House Builder Marketing

As a PR and digital marketing agency with extensive house builder experience, we handle all marketing aspects throughout the entire lifecycle of developments, and all of the marketing requirements of homebuilder businesses themselves.

For over 25 years, we’ve looked after homebuilder clients through recessions, pandemics and bull markets. We’ve delivered record sales, awards, looked after reputations and even taken businesses to sale. We’ve worked with single development homebuilders, national players and those in between. We’ve handled eco-homes, innovative builds, NHBC rankings, exhibitions and hundreds of community projects.

Get in touch to learn more about our house builder marketing services.

House Builder Marketing Services

A homebuilder marketing agency increases sales and improves your brand.

Agencies have advantages over the use of in-house specialists, as their teams can be more rounded, drawing broader experience from providing homebuilder marketing services across multiple clients. They work over contracted periods on either a retainer or project basis – meaning that they negate the need for permanent employees and extended commitment.

A homebuilder marketing agency like Tank has experience of working with multiple brands within the industry and critically those outside of it. They bring marketing skills and knowledge of trends to campaigns. They understand homebuilders’ unique pain points, competitors and know what does and doesn’t work, as they’re not starting from scratch.

Tank is a PR-led housebuilder digital marketing agency, which means that our team are writers first. Great writers think in stories and create the best content for digital marketing campaigns, generating better customer and stakeholder engagement.

Our approach-

Marketing for Home Builders

It’s tough being a housebuilder. You are selling the most expensive thing that most people will ever buy. You have dozens of (at least perceived to be) identical competitors, each with their own set of advantages. You’re then expected to provide a dream-like experience for a customer against a mountain of challenges, which you then have to repeat sometimes hundreds of times.

The media changes by the minute in an industry that struggles to change by the decade, and the internet is arming buyers with a tonne of unrealistic expectation, with Section 106 et al worsening an increasingly tough marketplace – seemingly engineered to destroy your profit margins.

All is not lost though, as scenarios like the above set the pulses of good marketing agencies racing. Any good agency likes a challenge, and will show you how an integrated homebuilder marketing campaign can meet all of the above head on, whilst demonstrating its value proposition and return on your investment.

Our Home Builder Marketing Services :

PR for Home Builders

SEO for Home Builders

Social Media for Home Builders

Advertising for Home Builders

PR is an incredible tool for homebuilders. We use it largely in three main areas as part of any homebuilder marketing plan. Firstly it is used to secure positive, inspirational coverage concerning brand and homes across the regional and national consumer media.

Secondly, it’s used to inform and influence stakeholders throughout the development lifecycle.

Finally it’s used to promote the business behind the brand – attracting the best employees and investors and letting stakeholders in the trade, business communities – and those in which they’re constructing now, know that they’re dealing with a business at the top of its game.

Our homebuilder PR expertise is just one of the reasons why we’ve ranked highly in the PR Week Agency Business Report for the past nine years.

The new homes market is hugely competitive, but slow to change and conservative. It’s full of brands doing the same thing with varying levels of intensity, depending on their market position.

SEO is a key component of digital marketing for homebuilders that enables them to experiment without really ‘sticking their heads above the parapet’. Campaigns that optimise local search terms are especially effective – using micro level strategies to support different developments by being found first for the local terms that count.

This in combination with great housekeeping SEO for websites increases organic performance and creates high quality scores, which also reduce the bidding costs of PPC campaigns.

These local campaigns can also be supercharged with intensive digital PR activity that generates high quality links to further improve keyword search performance.

Social media platforms are where homes are sold and reputations built – where brands can engage directly with audiences on anything from spec options to curtain fabrics to what they like to do on a Sunday. They’re a place for relationship building, before, during and after purchase.

In our 25 years of homebuilder marketing experience, we’ve handled our clients’ national and regional presences. This has included inspiring, informing, listening and dealing first hand with prospect homeowners, buyers themselves and happy customers – helping them gently onto and through the buyer journey, and not forgetting them upon completion.

Sadly, social media is often the first place that unhappy customers and disgruntled publics land. Don’t worry though, as we’re experts in dampening the impact of such threats.

Property guides were once filled with dreamy illustrated full-page new homes ads, but that spend is now largely digital. Whilst the digital mediums that have replaced them may lack the visual impact – they certainly bring opportunity and accurate customer targeting.

Now showrooms are a more virtual experience, these ads can feed homebuilder brands into the customer lifecycle earlier and better targeting means a better intent to buy.

Social media ads and PPC allow us to target demographics more accurately and likely to those at a time of even greater intent. Using these ads as part of a homebuilder marketing campaign, Tank will ensure that they perform within your agreed cost per lead – the cost of acquiring an interested buyer that you are happy to pay.

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Our House Builder Marketing Experts

Martin

Martin

Director

Molly

Molly

Senior Account Manager

Jake

Jake

SEO Lead

Andrea

Andrea

Digital Account Director

Stuart

Stuart

Senior Social Media Manager

Annabel

Annabel

Account Manager

Sandish

Sandish

Account Manager

Our Work -

Some of our best home builder campaigns

Swipe below for more

MILLERHOMES white logo

Building brand reputation In the SERPs for national house builder.

