Your top priority as a home builder is to satisfy your customers. And then being able to generate custom home builder leads that can just give your company the projects to make your business grow.
Creating a home that is exactly right for your customers can be difficult. However, you enjoy the challenge and are happy with the results if you decide to bet on this industry.
Now, marketing can be more difficult than building a house. It can be hard to find new marketing strategies for custom home builders and make sure they are helping you get every sales qualified lead in the end.
You may have difficulty creating a coherent, effective plan that will reach your target audience without spending a lot.
What we can advise since the very beginning is to invest all your efforts or, at least, 90% of them on digital marketing alone.
With the right plan and consistent lead generation strategies, you should be able to generate your leads without many difficulties. However, this still takes time, and we recommend you work with patience and extra time on this.
We just added some secrets for your lead generation process to simplify the process.
Make Sure Your Branding Is Consistent
Homebuyers expect excellence and consistency from the company they choose to build their forever home. Any inconsistency will turn customers away when they are searching for a custom builder.
Thus, every interaction between your ideal customer and you must accurately reflect the experience they will have with your company.
The topic of brand consistency can be complex and lead to many different outcomes. These are questions and tips that can help you assess the brand consistency of your custom home-building business, depending on your needs.
-What is the visual appeal for your brand?
Your marketing collateral and logo may be outdated. Make sure you have the budget and time to replace all your collateral with the new design before embarking on a rebranding journey.
-Can the look and feel you use to market your company self?
Another visual check is to see if your logo and brand elements match your product. Your logo and design should reflect your product, no matter if you are a modern home designer or a farmhouse builder.
-Isn’t there consistency in your website and social media pages?
We often find inconsistencies between company websites and social media profiles. Even though you might have a beautiful website and a new logo, potential clients may be turned off if your Facebook page has outdated content and poor-quality photos.
-What do clients look for when they go to your company name website?
Unintentionally, many companies neglect their digital footprint. Yet this is one of the most common pitfalls of brand inconsistency.
Regularly practice going online and verifying that your company name is correct. It’s possible that outdated contact information or an old logo could be found in an online directory or review site that you aren’t aware of.
Build Your Own Website
Your website is the most powerful tool you have in your marketing arsenal, especially for custom-home builders.
After all, your website is the first place your potential clients will go to when deciding whether or not they want to do business with you. Therefore, it must be responsive and load quickly. It should also be optimized for local SEO.
These are some more tips to help you build a strong website:
- High-quality video and photography.
- Testimonials from customers.
- Calls-to-action prominently displayed.
- There are many ways to reach you (e.g., Email, phone, chat, and social media are all ways to reach you).
- Interactive map and directions page.
- Blog and other relevant resources for potential clients.
Strong websites are essential for a successful marketing strategy for custom-home builders. They form the foundation of all marketing activities.
Hire A Professional Photographer to Capture Great Photos
The best imagery is essential for custom home builders. You will see a significant increase in sales if your website has photo galleries and videos of high quality and not the general content you take with your phone.
Professionals will be able to take photos and videos that are properly lit and angle to highlight the product. So, consider investing in a professional photographer that can help you even if it means spending some money.
A professional can help ensure consistency in brand messaging. Poor photography and choppy videos are not good for custom homes.
Before they make an appointment, consumers expect to be able to view and inspect the product online. You will reap a strong return on your investment if you have great visuals for sharing.
Video Is the Most Important
While we discussed the importance of hiring a professional to take pictures and videos of your product or process, don’t forget these other benefits of digital video that can also be used in many ways.
In fact, we want you to focus on video even over photos. Why? Because you would be surprised by the number of people who actually enjoy watching a full process of learning about how you build each property:
- Virtual tours and video walk-throughs are great ways to make prospects feel more connected to your product.
- Customer testimonials: a recorded video from satisfied customers. Tell your potential clients about what it was like working with you and how happy they feel with the house that you built.
- Brand videos: a strong brand is built on customers’ positive experiences with your product. Videos are a great way to show off who your company is.
- Drone footage and aerial videos: drone video capabilities allow us to do more. A 360-degree view of your product can be a powerful way to increase brand value. Aerial footage is a great way to make a lasting impression, especially if you are building a planned development.
Your website is where potential customers go to find information. You can provide these details and answers about your product or services through video.
