Targeting the right stage of the digital funnel
Tags: Construction, Marketing, Property, Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategies

A difficult to sell development is transformed by focusing marketing at the correct stage of the marketing funnel and at a new range of customers. From no sales, to fast selling and all at a lower cost per sale than previous strategies.

Smart customer journey marketing tees up better sales conversions

Housebuilder marketers need to get smarter about their customer journey strategy to address struggling sales. While it is tempting to focus tactics and resources on the ‘conversion’ phase of the house-buyer’s journey, investing in the earlier ‘consideration’ phase of the marketing funnel actually works harder to deliver results.

With potential purchasers normally having their minimum criteria for a new home — type, size and so on — already set, their earlier searches are around price and location for those minimums. Here is where the focus should be, expanding the awareness of properties outside of their initial areas for shortlisting, to expand both the location and types of properties that they will consider.

In this specific case, the language used to sell the developments and properties was old fashioned and had not changed to appeal to modern tastes and expectations. With a potentially months-long consideration phase in the journey, updating the content to keep it fresh, relevant, and creating a sense of scarcity, also matters.

So what does investing more in the consideration phase of the customer journey mean in terms of results? Not only a reduced cost per lead acquisition, but also an improvement in the quality of those leads. Better-qualified leads delivered sales conversions more efficiently, which was crucial in a highly competitive market.

The ‘consideration’ phase: what is it?

It is important to get as close as possible to the mind-set of the target audience when planning journey-based marketing tactics. When a person decides to move home, it could be for several distinct reasons, each of which will completely change how that person looks for their next property:

Change in job situation, requiring relocation. Desire for more space, change in family structure — growing or after children have left home. Entering the housing market for the first time, the ‘first step on the ladder’.

These circumstances will push the target into a consideration phase. It is hard to induce people to consider moving home for its own sake, so injecting awareness of the product at the correct stage of this consideration process is key.

Why couldn’t we sell?

What were the deciding factors for potential purchasers when they came to reject purchasing one of the products? Qualitive research from the conversion phase was the only data then available for analysis. This came from the on-development sales team.

Product design — More urban than the current second hand market in the area and practicality was a concern for some.

Price — new homes typically command a premium to reflect lower running costs, maintenance bills and so on, but that was seen as a negative vis-à-vis the local market.

Commuting — Local purchasers thought it wasn’t quite as convenient as property closer to the central railway station.

Plotting these comments against the current visitor database indicated that these were mostly local purchasers. It was clear that the immediate area was not going to deliver the right purchasers. Product comparison with the existing second-hand market was not favourable, so widening the scope of potential purchasers was needed.

Changing track

For this development of homes primarily focused on families, the new strategy would target them at distinct stages of their lives that best corresponded to the product range.

Updated content on the individual house type/plot pages to focus on selling how the practical and lifestyle benefits of these homes, and how living there would benefit them.

Advertising was moved to appear within areas where the product would be compared favourably on price, design and size.

Leveraging expectations of new commuting opportunities — Crossrail — we would again target out of area purchasers where Crossrail was seen as a future improvement for commuting.

Delivering a new structure

After rewriting the content about the houses themselves, I also rewrote the local area information to promote elements that mattered to our target demographic (e.g. schooling, leisure opportunities), and that were differentiators — open spaces for urban dwellers, accessibility to high quality evening venues — thus changing lifestyle loss aversion to lifestyle gain expectations.

Then a new digital marketing strategy was prepared:

Key search terms were inserted into the copy to tie-in with SEO on the website. A series of competitor target areas to advertise in were ranked for the key demographics of those who would be able to afford and would likely be looking at these types of properties and competitive environments. Marketing was focused on these competitor areas, by paid channels at the short-listing of property options. Property portals were used to deliver search results for those searching within the area that the development was located in. Advertising messages were adjusted to push the USPs — space, countryside, commuting, design of product, lifestyle, and not price offer-led as had been in the local area.

The sales start flowing

The results showed a dramatic improvement in the quality of the leads. Visitors became focused on the benefits of living in the development’s area. We were often their first introduction to living in that area, thanks to the effectiveness of our digital content and promotion, allowing us to frame the lifestyle and product messages.

The development’s awareness had been prominent at the correct stage of the consideration phase, with content and targeting to support the right parameters and context for consideration.

Sales began to be taken and through rapid rotation of messages and advertising locations, the development sold at a far faster pace. This marketing structure was rolled out across all existing developments within the organisation, and became the key to selling all the developments going forward.