How to Market Your New Home Model Opening

While there’s no one-size-fits-all marketing plan, you came here for one reason – you wanted a one-size-fits-all marketing plan – so here it is (because who are we to say no). However, if you work with us, you’ll get a custom strategy to fit your specific needs that’s WAY better for YOU than what you’re about to read (or more likely skim). Actually… feel free to skip this blog entirely, and just hire us. But if you’re up for a good read, there’s some gold to be found below.  

Real estate is all about location and real estate marketing is all about timing.

More specifically, it’s about timing your marketing launch to coincide with your model opening across multiple channels (both physical and digital).

It’s about making sure your potential customers experience your messaging at the very best moment in their new-home buying adventure.

And as these home shoppers are at different stages in their new-home buying journey, that “best moment” will be at a different stage and a different medium for almost every shopper.

How do you know where (and when) your message will be the most effective?

In this blog post, we dive into the tactics and strategies we’ve found to be the most effective after decades of marketing new home builders and communities. We outline the must-have elements of a real estate marketing plan from both a physical and digital perspective, and our recommended timing of each. This will get more potential buyers exploring (and hopefully buying) your fantastic new homes.

Three Months from New Home Model Opening

As we already said, real estate is all about location and real estate marketing is all about timing. And that “timing” means your strategic marketing should begin at least three months before your new home model opens. Here’s what you should focus on:

Begin Building Your Email List/Creating Awareness

One of the first things you want to do is begin building your opt-in email list. This essential list will be used for a strategic email nurturing campaign, communicating with your prospects throughout their journey (more below).

Your digital campaigns (particularly Paid Search and Paid Social, see below) are your best tools for email collection. Drive potential customers to a landing page where they will be met with compelling visuals and copy. Your call to action will be “Join our VIP list,” “Stay in the loop,” or any other actionable phrase to make them feel the need and exclusivity to join your list.

Paid Search

Running Google Paid Search Ads is a fantastic foundation (house joke!) for new home sales as this enables you to get in front of home shoppers who are actively searching for homes in real time. Don’t spend a lot of your money on branded keywords. Instead, allocate most of your budget on people searching for “new homes in [insert your location].”

This will drive people who aren’t familiar with your brand to your website/landing page. This tactic both creates more awareness for your brand and property, and builds your opt-in email list with active real estate buyers (which you can use for your email campaigns, of course).

Paid Social

As the Gretel to Paid Search’s Hansel, Paid Social Ads go hand in hand to give your marketing a larger reach. But like Paid Search, Paid Social Ads for real estate aren’t just about awareness anymore. Meta’s (Facebook & Instagram) algorithms have gotten so sophisticated that your ads get in front of people who are earlier in their home shopping journey. In our experience, Paid Social Ads generate quality leads quite quickly.

Paid Social Ads also give you the benefit of a large number of impressions (to the right audience) with ad formats that help showcase your homes and community in a very visual way, driving both a high level of awareness and lead generation.

Remarketing

Running a remarketing campaign is a given for most industries, but particularly for real estate. Sales cycles are long and beginning three months before your new home model opening, you want to make sure you stay in front of prospects who have visited your website throughout the entirety of their home buying journey.

While remarketing can be run on several platforms, we prefer running this type of marketing through Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Google Ads offers banners, as well as Responsive Display Ads, which we’ve found highly effective for real estate marketing. Facebook is also a great way to get those highly visual formats back in front of them, while they’re spending time on social media.

Resale Geofencing

Your biggest competition to your new home community are resales. In fact, 7–9 out of every 10 homes sold is a resale home. With AdsIntelligence Marketing’s Resale Geofencing, our proprietary digital program, you now have the ability to target prospects who are actively touring resale homes listed on the MLS (see below) in your area, and then deliver them banner ads on their devices about your model homes, new homes, and community.

Resale Geofencing adds a highly targeted, previously unavailable, tactic to your marketing mix: people shopping resales who either haven’t yet considered buying new or who aren’t familiar with your brand. It’s not so much a lead generating program as it is a highly targeted awareness strategy. Resale Geofencing is easily scalable and should translate into more high-quality leads and, by extension, sales.

