Real Estate Marketing: from Lead Generation to Sales
The construction industry plays a significant role in the world’s economy.
To innovate and stand out in this market, it is essential for players to invest in marketing with a focus on construction companies.
With the digital acceleration of recent years, virtual reality has become increasingly present in this area.
Nowadays, it is possible to virtually visit new sites and decorated properties, which has been a real transformation in the sector, directly affecting customer buying behavior.
Currently, the internet is the main research channel, and online searches for properties have skyrocketed.
With this in mind, we developed this material to help you implement ideas and strategies in the marketing of your construction company/developer/real estate agency.
Through assertive digital actions, you will be able to target the audience that fits your business and thus increase sales.
Read this article to the end to discover which strategies you can start implementing in your company right now!
Who are the Clients/Audience of Construction Companies?
The first step in developing any marketing action, whether online or offline, is knowing who you are talking to.
Therefore, it is essential to identify your target audience and know exactly how to segment it.
There is no point in investing in advertising if you are not clear on the segmentation of your customers.
You risk wasting money on actions and media that are not specific to the audience you want to attract.
If your construction company has different types of properties in its portfolio, you will need to think of specific actions for each type of customer.
The more data and information you have about each of your audiences, the easier it will be to direct marketing efforts and achieve more satisfactory results.
The most important thing is to have objective and precise communication to reach the right people and spark their desire to buy, while reducing any uncertainties that may prevent the sale.
We’ve divided the target audience into three main groups:
Buyers
Since the profile of buyers can be quite diverse, there is an urgency to categorize the audience by creating various personas.
It is crucial that you fully understand the profile of your personas and have a detailed picture of their world.
It’s important to know their interests, pain points, desires, the reality they live in, demographic data, routines, preferences, buying intentions and objections, needs, dreams, and challenges.
Buyers can be married, single, widowed, engaged, with or without children, looking to invest or buy their first home.
They can also be retailers, entrepreneurs starting a business, or even industries that are expanding.
Considering the variety of the audience, it is recommended to delve into the differences between the groups and create specific actions for each.
Remember to act according to the profile of each group!
Investors
Investors are buyers with a different goal than those looking to buy their own home.
Communication with this group will be geared towards the investment market.
Brokers
As one of our clients, Cimos Construtora, pointed out, there is also an important stakeholder: independent agents who work as salespeople for construction companies.
Communication with this group will be completely different from the relationship with investors and buyers and requires specific actions.
What is the Market Like?
In Google’s search engine, real estate agencies and construction companies face competition from large portals, which often have higher SEO authority, occupying the best organic positions and making competition in this channel more difficult.
Another key point in market analysis is the consumer’s buying journey.
Through the sales funnel, you can track every stage of the buying process, from when the customer realizes the need to the final moment when they make the purchase decision.
In the real estate sector, the buying journey can take up to two years, as sales involve significant financial and emotional investments.
Because it is a complex purchasing decision, the customer can spend years researching to find the ideal property that meets their desires and needs.
However, the time in this journey can indeed be shortened if you employ good content marketing to help them in their decision-making process.
Why is Digital Marketing Important for Construction Companies?
Marketing for construction companies is like real life in construction: a job built slowly, brick by brick, with a long-term goal.
Using digital marketing in the process to convey an image of positioning and authority is essential.
The beginning of the consumer’s buying journey almost always passes through the internet.
According to Google, there are over 100,000 searches per month for terms like “buy property, house, apartment, condos.”
This means that people have started their purchase search online – which is why it’s so important for construction companies to be present in these channels.
Customers search for developments in search engines and land on the construction company’s page.
But getting website traffic is not enough to make someone decide to buy a property.
We know this process can be slow, as customers need to feel secure before buying.
They want to be sure that the construction company is truly reputable and trustworthy, answering their questions and ensuring a sound investment.
A key point in marketing for construction companies is that strategies must be focused on nurturing relationships to build trust.
An effective way to strengthen the relationship between the company and the customer is by offering relevant content that will help the customer when making a purchase decision and providing information about developments and new launches.
Keep in mind that sales will be the result of the trust your company has earned.
The closed deal will be the result of a relationship built over time.
Even if the customer is not yet ready to buy, they will view your brand as a reference when comparing options to finally close the deal.
