Homebuilders.com

Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with good prospects that plan to buy over time. The great majority of people who visit your website aren’t necessarily ready to purchase…yet. Their buying ‘window’ is longer than a hot prospect so an effective process to keep them informed and engaged will dramatically improve the chances of them buying from you.

Your CRM system can help with this. Some buyers may not be interested in engaging with a sales agent right away so marketing and sales need to be in sync with each other for the hand off at the appropriate time, and to make sure the prospective buyer gets the information they need when they want it!

Figuring out what makes your buyers tick and at what stage they realistically are at in their buying journey is key.

Here are a few things to consider as a foundation of your lead nurturing program:

1. Create new home buyer personas – Just this morning I had a conversation with a builder who is totally focused on driving sales by ‘special events’ based on targeting several different buyer segments. Who are your purchasers? What are their profiles? What are the demographics, where are they coming from, what motivates them? Once you determine your ideal purchaser types, you can really focus on communicating to their interests.
2. Content mapping – Map your available marketing content to leads and prospects depending on their buying stage and category of lead. It may be general information about real estate and home sales in your area, blog posts that have been written about the community, information about the amenities and growth in the area, or specific information about the new homes available along with contests or promotions to encourage visits to the sales center!
3. Create a Sales Process and Timeline for Communication – Your CRM system is invaluable here. Establish a series of activity timelines and create targeted email templates that marketing and sales can both use. And, of course, phone calls, personalized mail and event marketing should be part of the defined sales/activity process!
4. Evaluate – Define your goals and objectives and then evaluate to see what is working.
5. Be flexible – Take queues from your leads. What is working and what isn’t? Adapt and evolve!

In today’s times when the cost of a lead is several hundred dollars, the importance of having a system and process in place will help differentiate your company, drive better results and pay for itself over and over. Let us know how it’s working for you!