Work with Social Media and PPC
For new home builders, it is helpful to consider social media marketing in two main ways: drivers and engagers. Marketing “drivers” can be paid advertising opportunities that drive traffic and engagement to your website.
While marketing “engagers” provides valuable and meaningful content that builds the brand, they are often paid advertising opportunities.
Pay-per-click advertising is a way to drive traffic to your site (drivers). You can also use your social media profiles pages to share content with potential clients (engagers) using your social media profile pages.
Facebook and other platforms can help drive more traffic to your site. Retargeting ads can also keep your brand front and center for potential customers until they make a purchase. It is important to highlight that great relevant and useful content for your target audience will bring you more organic traffic.
This will help establish your brand as an influencer or thought leader in your niche.
Although it may seem difficult to use social media for home builders, it can be a great way to connect with potential sales and marketing qualified leads and build relationships with customers online.
You can reach new audiences, grow closer to your target audience through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, and offer a unique customer support level.
Facebook is a great place for potential buyers to ask questions about homes. Homebuilders who use it often find it the best place to do so. It’s easy to share photos and engage with your fans on Facebook.
Twitter is great for curating similar content, such as articles about new constructions or businesses located in the same region of your company. You can also use Pinterest to expand your reach.
Create boards for interior design, paint colors, or other details that others will find and then link to your business.
Social media allows you to see conversations about your company and to respond to them. For example, Twitter may allow users to discuss local brands and companies without mentioning them directly. These conversations and the sentiment behind them can be very beneficial for your business.
Optimize Your Website for Google Ranking
Google uses a variety of algorithms to determine which websites will show up when you enter a phrase or word into its search engine.
SEO (search engine optimization) is about optimizing your website to appear in the search results more often by using the common keywords most people hear about.
Let’s suppose your company is ranked #1 in a search for “custom home builder in Sioux Falls.” This is because you build custom homes in the city and have been targeting this keyword along with similar ones. This is the power of SEO.
To make sure you’re actually ranking for these phrases or bring your company to the top of search engines, make sure to include them in:
- The title of your pages.
- Your homepage copies.
- Write content about custom homes built in the city and add more keywords without stuffing the content.
These steps will show search engines such as Google that your website provides relevant content for users searching that phrase. However, it is not enough to “stuff” your website with a particular keyword and expect to rank high.
To get the ranking you desire, you must also provide the information customers need when they search for that keyword.
You can also use “off-page” signals to improve your site’s ranking. Links from authoritative sites are the most important. Sites with many links will have a greater chance of being ranked highly in search engines results.
This is why, in addition to optimizing the site for your own use, a complete SEO strategy for home builders includes earning links from other websites.
These are not the only steps that you must take to rank high, but they can be a great starting point towards getting the rankings you desire. It is no longer acceptable for a website to be just a place where people read random information.
Google will connect the dots and rank you for certain keywords. The higher your rank, the more customers you will get, so it is definitely worth doing everything possible to secure that top spot.
Make Customer Case Studies
Custom homes can be very personal and visually appealing and require a significant investment in time and money. It can be hard to attract a customer’s attention without showing them your work. However, it is possible to showcase studies and a gallery of previous homes you’ve built.
You can use the power of past customers to get new customers by creating a “case study” and “customer stories” section, as we kind of mentioned earlier, with the whole idea of photos and videos.
You can gather testimonials, photos, videos, and quotes from customers who are happy with their custom homes. Then, put them together on compelling pages that tell the story of your home.
Show a before-and-after photo or a gallery of photos with a quote from a customer telling how happy they were.
Another way to achieve this is through photo galleries. Just make sure that visitors can zoom in on the photos to see the fine details. Also, ensure there are testimonials or quotes to go with the photos. Customer feedback is just as important as the photos.
This will show potential customers what quality work you can do and help you achieve your SEO goals. These pages can be optimized for keywords such as “custom home gallery” to attract search engine users searching for ideas and inspiration.
If they are impressed by your work, they might choose you to be their builder. It is a matter of combining the previous two lead generation strategies for a big final lead generation process.
It Is Worth Creating an Email Newsletter
Sometimes potential customers may be interested in your company and what you have to offer but not ready to buy. It’s a smart idea to offer a way to stay in touch with potential customers in this situation, and for it, email marketing is one of the best options.