The advantages of digital marketing are numerous.
Among them, we can highlight:
- An efficient way to increase sales and attract new customers;
- Connection with other market players to establish beneficial partnerships;
- Contributes to building brand authority;
- Helps generate qualified leads;
- Much lower media costs compared to other channels like TV, newspaper, and magazine;
- Ability to segment the audience;
- Ability to analyze metrics to measure the effectiveness of actions and optimize results.
Marketing Strategies for Construction Companies and Developers
Now that you know the importance of digital marketing for the success of your business, we’ve brought a series of strategies for you to develop within your company.
Each group of strategies has a different goal, with actionable suggestions you can start implementing right away.
But before we go into detail on each of these strategies, let us share a secret: our client, Cimos Construtora, revealed to us that the strategies that work best for them are paid traffic, chatbots, and ads on industry-related pages.
Now, let’s check them out one by one so you can identify which of them best fit your business.
Strategies to Prepare the Site for Conversion
You might be wondering, “what do you mean, prepare the site?”
Yes, in order to grow and reap the benefits, it’s necessary to first prepare the ground.
When we talk about preparing the site, we’re talking about receiving visitors.
Just like in offline life, we design offices and model apartments to welcome potential clients.
In the digital environment, it’s no different – we need to pay proper attention to our virtual visitors.
In other words, prepare the “store” (site) before handing out “flyers on the street” (investing in paid traffic).
Check out the following strategies to ensure your site is well-prepared to welcome visitors:
Facilitate Site Navigation
Your site is usually the first place potential clients will go to find more information about your company and your developments.
Therefore, the site should be well-designed and offer exactly what they are looking for.
If treated only as a photo catalog, most people will likely close the tab and move on.
To make your site stand out among competitors, you need to provide consumers with the most engaging content and useful information.
Consider that customers are researchers, and your site must be the answer to all their questions.
A well-designed site can do an excellent job of generating leads and positioning your construction company ahead of the competition.
Some essential features your site should have include: a menu bar, quality design, chatbot, blog, and CTA.
Include a Sales Chatbot
Chatbots are excellent automation tools to help potential customers get the answers they need.
They can also save your customer service team from many unnecessary calls.
One of the biggest challenges in lead generation is ensuring visitors stay connected with your brand long enough to build trust and provide personal information.
Chatbots can create this connection faster, delivering what the visitor wants in just a few clicks, without them having to search the entire site for the information.
With automated service, you can work more dynamically than with static forms, capturing your lead’s data and qualifying that contact from the very beginning.
So, in addition to offering a customized experience to the visitor, you also gain deeper insight into your consumers by collecting a much larger volume of information.
Apply Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Strategies
When we talk about CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization, we’re referring to a strategy that focuses on optimizing conversion rates.
The goal behind this methodology is to deeply understand how the audience behaves in the digital environment.
This makes it easier to create a connection between the brand and the customer, always aiming to provide the best possible user experience.
CRO in practice works with the methodology of analyzing and validating hypotheses based on user behavior. From this premise, we aim to optimize the conversion rate.
Conduct A/B Testing
A/B tests are used to compare marketing strategies to identify which ones work best.
Through these experiments, you can analyze which variables are more effective and, in this way, optimize the results of marketing efforts.
To improve your site’s conversion, it’s essential to test different landing pages until you find the one that performs best with your audience.
To perform A/B testing, you first need to analyze user behavior. Once you’ve gathered the data, you can create hypotheses, design, and conduct A/B tests.
In this dynamic of experimentation, you can run the original version of a page alongside this hypothetical version (called a variant) and track the performance of each one side by side.
That’s what A/B testing is—observing how each version performs and which one converts better.
Optimize Mobile Access
Nowadays, people spend more time looking at their phone screens than at their computers.
To improve mobile access, there are a few mobile-specific points that can be addressed.
The first thing to look at is the size of the article—it’s important that it fits the phone screen.
Also, make sure the CTA (Call To Action) button is above the fold, so the user sees it before scrolling down.
This way, they already know what action your site wants them to take.
The chosen images also need to be appropriate for mobile, so the person can view them without loading issues.
Finally, pay attention to loading speed because when the site takes too long to load, the user loses patience and gives up browsing.
In this case, it’s worth optimizing images or even the server or hosting to deliver better speed for the mobile version.
