Certain markets are prime for second home buyers. The coast of South Carolina and Florida, among others, are perfect locations for those looking for a second home. If you live and work in a real estate market like this, specifically targeting second home buyers could be wise as they often have above average budgets.
How do you stand out from the competition? As you probably know, you need to do something different.
Most take the easy route to target out of town, second home buyers by simply firing-up another Google AdWords campaign. While this is an option, it's a competitive one.
Another option is to commit to a well planned inbound marketing campaign. So where would you begin? It all starts with who you're targeting!
Create buyer personas
Without knowing who you're targeting, you won't know HOW to properly target them. Creating buyer personas will give you the information you need to know how and where to market to your target audience.
You'll want to uncover their goals, challenges, pain points, common objections, frequently asked questions, demographic information and how you can help. You can use this information to drive your entire marketing campaign.
Target the right audience
The information you gather in your persona research will tell you the targeting options needed to get in front of your second home buyer audience.
For example, your research discovered they're:
- Between 55-65 years old, mostly male
- Earn over $150k/year
- Have been visiting Charleston every summer for the past 15 years
- Live in New York
Did you know Facebook Ads feature all the above as ad targeting options?
You can use ALL this information to promote your content where your audience spends their time.
Promote the lifestyle
Remember, you want to stand out from your competitors. Most only target keywords and dump thier website visitors directly in into MLS search results. They're missing most of the home buyers "why." Yes, they're looking at purchasing a second home, but they're doing so because of the lifestyle the home's location offers.
Share information that they can't get from simply looking at MLS data. A picture is worth a thousand words remember? Images and informative content about the lifestyle, area etc., are all worth creating and sharing as well. This will help to establish an emotional connection and help your marketing not only stand out, but resonate deeper with your target audience as well.
Build a marketing funnel
One size doesn't fit all. Like we mentioned before, most of your competitors will:
- Target keywords, not people
- Send them directly to MLS search results
- "Squeeze" them by asking for contact information to continue browsing
- Immediately start calling and sending "salesy" pitches
Are you doing this now?
Instead, why not help them move on their own through the buyers journey. Help them discover area and lifestyle information, as well as the real estate market. Provide them with information for every stage of the buyer funnel.
Providing value will showcase YOU as the local real estate expert and keep prospects engaged with your brand, in a non-threatning and non-salesy way. Leverage markeing automation and retargeting to nurture prospects into sales ready leads.
Think about the types of content you'll need to create to cover all phases of the buyers journey. Create content for:
- Awareness stage
- Consideration stage
- Decision stage
Being strategic with your content and lead nurturing will move prospects through the buyers journey, while you earn brand trust and awareness.
Instead of generating one type of lead to call, email and text over and over, let your marketing automation nurture and qualify leads so that you're only spending time calling warm leads.
When your second home buyer prospects are ready, you'll stick out like a sore thumb (in a good way!) and they'll reach out to the real estate professional they trust... YOU!
Make a commitment
Inbound marketing works, but not overnight. In order to create a winning strategy to consistently generate sales qualified second home buyer leads, you need to commit to the long term. Commit to publishing and promoting the right content consistently, for at least a year. Trust in your funnels and automation. Many give up too soon. Will you?
If you stay the course, you can be rewarded hansomely with a healthy return on your investment and leads that WANT to hear from you.