Email Nurturing Campaigns

At three months before home model opening, email nurturing campaigns are a valuable tool to help prospects “stay in the loop.” They asked for more information about your homes and, by Jove, you’re going to give them just that! Of course, we’re not encouraging you to spam your audience, but rather develop a respectful and regular cadence of email blasts.

And what can your emails be about? Community and home building progress, open model dates, pricing, amenities, what it’s like to live in the area, closest supermarkets and restaurants, nearby recreation and entertainment options, and any other bit of news a new-home buyer would find useful. Keeping your property on their mental radar is imperative.

In our vast experience, anytime an email is sent to an opt-in list, we see fantastic engagement on the website in Google Analytics. So, make sure to stick to a regular schedule of emails. Following through with your promise for keeping your list “in the loop” is just as important as the information the emails contain!

Three Weeks from New Home Model Opening

It’s getting closer to your new home model opening. Right now, inside it, you probably have designers designing, decorators decorating, and marketers marketing (that’s where we come in). But there are still things that need to be done.

QUICK DISCLAIMER: you’re about to read a few things that you clearly already know (or else you wouldn’t be in this field). But in the interest of getting this blog to rank on Google, we’re going to spell each step out in annoying, painstaking detail simply to appease the Google Lords. The fact that you’re reading this, means it’s working! But anyway… commence skimming the rest of this post:

Multiple Listing Services

Take full advantage of the Multiple Listing Services (MLS) in your area. Once you have lots available, it’s imperative that the applicable MLS has all your property’s up-to-date information. List every aspect of the new homes, broker commission rates, and any and all features that make your homes stand out.

Since aggregators might pull different information for their lists and searches, the more you put into your MLS listings, the more they’ll work for you.  

Realtor Outreach

Three weeks before your new home model opening, you’re going to want to target and meet the top-producing realtors in the area. Begin by Geofencing the offices of top-producing realtors and competing properties. This will make sure your ads get in front of the realtors you want to show off your new homes.

Then, visit realtor offices, get to know them, add them to your realtor-specific email list. Bring them gifts and personal invitations to your new home model opening event. Leave promotional materials with them: flyers and brochures to educate them and for them to pass on to their clients. Show off your new homes properly to these realtors and they will, in turn, show off your new homes to the people you really want to reach: new-home buyers!

Weekend/Day of New Home Model Opening

The day you’ve been planning for is finally here: your new home model grand opening event! Here’s the marketing you need to do alongside your grand opening:

Directional/Bandit/On-Site Signage

The use of physical on-site tactics—like directional signs, model, balloons, and flags—is an obvious way to draw attention to your new home model opening. But though it’s obvious, make sure you’re using it to its best advantage. Each use of physical on-site signage is not just a marketing tactic: It’s also one of your brand’s first impressions, helping to establish your value in the minds of home buyers.

Resale Geofencing

We mentioned starting Resale Geofencing three months prior to your model home opening, but we bring it up again for one very important reason: conversion zone visits. Now that you have a model to tour, you want to set that up as a conversion zone target. This will enable you to see how many times someone who toured a resale home, saw your ad and then physically showed up to your model home. While these numbers are naturally small, it’s cool to witness the effectiveness of your Resale Geofencing campaign.

One More Thing…

The methods listed above (and our recommended time frame) are just some of the ways you can market your new home model opening. Here’s one more:

Traditional Media (1–2 Weeks Out)

Television and radio can still drive a meaningful amount of traffic to your new home model opening event. Both terrestrial and streaming, these channels have proven time and time again to have an amazing reach. Plan your media buys to run 1–2 weeks before your model opening. While this form of marketing isn’t measurable in the way digital media is, traditional media advertising boosts branding and awareness, and can elevate the performance of all your traffic-driving tactics.

Marketing Your New Home Model Opening

Now you have a roadmap in how best to market your new home model opening. But this outline isn’t just about pushing buttons and filling in the blanks. This is a strategy and timeframe we’ve found to be highly effective in marketing a new home model opening.

Of course, the award-winning team at AdsIntelligence Marketing is always ready to assist your properties’ push to the forefront and turn all your “new homes” into “sold homes.“

Stay tuned: Next, we’ll explore how to strategize your marketing after your new home model opening! Unless nobody reads this blog. In which case, we’ll pick a new topic. Maybe puppies?