Strategies to Attract Local Traffic
It’s essential that the marketing for the construction company be primarily local.
After all, you usually need to reach people who already live in the city and are looking for a property to buy nearby.
So, keep this in mind when creating your paid media campaigns.
Check out the strategies to attract your local audience:
Include Your Business in Google My Business
A good and easy-to-apply strategy is to register your business on Google My Business.
If your company is not yet registered with Google, do it as soon as possible, especially if it’s a new development.
This way, when users search for your brand name on Google, they’ll see a box with information about it.
In addition to this information box on the side, your construction company will appear in the top results, just below the paid results for local searches.
Create Specific Ad Targeting
In digital marketing, it’s possible to create very specific targeting, and this can be a great ally in bringing qualified leads.
We suggest investing in ads on social networks, as well as Google Ads.
Keep in mind that this type of campaign should be done by someone with a solid understanding of the subject.
PPC (pay per click) can be a very effective marketing tool, but it requires careful monitoring to perform at its best.
Another channel that allows for more specific targeting is Facebook Ads, which manages ad campaigns within Facebook and Instagram.
The first thing you should do on these platforms is specify the location you’re targeting.
Then, consider your target audience.
What do they look like in terms of income? What about their interests and behaviors?
It’s likely that you have different audiences, so creating specific campaigns that align your article with each one makes a lot more sense.
Whatever your decision (there are many options), explore what works best in your case, and you’ll be able to speak directly to the right people.
List Your Business in Online Directories
When someone searches the internet for the best service provider in your city, the search engine presents the names of directories rather than individual sites.
That’s why you need to list yourself in those directories.
When listing yourself in directories, don’t forget to fill out all the details they ask for.
This helps customers get to know your company better and also improves your ranking in the directory.
Keep checking them regularly and answer any questions that arise.
Respond to comments, especially those that give you feedback—positive or negative—about your developments.
Build an Informative Blog and Apply SEO Strategies
We’ve already discussed the importance of offering relevant content to your customers.
Doing this through a blog is a great strategy for positioning your site on the first pages of local search results.
When planning your company’s article, keep in mind that the information must be useful to address your customers’ needs and problems, presenting a concrete solution that solves one of their issues.
To attract organic traffic and increase site engagement, we suggest creating blog articles that position keywords such as “best place to live in [city where you plan to build the development],” “best construction company in [your city],” and similar.
Reducing the reach radius of terms to the region where your target audience is located, in addition to being logical, is what can bring you more return given the great competition in this market.
Maintain Good Communication at the Construction Sites
The moment and place where the construction is taking place is when you’re truly showcasing your work.
Imagine the construction site as a stage being set up for a show.
What will be presented is nothing more than your completed development.
Understand that people’s perceptions of the construction affect how they perceive your professionalism.
And people’s perceptions of your professionalism affect how much they’re willing to pay for your services.
Therefore, it’s crucial to maintain a good communication bridge with the construction sites and use this to your advantage when promoting your new developments and ongoing projects.
Personalize Communication with Clients
Marketing and advertising don’t work like a one-size-fits-all solution.
What may work for one group of clients might not work for another.
Pay special attention to getting to know your ideal clients well, and then segment them.
Personalized approaches in marketing happen based on collecting information and data about leads.
This type of data includes interests, visited pages, purchase preferences, consumption habits, history with the brand, and even data provided by the lead themselves through conversion and qualification hooks.
When marketing uses tools that leverage this data to create content, we are talking about personalization, which can be used in calls, email sending, ad displays, or instant messages and virtual conversations.
Advertise in Local Media (Online and Offline)
We’ve talked a lot about the online space for construction company marketing, but how about investing in some real-life experiences for the community in the region where your company operates?
One suggestion is to try applying guerrilla marketing to your business.
Not only is it fun, but it also allows creativity to flow, bringing in new clients in unexpected ways.
You can also think about local media and channels that are well-known in your region to expose your brand.
Set Up Local Service Ads on Google
Local service ads are indispensable for a construction company!
When these ads are set up correctly, and someone searches for “construction company near me,” your service ad with a “Google Guaranteed Badge” will appear next to a direct link to your phone number.
Strategies to Build Long-Term Relationships with Customers
At the beginning of this article, we talked about the importance of nurturing long-term relationships with customers.
