Homebuilders are on the cusp of wanting to evolve their products and grow their footprints while figuring out how to be profitable in a softer marketplace. Post-covid has left a whirlwind of demands for that growth, changing cultures, surges of new hires and some sudden layoffs. What does not change is the need for a strong marketing plan, a thoughtful marketing budget and the desire for marketing teams to be innovative and prove their ROI on all things that drive marketing activity. So, let’s drill out a few areas where builders can prime their plans, lean in on their vendor partners for more support and stay curious about what they love to do- which is producing great marketing that connects to their brand and customer experience.

Planning Season:

August is never too early for planning conversations. Nearly 2/3 of the year has passed, there is a realistic glimpse of where sales and closings should net out, and plans for the following year are already coming into focus. Now is the time to look at which quarters offer
the chance to drum up excitement for new products, new communities, and new competitive landscapes in highly desirable areas. Planning with your partners to look at cost and timing scenarios is key. Part of the reason you hire great vendors is to invite them to be a part of your planning and strategy as an extension of your team. Having a road map for sales office rollouts, new community positions and perceived challenges in the year ahead are all things to consider. With proper and timely planning, you can build a formula to determine how much should be spent to support lead growth and consistent customer engagement while tracking cost to the bottom line. Great service and strategic marketing partners can offer details for those formulas based on data, planning and case studies.
Marketing is a science most days and it’s okay to treat it as one. You set the formula but make sure you plan for it.

AI and How to Use It:

AI has a foothold in our algorithms, in our search, in our daily apps, and it is finding its way across industries in various uses. However, it’s important to keep in mind, AI is going through its own discovery and it is not running businesses. Understanding and embracing AI is a balance and you might consider the phrase “everything in moderation” as a healthy way of looking at adoption. As marketers, there are tools out there that can help offer team efficiency. Consider things like subjectline.com to test the best subject lines and alternative suggestions, using Chat GPT to check out how your brand and your communities are found through search. This is something all marketers need to be doing because more and more folks are turning to ChatGPT and various forms of AI to use it as a
general search engine. AI only knows what it can scrape. Understand how well your content is listed, how your reviews show up, the searchability of your brand and communities, and how your content is reliable, consistent and defined. AI can also support your teams with the daunting exercises of naming communities, product lines, paint colors, and street names! Other famous marketing tools like Canva are evolving with AI changes each year, so make sure your team is privy to new releases of such tools. AI can help with content writing, but make sure the flavor of your brand, voice and tone are not lost. Authentic copywriting speaks to your brand based on the inputs you know and reflect on. Make sure to feed your AI with the same thoughtfulness you would use to create new content. It’s nothing with the human component- still!

Lead Generation:

Lead generation is one of the main goals of all homebuilder and multifamily marketers. But do you know where your leads are getting stuck, where they are spinning, and where they are falling on deaf ears? The first thing to managing your lead gen pipeline is your CRM. Many times, your CRM offers details for your marketing formula. What region your buyers are coming from, how long it takes them to convert and knowing if your marketing is attracting the right target buyers is important to watch. Sometimes there is a surprise! With further review of your digital activity you can learn which products will likely sell first (based on views/saves of specific content), take rates of upgrades and structural options (based on interactivity if properly tracked), and, most importantly, which leads are interacting with your content online, especially if you have things like customer or prospect portals, interactive site maps and interactive floorplans that track that this data. Are customers engaging in conversation, saving floorplans, and returning to emails more times? The more you look for data, and integration, and then analytics, the more you know about your opportunity to attract more leads.

Marketing ROI – Manage Up:

Time and time again, leadership wants to know how to equate marketing ROI. As marketers, we must set the formula for this answer. Part of the answer is always quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative comes from looking at the goal, understanding your conversion rate and understanding how much money needs to be spent to drive enough traffic units that convert. For many builders if you have benchmarked your budget spent against activity you can equate what your cost per lead is and how many leads you need to convert to sales. Those numbers should be published and looked at weekly to know if you are hitting your goals for conversion. If you are not, part of your plan could be out of wack, something in the sales pipeline needs to be evaluated for efficiency, or not enough money is being spent on the right things to drive engagement. Setting your goals and reporting on your goals is part of the ROI makeup. The other part of the ROI conversation is qualitative which is somewhat subjective at times . Tracking brand awareness in a new market takes time, earning a strong reputation or fixing a reputation issue online could take more time and dollars to earn or fix. Also, real estate agent programs and relationships may take time to quantify and build depending on consumer confidence and market strength. All these tactics equate to building future ROI. Marketers need to be aware of the hindrances and threats around marketing efforts and the time needed to marinate in market. Keep these conversations with leadership alive to help come up with strategies to combat marketing challenges. Marketers sometimes have the hardest job in the business simply because so much of what marketers do requires trial and error, learnings, testing and consistent pivoting with
changes in technology and consumer preferences. Make sure you leverage the knowledge of your service providers, like Focus 360, when building your budgets and considering all the data points and techniques you might use to increase your marketing presence through planning season and beyond!