5 min read
Background
SevernWoods Fine Homes is a custom home builder and whole home renovator based out of Toronto, Ontario. They have been partnered with Builder Funnel now approaching 3 years. SevernWoods originally came to us looking for help in generating more leads online, and after two and a half years, we have been able to achieve this and more! Now that they had a whole bank of quality content created on their site, generating thousands of views every month, with several leads coming in the door daily, it was time to change up the strategy.
The New Marketing Strategy
After 2 years of collaboration between SevernWoods and Builder Funnel, it was time to switch up their marketing strategy and come up with a new game plan. Over the years, not only do marketing best practices change. So does how homeowners shop and buy for custom homes. 🎯 The goal of the new strategy was targeting more bottom and middle-of-the-funnel leads and our recommendation to capitalize on this was to start running Google and Facebook Ads.
A full pipeline is so important. That means generating more than just "bottom of the funnel" leads who are ready to buy today. It means also capturing those in the research phase who may still be getting to know you and your competitors.
When working with Builder Funnel, we recommend Google ads for those high search intent users that are currently in the market to build a custom home or renovate their house (bottom of the funnel). We also recommend utilizing Facebook and ads on their platform to generate more middle-of-the-funnel leads - this is where SevernWoods' influx of leads starts to roll in.
Repurpusing Existing Lead Generation Campaigns
"We need leads yesterday." Sound familiar?
When you partner with Builder Funnel, one of the first things we do is build a lead magnet. This helps convert traffic on your website so you know who is interested in your services. Consistently top performing lead magnets include pricing, timeline, process, and expectation setting.
Now that SevernWoods has been partnered with Builder Funnel for 2+ years, we already created several pieces of content that we capitalize on to capture leads. Rather than create new, unproven campaigns, we were ready to test pouring fuel on the flames instead.
SevernWoods wanted more, high quality leads. That meant targeting higher intent users, so we tested running Facebook ad campaigns to their Custom Home Cost Guide along with their Whole Home Renovation Cost Guide. If someone downloads one of these guides, they are most likely in the market or considering the possibility.
After we decided on running Facebook ads for these specific guides, now it was just time to set the ads up and watch the leads flood in, which brings us to the results...
Facebook ad leads for custom home builder
Now, you can just pump thousands and thousands of dollars into ads and generate leads and inflate your numbers, that's not hard to do. The interesting part with most of our Facebook ad budgets that we are working with is that we aren't pumping thousands upon thousands of dollars into the ad spend.
After only starting their ads in mid-April, we were able to generate SevernWoods 233 leads in less than a quarter! 🔥
As stated earlier, you can just pump more and more money into the campaigns in order to increase your numbers and make it appear better than it may actually seem, however, when we look at our cost per lead, this is where the numbers start to get unbelievable. We were able to acquire leads at a small cost of only $3.12. That means for approximately every $3 we spent, we gained a new lead. They may not convert that instant, but there is high intent there and they are now in SevernWoods' system to be able to be nurtured, with the ultimate goal of turning them into a custom home or whole home renovation project down the line.
How To Build facebook ads That Can Achieve These results For Your Residential Construction Business
Even the best strategy can yield muted results in a tricky location. Recognizing that SevernWoods is in a highly populated area means that there are lots of opportunities to gain new leads - and it also means there are lots of competitors fighting over the same audience.
With that being said, let's walk through how to create a Facebook ad that you can set up yourself and reap great leads and how we were able to achieve these outstanding results.
Facebook ad campaign settings
Our goal with this campaign is to generate more leads. So, depending on your goals for the campaign, you may want to adjust accordingly. With our goal in mind, we need to select "Leads".
Creating your ad set in facebook
Once you have selected this, your campaign is now drafted. It's time to set up at the ad set level.
There are several different options at this part of the campaign that you need to consider, whether you want to collect leads through your website, Facebook forms, calls, or others. At Builder Funnel, we believe your website should be your strongest salesperson. So we chose "website". With this selection, you need to ensure that conversion tracking is set up properly. This helps Facebook and its algorithm know when your leads are converting and who they are. Closed loop data helps the ad stay in front of the right audience more often.
Next, add in the locations that you are targeting. For our campaign, this was Toronto with a 15-mile radius. You can add detailed targeting for people with search intents, but we like to go broad and let Facebook learn who the users are that are downloading and let their algorithm work its magic.
We also recommend to set manual placements for our ads so Facebook isn't putting them in areas that people won't notice or that we believe have lower intent. After this, it's time to build the ad creative.
Top Performing facebook ad creative
You have a few different options when setting up your ad creative. You can either choose a single image or video, a carousel, or a collection. You can experiment and see what works best for you, but we chose a single image for this campaign. You can also test out different ad creatives by duplicating the ad creative and keeping it under the same campaign and ad set.
Once you've chosen your creatives, it's time to input your verbiage. This is where you need to catch their attention and drive them to download or want to learn more. You will need to come up with primary text, headlines, and a description.
You have the option to add up to five for each and we like to utilize these options to give Facebook more options to A/B test and play with. There is an additional thought that if you do this on a limited budget, it may be better to just give it the best one that you believe will work so Facebook doesn't waste money, but at the same time, Facebook's algorithm is constantly testing to see what performs the best. So we like to include and give Facebook as much information as we can to derive the best results possible.
Once this is done and set up, all you have to do is include the website URL where you want to be directing traffic - your lead magnet. For us, it was our cost guide landing pages, which we will discuss more in the results section below, but this gives you additional control for acquiring these leads.
Results
This Facebook ad campaign converted 233 leads for SevernWoods in 90 days with a cost per lead at $3.12. 🚀
Lead generation campaigns are the most expensive to run. Facebook knows they are delivering the most value to you, so they can charge the most. For this campaign, that means we will be paying more for each impression, leading to fewer impressions, but the goal would be also paying less per lead.
Traffic and reach campaigns are far cheaper because they're still leaving a lot of work on your plate to convert those viewers into leads. In that scenario, we would pay a lot less for impressions but receive fewer leads.
Over Q2 2023, we received approximately 67,000 impressions and had approximately 1,200 clicks at an average cost per click of $0.62.
With SevernWoods' highly strategic new contract, our goal is to now nurture and move all these leads down the funnel with an additional sales email sent out each month... Something that we may need to touch on in the near future when those results start rolling in, too!
Conclusion
After years of trial and error serving the home building and remodeling industry, our expertise has led us to be able to generate new all-time highs in leads for SevernWoods. As stated earlier, we direct them to our landing pages that we have created in the past, where we are able to run additional A/B tests to ensure that we are capturing all the potential leads that end up on their site.
With a strategic plan in place, and leads flooding in through the doors, Facebook ads are a great strategy to generate more contacts in your database. However, you do want to ensure you know what you're doing because several people just end up paying Facebook thousands of dollars just trying to get something to stick.