Why Are Testimonials Important for Home Builder Marketing?

Buying a new home is one of the most important purchases someone can make, and homebuyers don’t take that lightly. It can only be expected that they are bound to conduct ample research before determining which builder they will entrust to build a home for their family.

What factors may influence their decision? Well, there is one initial factor they will look for that impacts their first impression and tells them everything they need to know – previous testimonials from your homeowners. Prospective homeowners will seek out homeowner testimonials even if they have already fallen in love with your homes, home photography and communities on your website and social media platforms. Data from Review Trackers indicates that 63.6% of consumers are more likely to check Google reviews before engaging with a business.

What if you don’t have many reviews or any at all? Homeowners will often keep searching until they find a builder who does have the positive reviews they need to feel confident in considering their business. Without a recommendation from friends or family or a good review from a homeowner, buyers may be less likely to trust that they can depend on a home builder to deliver the home and experience they desire. Let’s discuss why testimonials are essential to building awareness, trust, credibility and earning new business for home builders.

Why Are Testimonials Necessary?

Experience is the leading benchmark for judging businesses, especially when it comes to the homebuilding industry. Homebuyers want to know about the quality of your homes and services, but they don’t want to hear it from the home builder themselves. They want to know that your past clients would choose you again if they could do it all again. Homebuyers desire reassurance, and that can only effectively come from someone who has had experience with your business.

Let’s discuss the many benefits that accompany homeowner testimonials, and why they’re so important for achieving success.

Earn New Business

Before you make a big purchase and gave several options to choose from, what are you most likely to look at to help make your decision? More often than not, your answer would be online reviews. These statements from others can make a significant impact on our purchasing decisions. The bigger the purchase, the more confident we want to be before taking action.

Offering good testimonials from previous homebuyers is guaranteed to outlast any other marketing or advertising home builders produce. These unbiased statements have a great deal more weight than anything your business has to say about itself. Studies show that businesses with more reviews generate 54% more revenue.

Builds Brand Reputation and Credibility

Glowing testimonials provide a sense of comfort for prospective homebuyers. Learning that other customers had positive experiences with you will make them feel confident in considering you and more likely to trust your business. Encouraging your happy homeowners to leave reviews allows prospective buyers to view your company in the best light and gain a great first impression. Building up your reviews with positive, high ratings will also minimize the impact of any negative reviews your business may receive.

Improved Visibility

Reviews are among the most important factors that can help home builders improve their SEO ranking, which is vital to boost website traffic and attract homebuyers. You can effectively elevate your business’ online visibility by gaining high-quality reviews. The more positive reviews your business earns online, the more likely it will be to show up in search results above competitors.

More consumers than ever are taking note of Google reviews, evidenced by an increase of 65% in Google zero-click searches that indicate instances when users search without making any clicks to further content. This is likely because Google shows review clips and overall star ratings without requiring users to click into a third-party site. Google leads consumers to discover new business over other search engines and review websites.

When home builders don’t have enough positive reviews or a rating below four, buyers may automatically overlook their business. Many consumers filter ratings by four stars or above to discover new companies. By building your Google reviews with positive, highly-rated reviews, you increase the chances that homebuyers view and consider your business during their new home search.

How to Gain New Testimonials

Now that you know why testimonials are so invaluable for your business, let’s get into how to gain positive testimonials. Getting these reviews can be much easier than you think, it’s all about finding the right ways to ask! Delivering great customer experiences should always be a priority and asking these satisfied homeowners for reviews allows you to impactfully showcase that with other prospective buyers. How can you get them to share their great experience? Let’s explore a few ways to ask for reviews:

After Receiving Compliments

After you provide a fantastic experience for a homeowner, chances are that they’re likely to express their gratitude for your work. They might offer a compliment to your team in person, over the phone or through written communication as they’re working with you. No matter how the remark is delivered, this poses a great opportunity to segue into asking for a review.

You can start by acknowledging their compliment, thanking them for their words and indicating that you appreciate hearing about their experience. Then, it’s best to mention how much positive testimonials benefit your business and that you would greatly appreciate it if they would be interested in leaving a review. This gentle encouragement, whether in-person or otherwise, is an easy way to remind your homeowners to document their positive experiences.

Personalized Emails

When you finish a home for a client, a personalized email offers a great way to follow up with them and mention their option to give a review. Rather than an automated email, personalized emails feel like more of a one-on-one interaction that will make your buyers feel valued and even more confident in testifying to a positive experience with your business.

