We’ve always trusted those around us more than brands and companies trying to sell us their products and services. In the digital age, word of mouth has taken on new importance in the form of social proof. For good reason, an effective homebuilder marketing strategy must include social proof. Here’s why.
Modern consumers don’t like hard sales tactics. According to one study, fewer than one in five consumers trust what they read in paid ads. Worse, according to the same study, only 37% even pay attention to those paid messages. And that’s before even discussing cold call sales tactics, which have an even lower trust level.
But consumers do find comfort in the opinions of others like them. Particularly when those opinions concern a specific brand, trust in that brand tends to skyrocket.
For homebuilders, that shift in consumer behavior is crucial to consider when designing a homebuilder marketing strategy. After all, they are selling one of the highest-investment and most emotionally significant purchases in most of their audience’s lifetimes. Learn how social proof can help your homebuilder marketing strategy succeed, and what you need to do to start leveraging it.
What is Social Proof?
In homebuilder marketing, social proof describes the use of third-party influence to build trust and credibility with your target audience. Customer reviews, testimonials, social media engagement, case studies, and endorsements can all serve as different types of social proof to which you can turn to get your message across.
It’s a concept as old as word of mouth. Consumers in all industries look to the actions and opinions of others to guide their behavior, especially when making important decisions. If others have made the same decision and seem happy with the result, the threshold to take that step gets less significant.
Contrast that with traditional homebuilder marketing and advertising, which inherently has a point of view. Consumers know that a homebuilder is trying to sell them on building a house, just like a hotel will try to make their vacation spot look as attractive as possible to get more guests.
In homebuilder marketing, social proof is perhaps most appropriately referred to as a bandwagon effect: when others are jumping on, it feels better to join them than it would to be the first on the wagon. That’s especially true as the stakes of a purchasing decision increase.
Why Social Proof Matters in Homebuilder Marketing
Buying a home is a major life decision. Building a home is even more significant, since it is typically done with an explicit intent to create your own “forever home” rather than just a spot to live for a few years.
In that homebuilder marketing environment, trust is critical. Potential homeowners need to be able to trust that the company they work with gets everything right, from the foundation to the roof. No one wants to build a home that starts to crumble, leak, or become otherwise hazardous and expensive after a few years.
As a result, homebuyers are wary of traditional sales tactics. They know that homebuilders will try to get their business. And so, they do their own research, which might include:
- Reading reviews of the company online, including on Google, Better Business Bureau, or Yelp
- Watching walkthroughs and testimonials of completed homes on YouTube or Instagram
- Scanning the homebuilder’s social media presence for comments and interactions of other homeowners
They can also go deeper, looking for industry certifications and awards as well as complaint history in public records. With homebuilding sales cycles stretching months and even years, the time and opportunity for this type of research are significant, and many prospective homebuyers will take advantage of it.
Each positive mention they find from external sources increases credibility and reduces their perceived risk, the overall goal of effective homebuilder marketing. With each piece they read, they become slightly more likely to trust the homebuilder in question with the biggest investment of their life.
The Role of Social Media in Amplifying Homebuilder Social Proof
Even more specifically than social proof as a whole, social media is the modern word of mouth. It’s where consumers of all stripes, locations, and demographics share their honest and unfiltered thoughts about everything from their day-to-day lives, including their unvarnished opinions about the brands they like and loathe.
They’re not afraid to involve the brands directly, either. You’ll commonly find opinions, questions, and concerns in comments, direct messages, and original posts tagging the brand in question. Meanwhile, shares and likes on brand posts can serve alongside comments as trust signals that show a consumer’s loyalty to the brand in question.
This branch of homebuilder marketing happens organically. But with the right homebuilder marketing strategy, companies can take a more active role in amplifying the social proof that is already there or just ready to be shared. Potential opportunities include:
- Encouraging user-generated content (UGC). Encourage happy homeowners to share photos, videos, or stories of their new homes. Offer giveaways as encouragement, and repost the content with the homeowners’ permission. This validates your brand, but also shows real people enjoying the result of your work in an organic and relatable way.
- Interacting with and highlighting positive comments—and more. When a customer praises you online, respond to it. But even when they don’t, and they just have questions or maybe even concerns, show that you care. The more actively you engage with your followers, the more authentic and trustworthy you become in the eyes of your audience.
- Publishing customer spotlight posts. Feature the stories of individual homeowners on your social media channels. Highlight why they chose to build with you, what their experience was like, and what they love most about their new home. These stories can humanize your business while helping future buyers see themselves in your customers’ shoes.
- Sharing behind-the-scenes content. Give followers a sneak peek into your building process through the eyes of homeowners currently in the process of building with you. Highlight the employees they work with, the steps they’re going through, and the decisions they’re making to ensure that they can get their dream home done right.
As channels like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok move social media more into the visual storytelling arena, highlighting photos and videos becomes ever more important. For homebuilders wanting to show off their product, this offers a great opportunity to highlight and amplify social proof in a dynamic, immersive, visual way.
How AI Can Supercharge Your Social Proof Strategy
By definition, social proof starts with the experiences of your customers. Still, artificial intelligence (AI) can play a role in optimizing and growing your social proof efforts, especially on social media.
On these channels, timing and responsiveness are key. As the three benefits below show, that’s exactly where AI can shine.
- Smarter social media engagement. AI-powered tools can monitor your social media channels around the clock, helping you respond more quickly to comments, questions, and mentions by your followers and customers. That responsiveness improves your customer experience, but also signals to potential homebuyers that your business is attentive and trustworthy.
- Lead qualification from social channels. When someone engages with your content or clicks through to your website, AI can help to qualify that lead instantly. For example, conversational AI tools can ask questions, provide additional information, and guide users toward scheduling a tour or speaking with a sales rep. This instant follow-up reinforces your reliability and professionalism.
- Attribution and insight tracking. AI can also track where your leads are coming from, using tools like UTM parameters. As a result, you’ll be able to see which social media posts and campaigns are driving the most traffic and conversions. These insights, in turn, allow you to see how your social proof is working and where you might need to improve to keep up with your audience.
By integrating AI into your homebuilder marketing and social media strategy, you can both amplify your message and create a better brand presence. Put it all together, and AI-enabled tools like Atlas can help to build a consistent, on-brand experience across all of your homebuilder marketing channels that moves away from sales messaging and toward a more authentic connection with your customers.
Getting Started: How To Turn Social Proof Into a Strategic Advantage
In the trust-driven journey of buying and building a home, social proof has become an essential part of marketing. Polished ads and sales pitches can only take you so far with customers who want to hear from real people who’ve made the same decision as them. That’s why building a strategy around authentic social proof is essential.
Start with a social proof audit. Review your existing reviews, testimonials, and user-generated content. Identify what platforms your audience uses, what types of messaging they typically share, and what parts of the homebuilding journey they tend to talk about. You’ll probably find some gaps and improvement opportunities that you can address in the next step.
Next, build a homebuilder marketing strategy to encourage your homeowners to share their stories. Let them know they’ll be featured, and provide incentives like promotional items. Even simple photos or quotes can go a long way. Then, use AI tools to monitor engagement on these posts and qualify leads to determine what content drives action and where to invest your efforts.
Leverage AI tools in just the right spots for engaging your leads, tracking what’s working, and delivering a more seamless experience. By combining authentic content with smart technology, you can turn social proof into a measurable strategic advantage.
For more information about how AI tools can boost your homebuilder marketing strategy, let’s talk about what Verse can do for you.
