As a builder, marketing your homes is a challenge. Depending on where you are in Australia, you will face different levels of competition — up against other home builders, each with their own website and each trying to take the bread off your table.
There are also many outside influences within the market that will affect your ability to get sales over the line — from the state of the economy, through to your potential customers’ ability to arrange finance.
Whatever your challenges, marketing your homes is something you need to be on top of, so that you have a steady flow of QUALITY enquiries for your sales team to work with.
In this article, we’ll look at steps you can take to structure your website and digital marketing plan to increase your online visibility and attract the RIGHT kind of enquiries from the RIGHT kind of prospects.
To help you to sell more homes we will explore:
Let’s unpack each of these in a bit more detail.
One of the advantages of digital marketing is that it allows you to zero in on specific market segments. As a home builder (or commercial builder) looking to increase your ROI from your marketing, you’ll increase your chances of really nailing it (Sorry, I just had to say it), if you focus your lead generation strategy on one or two niches.
The concept of focusing on one area of home building won’t be news to you. If you are like most builders, you’ll have a type of home you prefer to build. You are set up for it. You know the ropes. Your crew is all over it. You enjoy it. It is your ‘thing’.
The missing link for many builders though, is that they don’t follow through with that into their marketing. Their website and nurturing programe makes them look like a generalist — and they miss out on opportunities as a result.
The types of ‘niches’ I am talking about?
For example, you may be most comfortable/profitable building:
It is important that you clarify this for your marketing, as it is the first step in setting you apart from other builders in your geographic service area. It means your point-of-difference can be clearly communicated, and you can promote your strengths.
If you are thinking “Hang on, we don’t want to be boxed in to one type of home, we work across a range of niches”, this is still doable.
If you span across a range of niches, then you can still market to all of them — but you need to structure your thinking around different CAMPAIGNS; eg:
Structure things this way, and you can use your website and blog to give the potential customers in each market SPECIFIC information that will help to win their confidence in you as their new home builder of choice.
If you scroll back up the page at to the bullet point list, you’ll see that we began to describe the people you would be building homes for, and WHAT THEY WANT.
Things like:
Each of these is a market PERSONA, and each one:
Do you get the picture with this?
You will sell MORE homes if you take the time to learn MORE about your potential clients — and structure your digital marketing strategy to show them that YOU are the home builder who understand them and who will cater to their needs.
To do this, develop some “Buyer Personas” so you can think differently about your prospects — and understand them as people.
A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
Once you have them documented, they will become your anchor point for your website and digital marketing strategy.
You’ll be talking to them, about their favourite subject — themselves! And that will give you a significant advantage over other home builders in your market who do not get this.
When creating your Buyer Persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behaviour patterns, motivations, concerns, hesitations, reservations, dreams and goals.
Once you have your Buyer Personas figured out, you’ll feel more confident about your marketing, what you are doing and why you are doing it.
Your marketing message will be more consistent, and your ROI will improve. This will be ESPECIALLY powerful if you use your Buyer Personas as the platform on which to build an automated marketing strategy. You'll bring people into your funnel early in the Buyer’s Journey, and stick with them until they are ready to sign a contract for their beautiful new home.
We address the Buyers Journey in other articles, but here’s a quick heads-up that will help with your thinking about the structure of your website.
Divide the pages of your website into two broad categories:
Content on your blog should be ‘big picture’ stuff about home building styles… what type of kitchens work best… ideas for outdoor living… information about home design… case studies and examples.
Your blog is NOT the place for a ‘sales pitch’. It is the place to give ideas, information and inspiration.
This is where you would pitch the value of your offering, showing specifics about your services, the way you build and the quality of your work.
So that wraps it up for this article.
To re-cap, the overall message is to:
If you are in the building industry and want to have a chat about your website and digital marketing, please call us on 07 3891 3800.
We have experience and expertise in your sector, and will be happy to point you in the right direction.