As builders feel the shift of a cooler market in the late summer months, it’s important to remember that now is the time to make sure your messaging stays aligned with the buyer journey. While it is natural to feel stress and pressure (whether internal or from your leadership) when this happens, pushing messaging to a broader audience can sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity. Below is an effective guide to reviewing your messaging strategy.
When reviewing your strategy, you will find it typically falls within the categories below:
What You Offer And Where You Offer It
- Where are you building homes?
- What type of homes are you building? (Beds, Baths, Square Footage, Key Features)
Why Buyers Want To Live In Your Homes and Communities
- What would their life look like living here?
- How do the features in your home improve their quality of life?
- What amenities and lifestyle do they get to enjoy in your community?
Ease of Purchasing and Building With You
- Are you offering a promo or incentive that can make your homes more affordable?
- Do you have convenient tools or services that make the buying and building process more enjoyable?
Where the importance of strategy comes in is making sure your messaging takes place in the appropriate stage of your buyers’ journey.
Stage 1: Exploration: “What Are My Options?”
At this stage, the buyer is really early in the process and has likely just begun considering making a change to their living situation. This is the awareness stage, and our job as marketers is to make sure this buyer knows What You Offer and Where You Offer It. By focusing your efforts on this topic at this stage, you set your funnel up for success. On the flip side, by jumping right into other primary messaging, such as financing incentives and promotions, you potentially capture a lot of traffic that is not necessarily the buyer for your product. Remember, the people you are reaching may not have heard of your company before!
Stage 2: Consideration: “What Is The Best Option For Me?”
By this point, the buyer has a broader understanding of what is available and where they could see themselves buying a home. During the consideration phase, we need to provide information needed to help narrow down choices, focusing on Why Buyers Want To Live In Your Homes and Communities.
Stage 3: Decision: “How Can I Make This Happen?”
You guessed it! Last but definitely not least is the decision phase. At this point, the buyer has considerably narrowed down their choices to a few builders, communities or even floorplans. This is where Ease of Purchase and Building With You comes into play, and where messaging around promotions and offers is the most effective.
While there is no single message that can solve all of your problems, the key to success is hitting all of the points at the right time. And remember, it’s okay to use multiple messages at one time! Things aren’t always straightforward in homebuilding, as you know, and there is often overlap between the stages.
I challenge each of you to look at your current messaging and advertising strategy to see if your messaging is aligned with the buyer journey.
