Homebuilders have their work cut out for them. They need to cut through tons of red tape to get approvals, manage large construction projects and then fill hundreds or even thousands of units by a certain date.
When it comes time to sell units, a targeted approach that drives the most traffic to your website to generate a high amount of real estate leads is the only strategy. Even in down markets, people are eager to buy or invest in property. Home builders need to connect with potential leads where they’re spending their time online, such as Google, social media or via email.
It's about creating, executing and sticking to the right digital marketing strategy for home builders that will increase traffic to their website.
4 Best Home Builder Marketing Strategies
Every day, home builders need to market to their audience to generate real estate leads. You can’t take your foot off the pedal when sales trends are good or coast between executing tactics. It doesn’t work that way.
Let’s look at 4 home builder marketing strategies that you must include in your larger marketing plan.
1. Optimize Your Home Builder Website to Drive Traffic
Homebuilders need a high-performing website to rank for relevant industry keywords on Google searches. This will increase traffic to your website, which you need to capture valuable real estate leads.
An optimized website adheres to Google’s process for search engine optimization (SEO). This process improves a website’s performance and, in turn, increases the traffic from search engines. It's not as complicated as it sounds but it requires a lot of time and effort and it's never-ending as long as your website is live. Sorry, but it's the truth.
Ultimately, the goal of your homebuilder marketing strategy is to drive traffic to your website. Traffic goes up, you get more leads. Traffic goes down, you get less.
How to Optimize a Home Builders Website to Drive Traffic
Google has over 200 factors that it uses to rank websites. Here are some factors that your homebuilder website must have to get the best chance to rank.
The goal is simple, optimizing your website can help generate more qualified leads by increasing traffic.
On-Page
Many people think that on-page content refers only to text on a webpage when it’s actually everything on a webpage. In addition to text, this can include images, graphics, tables, videos and more.
You need content that Google considers “unique”. This means you created it and it wasn't duplicated from somewhere else on the web. Don't steal content from other websites.
How to Create On-Page Content?
Your content must be helpful to your users in the hope of converting them into clients. You can gauge this by how long they remain on the page, referred to as the bounce rate, and if they click to visit other pages and links.
Avoid keyword stuffing, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s where you spam a page with keywords to dupe a search engine into returning the page for relevant searches. Don’t do it.
It’s best to add something new to your subject matter than just rehash the same ideas as your competitors. Try not to reach too far beyond the keywords you want to rank for. Instead, focus on creating content that appeals to your target audience and matches their search intent. If there's an industry-related question that many users search on Google, then turn that question into a piece of content. For example, a common question could be, "cons of buying pre-construction", so you can publish an article that explores the pros and cons of buying pre-construction or a graphic that breaks down everything to know when buying pre-construction.
Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Your page needs to present well in a search result. You need optimized title tags (the element that specifies the title of a web page to a search engine) and a relevant and compelling meta description (a quick summary of what the web page is about).
These elements combine to improve the click-through rate (the percentage of users who click on your ad or website when displayed on a results page).
Off-Page
Off-page is activities done on other websites that can improve or hurt your website's ranking. It also considers how your website stacks up again to those of competitors.
Google wants to evaluate how authoritative your website is. It measures this by looking at how many credible, relevant websites link to yours. This is called backlinking.
You want relevant websites that Google trusts to be linking to specific pages on your website using anchor text (highlighted text that links to another page).
Home builders, avoid hyperlinking “click here” as it doesn’t tell Google or the user where the link goes. Proper anchor text for homebuilders can be some form of “best home builder”, “home builder” or “developer in (location)”. Use the formula of brand + keyword wherever possible.
2. Digital Marketing: Create a Newsletter to Nurture Real Estate Leads
Newsletters are not the quickest way to generate real estate leads but there are some big benefits. In addition to driving traffic to your website, it can also nurture leads who aren’t close to buying. It takes patience but newsletters can be an integral part of a home builder's digital marketing efforts.
A newsletter keeps you top of mind for when a buyer is ready to buy. It can be weeks after they enter your funnel or even months or years.
The strategy is to push all your clients, leads and potential leads to subscribe to your weekly newsletter. Building a mailing list can be challenging but it’s low-hanging fruit compared to booking sales meetings. On your website (CTA pop-ups are quite effective) and social media presence, compel people to join your mailing list. Let them know what to expect, how they can unsubscribe at any time and the benefits.
The subscriber benefits can be gaining access to exclusive listings and offers, market data, tips for buying pre-construction, links to your relevant blog posts and general real estate advice and community insight.
Create a newsletter content strategy as part of your overall marketing strategy. Outline what content makes sense for different times of the year. You can use the same template with sections dedicated to market data/insights, highlighting blog posts, listings and whatever else you intend to include.
Include CTAs to book a call and links to relevant web pages. Each click will drive traffic to your website.
3. Manage Your Online Reputation
People talk. They talk a lot and social media and the Internet, in general, place a megaphone in front of them. This can be frustrating for home builders but you need to stay on top of your online reviews. Remember, word of mouth is a great way to build your brand and reach more potential real estate leads.
Monitoring and responding to Google Reviews need to be part of your home builder marketing strategy. Respond to reviews on Google as they are posted. If the review is positive, be grateful to the poster. If it’s negative, don’t get defensive or angry. Reply to the review asking them for more information and ask them to email you to set up a time to talk. Asking a reviewer to remove a negative post usually doesn’t go over well.
The same goes for social media. If you’re tagged in a review, take the same approach as you would with Google. Every two weeks, search social networks for mentions of your brand to see if there are reviews or comments you were not tagged in or missed.
4. Digital Marketing: Real Estate Landing Pages for Pre-construction Developments
Real estate landing pages can work wonders for homebuilders’ SEO efforts, especially when promoting the quality, benefits and features of a new home. They can increase search engine visibility and, most importantly, are designed to convert users into leads and leads into clients.
A landing page is a standalone web page with one clear CTA and content that only relates to its core purpose and subject matter. For real estate lead capture, you should have a simple form that users can provide their contact information. Once you’ve collected this contact information, you have a lead that you can follow up with and nurture or, even better, try to close.
Create a landing page for each development. This will ensure that one development doesn’t get lost in the shuffle and keeps your leads segmented and organized. You can also gauge interest in other developments during the initial conversation.
Agent Launch, a Home Builders Marketing Agency
A homebuilder marketing strategy for real estate lead generation needs to be extensive and updated regularly. It’s a tall order that requires knowledge, time and attention if you want to generate those leads. To unburden your marketing team, drive more traffic to your website and landing pages and keep your sales team busy, consider partnering with an expert home builder marketing agency.
Agent Launch is a marketing agency with a proven system that drives more traffic and leads to a home builder’s doorstep through strategic planning, brand development and digital marketing, including robust, optimized Google Ads and Facebook Ads campaigns, landing page development and more. Agent Launch creates an omnipresent lead generation system that will endlessly fill your pipeline with targeted leads ready to buy.
Apply now and learn how Agent Launch can build your pre-construction business and help you make stronger connections that sell more units faster than before.
