How to Use Free Guides to Attract More Business as a Home Builder
By now we all know that content is a good thing, right? Having a steady stream of high-quality content is one of the best ways to attract new clients, plus it makes Google really happy, so it ups your SEO rankings.
I’ve talked before about how to create content for your custom home builder website in general, but today I want to go deeper with you into one of the most effective types of content for lead generation in the construction industry: guides. In this article, I’ll go into the benefits of having custom home builder guides, share the general blueprint of a guide, and then give you three topics and outlines so you can easily make your own guide.
What are free guides or downloads and why should you, as a custom home builder, have them?
Custom home builder guides are in-depth resources you create and put on your website, most often in the form of a downloadable PDF that people can get in exchange for their email address, or sometimes in a library or membership site setup that people pay to access. They can be on all kinds of topics, but the best ones are those that provide expert advice and guidance for questions your customers ask you over and over again. The more you can save people having to do the research into these topics themselves, the better.
Guides are especially good for industries that involve longer, more in-depth projects, higher price points, and a deeper level of involvement between the service provider and the customer –– which is exactly what goes on with custom home building. Creating guides is a great way to show off your expertise while also providing content that’s genuinely helpful to your customers and potential customers. This helps build rapport with them before they ever get in touch with you, which makes your sales and customer management so much easier.
Guides are also useful from a marketing perspective, since they feel valuable to people, which makes them much more effective for lead gen than other types of content. And, since Google heavily weights its rankings based on the value of site content as well as the amount of time people spend on your site, guides can be a reliable way to increase your SEO rankings, especially if you do them in a library format, where people have to stay on your site to read the guide.
What’s more, guides stand out. People have been focused on short-form content and video content for so long that having a high quality, well-crafted guide instantly sets you aside from the constant stream of “throwaway” content. And, if you can create a content strategy that sees you balancing both short-form and long-form content, followed up with a solid email automation? Then you can really see what your site can do in terms of lead gen.
Using Free Guides for Lead Generation as a Custom Home Builder
Let’s first look at the blueprint of a custom home builder guide
There’s just about as many ways to write a guide as there are to build a house, but you generally want to follow this kind of structure:
Intro and overview
Here you want to let people know what this guide is going to be about, and why they can trust what you have to say about it. Share a little about your expertise, but focus primarily on giving them an overview of the topic.
1 - 5 points, each with a takeaway.
This is the body of the guide. Here, you want to give them a short, easy-to-understand piece of advice, tip, or suggestion, and then end the section by giving them one takeaway.
Conclusion and Call To Action (CTA)
Wrap things up by reviewing what you’ve just taught them, and then encourage them to take an action. Usually this is going to be something like, “Call us to get a quote” or “Email us to set up a call.”
Whatever it is, keep it simple and direct. If you want to include a little sales copy here, that’s fine, but don’t overdo it. Remember, the whole point of the guide is to provide helpful content. It’s a teach-piece, not a sales letter.
3 common pitfalls when creating a free guide
Guides aren’t all that hard to write, but I do see people make the same mistakes over and over again, especially at the beginning.
Mistake 1: Forgetting that you’re an expert and your readers aren’t.
You live and breathe this stuff, but the people who are reading your guide may be completely new to the topic. You have to meet them where they’re at, and consider what they know and don’t know about your industry.
Mistake 2: Making the guide too long or too short.
Guides are meant to educate people, so they need to be moderately in-depth, but they’re also not intended to be, say, a book. Keep it to between 1500 and 5000 words, and you should be good.
Mistake 3: Writing to your peers and not your customers.
It’s easy to fall into talking shop, but you need to think about what your customers care about, and write about that –– or at least educate them as to why they should care about your shop talk.
Bonus Mistake 4: Forgetting your call to action!
While your guide is intended to be helpful, it’s also a tool for your sales and marketing. Remember to include your CTA at the end of every single guide. It doesn’t have to be super salesy or anything, but you do need to include it, and make it easy for people to act on. For instance, if you invite them to book a sales call with you, include your scheduling link or email. If you want them to call your sales team, have the number right there. It sounds silly, but having those little details right in front of someone’s face makes a world of difference when it comes to conversions.
Topics and outlines for custom home builder guides
How to budget for a custom home build
Most people have no idea what this kind of project costs, so if you can create a guide walking them through how to think about that, you’re already their best friend. This guide could look something like:
— Introduction
— Land costs (especially how to calculate if you’re buying unimproved land)
— Design costs
— Construction costs (what a typical project costs, and how they can save money on it)\
— Unexpected costs –– how to plan for the unexpected
— Conclusion + call to action
How to create a custom home build plan.
Similarly, people have no idea how to actually create a custom home plan. (This is why you get people showing up on sales calls with ideas that are way far beyond their budget, or expecting you to read their minds and somehow guess what their ideal custom home looks like.) Use this kind of guide to educate them as to what actually goes into a custom home build, and set expectations about what it’s like to work with you.
— Introduction
— The key elements of any custom home build plan
— Finding and choosing a designer
— X things to think about when coming up with your plan
— Balancing your design with your budget
— Codes to consider as you’re designing your plan
— The X most common mistakes people make in creating a custom home build plan
— Conclusion + call to action
How to create an eco-friendly custom home.
Eco-friendly homes have been on the upswing for over a decade, so having a guide about how to build one just makes sense. Of course, as with most things in this industry, customers don’t have a lot of access to good insights. Share your experience and expertise with them so they can know what it takes to build this kind of home (and show off some of your best eco-friendly projects as examples while you’re at it!)
— Introduction (Why build an eco-friendly home? Pros and cons. Etc.)
— Choosing a designer for an eco-friendly custom home
— Common mistakes people make when trying to build an eco-friendly home
— Budgeting for an eco-friendly home
— How to work with a custom home builder on this kind of project
— Conclusion + call to action
Making the most out of your guide
Once you’ve got your guide up, it’s time to start using it. Set up access to it on your site, either by creating it as a reward for signing up to your newsletter, or in a gated library. Talk about it in your newsletter, and offer it to your existing subscribers as a gift. Share information about it on social media too, remember, you can always take snippets out of the guide and then share them as social media posts. Just remember to link back to the original resource so you can get more people to download it.
You can also offer your guides to people on sales calls, or as a gift if you have customers or potential customers ask you about a topic you’ve already covered in the guide. This is not only a nice thing to do, it also helps you show off your expertise, and saves you from having to take the time to sit down and answer all those questions individually.
Long story short? Guides do take more time to create than other types of content, but honestly, not all that much more. And the payoff in terms of lead gen and sales is more than worth it!
Make your website lead with strategy to attract new clients and skyrocket sales!
Looking for a custom home builder site that works just as hard as you do? Let’s talk! I love helping construction industry businesses create effective, strategic custom websites that bring in new business.
