especially if your customers don’t have them. Please speak with your clients and ask them to leave reviews on Google, Yelp, and any other platforms they use to give your business a boost.
Bonus tip: Testimonials on your website can also help. Ask customers who loved their new homes to share quotes and feedback that you can use on your website as social proof for potential clients.
Use Google Analytics
Be honest, do you have Google Analytics and know how to use it? Many people set up their Google Analytics because they received sage advice somewhere along the line. Those same people often fail to make the most of Google Analytics because they don’t understand how to leverage the tools. Here are a few tips to help you make the most of it.
Bonus tip: The Goals tool in Google Analytics can be your best friend in home builder marketing. It helps you fine-tune forms to achieve desired actions, like getting a visitor to sign up for your newsletter.
Find Linking Opportunities
Did you know that Google rewards your site for links from other sites? Partner with appropriate, reputable companies to share links. For example, look for popular local blogs in your area and offer to do a guest post. You get a link on their blog, and you can give them a link on your website.
It may help to do a little recon to see where your competitors get their links. Consider your partners or complementary businesses that would benefit from a mutual partnership.
Bonus tip: Don’t forget to set up your Google Search Console. You get access to more valuable tools, including keywords that brought people to your site and any potential errors.
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3. Develop a Valuable Lead Magnet
Even if you already have one (or more) lead magnets, you may want to reconsider how you currently use it. If you don’t currently have a lead magnet, it’s time to develop one.
Creating a Valuable Lead Magnet
Consider your customers and what they need. What do you see clients struggling with when they come to you? Creating a valuable lead magnet draws people to your site, and to you. Make it worth their while and helpful for their purposes. Ebooks, especially guides with checklists, are popular options.
From choosing colors to deciding what plot to select, there are plenty of questions that home builders can answer for potential clients. You could even do an FAQ guide to answer multiple burning questions.
Using Your Lead Magnet the Right Way
Even if you have the best lead magnet around, it doesn’t help you if it doesn’t convert visitors to real leads. Offer the lead in exchange for more detailed information than a name and email address. You don’t want to ask too much, but a phone number or physical address could open new doors for you.
Bonus tip: Don’t forget to brand your lead magnet so that it matches everything else you use and choose a document type that’s easy to download, like a PDF.
4. Social Media Matters
Social media platforms allow you to reach potential customers with your message and deliver valuable information with the ultimate goal of converting them to clients. From Facebook to Pinterest, you have a multitude of opportunities to reach your audience and expand your digital footprint.
Advertising on Facebook gives home builders various options for targeting new clients. You can set your ad for a particular geographic area so that you can target viable leads instead of people who live on the other side of the country.
Millions of people around the world use Pinterest. The social media platform is a haven for people of all ages and backgrounds. Though most users are women, the gender gap is narrowing, especially since more Dads join every day. You can even promote your pins now.
Instagram is another visual social media platform with a growing membership. It provides a wonderful opportunity for home builders to share your designs, completed homes, and valuable information to attract new leads.
YouTube
Virtual home tours and 3D home builder tours allow potential customers to see what you have to offer without leaving the safety of their homes. Videos allow you to connect with leads and showcase your designs to pique the interests of your target demographic. Posting them on YouTube allows you to create playlists as well.
5. Hone Your Pay Per Click Marketing Strategy
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is beneficial if you do it correctly. Make sure your ads are appropriate and consistent with your brand. You also want to choose your platforms wisely and narrow your target audience wisely – you don’t want to reach teenagers or people living in another country!
Bonus tip: Bing may be smaller than Google, but it’s also cheaper and frequented by older people (55 and older). Home builders catering to retirees may find greater success on Bing than Google.
6. Email Marketing
One of the easiest, least expensive ways to reach clients and prospective clients is email marketing. You can use material from your blog, highlight specials, and remind your list about the work you do. Don’t neglect this aspect of your content marketing strategy!
7. Automate Marketing Tools
Are you exhausted yet? It sounds like a lot of work, and you probably already have too much on your plate. Take a breath and read on because you’ll love this part – automating your home builder marketing plan!
Make a list of everything your team contributes to the marketing strategy. What if you could automate a lot of those processes? It’s completely possible if you have the proper tools.
Use a Customer Relationship Manager
Purchasing a Customer Relationship Manager, commonly known as a CRM, could be the best thing you do for your business. A CRM platform helps you organize and manage all of your contacts. From clients to prospects and real estate agents to vendors, information is available to everyone on your team at any given time.
CRMs also happen to have several tools for automating marketing. Even if you already have a CRM set up, make sure it’s fully functional and that you make use of those automation tools, including setting reminders for your team.
Get Creative and Personal
It’s the little things in life that matter to people, like remembering a special occasion or a simple “thank you.” Depending on the system you use, you can send personalized cards, emails, or texts whenever certain events occur. Here are some important ones to consider:
- Set automatic reminders about open houses or grand openings.
- Create birthday, holiday, or house closing anniversary emails for your clients as appropriate.
- Create emails for various stages of the home building process to encourage upselling, like reasons to add a deck or three-seasons room.
If you’re looking for more help with your digital marketing strategy, contact our team for a consultation.
MOST Home Builders STRUGGLE WITH GENERATING NEW Clients...WE FIX THAT!
Since 2009, we have helped many home builders grow their business. Let us do it for you!