Digital Strategies to Get Your Brand in Front of Home Buyers

A surge in demand for housing and new construction homes offers major opportunities for savvy home builders – but just as many challenges come with it. With these dynamic market trends, new builders are looking to cash in, making it more difficult for brands to stand out from the competition and capture the attention of home buyers.

When it comes to developing a winning playbook, it always goes back to the basics of strong branding, location‑based marketing, and a multi‑faceted digital strategy, and we sat down to get some insights from SmartTouch® Interactive’s own Tanner Ross, VP of Marketing Services, and Henry Medrano, Creative Director.

Digital Strategies for Home Builders: It Starts with a Landing Page

How do you market multiple communities in the same market? Create landing pages that target your audience, offer something of value, and convert your visitors.

“It’s pretty straightforward – create a landing page that has enough information that pertains to both communities,” says Ross. The main differentiator between two communities is usually the price point, but the landing page should have the keywords you want to rank for, along with all the broad information for both communities and the locations.

Drive traffic to that landing page, then leave it up to the user to decide what’s right for them based on price points, floor plans, square footage, and number of bedrooms and bathrooms ‑they have everything they need to find the community that’s right for them.

Brand Strategy for Home Builders: Creating Something Unique

Another big challenge in brand development for new home builders is creating and cultivating something that’s truly unique. With more than 20 years in the home builder sales and marketing business, SmartTouch® Interactive focuses on making brands that are completely distinctive – from brand elements to positioning – and unique to the builders and their communities.

Often, builder clients come to marketing agencies with an example of a brand they want to emulate. While that’s great for inspiration, every builder should have their own brand, their own voice, their own story – in short, their own identity that they can own.

“You don’t want to look like anyone else. Make sure you stand apart and have a brand that people will remember,” says Medrano. It’s important to avoid brand confusion, or worse, accusations that the brand closely resembles a competitor’s, which is not only bad for your brand reputation, but it makes it much harder for the audience to distinguish between brands and identify the traits and values that make them want to enter into that brand relationship – the core of brand loyalty.

Another challenge comes with differentiating between the builder brand and the community brand. The builder brand is important, but the community is what people identify with. The goal is to build a community brand that has similarities in the voice and tone to the builder, but it needs to be distinctive enough for the people who want to live there.

“For example, a current client with communities all over Texas and Mississippi came to us with everything built around the builder brand,” says Medrano. This creates a lot of challenges in distinguishing those communities for the audience. The people moving in want to identify with the community, not the builder brand.

Medrano stresses that “the biggest thing is consistency.” Consistency in the elements, tone, and voice on the social media posts, the website, the email campaigns, the brochure, and every other touchpoint shows users what the community stands for – and why they want to be a part of it.

Getting the Best Results from a Geo Campaign: SmartTouch® Geo

The real estate and builder market still rely on traditional location‑based marketing solutions, such as community signage and billboards. While they can be effective, these methods are often expensive and difficult to track.

That’s where SmartTouch® Geo comes in. This breakthrough geo‑fencing technology is built specifically for residential home builders and real estate developers, combining location‑based targeting, tracking, and advertising in one. You can track homebuyers in real time, directly connect with captured “in market” homebuyers via ads on their mobile device or social media, and drive traffic to your model homes to convert buyers.

SmartTouch® Geo may sound like a complex process, but it’s simple in principle. It’s location‑based marketing for home builders and developers made easy, and most importantly, highly effective.

According to Ross, the most important part of the geofencing process is setting up conversion zones with your target locations. This gives you visibility and transparency to know how many devices connect back to your model home or sales center – showing your true return on investment.

“A lot of builders get caught up in clicks for a geofencing campaign, but that’s not necessarily the top KPI that you want to focus on,” says Ross. While clicks are important for your overall data view, they’re not a traffic driver – they’re a behavior influencer.

Create banner ads with relevant messaging, but don’t use the same creative you’re showing to a remarketing audience or an overall display awareness audience. Draft new creative for a better experience, show it to an audience that is in the market, and try to get them to visit your sales center.

For example, your creative should have an address for the sales center. You may not get the click on the banner ad or the traffic – which is where many builders have had negative experiences in the past – but you’re giving the user an opportunity to take that address, pull it up on Google on their device, and visit your model home sales center in person. When they do, you know exactly where they came from and what target or location your geofencing got them to come back to.

Elevate Your Digital Strategy with SmartTouch® Interactive

It’s a fierce market for home builders, and robust branding and a positive user experience – enhanced by tools like SmartTouch® Geo – can mean all the difference. The SmartTouch® approach is to focus on showcasing your brand and value, driving traffic from the right buyers, and tracking your progress for continuous improvements.

If you want to stand out in the crowded digital market, partnering with SmartTouch® Interactive can help you cultivate your brand, perfect your creative, and drive traffic with location‑based marketing with a tangible ROI. Reach out to SmartTouch® Interactive for a personalized consultation today!