Keystone Custom Homes, headquartered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, won the Market Proof Award for Best Virtual Community Launch. Rachel Peters, Marketing Manager, at Keystone has considered the PreSale Without Fail process as her “baby” for the past three years. The community launch for Retreat at Boyertown Farms was unique because it was released when much of the world was locked down because of COVID, so a lot of the process had to be adjusted accordingly.

Fortunately, the community was located in a high-demand area and Keystone already had a solid online program set up in advance. Because of this, they had long been compiling a list of people who had indicated they were interested in that particular school district or area. Keystone was able to build the interest list even more by running Google Ads with a short drone video of the location and Facebook ads, as well.

Everyone on the list then received a BombBomb video from the senior online advisor telling them about the new community and where it would be located. She also explained that homebuyers could learn about homesite information, pricing, floor plans, and all the details for the community at a virtual preview appointment. These 30-minute appointments were first come, first served, and were held via Zoom.

Once the email was sent out, they had a great response from people ready to schedule appointments. After that, Keystone sent out a survey using a simple Google Form, with general questions about their price range and what the prospects were looking for in their new home. If prospects were significantly outside of the range of the upcoming community, it allowed the online advisors to let them know about other communities that might be more in line with their budgets and avoid clogging their pipeline with prospects who may not end up being qualified. The survey results were also entered as notes in the CRM so that the online advisors were able to familiarize themselves with what prospects were looking for before the 30-minute preview appointment.

The virtual preview appointments were so successful, they’ve continued them ever since, and they continue to be a win-win for the Keystone team and their homebuyers. The home advisors enjoy being able to review important information with the prospect without the distraction of the model home and homebuyers have appreciated not having to take extra time to travel to the model home.

After the preview appointment, it was then left up to the customer and the new home advisor to determine whether follow-up discussions would take place virtually or in a model home. Because Keystone has done such an excellent job providing a large depth of content and online website tools, potential homebuyers were able to view a large amount of valuable content that ultimately led homebuyers closer to a purchase decision before even visiting a model home. Keystone’s digital-first approach has been the heartbeat of its marketing program, allowing many customers over the last year to purchase a home without ever stepping foot in a model home.

Rachel encourages anyone wanting to start or improve their virtual community launches to be willing to constantly reassess what is and isn't working and not to be afraid to try something new. Another big part of the success of the program is that Rachel prioritized getting all the departments that were involved in the presale process to work together. She focused on building relationships between departments, including the land department, internal operations, and sales leadership.

Rachel and the team at Keystone Custom Homes successfully maneuvered a community launch during a turbulent time by focusing on staying flexible and building relationships, making their Market Proof Award for Best Community Launch well deserved.

Explore all the winners of the 2021 Market Proof Award at https://www.marketproofawards.com/2021-winners/.