By Eleanor Bowman, Director of Marketing, BDX

BDX recently completed a study of over 1,000 potential home buyers and one of the most surprising data points was the timeframe for home purchase. Almost two-thirds of those surveyed were unsure about when they would purchase or expect to take at least 9 months to make a decision.

Now compare this to the conversations we are having with many of our builders who work leads for 30 days and then consider them to be cold. Think about the impact this can have on your marketing campaigns? It means that if you’re throwing out leads because they haven’t converted in 30 days, you’re probably missing out on sales.

Putting these leads into a nurturing campaign can pay off months down the road when the buyer is ready to make a buying decision.

What is lead nurturing and how can home builders run successful campaigns?

Lead nurturing simply means creating a series of communications to stay in touch with those prospective buyers. These may not be the leads that your sales team is working aggressively, but it is important to keep your brand and your selling points top of mind. According to a recent report from Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads, at 33% lower cost per lead.

Some ways builders can nurture leads through the sales cycle:

  • Create a weekly or monthly email newsletter.
  • Use marketing automation software that will automatically trigger communications at specific points in the process.
  • Use advertising retargeting programs to reach out to people who have visited your website.
  • Create social media campaigns to encourage people to engage with your brand.

Taking a few simple steps to keep these leads in your sales pipeline will pay off in the long run. Research has shown that 75% of companies basically drop leads who aren’t ready to purchase immediately. Make sure that your business is part of the 25% that will stay in touch and be top of mind when the consumer is ready to buy.

 

BDX is excited to announce that we are now the exclusive provider of new home listings for HomeJunction’s SpatialMatch.com, the first real estate search platform to fully enable geospatial map-based search. Now home buyers using SpatialMatch’s neighborhood and lifestyle search technology to find homes in areas that ‘fit’ their lifestyle needs will also have access to thousands of new home community listings through the extensive BDX network.

“We are very excited to add this national footprint of high quality new construction listings from BDX,” said John Perkins, chief executive officer of Home Junction, Inc., creators of SpatialMatch™. “Giving home buyers access to the new construction data and listings from BDX on SpatialMatch allows for a better user experience and a more effective team approach between resale agents and new home builders”.

The alliance also allows BDX to provide another distribution outlet for builders interested in reaching new home shoppers online, and is part of a larger BDX effort designed to help builders “List Once and Be Everywhere”. In addition to hundreds of partner sites, the BDX network includes NewHomeSource and Move New Homes, the number one and number two new home websites*. Collectively, the BDX network reaches over 40 million potential new home buyers each month.