Managing Online Leads Through Marketing Automation

When the home building market was struggling, most chose to take advantage of as many lead opportunities as possible. Now, as the market rebounds, record numbers of new leads are coming through the pipeline.

And it should come as no surprise that more than 90% of home shoppers begin their search online. So, in an upswing market, how do you find time to deal with the onslaught of new leads?

Enter Marketing Automation: A Smart Way to Manage Leads
Marketing automation offers an answer to this problem with ready-made, analytic information on lead quality and customer profiles, as well as automated methods to prioritize and nurture leads based on where they are in the home buying process. Using this type of software gives you the ability to capture online leads with little effort, and spend less time qualifying prospects and more time closing sales.

How Marketing Automation Works
Marketing automation works with your existing customer relationship management software, and scores leads based on their browsing habits and other customer profile information. It then generates and distributes tailored, valuable content to prospects through your website, social media and email marketing — all designed to nurture consumers through the buying process.

Automated analytics allow you to spend more time developing high-quality content, while the software progressively scores, profiles and prioritizes leads. With that information, you can ramp up your marketing efforts in a calculated way, providing useful, well-timed content and interaction to your customers.

The Benefits of Marketing Automation for Home Builders
For most home builders, automated scoring and categorization of leads is a huge breath of fresh air. There are plenty of tire kickers out there anxious to learn every detail of every floor plan with absolutely no intention of buying. Automation allows you to focus only on the leads worth the effort, saving yourself time and money.

Consumers don’t want their time wasted either, and will appreciate original, relevant content and outreach. A customer just beginning the research phase may not respond well to an immediate, head-on sales approach, when they simply need more information about a particular plan or feature.

Through the methodical process of progressive profiling, you learn whether a contact is a qualified prospect, and if so what makes them tick. And then you can provide them information of real value through relevant event invitations, personalized email content, graphics or other important communications.

This article originally appeared in the May/June issue of Sales + Marketing Ideas magazine.