The 2020 Home Builder Marketing Guide
Utilizing the proper digital marketing strategies will yield you more potential home buyers. If you’re a home builder and you found this blog post, chances are, you understand the importance of having a well-developed web presence in order to attract those low-cost leads and sales from the internet. You already have a leg-up on the competition.
Let’s face it, nowadays if someone is looking for a new home, they’re not likely to go digging through the latest copy of Ye’ Ole Newspaper, in the hopes that there’s a relevant ad.
Nope – instead, they’re going to pull out that convenient hand-held supercomputer located within their pants pocket and consult the all-knowing internet via a search engine query.
It’s the 21st century, my friends. The way that prospective home buyers look for and purchase homes has evolved over recent years—so much so, that roughly 90% of all potential buyers now turn to the internet for their housing needs.
The main goals of a digital marketing strategy are as follows:
- Increase your website traffic, attracting potential home buyers to your website
- Convert as many of those visitors into leads by gaining their permission to market to them
- To create valuable content that will answer your prospects’ questions, move them along their home buyer journey, and close them as a customer.
This blog will provide you valuable insights into our top digital marketing strategies, as well as recommendations for home builders who are unsure of where to begin the process of moving their advertising to a virtual medium.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential to help your properties stand out from the crowd!
Investing in SEO increases your business’ visibility on search engines and directories and helps customers and prospects find you. The on-page elements of SEO provide a stellar user experience for your website visitors.
The next step is to convert these searchers to new customers, for this, you need to occupy as many spots on the first page of Google as you can.
Content Marketing
To do this, you’ll need to invest in content marketing.
Each page of content on your site is an opportunity to rank for a specific set of relevant keywords. The more content you have, the more likely you are to rank. Simple.
Think of it this way – Your website is a fishing vessel, and each page of content allows you to cast a larger metaphorical net into that ever-competitive lake of prospective customers. The larger the net (pages on your website) the better your opportunity of catching those elusive fish (visits, leads, and sales)!
Additionally, you’ll want to ensure that the content of your website is targeted to your top keywords.
The content needs to be well-written, and informative—no consumer wants to purchase a home from a company with poorly written content. If you can’t write a blog well, how can they expect you to build them a quality home?
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
In a competitive industry like yours, we highly recommend investing in both SEO and PPC. Think of the web as real estate – you want to cost-effectively maximize listings on the first page of search results. If you have both a paid listing and an organic listing on the first page of search results for a given query, you reduce the likelihood that any of your competitors will win the click for that query.
Even though there is no mandatory minimum budget, your budget determines how many impressions and clicks your ad receives. The pay-per-click cost will vary depending on a number of variables including: bid, competition, ad quality score, geographic area, etc.
To put it simply – If you’re not investing in PPC, you’re basically giving those potential leads to your competitors. Nobody wants that, besides your competitors.
Remarketing: The Smart Way To Increase Qualified Home Buyers
If you own a home building company, you know that the buying cycle for individuals looking for your services is probably longer than those looking for other types of remodeling services. A new, custom home is quite the investment, and most users probably aren’t willing to make a purchasing decision upon the first visit.
What can you do to recapture those visitors? Target them again with Google and Facebook remarketing ads.
Remarketing is a powerful tool that allows companies to stay engaged with lost opportunities, keeping their brand top of mind. Remarketing is especially useful for companies with a longer sales funnel as it may take the user several visits to the website before converting.
With remarketing, you can subtly remind those qualified visitors about the custom home of their dreams, and that you’re the best design-build company to build it for them.
After someone visits your website they will be “cookied” (make sure that your privacy policy allows for this) and your ads will follow them around the web for a period of 30-days. It sounds creepy, but it works.
Remarketing is one of the most underutilized digital marketing strategies because most builders do not know how to deploy it properly.
Call Tracking
Home builders need to know which advertising strategy is making the phone ring! Marketers spend time and money advertising homes and communities online, but most advertisers do not know which ads, webpages, and keywords are driving inbound phone calls. This is where call tracking software can help.
Call tracking enables marketers to measure phone call conversions from your organic search, paid advertising campaigns, offline marketing campaigns and even which PPC keywords are triggering phone calls.
For home builders, we recommend using online call tracking for all of your organic and paid advertising campaigns as well as your offline campaigns such as newspaper, magazines, and even billboards to assess your advertising ROI. You will be surprised with the results.
Want More Online Marketing Tips for Home Builders?
Conversion Pipeline has helped Home Builders implement successful online marketing campaigns that attract qualified home buyers.
If you’re interested in finding out more about how we can help you sell more homes, we would love to discuss your goals. Contact us today!
