5 Content Must-Haves to Attract New Custom Home Clients
Being a business owner comes with a lot of perks. You’re in charge of everything — setting your own schedule, making decisions that align with your goals and values, establishing plans and processes…
But the downside?
You’re in charge of everything!
Not only do you need to do your job — you also have to think about areas of the business you might not have any experience in, like marketing. And there’s nothing wrong with that! After all, you’re a builder, not a blogger. That being said, it is important to keep a steady stream of high-quality content coming out on your website.
Not sure what to post? Don’t worry, I’ve got you!
In this article I’ll share the 5 types of construction content every industry website needs to engage website visitors, build trust, and turn prospects into paying clients.
Creating Website Content That Attracts New Custom Home Clients
First, let’s talk about why this is so important for your business, and the integral role it plays in making your custom home builder website work for you.
Why is high-quality content important?
Creating and posting content regularly isn’t just a nice thing to have…it’s crucial to the success of your business. I know that can sound like a lot to put on a blog post, but hear me out.
You have a custom home builder website for two reasons:
To make Google and other search engines take you seriously so you can rank highly in organic search traffic.
The more high-quality, SEO-rich content you have on your website, the better. While Google still rewards backlinks (where someone else links to your website), but they’re more interested in interaction these days.
The longer a customer stays on your site, and the more they interact with it, the more Google will favor it in the rankings. This is why it’s important to have solid, useful content on your website rather than trying to slap up a bunch of articles that are technically SEO-rich, but nobody actually wants to read.
To build trust and rapport with your prospective clients so they feel more comfortable hiring you. (AND so that you have an easier working relationship with them when you do start working with them.)
I’ve talked before about how your website is a great source of lead generation and this is one of the elements that goes into that. The more high-quality content you can create that shows your prospective customers that you understand them and are able to help them, the more they’ll trust you. This helps facilitate the sales process, helping them to know, like, and trust you before you ever get to the point of an inquiry or a sales conversation.
Home design trends and inspiration
Sharing regular links to home design trends can help you position yourself as an expert in the market, and give people an idea of the kind of work you can do. Having a portfolio of work like this on your website also encourages people to stick around longer, browsing from article to article as they envision themselves in that gorgeous new house, all of which is great for your Google rankings.
If you do this regularly, you’ll also find that it helps you avoid having those situations where clients say they want something, but can’t quite describe it. With a catalog of inspiration at your fingertips, you can have them point to the kinds of designs they’re looking for, which is so much more helpful for building out a project plan than, “Oh, I’ll know it when I see it...”
To make this particular type of content work well, choose projects that are close to (or at least adjacent to) the kind of work you do, and remember to add your own take on the build with commentary or at least captions. The more you can help people see themselves in their gorgeous future home, the easier things are on your sales team!
Building and construction progress
Want more guidance on what kinds of pictures you need on your site?
Read our guide on the must-have photos to include on your construction website with tips from a professional commercial photographer!
People love getting a behind-the-scenes look at projects, especially construction projects. Share images of the site before and after, take videos or pictures of your team working on a project, and of course include pictures of the finished project! The more you can bring people into the story of working on a project with you, the better.
There are so many different ways you can do this:
Zooming in on the little details, like the finishings
Talking about the process of a custom home build
Documenting a project from beginning to end and explaining what’s happening at each step along the way
Basically, anything you can create that makes people feel like they’re on site with you is great for this category of content.
Posting pictures like this gives people the vicarious experience of working with you, which is fantastic for building trust and encouraging them to get in touch with your sales team. It’s also excellent for setting expectations with your customers. If they can see what goes into a build, and how you handle each step of a complex project, they’ll have a better sense of what to expect with their own project, and act accordingly.
This is also the perfect place to include staff pictures and quotes or interviews. Include candid shots of your team working, get them to talk about their favorite parts of a project, or why they love working with your company. Show people who they can expect to be working on their custom home build so they can get to know your team ahead of time, and get a sense of how you work.
Customer stories and testimonials
Be sure to share customer stories, case studies, and testimonials on your website. Blogs are great for this and using video is even better! Talk to your happiest customers about whether or not they’d be willing to create short video testimonials talking about the best parts of working with you, or if they’d be open to you using their build as a case study.
If so, write up the story of how the build went, all the way from the customers first getting in touch with you right through to the end of the project. This is a great opportunity to show off your technical skills, as well as the way you interact with clients, and all the little things that make your business different from all the other custom home builders and remodelers.
Here’s a great example of a customer testimonial from the client of AFT Construction in Arizona!
Guides (especially about costs and budgeting)
An example of a free guide/download to offer website visitors. (Created by Paul Kuthe, Tributary Coaching)
As I’ve talked about in other articles, one of the primary functions of your site is to build rapport with your future customers, and anything you can publish that answers a question for them or highlights your expertise is going to help jumpstart that process.
One high-impact way to do this is with guides. Think PDFs site visitors can download, in-depth articles that live in a library on your site, newsletter series, etc. As long as it answers some kind of question customers commonly ask you, and gives them genuinely valuable data, it’s perfect!
If you’re stuck for topics, go with information about costs and budgeting. This is one of the most common gray areas clients have when it comes to construction projects.
Create guides to help them get the most out of their custom home budget, talk about how to secure the funds for a custom home build, or even list out what a typical custom home build looks like with your company. This continues that process of expectation-setting, but it also makes people feel like they can trust you, since you’re up-front, transparent, and helpful about one of the stickiest areas of the home building process.
Alternatively, you could create guides about energy efficiency and sustainability. They’re hot topics and most people don’t want to do the in-depth research for themselves. Share your industry insider knowledge with them and you’ll take on the position of “their friend in construction”, which is a great position to be in for filling your pipeline and project docket.
One note here — make sure you’re being strategic with your guides. Consider putting them behind an opt-in by having people share their email address with you to get the resource, or at least have a strong call to action at the bottom of each guide.
Industry news and updates
Finally, consider putting up regular content with updates about your industry.
And I don’t mean regurgitating press releases or talking shop and expecting your audience to care. You have to show your expertise here and connect the dots for them, telling them why this industry update is important FOR THEM. If you can keep people up to date and help them understand how these updates are going to affect their project, you’ll set up a strong foundation of expertise as an industry leader.
Let’s talk for a sec about how to make the most of your construction content…
Putting high-quality content up on your site is great, and if that’s all you do, it’s certainly better than nothing. But there’s so much more you can do with that content to help raise your brand awareness and encourage people to get in touch with you.
Repurpose this content on other platforms!
Be sure to share the content you create on your social media channels, and link back to your site so people can be directed to learn more about your services. Also think about ways you can use the same content in different places. For instance, if you have a blog post, you can easily convert that into an educational social media post, do a quick video about the topic, or even a podcast! The more you can syndicate your content across multiple channels, the better.
And don’t be shy about sharing the same content a couple times! Mix up the social media posts a little or give people a reminder in your monthly newsletter. Don’t post the same exact content a bunch of times in a row ... but do share reminders and remixes of the same content. People don’t retain a strong memory of most content, and by sharing it a couple of times you’re more likely to have it actually make it across their feed and into their minds.
Need a custom home builder website that works as a strong source of lead generation? Let’s talk!
I work with custom home builders and renovation companies to design strategic websites that are effective in turning website browsers into buyers. Let’s chat about what a custom website can do for your business on a free 30-minute consultation today!
