Thanks to rising mortgage rates and skyrocketing home prices, the once booming housing industry has slowed to a crawl. This seemingly quick change in fortunes has forced home builder marketers to quickly pivot their marketing priorities to focus on driving high-quality traffic and leads to fill their sales pipeline.
It’s unclear how long this market cycle will continue so it’s important that you’re prepared. Here’s how you can maintain a strong online presence and bring in high quality traffic and leads during this season.
Attract
The flashiest website design and best content marketing strategy are nothing if you can’t be found online. Making sure your business can be found online is important.
One way home builders can be found online is by investing in their local SEO strategy. Since home buying is local by design, focusing on local SEO remains an effective way to appear in relevant local searches when buyers are looking for new homes in their area.
Builders can increase their appearances in local searches by doing the following:
Optimize for Google My Business: Google My Business allows home builders to be found in the 3-Pack on the Google Search results, the section of a search result that shows the top three local businesses in the area. It also lets customers leave reviews that serve as social proof for the builder.
List homes on listing networks: Listing networks heavily leverage a local SEO strategy – that’s why they always appear in every search. Make sure you syndicate your new construction homes to appear on listing website sites to increase your visibility.
We dive deeper in how builders can leverage local search in their SEO strategy in this blog post.
Another way builders can build visibility is by incorporating a location-based marketing strategy like geofencing. Geofencing is a great way for home builders to generate more qualified leads, raise awareness, and increase foot traffic in ways that listing networks and search engines aren’t capable of. Here are some of the benefits of targeting home buyers through geofencing.
Engage
Once buyers have found you online, you need to give them a reason to explore your website. A common sales mistake is to immediately go for the sale. Focus on connecting and engaging with these buyers by creating timely and valuable content that provide help or answers their questions.
We’ve long since championed the importance of having a compelling website. Successful home builders are investing in websites that provide a robust online shopping experience with the important features buyers want during their shopping phase. Buyers want digital tools – like high-quality photos and videos detailed home information, floorplans, virtual tours, and interactive maps to name a few – that enhance the traditional home buying experience.
New homes are an expensive and heavily researched product – no one wakes up and decides to buy a house. That’s why it’s important to provide buyers with the information they need to make an informed decision. Now that interest rates and home prices have continually ticked upwards, buyers are spending more time carefully researching their options than ever before.
Developing content that meets the needs of buyers in each stage of the buying process allows your business to connect with the buyer and show that you understand their current situation. Here are several different types of content you should be creating for each stage of the buyer’s journey.
Convert
By providing all the information home buyers need to make their decisions, you’re more likely to convert them into a lead. You always want to give clear instructions of what you want buyers to do after landing on your website.
A call-to-action (CTA) is a prompt that tells your audience to do something specific. They’re usually found at the end of a blog post, webpage, eblast, or ad, but can also appear on social media messages. Creating an effective CTA is more complex than just adding ‘Buy Now!’ to a caption or website button. Here are a few helpful tips for creating clear and effective calls-to-action that will hook your audience and generate more leads.
Just as critical as an effective CTA, landing pages always work to convert visitors to leads. Landing pages help convert website visitors from your digital campaigns into leads and sales by speaking directly to their interests. Instead of dropping buyers to your homepage and expecting them to figure out where to go next, landing pages direct homebuyers to a single place where they can quickly and easily find the information they’re looking for, increasing the chances they will provide their contact information to join an interest list, schedule a tour, or register to view more homes.
Nurture
You’ve spent a lot of time and effort attracting, engaging, and finally converting a buyer into a lead. But your work is not done yet. It’s important to continue nurturing this lead through the rest of their buying journey. That’s where email marketing shines.
Email marketing remains a valuable tool in a home builder’s digital marketing strategy. It gives builders a direct way of providing relevant, valuable information buyers need to achieve their goal of buying a new home. Blindly sending out emails without a plan is ineffective and damages your credibility with buyers. Take the time necessary to develop a strategic plan to guide the design, content, and measurement of your campaigns.
Smart home builders can capitalize on having direct access to prospects by developing a strong email marketing strategy to guide the types of content they create. Since buyers are in different stages in their home buying journey, here are four essential emails home builders should be sending.
The housing market is a dynamic one and we know how certain conditions affect buyer behavior. Today’s market conditions offer some challenges but successful builders are able to adjust their strategy to meet these new expectations.
Graphic Language can help fine-tune your digital marketing strategy so you’re well-positioned to drive the highest quality traffic and yield the highest quality leads. With over twenty-five years of working with home builders, we’ve seen – and weathered – every kind of market. We understand the unique challenges our builder clients face and can help develop strategies to thrive in every market condition. Connect with us to see how we can partner in your digital marketing success.