Below, we’ve outlined strategies for you to start strengthening the bond between your company and your consumers as soon as possible.
Check out all the strategies and consider applying at least one of them right away!
Invest in Highly Visual Content (Images and Videos)
According to a Wordstream study, one-third of internet users’ activities in the digital environment involve watching videos.
Even Google has noticed this trend and now displays videos when you search for specific terms in its browser.
Another study from Brightcove shows that including videos in your content can lead to a 157% increase in organic traffic.
Therefore, it’s clear that video is a marketing strategy that cannot be ignored!
Videos can be a wildcard in communication, as the construction sector needs to be highly visual.
Your company can showcase construction projects through videos, showing a bit of the day-to-day work, what happens behind the scenes of construction.
There are millions of ideas to be explored in the audiovisual universe.
The video can also be replicated across numerous channels, whether on your company’s website, social media, newsletters, or on sites like YouTube, to be sent directly to leads interested in project X or Y.
Remember that videos are currently the most far-reaching content format on social media.
Considering the endless possibilities you find in videos, this could be one of the best investments for your construction company’s marketing strategy.
Have a Remarketing Strategy
We suggest investing in a remarketing strategy.
The idea is to target those users who have already had contact with your brand.
This increases brand recall and provides sales arguments for those who are still undecided about making a purchase.
For a more comprehensive marketing and paid media strategy, it’s beneficial to combine advertising platforms to target leads at all stages of the sales funnel.
Our suggestion is to invest in Google to attract users searching for terms relevant to the brand, and then invest in Facebook Ads with remarketing campaigns.
Create Email Nurturing Flows
Email is the closest place to converse with your potential customers.
Being present in your audience’s inbox helps nurture the relationship between company and customer.
By capturing contact information like phone numbers or emails, you have the opportunity to create a highly converting channel to interact with leads.
You can work on this through content marketing.
Offer exclusive and valuable content to your reader in exchange for their data.
This could be an e-book or a link with useful information, where the person needs to provide an email address to gain access.
Once the person is subscribed to your email list, you can approach them more closely through email marketing.
Other advantages of this strategy: low cost, immediate communication, easily measurable results (open rates, product clicks, etc.), and easy automation and segmentation.
Be Present on Social Media
We’ve talked a lot here about the importance of being present in the digital environment to interact with your target audience, offering relevant content about your brand’s universe.
To develop a coherent and aligned digital strategy across all channels, it’s essential to be present on social media.
Choose 2-3 communication channels where your audience is and keep them always updated.
Use these channels to connect with your clients and nurture the long-term relationship.
Build and Maintain a Good Reputation
Understand that your reputation does not depend solely on the projects your construction company completes.
You need to ensure that customers are happy and satisfied after doing business with your company.
Pay attention to the feedback and reviews your company receives after the projects are delivered.
Everything starts with your company’s word.
If you, as a brand, promise something, you must deliver.
If a customer has a problem, resolve it immediately and have a pre-established process for handling complaints.
If it gets to the point where it affects your company’s online reviews, you could lose new business.
And you certainly don’t want that to happen with your construction company.
Invest in Your Brand’s Image
Your brand’s image goes far beyond a good marketing strategy.
The way people perceive your company is crucial to business success.
Your brand’s representation is built on the company’s values.
Pay attention to details, for example: clear signage on your vehicles and equipment should reflect your company’s values, as well as all your employees, including subcontractors – all should honor your brand’s image.
Strategies to Close Sales on Time
With the goal of closing sales within the set timeframe, we’ve selected some strategies that can help you close more deals and hit your sales targets on time.
Create Partnerships with Related Companies
Consider forming alliances.
Build partnerships with a similar company to yours to do some cross-promotion and expose your construction company to a new market.
Partnership marketing campaigns will take different forms for B2B or B2C, for products or services, for new startups or established brands.
So, think about what works for your segment.
Ask yourself what are the best brands to partner with?
The answers may lie in your target audience.
Where else do they shop? What other needs do they have?
Before forming partnerships, consider a few things: seek to build these relationships with similar brands, but not direct competitors.
Make sure the brand you partner with has a reasonable (if not large) audience.
Seek partnerships with a company that is compatible to ensure a mutually beneficial exchange.
