How do you plan a marketing strategy in your building projects to make your construction business stand out?
An effective marketing strategy beyond the usual methods matters a lot in presenting your home building business.
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Building the “Know-Like-Trust” Factor
Amelia
All of that feeds into being an incredible advertisement and marketing opportunity for your business.
Duayne
Alright, Amelia, this one’s for you. And I think it’s a good one because a lot of builders are probably a little bit hesitant or don’t understand how they can market their business. I guess this day and age with things like social media, and especially getting things on their website.
But we’ve learned through our building business that they’re incredibly powerful tools, and you can do far more than just marketing through social media and websites.
Amelia
It’s so true. And I think builders underestimate how long homeowners think about their projects before they pick up the phone to contact you as a builder. And ask if you’re available or what you’d be like to work with.
The homeowners are stalking, sussing out, and watching carefully how all sorts of professionals are performing. They’re speaking to their friends, to their neighbours. Your social media platform and website are incredibly freely available opportunities to present yourself and your business.
So that those homeowners who are looking for a builder like you can watch. They can get to know you. They can see if you’re a good fit. And they can get a sense of how you do business and how you work. And then be informed and already have built a trusting relationship with you where they feel that they know, like, and trust you before they get in touch.
And this is the thing, like all of that social media, is just about building up that know-like-trust factor. So that you just reduce the number of questions and hurdles you have to overcome. When you have that first conversation with a potential client, a builder would generally feel like they’re always having to convince them or sell themselves or that kind of stuff. The social media and your website can reduce and eliminate so much of that if you use it effectively.
Duayne
If you’re putting the right information out there, you can reduce so much conversation or wasted time with people on the phone and sending emails because you can answer so many questions that you get asked all the time through what you put out there.
Social Media As a New Word of Mouth
I really believe social media, for a business, is a new word of mouth. In the old days, it was always… you gave a business card to someone, or someone was going for a walk past a job site, or a friend told a friend or a family member, whatever it may be, whereas now that can still be happening.
But even if that does happen, the first thing those people will do is see if you have an Instagram or a Facebook site or website. And like you said, they will literally stalk you, for who knows that they might even start following you. And at that point in time, not be considering building or renovating at all. But they end up building a relationship with you.
And then all of a sudden, something changes in their life, their family, and they’re like, “Oh, we’ve been checking this guy out. We’ve seen what he does”.
I know for myself, as a builder, it allows me to highlight things in my business. And I’m passionate about it. My big thing is that it’s all the things you don’t see that make a difference. So we can get that out there on videos, and most of the clients that come to us said that’s the type of builder, the quality, my personality, and stuff thereafter. So, it’s a pretty powerful tool.
Building Relationships with Potential Clients through Social Media
Amelia
Most definitely. Google’s done research just on standard purchasing decisions to show that it takes between seven and eleven touch points for somebody to make a purchasing decision about something. When it comes to investing in your home, it’s a significantly longer relationship, a much bigger investment that somebody knows that they’re stepping into.
And so it makes sense that they might be watching you for two or more years before they do actually decide that they’re going to commit to this because they’re not just committing to you, they’re committing to a huge amount of time, energy, effort, it’s a big step for them in terms of what it might do to disrupt their life for a while, all of those kinds of things.
So homeowners do watch and look for a long time. And I think that if you can utilise those social media platforms like you say, to show how you position your business for you, it’s all the things you don’t say that make the difference.
You can do those things by sharing your project journeys. You can show stage by stage what it’s like to build a home. You can educate a homeowner so that you can reduce many of the questions that will come up.
They can then start to see and compare how you’re building a home to other builders they might be seeing. They can start to see, if you’re highlighting look, this is what we do. I know there’s a video you have of what you do to weatherboards before prepping them for painting.
So, they can then look at that and then know, “Okay, that actually makes sense”. If I’m speaking to another builder, I’m watching another builder. Are they taking the same care? Oh, they’re not? Okay, well then, that immediately pegs DPS constructions above this other builder.
And they’re going to be making thousands and thousands of assessments like that over that two-year period, sometimes, of really making that discernment between who is the right builder for them versus who’s the builder that is not the right fit, isn’t doing the same quality work, and isn’t positioning themselves as an authority, who really cares about how we’re going to build our home.
The Value of Transparency on Homeowners’ Decision-Making
Duayne
Everyone’s different. And social media has brought that to my attention. And through the videos we do on social media, because there’s going to be clients out there that the only thing that they might be worried about in the entire build might be a tile set out, or all the way that you finish your painting, or the weatherboards, or how clean you keep your site.
Social media allows you to do videos on the particular things that you do in your business. We video everything. And I’m just so passionate about every part of the building: the design stage, the building stage, the handover stage, all those things, and everything in between.
But you can get a client that will be looking at you. And they’ve just seen that one thing that had been that light bulb moment, they’re like,
“Right there, that’s our builder. That is something that I never would have thought of. I can’t believe he’s doing that, let’s go and talk to them”.
Amelia
Yeah, and often, it is that thing that has not even occurred to them. But they’ve lived with the poor outcome in their current house, or they’ve seen a friend be frustrated by the poor outcome of that not being done well. And all of a sudden, you shed light on the fact that “Oh, actually, that can be done differently if the builders do the right thing at the construction process”.
And because you’re giving them a behind-the-scenes, it doesn’t have to be polished. The more real it is, the better it is that you actually show them how you can step them through the process of building a home.
It’s important that you get clearance from the clients that you’re working with that you’re allowed to share their projects on social media. One of the things that we teach our members is to ensure that they get that before they sign a contract with a client so that they have permission to share their projects publicly on social media.
But I find lots of clients like watching their own projects being shared on social media because they’re not able to be on-site. All the time they come for the weekly site meeting, but their life gets in the way they might not be able to attend every week.
And for them to also see all of the little things that are going into their home to ultimately create the outcome they’re going to be living in, that can be really exciting. They can share it with their friends and family and tag others in. It’s a big undertaking. There’s a lot of personal and emotional stuff attached to it.
So, for a homeowner to see that about their own project. And then your potential clients are seeing one existing client of yours getting excited about their home, and a great relationship they’re having with you. All of that feeds into being an incredible advertisement and marketing opportunity for your business and positioning you as a great builder.
Putting Yourself Out There
Duayne
And these days that we’re seeing it a lot of our clients are actually setting up the page for their projects.
Amelia
Like an Instagram account for their own project or something like that.
Duayne
Yeah, Instagram. Being able to tag them and share things. That can excite clients because it becomes their little documentary of their bill. They can always go back to that page, click through it, see different parts and show their friends and stuff.
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. Jump on video. Like Amelia said, it definitely doesn’t have to be polished. For me, the real deal means more. You’re showing people the true you, your personality, and your passion, and you’re going to attract like-minded clients.
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