Builder Inbound Marketing is About More than Getting Found Online

If your building company has a killer web site, blog, and social media accounts, congrats!  You’ve already completed the first step toward inbound marketing as you have a solid follower base in multiple locations online.  However, there is still more to the process of inbound marketing than simply getting found online.  Now that you have these leads, you need to understand them and adapt to their needs so they will become clients.  This takes time and communication that is tailored specifically to building clients.

Buyer Experiences and Interests: How to Understand Them
In order to have effective lead intelligence, you must be data-driven.  Your inbound marketing must help you understand what brings in potential clients and what their goals are.  You should also be able to discern between general web site traffic and potential building clients.  Finally, being data-driven involves understanding the entire process of customer experience to tailor each step of the process.

Cultivate the following:

• Lead database with history of leads’ content interactions and interests
• Analytics: Prospects and companies that are visiting your building web site AND e-mail and social media interactions.

Marketing Automation and Lead Nurturing aka Adaptive Communications
Avoid outbound marketing and e-mail marketing campaigns with irrelevant messages.  While it is easy to send out generic messages, it is generally not very effective.  Your marketing should be relevant for your leads and specifically where they are in the buying cycle.  Go even one step further to add a personal touch so that they sound hand written, not computer generated.  People are much more likely to click-through ads based on individual interests than they are likely to click-through ads in generic e-mail messages.

Take the time to:

• train your building team members to write and to relate well with your customers.  Customer service counts!
• design e-mail content that informs and engages over time
• send messages that are based on lead behavior on your site and elsewhere online (i.e. social media)
• use an intelligent e-mail system to shift communications appropriately

Marketing Analytics                                                                                        
The final step in this process is to analyze the effectiveness of Inbound Marketing for Builders as a whole.  Gaining an understanding of the channels and strategies that are and aren’t working will help you to further refine your marketing campaigns.  It will also help you prove the inbound marketing ROI.

What you need:

• Marketing analytic and web site tools that allow you to see which channels are and are not effectively generating leads.

Closed-loop marketing analytics to assist you with turning leads into customers.