Digital marketing tools and trends are ever-changing in the marketing world. It can be hard to keep up with it all, especially tools tailored for the home-building industry. Discover the hottest digital marketing tools and trends for 2023 working for building professionals around the country and how leading building professionals are using them.

Learn how to apply these 14 tools and trends to your marketing strategy to drive more traffic, leads and sales in the coming year.

Digital Tools

Here are seven of the hottest digital marketing tools home-building professionals are using.

#1 ChatGPT

GPT stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer. It’s an AI tool that uses human language so you can communicate with ChatGPT, ask any question to generate the answer/response for you. You can use ChatGPT to write blogs and social media posts, home descriptions, etc.

You can use this tool to generate content ideas and ChatGPT also tells you exactly what to say about it. You can also incorporate it into your website to use as a real-life chat (like a Chatbot but better) so that it communicates with the visitors to your site.

#2 Ubersuggest

This keyword research tool helps you find keywords to target when creating content like blog posts and website pages to get the content to rank high in the search engines. Ubersuggest also gives you other suggested keywords like your original search.

Look for keywords with a high search volume and low competition to target for a better chance for your content to rank higher in the search engines.

#3 Google Trends

Type in something that applies to your business to see what is trending around this phrase or topic. You can also find similar related phrases. Figure out how to tie the trending topic to your business. It’s all to help you create content on hot topics that interest your audience.

#4 Yoast Plugin for SEO

Yoast is a plugin for WordPress sites. Some describe it as a private SEO tutor that helps you improve the SEO on your website pages. It guides you step-by-step on how your page rates for SEO purposes. It provides advice on how you can modify your copy and content until it improves the SEO on the page.

#5 Google Search Console Insights (Beta)

This tool monitors your position in the Google rankings and shows your average position for specific keywords. If you are already ranking high in the search engines for a particular keyword, you can find ways to leverage the high-ranking content and focus on creating content for keywords you’re not currently ranking for.

#6 Session Recording Tool

A session recording tool records the actions of visitors when they are on your website. It records mouse movements, clicks, where they go and where they spend time. This information can help you create more content that appeals to them or revise your current website content or design to better appeal to them. Hotjar offers a session recording tool you can use.

#7 Google Analytics

Google Analytics gives you helpful statistics, data and information about your website so you can use this information to make your website content better. Some of the information you want to monitor:

• Number of visitors per month
• Average time spent on your website
• Most popular pages
• Where your traffic is coming from: Direct, organic, referral, social media
• Where they are visiting from geographically so you can run paid ads on social media, etc.
• Bounce rate

It allows you to see what type of content is doing well so you can create more content like it or improve underperforming content.

Trends

Here are seven of the hottest marketing trends for 2023 that home-building professionals are leveraging in their marketing efforts.

#8 Personalize

Personalize your content so that it speaks directly to your home buyers. The best way to do this is to collect data on your visitors and audience so you know what they like, what they don’t like and their behaviors when “shopping” for a home online.

Why personalize? According to Mckinsey & Company, as of 2021:

78% of consumers are more likely to make repeat purchases from brands that personalize their content

80% are more likely to refer friends and family to companies that personalize their content

A great example of how a home builder can personalize their content is to use an online customization tool for home buyers looking to buy and build a new home. When you add this tool to your website, buyers can customize the building of their new home. They can do everything from choose the lot and add rooms to include amenities inside and outside of the home and choose exterior house colors.

A visitor is more likely to go through with the purchase and build of the home since they spent so much time online customizing and designing it with your online customization tool. The builder receives the information for the visitor so the builder can follow up with the buyer.

A customization tool like this allows you to create dynamic content so each person feels like it is content just for them.

#9 Local Content

Create content that has a local community focus. Local content improves SEO and helps you connect with home buyers. Some examples of local content you can create that appeals to home buyers are a list of curated events or 11 things to do in [city/community] this summer.

#10 Short-Form Video

Short-form video is a short video, usually with music pumping. These short videos are easy for your audience to consume and share, which makes them more likely to go viral. Shorter videos are better because they tend to perform better.

A great approach is to see what others are doing and copy it. Take whatever audio is trending right now, make it yours, make it funny and it will go viral. A good example is when the Miley Cyrus song Flowers came out, people were using it as the music for their short-form videos – many of which went viral.

#11 Interactive Content

Visitors engage with interactive content. Use the data you collect during the interactivity to personalize the content they see from you. Home builders using interactive content find visitors spend 16 minutes on their sites (3x longer than average), experience a lower bounce rate of 15% (3x better) and 16% more conversions (45% better).

#12 Binge-able Content

Bingeable content is content your audience cannot get enough, so they consume content one after the next until they consume all the content. When you create binge-worthy content like the latest series on Netflix, the content must add value to the homebuyer.

Some examples of binge-able content:

1. Updated photo galleries, videos and testimonials. For photo galleries, use sorting and filtering options that sort down to specific details.

2. Series: Podcast series, video series, blog post series (try to keep it as evergreen as possible).

3. Curation: Location guides, design trends and how-to information.

#13 Maximize Content

When you create a piece of content, repurpose it into other forms to maximize the use of the content you create. For example, if you write a blog post, turn it into a video, audio recording and social media posts.

When you have a series of blog posts on the same topic, combine them to create a guide or ebook visitors can download. Turn the ebook or guide into a webinar or podcast. If you start with an ebook or guide, turn each chapter into individual blog posts, social media posts, videos, audio recordings, etc.

The possibilities of the content pieces you can create are almost endless.

#14 Predictive Marketing

Use data to predict future behaviors. Then, you can create your content, marketing strategies and efforts from the data you’ve collected and predictions of what homebuyers will do in the future.

Digital marketing tools and trends are always a hot topic for IBS Education Sessions at NAHB International Builders’ Show (IBS). Stay up to date on #IBS2024.