How to Market Luxury Real Estate Using Journey Mapping

Cost-effective digital marketing campaigns rely on having clear insight into how your online visitors interact with your brand. One of the most crucial metrics is your conversion rate, but even this single metric is hard to pin down, as Realvolve analyzes here:

"Most real estate agents and brokerages have self-reported a customer conversion rate of 3-5%. However, this may be optimistic based on the market. The National Association of Realtors® disclosed that the rate is closer to 0.4% - 1.2%."

This presents two problems for every luxury real estate company and luxury home builder: conversion rates are extremely low, and it's hard to know exactly how low they are.

That's why more and more businesses are turning to customer journey maps to gain a clearer insight into how prospects behave at different stages of the buying process. In this guide, we'll discuss what customer journey maps are, their benefits, and why your team should use them to both analyze and improve customer engagement at different stages of their journey.

What Are Customer Journey Maps?

Every business needs to know how visitors and prospective clients engage with their website, but this insight is even more crucial with luxury real estate experiences. Identifying the customer journey — the route successful customers take from the initial point of contact to making a purchase and beyond — helps your team streamline that process. You can remove obstacles, shorten the journey, and ensure leads have everything they need on your website, so they don't have to look elsewhere.

A customer journey map represents that journey visually. Create a diagram that lists key events as the lead progresses toward a sale, their motivation at various points, and friction areas that cause drop-offs or make leads go off course.

It should clearly document the steps taken during the awareness, consideration, and decision stages for captured leads. If you have complex customer journeys with multiple paths to a purchase, it's important to have clear-cut diagrams, so your team fully understands each unique path.

Creating detailed customer journey maps is essential before, during, and after every digital marketing campaign.

• Before a Digital Marketing Campaign Is Implemented: Your team can draft hypothetical customer journey maps based on past interactions to ensure you have adequate landing pages, online resources, and marketing materials so leads can complete the journey. This infrastructure should be built out before your first ad is released.
• During the Digital Marketing Campaign: Your team can analyze drop-off points, and friction points on the plotted journey maps to revise the materials while the campaign is live. They can also plot and analyze alternative routes that leads are taking to optimize and learn from them.
• After the Digital Marketing Campaign: The live and summative notes your team made can help you create more robust campaigns in the future. You can assess areas where streamlined sales and friction points need to be proactively addressed next time. You can also incorporate leads' behaviors into your buyer persona profiles.

How to Market Luxury Real Estate: 3 Distinct Journey Maps

Every sector has distinctly different journey maps that outline lead behaviors and buying paths. For example, the path a commercial real estate investor will take is very different from the path someone looking for a new apartment will take. But even within the search for a new single-family residence, buyer behaviors are significantly different based on the property's budget and the buyers' goals. To effectively market to luxury real estate buyers, you and your team need to develop customer journeys with absolutely no friction points or weaknesses. Not only that, but it's crucial that you develop multiple different customer journey maps to help your leads take further action.

The three most vital customer journey maps you need to build out are lead capturing, appointment scheduling, and lead nurturing maps. Let's explore each of those more in-depth to see how they help you streamline your customers' journeys to the purchase finish line.

1. Lead Capturing

What Is a Lead Capture Form?

A lead capture form directs visitors to input contact information such as their name, email address, or phone number. It can also ask for relevant details based on the type of service the visitor wants. A lead capture form in luxury real estate marketing might also inquire about the visitor's anticipated budgets, preferred amenities, desired move-in date, and more. Luxury real estate companies can use these lead capture forms to start different leads on the right journey based on which properties they are interested in and which campaigns are the best fit. These forms also give marketers, online sales counselors (OSC) and salespeople the contact information they need to start a personalized conversation with the lead. The OSC serves a critical role in conversing with the lead, answering their questions and moving them through the buyer’s journey.

However, prospective customers don't always want to give contact information. It's essential to pair a lead capture form with an incentive. This can include access to an ebook or resources, curated search results, or even an email response to their questions.

2. Appointment Scheduling 

Warm leads want to make an appointment with your company's representatives. So, optimize your website with a simple appointment-setting calendar or request-an-appointment form. This can let leads set or request appointments for showings, one-on-one consultation appointments, and calls.

Better yet, provide an online chat function for your leads to set an appointment directly with the OSC. Read more about How an Online Sales Counselor can Help Nurture Leads During the Home Buying Process. 

These options should be easy to engage with and clearly presented. If there are too many barriers to setting an appointment — such as the calendar being hard to find or the intake form requesting too much information — your leads will leave. An online chat gives them yet another reason to ask questions or make an appointment. 

This is where a detailed customer journey map comes in handy. You can analyze how customers engage with your representatives in scheduling personalized appointments to see what you can do to increase the rate of appointment setting. 

3. Lead Nurturing 

Lead nurturing is the process of building a relationship with a lead and bringing them closer and closer to a sale. As your team nurtures a lead, they're providing resources, offering assistance, and otherwise helping guide leads through their buyer’s journey. With a journey map, you can identify which stages need the most one-on-one contact and what changes are the most effective at converting customers.

Our article why Home Builders Need Online sales Consultants in All Market Conditions outlines how the OSC is a valuable first line of contact for new leads. Discover how an OSC helps with customer nurturing, reputation building and measurable results.

Partner with Milesbrand to Build Your Journey Maps

Luxury real estate audiences, especially, need highly personalized and enjoyable journeys to make a purchase. Customer journey maps are tools that make your leads' behavior more predictable over time. You can identify friction points, optimize interactions, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates. At Milesbrand, we specialize in supporting real estate companies that serve luxury markets. Our team can help you create a unique brand identity and develop buyer's journeys that fit your target market. Contact us today to get started.