Extra insights into 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.