When it comes to sales and marketing intel, customer intent is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. When you understand what customers are looking for at any given moment, you can provide them with what they need most to connect with your company, whether it’s a powerful piece of content or a deal on the services they need. Thanks to the rise of AI, not only is there more data available than ever, but your brand can analyze that data to uncover actionable insights that will allow you to leverage that inside knowledge to increase sales.

Understanding Customer Intent

In marketing, customer intent is a term that considers the motivations behind key customer actions throughout the buyer’s journey. Not only does it take into account the end goal—the customer’s desire to purchase a new home—it analyzes the reasons behind smaller steps in the process. As a result, marketers get deeper insight into the steps a company needs to take to attract potential homebuyers.

The Importance of Customer Motivation

Understanding customer intent starts with taking a close look at the “why” behind customer searches. That can mean several things, depending on what actions the customer is taking and how they may influence the homebuying process. A customer who needs to make a quick buying decision—for example, one who will be moving for work within a short period of time—may have significantly different motivations than someone who has more time to select the right home for their needs.

As a homebuilding brand, understanding customer motivation makes it much easier for you to personalize your marketing materials to the content your customers most need in order to choose your brand. It helps you identify a customer that is looking for more information about school districts, access to parks, or a home with plenty of bedrooms for a growing family versus one who is looking for easy access to community resources or public transportationan—and present them with the marketing they need to make a decision in favor of your brand.

Data-Driven Solutions

Understanding customer motivation is often a complex process. As a home builder, you may have a wide range of properties that fit equally diverse customer expectations, and marketing the right property to the right buyer is essential to not only increasing your odds of making a sale but also increasing overall satisfaction.

Fortunately, AI tools for home builders are here to help.

AI can help track customer behavior across a variety of platforms and interactions with your brand, including website clicks, email opens and click-through rates, and social media connections. Then, it can provide you with solutions that allow you to adapt your marketing to more effectively meet customer needs.

Intent Signals in Homebuyers

As a home builder or real estate brand, you know that your website will attract many customers who aren’t yet ready to make a buying decision: customers who are “just browsing,” dreaming of someday, or thinking about what their dream home will look like as they make a number of renovations over several years. However, thanks to data analysis, you can get a better feel for when customers are serious about their browsing habits.

Research Habits

Homebuyers who are genuinely interested in making a purchase will do deeper research, not only into the homes themselves, but into other information. That can include:

• Local neighborhoods, including school districts.
• Loan terms and interest rates.
• Homes in different areas, testing affordability.

In many cases, those types of research can signal that a lead is actively interested in purchasing a home, which means that your brand may need to pay more attention to their needs than you would if they were passively searching, looking for inspiration, or daydreaming about “someday.”

Early Signals

Through your research, you can identify early signals that may suggest that buyers will be more likely to make a purchase—or that people will be more likely to move in the near future. That may include things like:

• Damaging weather that can make issues with their current home more obvious
• Adding to the family
• Children moving out/empty nesters
• Major job changes

As you get to know those signals, you can shift your marketing to reach out to customers who are likely to need your services—whether you are focused on new builds or home renovations—even before leads are aware that they are ready to start down the buyer’s journey. Not only does this allow you to get out ahead of your competition, it means you can personalize your marketing to customers’ unique needs.

How Home Builders Can Leverage Customer Intent To Shape the Buyer’s Journey

A strong understanding of customer intent can provide you with crucial inside knowledge that allows you to guide the customer through your sales funnel—and, in many cases, keep them from turning to your competitors for their homebuying or homebuilding needs.

Content Creation

Understanding customer intent allows you to create a comprehensive content library that covers the things people are most likely to search for when they’re connecting with your company. That can vary significantly depending on the type of work you do, including your focus areas—and the budget you generally market to.

If you’re building homes designed for young families, for example, you may want to include content on how to babyproof a new home or what local parks or facilities are available. If you’re marketing to empty nesters, you may want to offer information about how to age in place, what type of property is best for accessibility, or what local centers and activities might appeal to those individuals.

Using AI is a great way to learn more about customer intent and what type of content you need. Your AI assistant can recommend topics that interested buyers are searching for, provide you with deeper insight into where you may have gaps in your content library, and offer suggestions about how to better engage buyers.

Personalization

For today’s buyers, personalization is more important than ever. Customers don’t want a generic, one-size-fits-all customer experience moving them through the sales funnel. Instead, they expect a personalized experience. Modern personalization isn’t just about using the customer’s name or keeping content focused on the geographic region they’re searching for. It also incorporates:

• The type of renovation customers are most likely to need, or the type of property they’re searching for
• Marketing focused on their budget range, rather than solutions that they cannot afford or do not need
• An understanding of customer priorities
• Content focused on a given buyer’s specific life stage

As you deepen your understanding of customer intent, you can better personalize each lead’s experience based on their goals, preferences, and budget.

Segmentation

A key part of leveraging customer intent is segmenting your audience so that you’re able to provide the right type of content to the right targets. As a brand that targets homebuyers, you may have a wide range of potential customers based on:

• Budget
• Location
• The type of property they’re looking for
• Stage of the buyer’s journey (and the type of content that applies to that stage)

The larger your brand, the more segmentation you may need to apply. If you span a large geographic region, you may want to segment your audience into smaller geographic areas—including specific cities or counties—in order to ensure that you’re reaching buyers who are planning to move to those areas. Your AI solution can provide deeper insight into how you can best segment your audience to ensure that you’re reaching your customers effectively.

Customer Experience

For today’s customers, selecting a brand is often about the experience. Not only do they need a high-quality connection that provides them with the information and support they’re looking for, but they also need to have a similar interaction each time they connect with your brand—no matter what platform that might be on. A customer who has spent time interacting with your website or reading emails from your brand should have the same experience when they connect with you on social media or reach out through a call to start navigating a build.

Enter your customer relationship management solution. An AI-powered assistant can offer deeper insights into how customers have connected with your brand throughout past interactions and how they will expect to hear from you in the future. It can also track and analyze those essential customer interactions and give you more information about what leads are likely to need next, allowing you to get out ahead of those requirements and show customers that you understand their needs.

Not only that, AI can prove essential in making sure that customers do not fall out of your sales funnel. AI tracks your last interaction with your customers, automatically sends out new communications as needed, and screens leads to let you know when you need to pursue them more intently and when they may have backed away from making a purchase.

Get the Inside Knowledge You Need To Increase Home Sales

If you’re looking for strategies that will allow you to take your homebuilding brand to the next level, Atlas can help. Reach out to us to learn more about our AI-powered solutions and how they can help you collect and analyze customer data, providing you with more solutions to meet your customers’ needs and encourage them to connect with your brand.