If you don’t then who will? Your competitor down the road? Gain the trust of your prospects and customers through education, not hard sell techniques.
In the pre-digital era, consumers had little control over what they could see or find out about products they were wanting to purchase. To find out information and to research different products, they had to locate advertisements to tell them who and where products could be found and then physically go into a store, showroom or display home to check them out for themselves.
Today, the internet has enabled all consumers to research everything they need to know about the products and homes they would like to purchase.
Pre-digital, information was withheld from the consumer until they became a customer. Now a consumer can research a product, business and even other purchasers’ experiences on their phone or laptop. If you don’t educate them, then they will find a business which will or from poorly informed websites. This only confuses the customers.
Good marketers and businesses understand that a customer goes on a buying journey when purchasing a product, even a new home. The journeys can be more detailed and require different periods of time but the journey is essentially the same –
Awareness, Research, Consideration, Commitment, Delivery, Loyalty /Advocacy.
For home buyers, this journey can be described as-
Awareness, Research, Quote, Contract, Construction, Handover, Maintenance Period, Loyalty /Advocacy.
Every one of these stages in the ‘Customer Journey’ requires education, in some form or another. Understanding this and knowing what types of information and education is required at each stage will enable you to prepare the information in the right context and at the right time.
Offering a good coffee requires much less education over a much shorter period of time than buying and building a new home. Consequently, the task of educating new home buyers becomes much more complex.
You can breakdown the education needs by constructing a ‘Customer Journey Map’ that describes the various stages, what information new home buyers would be looking for, what activities the builder is carrying out during that period, the various channels that ‘touch’ the customer – the customer ‘touch points’, the business goals, the KPIs and then any tasks to complete to ensure the education during the ‘customer journey’ is complete.
While this all sounds complex and time consuming, and it is to begin with, many of the tasks and information can be automated using lead nurturing, email automation, customer portals, pre-prepared brochures and information provided at the various milestone points in the journey as well as online blogs and videos. Knowing your audience and what information they are looking for will help make it easier to prepare the information.
Education of past customers is also extremely important as you can build up the referrals and repeat customers using the right information and education. Becoming a trusted business is very much the end goal to obtaining referrals and repeat customers.
Alpha Edge can help you create your ‘Customer Journey Map’ and your customer education program.
The whole purpose of The 3C Mentor and Alpha Edge is to help create really great businesses in the residential building industry and delivered by our unique ‘Four Pillars to Your Success’ – Business Coaching, Business Consulting, Business Resources and Construction Software.
For an overview of these four pillars go to Alpha Edge here. To find out more about our Business Coaching go to The 3C Mentor here, for further information about the services Alpha Edge can provide go directly to Alpha Edge here and to access the many documents and resources you need as a residential builder, go to our Builder’s Business Resource Centre here. For more information on the construction software and how to ‘Be a Better Builder’, click here
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