You can create an email newsletter for potential customers that they can sign up for through your website.
This will give you a chance to discuss new homes, innovations in the home building industry, as well as mention trade shows and other local events.
Your subscribers can be reached as often as they wish. You can even address their emails as if it were a personal conversation, which can make them more effective.
Work with Compelling and Informative Content
One great online marketing strategy is to create engaging content. This content can be blog posts, videos, infographics, or other forms, but the ultimate goal is to educate and inform.
As we mentioned earlier, the visuals are worth your effort. However, we will be focusing on the usual blogs and written content most people ignore.
You can educate your customers on specific topics through content. If someone is looking for information about how long it takes to build their custom home, they may visit your site and read an article about it.
Most visitors and potential leads will assume that you have a detailed page that answers that question and ranks high in search results. If the question is answered well, the consumer will stay on your website for some time, be interested in your company and subscribe to your Email.
Then, they may choose you to build their home.
Content alone will not result in sales. It can, however, help increase awareness of your company and improve your SEO. This will lead to boosting your sales pipeline. This is why it’s important to create content and why content marketing has become an integral part of almost every online marketing plan.
Users will find you via social media or through Google search results. But information is what they are most interested in. Content marketing can be a powerful lead generation strategy when done correctly.
Now, for those who aren’t too familiar with this, it refers to the practice of creating relevant and informative content for your website.
As mentioned earlier, this can be done in articles or blog posts, and you still need to be consistent. Your content should not be boring. Instead, you want to provide value to your visitors.
If you are able to give information to people, it will increase their trust in you and encourage them to subscribe to your emails or blog. This will lead to them becoming high-quality leads.
Develop A Valuable Magnet
You may need to rethink how you use your lead magnets and where you place them on your website. If you don’t have one, you’ve been doing things wrong so far.
The question is, how can you create a valuable lead magnet?
Think about your customers and what you can do for them. What are the most common problems clients have when they visit you?
You can create a lead magnet that draws people to your website and to you. It should be worth their time and useful for their purposes. Popular options include eBooks with checklists and guides.
Homebuilders can answer many questions for potential clients, including choosing colors and deciding which plot to choose. To answer many of your burning questions, you could create an FAQ guide.
When done, make sure to use your lead magnet in the right way.
You don’t get any benefit from a lead magnet that doesn’t convert visitors into leads. Keep in mind that the magnet’s purpose is to exchange for more information than just a name and an email address, and the leads get the guide or magnet for it.
Although you don’t need to ask for too much, a physical address or phone number could open up new opportunities.
Additionally, make sure to brand your lead magnet to match everything else. Also, choose a file type that is easy to download, like a PDF.
Make Sure to Use the Automation Marketing Lead Generation Tools
Are you tired yet? This sounds overwhelming, but you likely already have enough on your plate. You’ll love the next part, automating your homebuilder marketing plan to make sure you spend less time and get the same or better results.
List all the contributions of your sales team to the marketing strategy. Imagine if all of these processes could be automated. If you have the right tools, it’s possible. After all, sales teams can work with tools that can speed up the process.
First, you can opt for an automated customer relationship manager.
A Customer Relationship Manager (also known as a CRM) could be the best investment you make for your company. The platform allows you to organize and manage all your contacts. Information is always available for everyone in your team, from prospects to clients and real estate agents to vendors.
Many CRMs have tools that automate marketing. Even if your CRM is already in place, ensure it is fully functional. Also, set reminders for your staff to make them aware of the automation tools available.
Email automation and tools like Trello to post your content on social media can also be useful and time-saving. The best part is that most of them can be used for free until you’re able to work with the premium options when your company grows, or your business expands and starts generating leads every day.
Be Creative and Personal
It is the little things that really matter in life, such as remembering special occasions or saying “thank you” when they occur.
Depending on your system, you can send customized cards, emails, or texts to your prospective leads and get the chance to bring them your way. These are the most important:
- Set up automatic reminders for grand openings or open houses.
- Send your clients birthday, holiday, or house closing anniversary emails as needed.
- To encourage upselling at different stages of the home-building process, create emails that highlight reasons for adding a deck or three seasons room.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Custom Home Builder Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Custom Home Builder Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Custom Home Builder Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.