House builder Miller Homes wanted to become a resource for homeowners looking for advice on lifestyle, property and family matters. Despite its strong reputation it had limited backlinks to its site. Miller needed regular activity to build its profile with new links from a variety of trusted sources to improve rankings for new homes-related keywords.

Over 12 months, Tank has taken a multifaceted approach to digital PR, mixing data-led campaigns with advice on trends and topical thought leadership.

For example, we used information on changing trends in décor-based Google searches to provide expert comments on colour schemes.

We also used data to reveal the UK cities where residents are most likely ditch the gym and pursue fitness at home. In partnership with Blue Cross, we also managed a campaign to educate dog owners on how to help their pets keep cool in hot weather.

 

98+

Pieces of coverage and links within the first six months.

44

Referring domains from just one campaign, including links from the Express, Scotsman, Stylist and Property Reporter.

Good to know -

Extra insights about house builder marketing services:

What steps does Tank take to create a home builder marketing strategy?

Whether your issue is selling homes, navigating public opinion or simply that you want to let people know of your efforts to go over and above to create more sustainable developments, we tend to start at the same place.

A first meeting is where you offload your issues onto us and envisage what the short or long-term desired outcome might be. As an experienced homebuilder marketing agency, we ask lots of questions, go away to do our research and come up with ideas, and after more questions and scoping and checking in with you – we draw up our strategy for your approval and sign off.

We then begin our work. Creating PR, digital, social media or SEO campaigns, getting them approved by you then executing them across the many channels we may have decided to work on. Then we report back to you – showing you exactly how the investments you have made into our expertise are delivering a return to you, and achieving the agreed objectives.

How does Tank measure the success of its homebuilder marketing clients?

Everything about the way that we work is measured to insure return on investment for clients. The way we report is designed to illustrate your campaign’s progress, but also to assure you by showing the success of your investment with us. Here are just a few of the measures we use.

Brand PR is measured against targets of coverage frequency, brand mentions, sentiment and key message penetration. Social media by follower increase, impressions and brand mentions. Digital PR by organic keyword performance and PPC by cost per click, quality score and of course conversions.

For all of our checks and measures, what really counts is the volume of customer enquiries that lead to sales, and all performance is tracked for its impact on this outcome.

Can Tank help with content writing for home builders?

As we’ve mentioned, most of the team at Tank are professional writers who think in stories, so our vast content writing and creation capability is a reflection of that. We produce all of the content required for a campaign in house, with creative digital and print assets handled by our creative sister agency www.warboxcreative.co.uk

The team is roughly split into four content writing and creation camps. Editorial writing handles all PR, award submission, digital PR campaign content and feature work. Social media content is handled within the social media team, and SEO-led content by the digital team. Finally ad content, sales literature and the more creative driven copy is handled by the copy writing team.

Whichever division creates the content, it is all designed to work hard and more than earn its keep.

How can Tank help improve my home builder’s brand reputation?

Most marketing campaigns will in some way improve homebuilder brands, simply by virtue of the fact that they are continually putting out positive marketing messages.

As a PR-led marketing agency, we cut our teeth in the media, subtly delivering sales messages, as anything considered overly salesly would get a story ‘spiked’. This has served us well and producing such expert content is part of the fabric of the agency.

Customers and publics respond badly to being overtly sold to, so we ensure that reputations are dealt with alongside a set of values – ours and yours. The result of this is marketing content and materials that seek to work hard for you by being humble in successes, innovative in what we choose to promote and empathetic when dealing with publics. An example of this could be the creation of a local community initiative that goes on working beyond the initial story headline – creating a legacy for your brand in the community and not a single hit.

How can Tank help in a housebuilder media crisis?

Homebuilders operate in an environment rife with potential reputation issues.

We take a 360 view of reputation – yes we help generate the tonnes of positive and very genuine marketing messages, but we also prepare for the negative things that can sometimes happen. This is crisis management – and it’s a strategy that’s drawn up to handle potential crises within hours of any occurring.

Planned respondees and dialogue for potential outcomes are rehearsed, and everyone involved knows how we will deal with any problem that ends up being covered (or might be) in the media – be this publication, broadcast or critically across social media.

The important thing is to show empathy and exercise clarity and brevity in a response, which is what we will help to craft. We help brands to maintain their reputations, and contribute professionally to any dialogue, positive or negative.

Can Tank help improve the results of home builder email marketing campaigns?

It’s important to remember that not every marketing medium is right for you – so that’s where we start – is email marketing right for your audience? If the answer is yes, then there are a few other checks before beginning. Is your mailing list up to date and ‘cleansed’, GDPR compliant and of a sufficient size and relevant?

Never email for the sake of it – have you actually got something to say, or ask? Is the message for all of your audience or just some – is your audience data segmented? If you have many messages that need to go out at different times, to different people, you may need marketing automation to handle that for you.

As part of our homebuilder marketing services offering, we’ve helped dozens of clients to set up email marketing campaigns. We’ve handled the entire thing for some, and simply created the content for others – always ensuring that the campaigns are relevant and the results demonstrable.

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0115 958 9840

+44 (0)115 958 9840