The Building Blocks of Marketing: A Presentation for the Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans

Yesterday, New Orleans Managing Director Sam Olmsted and I gave a presentation to the Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans on how to get started with marketing. Many people in the audience were running small businesses, either family-owned or on their own. Some relied solely on word of mouth for business, while others had help from family members or their realtor on their social media, paid ads, or blog.

As Sam and I shared yesterday, even learning a few new best practices can help improve their results. Below are a few of the top insights we discussed.

Understanding Your Marketing Foundation

I’ve worked with clients in residential construction and plumbing for years, and taking the time to establish these fundamentals upfront has set us up for success down the road. Whether you’re from an organization like the Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans or you work in another industry, you’ll need to build a solid foundation for your marketing strategy before diving into specific tactics.

Set Clear Campaign Goals

The most successful marketing campaigns start with clearly defined goals. In my experience, you’ll want to establish both qualitative and quantitative objectives, as well as make sure you have SMART goals.

• Qualitative Goals: These goals are descriptive rather than numerical, though they can inform your quantitative goals. Examples include building trust with your target audience, educating potential customers about the home building process, or increasing brand awareness in specific neighborhoods.
• Quantitative Goals: These goals use concrete numbers you can track over time. Examples include getting 50 form submissions on average per month, gaining 250 new LinkedIn followers over the next 3 months, or increasing website traffic by 30% over the next 6 months.
• SMART Goals: Make sure your quantitative goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Rather than saying “increase website traffic,” set a target like “achieve 30% growth in organic website traffic over the next 6 months.”

Define Your Target Audience

Understanding exactly who you’re trying to reach makes every marketing decision easier. We recommend creating detailed personas that include:

• Demographics, such as age range, family status, income level, occupation, geographic location, and homeownership history.
• Psychographics, such as interests, priorities in a home, values, lifestyle preferences, personality, and opinions.

• Behaviors, such as how they search for builders, questions they ask before hiring, current challenges and pain points, goals, messaging that resonates with them, and their typical path to purchasing.

It’s perfectly fine to have multiple personas—perhaps one for first-time home buyers and another for experienced clients looking to build their forever home. The key is understanding each group’s unique needs and concerns.

Establish Your Unique Value Proposition

To support your marketing efforts, you need to clearly articulate what makes your home building company different from competitors. This isn’t about being the cheapest or claiming to be the best—it’s about communicating your specific strengths and values, such as a long history of experience, specialized expertise, a unique approach to the building process, specific services or guarantees that you offer, or your core values and their benefits to customers.

Top Digital Marketing Strategies for Home Builders

As we told the Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans, not every digital marketing strategy will be relevant for your business. In our experience working with this industry, these are the tactics tend to drive the most results.

Brand Identity & Logo

While often overlooked in digital marketing discussions, your visual brand identity serves as the foundation for all your marketing efforts. A professional, cohesive brand helps establish trust and recognition.

One tip that an audience member shared for home builders’ offline tactics is to use branded lawn signs, which are relatively inexpensive and cost effective. To tie them into your digital efforts, consider including your website URL, social media handles, or a QR code.

Website Design & Function

Your website is often a potential customer’s first impression of your business and your work. Make it as easy as possible for potential customers to have a positive experience on your website, learn about your services, and reach out to you. These are a few key web design elements to consider:

• Mobile-friendly design
• Fast page load speeds
• Simple, intuitive navigation
• Clear service area information
• Easy-to-find contact information
• Clear calls-to-action for scheduling consultations
• Professional project galleries with high-quality photos
• Testimonials and client reviews

SEO & Content Marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing work hand in hand to attract potential customers who are actively searching for building services or related topics. A few of our top tactics for this industry include:

• Blogging about building topics
• Location-specific pages for each area you serve
• Service-specific pages for your different offerings
• Detailed project case studies
• FAQs addressing common customer concerns
• Building backlinks to raise your authority and rankings
• Optimizing and managing your Google Business Profiles

Social Media Management

Social media offers unique opportunities for home builders to showcase their work and connect with potential customers. Consider sharing before and after photos, project progress updates, behind-the-scenes content, team spotlights, customer testimonials, educational tips, and local community involvement.

It’s better to maintain a steady presence on fewer platforms than to spread yourself too thin. Facebook is often our top choice for those in the home building industry, as it allows you to reach the greatest number of relevant users. In addition to organic posts, you can use paid advertising to gain a wider reach and target a particular audience on social media.

Paid Digital Ads

While organic strategies form your marketing foundation, strategic paid advertising can significantly accelerate your results. A few of the best options for home builders include:

• Google Ads, which allow you to appear at the top of the search engine results page for valuable searches.
• Microsoft Ads, which work like Google Ads except they’re on Bing, which tends to have an older and wealthier user base.
• Geotargeting, which allows you to define specific service areas for your ads and target the neighborhoods you want to work in.
• Remarketing, which shows ads to people who have engaged with your business online before, keeping you top of mind while they consider making a purchase.

Making the Choice: In-House or Agency

If you decide to expand your marketing efforts, the big decision will be whether to tackle them in-house or go to an agency like Online Optimism. Here are a few of the main considerations to keep in mind:

• Time: Do you have the time to run these marketing campaigns yourself? If not, you’ll need to either hire an in-house marketer or outsource your marketing to an agency. It takes time and effort to hire and manage an in-house marketer, but then you can devote 100% of their time to your marketing. Working with an agency allows you to get up and running much faster, but you won’t be able to use all of their time when they’re working with other clients.
• Money: If you have a tight budget and can spare the time, getting started on your own can help you build a foundation for your marketing without the need to pay anyone else. Once you’re ready to invest in outside efforts, which should yield higher returns, a marketing agency gives you the flexibility to quickly scale up or down, bring a variety of skills to the table, and access specialized tools without having to pay for them yourself. Most companies wait until they’re larger to make an in-house hire, because it means committing significant financial resources to hiring, onboarding, salary, and benefits.
• Value: There are distinctive values that come with either hiring in-house staff or a marketing agency. An in-house team may be able to keep up better with your day-to-day inner workings, react to internal initiatives faster, and have a deeper understanding of your company. By contrast, an agency has broader experience across clients, allowing them to stay more attuned to updates and innovation in the industry, as well as bring fresh ideas and strategies to your marketing.
• Expertise: What skills are necessary to successfully accomplish your marketing goals? Unless you have a background in marketing and are continually expanding that skill set, you will find more expertise by working with someone who does—whether it’s an in-house marketer or agency. If you only require a very narrow skill set, you may be able to fulfill it with an in-house hire. Agencies, on the other hand, can staff people with a wide variety of skills, all of which are potentially at your disposal.

For more information, read our blog post on the topic or contact us for a free consultation.

Make the Most of Your Marketing with Online Optimism

Interested in having Online Optimism share marketing advice at your event? Book us to speak! Whether you’re an organization like the Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans or you’re hosting a networking event or conference, we’re happy to bring our expertise.

Want to work with a marketing agency? Online Optimism has proven success in the AEC industry, and we’re happy to schedule a free consultation with you. Give us a call at (504) 324-0073 or contact us here.