Use Urgency and Scarcity Triggers
Mental triggers are stimuli identified by our brain that affect decision-making.
The decision process is often connected to emotions, and it’s possible to use this to your advantage when delivering a message to your target audience.
Using these triggers in communication can be quite effective in persuading the consumer to decide whether to buy a product or service.
We suggest using mental triggers such as urgency and scarcity.
We tend to want what is scarce or no longer available, which shows that humans give much more importance to what they have lost or are about to lose.
With that in mind, scarcity mental triggers were developed so the customer knows that a particular sale is about to expire, so they should make the purchase as soon as possible.
An example of this trigger used in the construction sector is “last units” or “only 3 lots left.”
Although it may seem very similar to the scarcity trigger, urgency activates a specific type of scarcity in the customer: time scarcity.
That is, if someone knows that their time is running out, they will automatically connect this with the idea that the product is also about to run out.
For example: “last days to buy this lot with discount X.”
Providing Support for Brokers
Don’t forget about the brokers!
They are the bridge between your construction company and the end customer.
Offering them support can be decisive in increasing sales, meeting deadlines, and achieving the target for closed deals.
Try to understand what the main obstacles are for brokers in closing sales and help them address objections.
Strategies to Ensure Customer Success
When you manage to guide the lead to the narrowest part of the funnel and finally close the sale, the work continues to ensure customer satisfaction during the post-sale period and to dedicate efforts to maintain the company’s relationship with them.
To work on this bond, we have outlined some strategies for you to apply in your company’s post-sale process.
Investing in a Post-Sale Strategy to Generate Satisfaction and Loyalty
The purpose of this phase is to gain the buyer’s trust and turn them into a promoter and defender of your brand.
It’s much more advantageous to nurture the relationship with the customer to ensure they continue purchasing your products or services than to prospect for new leads.
To create this sense of satisfaction, your company can invest in small actions after the purchase is made.
For example, you could send a satisfaction survey or even tips related to the newly acquired property, or information about the condominium or lot.
Or general tips related to the world of housing.
It’s also important to excel in customer service and be available whenever the client needs something.
Reaching Out to Past Clients
We suggest following up with your clients a few months after completing a project, just to check if you can help them with anything else.
By showing that you care, they will surely be impressed, and this could lead to more business in the future.
Even if it’s a smaller project your company completed for a family last year, or a commercial project from several years ago, if your clients had a positive experience, it might be worth seeing if they have any future needs that haven’t been addressed yet.
Creating a Referral Incentive Program
To increase your customer base in a simple and organic way, we suggest creating referral programs, where you encourage current clients to bring in new ones, rewarding them in some way.
This type of action, besides fostering customer loyalty, also helps strengthen your brand and attract new buyers.
Important Marketing Metrics and Analyses for Construction Companies
By analyzing metrics, it’s possible to know the conversion and retention rates of new leads.
If you keep an eye on KPIs, your investments become more effective, and of course, you avoid wasting time and money by “shooting in all directions” to hit a target.
Our client, Cimos Construtora, pointed out that the main metrics in the construction industry are registrations, likes, customer traffic, and closed sales.
Based on this, we’ve outlined three key metrics for you to analyze and evaluate the performance of your marketing efforts:
- Lead Conversion Rate
- Sales Conversion Rate
- Gross Sales Value (GSV)
The conversion rate (both for leads and sales) represents the percentage of potential customers who move from one stage to another within the sales funnel.
In other words, conversion rates show how long it takes for a prospect to move from one stage to the next in the sales funnel.
Meanwhile, the Gross Sales Value is an estimate of the revenue potential that a project can generate.
Of course, the return that marketing brings to your company is much more than just the sales of a project.
Efforts will contribute by engaging customers, positioning the brand in the market and in people’s minds, turning customers into fans, attracting business opportunities and partnerships… among many other benefits.
You can’t sit around waiting for customers to find you out of the blue.
You have to work to ensure that potential clients reach your company and your projects.
To make that happen, put into practice the strategies we’ve outlined in this article.
Now that you have all the secrets about marketing for construction companies, we hope you start applying them to your business as soon as possible.
If you have any questions or would like to share how implementing these strategies is going for your business, leave a comment!
And don’t forget to test our chatbot today – it’s free for 14 days, no credit card required.
