What Is Inbound Marketing for Home Builders?

Inbound Marketing for home builders is a step-by-step system focused on attracting prospects to your company and converting them into home buyers using marketing automation and strategic sales training.

How is Inbound Marketing Different?

In traditional marketing (outbound marketing), builders focus on finding customers. They use techniques that are poorly targeted and that interrupt people. They use invasive cold-calling, print advertising, TV commercials, junk mail, and email spam.

Technology is making these techniques less effective and more expensive. Caller ID blocks cold calls, DVRs make TV advertising less effective, spam filters block mass emails, and Internet publications are making print and display advertising less effective and more expensive. It’s still possible to get a message out via these channels, but it costs more.

Builders who use inbound marketing are breaking an ineffective, outdated marketing mold. Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying ads in print publications, they create their own business blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that prospects contact them looking for more information. Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a hammer, builders who use inbound marketing attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.

What Are the Steps to the Inbound Marketing Process for Home Builders?

Inbound marketing effectively generates qualified leads and helps you increase your closing ratio by providing a system for moving leads from the top to the bottom of the sales funnel so that sales professionals have an easier time closing a sale. Here’s a brief overview of the process.

Step 1 – Attract visitors to your website by strategically implementing social media, blogging and search engine optimization. These tactics are implemented in a specialized way as part of the inbound marketing system.

Step 2 – Convert website visitors into prospects by providing valuable, helpful e-books, white papers, videos or other content. Visitors provide their contact information in return for downloading free helpful content. For example, an e-book designed to attract prospects into the top of the sales funnel would be “10 Reasons a Custom Built Home May be Better for You than an Existing Home.”

Step 3 – After a prospect has downloaded content, marketing automation software automatically sends them additional helpful content designed to move them further down the sales funnel and convert them into a qualified lead. For example, a follow-up email designed to convert a prospect into an interested buyer may contain an e-book titled, “How to Choose the Best Custom Home Builder.” After prospects receive this e-book, they may receive another follow-up email containing an e-book entitled, “When Is the Right Time to Build a Custom Home?”

Step 4 – Distribute qualified leads to sales professionals in a strategic and organized manner using powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that allows you to better understand your prospect.

Step 5 – Sales professionals follow up with qualified leads and make a successful sale by implementing strategies learned in sales training.

Step 6 – Satisfied home buyers continue to receive emails over time containing helpful content. Maintaining a strong relationship with past clients in this way helps generate referral and repeat business.  

How Does Inbound Marketing Help Home Builders Sell More Homes?

The inbound marketing method works extremely well for increasing custom home sales for builders. Here’s why:

• Inbound marketing establishes your company as the trusted expert in your region.
• The decision to buy a home and the process of choosing the right one is stressful for buyers. By providing information that answers their questions right when they need it in a manner that doesn’t make them feel pressured, your company builds a lasting relationship with the home buyer, keeping you top-of-mind throughout their decision-making process.
• The process saves time for sales professionals. Receiving helpful information via automated email moves prospects through the buying funnel, converting them into qualified leads more efficiently. This makes it easier for sales professionals to close a sale, starting with the very first time they directly contact a qualified lead.

To learn more about how inbound marketing can increase home sales for your company, contact Paveya at 855-372-8392. You can also download our e-book, “Inbound Marketing for Home Builders.”