You are selling homes that sell for tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, which could be the biggest purchase your customers will ever make. The style and quality of your homes are the biggest selling factor. However, you could lose a customer simply because you failed to engage with them at the right time. Customer engagement is vital to moving your homebuyers through the sales funnel.

Buying a custom-built home may take 10-18 months from the start of the process to the closing date. This is a long homebuyer’s journey. That’s why it pays to know who your audience is and where they are within the process. Engaging with them where they are is key to helping them feel more comfortable with your company.

If you know who your buyers are and what challenges they are facing, you can customize your marketing so it resonates with them. You will be more likely to form a positive relationship during the buying process, building trust that can go a long way toward making a sale.

Customer Engagement Based on the Homebuyer’s Journey

Your customers may be reaching out from different places within the buying process, and this should affect how you engage with them. The homebuyer’s journey looks something like this:

• Taking a first look. At this point, the customer is curious about the options available and may have questions about your homes, their cost, and how to proceed.
• Getting finances ready. When a buyer is serious about buying a home, they will take steps to secure financing.
• Serious house hunting. If the buyer is interested in your homes, they will reach out, ask detailed questions, take tours, and desire to move forward toward owning their home.
• Ready to buy. This is when the customer makes the final decision and signs the paperwork.
• Moving in. Once the home is built, the homeowner may be dealing with service appointments, warranties, and other new home issues.

How To Learn More About Your Buyer’s Journey

Today’s buyers want the convenience of researching homes at any time of the day or night. They do not want to wait for office hours, so they can talk to your salesperson. Instead, they feel most comfortable going to your website and taking a close look at the content you provide, the photos and diagrams of your homes, and the virtual tours. Complement your current website with an AI-based digital assistant and automatic text messaging, which is available 24/7. AI tools are designed to interact conversationally with your website visitors, gathering data along the way that can help you know more about their demographics and where they are in their buying journey.

Automatic text messaging allows you to send targeted messaging to potential buyers in a digital format that they prefer. The messages provide customers with valuable information while also keeping your company fresh in their minds.

In many cases, nearly half of the buying journey is done before you first engage with a customer personally. People who are interested in buying a home are doing their research online. They can figure out what building a new home is going to cost based on information you and your competitors have available, and then take the first steps toward securing financing for the purchase. At this point, they may be ready to reach out with specific questions. Your digital presence is vital to selling more homes!

Gather Information

AI tools, such as a digital assistant, can gather details about each customer that comes to your website. By prompting website viewers to enter information, the digital assistant can learn contact information, age, family size, current address, income information, and more. Not only does this automatically qualify potential customers, but it also saves the data for you to view and analyze at a later time. As a result, you can build an effective customer engagement strategy.

Data gathering tools and website analytics tools work together to help you understand how your audience is interacting with your website, what they are asking the most questions about, and specific pain points within the process.

Know the Pain Points for Your Buyers

Some examples of homebuyer pain points include:

• Finding a home within their budget
• Increasing interest rates on mortgages
• Difficulty qualifying for a loan
• Lack of communication from the homebuilding industry
• Lack of knowledge about the homebuying process
• Confusing paperwork
• Delays that cause frustration

Knowing what potential buyers are struggling with can help you enter the conversation from a helpful position. If you notice a pattern of similar pain points, you can tailor your marketing approach to solve this problem. Promptly address your customers’ issues while helping them see how your homes are ideal for their needs.

Personalize Your Messaging

When you create segments of information that are specifically geared toward different types of buyers, your AI tools can guide potential buyers toward the information that is best suited for their needs. For example, you may have content geared toward young families, retirees, or first-time home buyers. Or, you may target people who desire to live in a specific area. Some content could be geared toward buyers who want a simple, streamlined process, while other content might focus on people who love lots of options.

Relevant content helps build trust and intimacy. It is important to note that digital tools are not meant to completely replace human contact. Instead, use a combination of AI tools and personal messages from your sales team to help your buyers feel that they are being noticed and actively cared for by your company.

Use Social Media

Reach a wider audience by marketing your homebuilder business through multiple social media sites. People who use Facebook may be different from the people who use LinkedIn and those who use Pinterest. You can learn a lot about your audience just by knowing where they first came to know about your company. Start by marketing to a wide number of social media sites, analyze the data you gather from each source, and let that information guide you toward a more effective marketing approach.

Measure Your ROI

Tracking your ROI for marketing campaigns helps you understand which strategies are reaching your desired audience. AI tools can help you gather the information you need and analyze it, so you can better understand who is reading your content, interacting with your website, and coming back for more information.

Ensure Consistency in Customer Engagement

Your potential buyers may be dealing with multiple home builders. How are you going to differentiate your company from the rest? Providing consistent communication is an effective way to build brand trust. When you keep your branding consistent, say things the same way across all your messaging, and keep your visuals consistent, buyers will always know what to expect from you. Consistency can speak volumes about your professionalism, which may help buyers feel more comfortable returning to your website and interacting with your digital assistant.

Improve Your Response Times

If there’s one thing that turns away the most potential buyers, it’s not receiving a prompt answer to their questions. Because homebuyers are doing their research online at any time of the day or night, it is necessary to have someone available to answer their questions all the time. Most home builders do not have the budget to hire people to answer phones or be online to chat 24/7. That is why a conversational digital assistant is so convenient. It provides around-the-clock customer engagement.

The digital assistant can answer many questions on its own, providing immediate answers to your potential buyers. If there is a question that requires a member of your sales staff, the digital assistant can assure the customer that someone will reach out soon to discuss the issue at hand, and then send the sales team a message including contact info and the question that needs answering.

Quick response times and better customer engagement often lead to a shorter sales cycle. Homebuyers who are well-informed and confident in their decision will not waste time moving down the sales funnel. Making more sales in less time is great for you, because it gives your team more time to sell more homes, increasing your overall profits.

Make Customer Engagement a Priority

Embrace the potential of AI tools and data gathering! Not only will they give you more ways to engage with potential homebuyers, but they will also improve customer engagement. Your marketing strategy could include consistent branding, eye-catching visuals, and virtual tours of your homes, but if your customers cannot easily engage with you when they have questions, none of that matters.

AI tools and automatic texting streamline the entire homebuyer journey, allowing you to be constantly available and ultimately shortening the sales cycle. By providing valuable information in a timely manner, you build trust and positive relationships that could last well beyond your buyer’s move-in date.

Stay in touch with the changing demographics of your audience by analyzing data in real-time. AI tools easily collect data for you and provide valuable insights that help inform your marketing and sales strategies, so you can continue to grow your homebuilder company.

Are you ready to engage with your customers where they are? Contact AtlasRTX to learn more or sign up to get a demo of our conversational AI tools.