A luxury home builder with a good referral business but minimal digital presence employs LAIRE to implement a website redesign, Inbound marketing, HubSpot implementation, and Sales Enablement to grow their business and a reliable lead flow.
When we met our client in 2018, their brand was known in our region as a quality home builder of custom homes, with an average home sales price of $950,000. They had an established, knowledgeable sales team, and an in-house Marketing Manager who facilitated print materials and advertising. The CEO was heavily involved in the flow of the business, and the departments interacted well with each other.
The issues:
This client was searching for a solution for these issues and was interested in HubSpot to better synchronize their sales and marketing activities. To be a key player in the housing market in the Charlotte, NC region, they knew they needed a digital foundation created to grow their marketing efforts beyond the reach of regional print ads. Our goal was to set their team up for success.
Our team diagnosed multiple issues with the client’s current website. The user experience was disjointed, with dead ends and no messaging for their different buyer personas. The site lacked content designed to educate and inform the buying process. And the sales team didn’t have a consistent pipeline of quality digital leads because the site’s only conversion point was to “talk to Sales”.
Our website team’s focus on improving their site:
Before we begin a beautiful website design, we conduct research so our design is based on a powerful user experience and the ability to capture leads from the website. That research process our agency undertakes is called the Marketing Action Plan (MAP) by LAIRE® and extends beyond just plans for the website, but also includes marketing strategies and tactics. The success of future marketing efforts is heavily dependent on a smart, Inbound website design, so we don’t design a website without a MAP in place.
We started the 4-week MAP process in early 2019. It included reporting on current website user and keyword analytics, conducting persona interviews and creating buyer personas, drafting unique selling propositions and “Remarkables” for that brand, and planning future content and channel optimizations. The client’s marketing and sales team worked closely with our agency team during this process, to give feedback on website wants, needs, and nice-to-haves, as well as invaluable feedback on the sales process and how it could be improved digitally.
Because we knew this client wanted to implement HubSpot Marketing and Sales Hub tools, it made sense to also build the website on the HubSpot CMS platform so that all of their lead generation efforts would be linked. Using HubSpot landing pages and website analytics tools would be key to learning from user experience and making adjustments to improve website conversions, resulting in sales growth.
After the research period, we created site concepts, held client feedback meetings, and made adjustments to the designs to result in a final website concept that delighted the client, and would speak to their ideal clients. The site was developed on HubSpot, the client’s team was trained on the CMS tools, and the new website was launched in spring 2019.
Now that the website was complete, we shifted our focus to establishing a digital presence. Our team knew we could achieve the client’s goals through our thorough, and consistent, Inbound marketing approach. The client had 12,000+ viable contacts in their database who weren’t being communicated with, so we knew we had a great opportunity to put nurturing marketing tactics in place, and then also reach untapped prospects.
Using HubSpot, each marketing activity would be tracked, allowing us to show the exact dollar amount our campaigns produced or influenced. These numbers would be visible to anyone on the client team, in real-time through our marketing and sales dashboard.
We implemented the marketing strategy and plan laid out in the MAP:
In 2019 we built the initial foundation with the new website, solidified their SEO strategies, and honed in on improving conversion rate. In 2020 we grew their digital presence and expanded their organic reach, and continued with a focus on increasing conversion rate sitewide and nurturing leads into customers. Here are some KPIs during our partnership:
2018 BASELINE STATS
2019 POST WEBSITE LAUNCH KPIs
2020 KPIs
In order to handle the growth the company was experiencing, the sales team needed support in embracing the new technology that could make their jobs more streamlined. Their sales processes were outdated, and they were using a prohibitive Contact Relationship Management (CRM) tool. Not only did they need coaching on effective sales and follow-up methods, but they also needed their new HubSpot CRM setup to optimize the knowledge they held on prospects, and utilize automation to close leads.
Initially, we held weekly team training to carry out an 8-week agenda, focusing on tools and best practices, with homework assigned to each sales member. We then moved to support the team on a monthly basis, with a scheduled check-in and assessment of the new tools and processes they had in place.
Issues their sales team was having, and the sales enablement solutions we implemented:
Here is a sample list of the types of custom HubSpot reporting we created, most of which were automated to be delivered to the manager before sales meetings. However, during our partnership, there were 50+ HubSpot reports created that addressed needs of each division.
Through our systems guidance and the inbound structures we implemented, we created a foundation that this home builder’s marketing and sales teams could continue to build upon, on their own, as they grow.