25 Aug Home Builder Marketing: Put some heart into it

Marketing your services as home builder is a complicated beast. Buyers can take many months if not years to choose a builder and their final decision is often influenced by a whole range of deep feelings including intense fears and dreams for the future. How you market your services against that of your competition plays a massive part in being considered when crunch time finally happens. A marketing strategy that incorporates a short, medium, and long term focus is the best practice for Builders who want to create a base of life long customers.

In the short term, you want to be considered when they are considering possible builders. We all know how much competition there is out there, and you want to be on their short list. Your medium term focus should be to help your customers feel convinced they made the right choice throughout the lengthy building process, which results in a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved. The long term focus should be all about gently reminding your customers why you were the best choice long after they worked with you, which may lead them to recommend you to family, friends, and others via positive reviews.

One strategy that can be applied across your short, medium, and longer term marketing, is a focus on the values that are important to your business. This is great middle ground you can create to connect with your ideal customers.

There is a growing trend amongst buyers to buy from businesses who have similar values to themselves and given the emotional attachment we have to our home; this is especially the case for home buyers.

There are endless ways you can trigger an emotional response in your marketing, and in a highly competitive market place when it’s often hard to truly prove the quality of your building service before purchase, making people ‘feel’ something positive for your brand may give you a competitive edge.

But how does a Builder add deeper meaning to their Marketing?

Firstly, attracting customers who have similar values to your business can be a win for both of you. We have all been in a position of trying to work with someone who just doesn’t get your point of view and you can’t see from theirs. No matter how hard you try to explain or educate, they push and pull the opposite way, leading to stress, frustration and most extremely ‘buyer’s remorse’.

Secondly, by reinforcing the values that you feel strongly about, you and your staff will feel a greater sense of purpose and positivity which will shine through in every aspect of your business. A team that feels that they are contributing positively in their work-life is proven to lead to happier and more committed employees who think beyond the financial benefits they get from their job. For customer facing employees, this is particularly important, especially during challenging market conditions when emotions run high.

Finally, by reinforcing the other positive benefits you deliver to your customers beyond bricks and mortar, your relationship with your customers may be less impacted when little hurdles and challenges along the way. In the long run, this approach may lead to a more favourable feeling towards your business long after you have delivered the final outcome and result in greater potential for referral work.

We’ve all met people who we just like being around but can’t always put our finger on why we like them, we just know they are ‘a good guy’. Being a great builder will only get you so far. Having your customers like what your business stands for will give you potential to create customers for life!