Home building is an exciting, ever-evolving industry that requires a think-on-your-feet attitude and a willingness to grow alongside the housing market and cultural trends. Now more than ever, staying relevant involves implementing a full-funnel digital marketing strategy. With all of these moving parts, it can be difficult to know where to focus and how to measure success. Understanding key performance metrics unique to the homebuilding industry is paramount.
What are Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)?
KPI’s are metrics that you can use to determine if your digital marketing efforts are going in the right direction or not. Have you ever had a friend who just gives it to you straight? In the world of pay-per-click advertising (PPC), KPI’s are those friends. They are here to deliver the unemotional truth of your campaigns’ successes and shortcomings. Taking the time to define your KPI’s clearly and with careful attention to both the short-term and long-term goals of your Paid Search efforts will pay dividends.
KPI’s for Home Builder Paid Search Campaigns:
Primary KPI’s
Though Paid Search interfaces present a wealth of KPI’s to track, there are a handful that are worth a greater percentage of your time and attention. For home builders, the most critical KPI’s are Goal Completions (or conversions) and Cost per Acquisition (CPA).
After years of working with Home Builders, we have narrowed our conversion list down to the following top 5 home builder goal completions:
- Registration Confirmation (or Contact Form)
- Click-to-Call
- Get Directions
- Request Appointment/On-Site Tour
- Store Visits
Once you have defined which goal completions you want to track and your campaigns are up and running, the next step is to review the Cost per Acquisition. This financial metric will allow you to directly measure how much you spend to gain a goal completion. Understanding how much you are spending to generate each of these goal completions will give you excellent insight into your campaigns, the types of actions taken on your site, and how close you are to your Target CPA.
Secondary KPI’s
When choosing secondary KPI’s, it’s best to choose ones that answer the following question: “How engaged are potential customers when they reach the site?” High-quality secondary KPI’s will give you a clear picture of traffic quality, letting you know if you are reaching the right people and providing the right content on your site to engage, motivate, and close. Check out our top 3 secondary KPI’s and decide if you are giving them adequate attention in your Home Builder campaigns:
- Click Thru Rate (CTR)– CTR (Clicks ÷ Impressions) will help you understand how relevant your ads are. When someone types in home builder related keywords, does your ad match the customer’s needs? Are you communicating your value in a concise, captivating, and convincing way? A high CTR is generally a good sign that your ads fit the bill.
- Average Session Duration– Seeing a healthy Average Session Duration indicates that the user is engaging in a meaningful way and exploring content once on the site. However, this metric loses some of its worth without a strong conversion rate as its companion, so be sure you are optimizing your page and your conversion goals for maximum efficacy.
- Bounce Rate– Calculated by the total number of one-page visits divided by the total number of entries to a website, this metric is another useful tool for measuring the quality of your traffic and how effective your site is. A bounce rate above 70% is cause for alarm, whereas anything below 50% likely signals a healthy campaign.
Are All Leads Created Equal?
At a high level, you can look at the value of a lead by looking at the value of the sale. However, for Home Builders, not all leads are created equal. A mobile Click-to-Call or a Contact Form is inherently more valuable than a Floor Plan download or a Virtual Tour view, though the latter are not without value entirely. Typically, we see Click-to-Call actions leading to the best “warm” leads. The Chat feature on a site is another promising lead that often translates to a sale. We go through each of the goals for our Home Builder clients and work with them to assign a specific monetary value to each of the lead types. Creating a hierarchy of leads with corresponding values provides a more accurate picture of campaign performance and is absolutely worth the small investment of time.
2 Mistakes to Avoid when Defining and Tracking KPIs
- Marketing Myopia – Avoid looking at your marketing efforts with a myopic view. Long gone are the methods of looking at the last-click conversion action as only driving conversions. We now live in a cross-device, micro-moment environment. Make sure you understand the purchase funnel cycle for your customer and industry so that you are reviewing metrics from a more holistic perspective. The Assisted Conversion and Top Conversion Path reports in Google Analytics provide valuable insight into how all of your channels work together to drive conversions.
- Rushing the Return – Consider how your channels all work together. Think of the significance of the customer’s purchase decision and the reality of your purchase funnel. A weighty decision for a potential customer, like the purchase of a home, may take from 90 to 150 days. If you review the KPI’s for only 30 days, you may miss out on the full picture.
Conclusion
Because Paid Search is a numbers game that drives value directly to you and your customer, it pays to focus on measurable success. As a recap:
- Carefully identify & define your key performance metrics. Take the time to evaluate the monetary value assigned to each goal completion in Google Analytics.
- Focus on the two to three most important KPI’s, but also know that there are secondary KPI’s that offer more in-depth insight into user behavior.
- Avoid looking at your marketing channels in siloes and making knee-jerk reactions. Truly understand your potential customer’s purchase funnel and set up touchpoints to reach those potential leads at the moments that matter most.
Helping a customer make the momentous decision of buying a house is a reward that all Home Builders enjoy. Leveraging PPC wisely will help increase sales, and those moments, that are worth savoring.