Within these emails, there are several ways to easily encourage buyers to provide feedback rather than a simple ask. One option is to offer a link to a review form that poses simple questions to evoke compelling responses.

Draw out their story with open-ended questions that reflect on their homebuying journey, what made your business stand out, what they expected to gain in their new home and their experience during your homebuilding process. How homeowners choose to relay their experience can affect how impactful their testimonial is to prospective buyers.

Posing specific pre-set questions inspires each homeowner to think more deeply about their experiences, dig into the emotions they felt during the homebuilding process and articulate how your business left them satisfied with their new home.

Social Media Direct Messages

As another casual approach to asking for testimonials, you can also reach out to homeowners over social media. There are several ways you can engage with them whether by posting photos of their home and tagging them, commenting or responding to photos they post of their new home or simply sending them a direct message.

By interacting with them in some way on their posts or your own, you’re indicating to potential buyers that your business prioritizes customer relationships and wants to engage. This may not be a direct testimonial, but it still provides a great example of your connections, and the appreciation homeowners have for your work.

Making the Most of Homeowner Testimonials

It’s not enough to earn reviews and hope homebuyers will find them. To ensure reviews are seen by your target audience, you must creatively incorporate reviews into your brand content to increase exposure Below, we’ve shared several ways you can highlight your glowing testimonials to potential homebuyers and grow the reach of your reviews for greater impact!

Incorporate Testimonials Into Your Website

Your home builder website should display every aspect you want prospective buyers to know about your brand – and that should absolutely include the feedback you’ve received from homeowners!

Showcase your best testimonials within a dedicated page to highlight to potential buyers the type of experience they can expect to have with your business and encourage them to move further down the sales funnel. Highlighting reviews on your website not only offers solid social proof during the homebuyer journey but also builds confidence in your company’s credibility, allows buyers to envision themselves building with you and motivates them to contact you.

Along with a dedicated testimonial page, you can also display reviews as sidebar items that are visible as users navigate throughout your website. Placing testimonials in several prominent locations heightens the likelihood that they will take notice of the positive feedback and it will have an impact on their decision to convert.

Respond to Reviews

Even after you start receiving positive reviews online, your work isn’t truly finished. It’s beneficial to take the time to acknowledge these reviews and respond by thanking reviewers for taking the time to share their experiences.

Staying aware of the reviews you receive is a crucial part of maintaining a strong brand reputation. Online reviews statistics reveal that 53% of customers expect a review response within 7 days. Replying to testimonials indicates that your business values its customers and truly appreciates hearing from them. Businesses that respond to reviews are shown to average 35% more revenue.

Share Testimonials on Social Media

One of the easiest ways to actively highlight your positive testimonials is by sharing them on your brand social media. Create appealing, bold graphics that draw attention to the memorable feedback your business has earned. For each post, incorporate copy that inspires buyers to consider the benefits of building with you and encourages them to convert into a lead.

Utilize QR Codes

QR codes are becoming increasingly popular, and they offer a great opportunity to lead prospective buyers to your reviews! You can create a QR code that links to your review page and share this code on flyers, brochures and business cards. After a quick scan with their camera, you can direct buyers to a review page on your website, your Google reviews or a landing page that links to other sites where you have reviews.

Publish Blogs Centered Around Homebuyer Experiences

As you begin asking for your homeowners to share their experiences, you may find that some may have a deeper story of how you delivered an exceptional home that uniquely met their needs. When cases like these arise, we suggest taking advantage of it and asking those homeowners if you can transform their story into a memorable blog shared on your website.

Within the blog, you can provide background on how they discovered your business and how your team delivered an incredible outcome. Sharing happy homeowner stories this way gives prospective buyers a more in-depth, authentic look at your work and how your business strives to satisfy its customers.

Grow Your Business with Glowing Homeowner Testimonials

When it comes to attracting new homebuyers, input from your previous homeowners is one of your most invaluable home builder marketing tools. Collecting homeowners' experiences is a fantastic way to both indicate how much you value feedback from customers and share their positive experiences as social proof for prospective buyers to establish brand credibility.

Growing your business is easy when you have the support of your happy homeowners on your side. Contact our team and let's talk about how we can make your happy homeowner reviews stand out and build your brand reputation!