Click Power: Building Block #2 – Drive Traffic

If you’ve been following along the last couple of weeks, you know we’ve been chatting about  The Click Power System™. It’s a roadmap to a successful sales and marketing strategy and it covers 5 building blocks for success. We’ve also discussed how your website is like the foundation of a house. It’s important to have a solid and sound foundation before any further construction takes place.

Once you have a solid website, the next step is driving traffic to your website. Just because you build a beautiful website doesn’t mean home buyers are going to find it. Promoting your website and, ultimately, your homes for sale requires a mix of marketing tools. Just like you use specific tools when building a house, you use specific marketing tools for specific goals.

Marketing tools are generally broken into two categories: inbound and outbound.

Inbound marketing: pulls visitors to you who have an interest and are an ideal fit.

This includes search engine marketing, content marketing, blogging, social media marketing, and permission-based email marketing.

Outbound marketing: push your message out to attract attention to your service or product.

This includes Google AdWords, Facebook ads, print advertising, signage, direct mail, television, and radio advertising. These tools are considered “interruption marketing” and seek to push your message on the intended audience.

How do you know what to include in your marketing mix? It can be overwhelming. I highly recommend the National Association of Home Builders, Master In of Residential Marketing (MIRM) courses to learn how to determine your target market. It’s important to not invest in a marketing tactic until you are sure that it’ll be effective with your audience.

Once you’ve defined your target audience, you can effectively map out your marketing tactics. Think of your marketing strategy like a wagon wheel. At the center of the wheel is the hub and the hub connects to the wheel via spokes. Your website is the hub of your strategy. All of your marketing should drive visitors to the hub – your website. In order to drive visits, you need several traffic drivers (aka the spokes) to lead visitors to the hub. This is where strategy comes into play. Some of these tools include: SEO, Google AdWords, Facebook ads, referral websites, social media, content marketing, online display advertising and behavioral targeting, and online PR. The direction you decide to go depends on your objectives, budget, and skill set.

Today’s post contains information found in Click Power, Meredith’s book written specifically for the new home building and residential real estate industry. It’s a comprehensive, digital marketing how-to guide for home builders. Meredith steps you through the sometimes overwhelming maze of web marketing and shows you how to optimize your potential online. Order it online at Amazon.com.

Categorised in: Home Builder Marketing & Sales, Marketing Mondays