Rocky Mountain Homes is an award-winning company that specializes in creating panelized, pre-designed and milled log home kits, primarily constructing $1,500,000+ homes. At the time we began working with Rocky Mountain Homes, they were utilizing their nationwide dealer network, but had very little web presence, so we were tasked with generating more qualified leads than what they were currently receiving, particularly utilizing the Facebook platform.
Reaching an audience that is both looking to build a home, and can afford something as opulent as a Rocky Mountain Home, is a difficult task, especially when using a platform like Facebook. Facebook audiences generally rely heavily on an appeal to emotion to encourage action, whereas platforms like Google are, in essence, as simple as finding what your potential customers are searching for and attaching yourself to those searches.
We quickly realized that in addition to utilizing highly in-depth geographic and interest research and targeting, a huge factor in attracting these high-end potential customers was to use imagery from the most expensive homes that Rocky has ever built. We found that when home shopping, buyers tend to be drawn to homes that are just outside of their price range. This meant that using video and images from their more “affordable” homes mostly resulted in responses from people looking to build houses that were around or under the $1,000,000 mark, which ended up being dead-end leads once they found out how much the home of their dreams really cost.
"We most recently were able to deliver 54 highly-qualified and motivated leads over the course of 14 days at a cost of less than $5 per lead, as compared to the previous cost of $26 per lead."
By using imagery from some of the most extravagant homes in Rocky’s repertoire, coupled with the in-depth targeting, we were able to shift potential customer’s expectations to be in line with the price range of Rocky homes, increasing conversion rates and the efficiency of the sales team. Along with that, we performed extensive A/B testing with content and visuals, and found that potential customers typically responded better to animated text ads that featured photos of projects and highlights of what sets Rocky apart from a traditional home builder, instead of the more traditional interview-style video. We also found that, although their target audience is older and much wealthier than most, Instagram was the most cost-effective source of leads.
Using these statistics to improve ads over time, we most recently were able to deliver 54 highly-qualified and motivated leads over the course of 14 days at a cost of less than $5 per lead, as compared to the previous cost of $26 per lead. These leads are delivered to the sales team at Rocky Mountain Homes, pre-qualified, sent an introductory lookbook via the mail, and then distributed to the proper department for follow-up and closing. Due to the amount of money and planning that goes into building a fully-custom log home, the sales funnel is long and arduous. Because of that, Rocky Mountain Homes puts a great deal of value in pre-qualifying their leads to increase the efficiency of their sales team.
A/B testing is a large portion of marketing, especially on the digital front, and unfortunately is overlooked by many marketing companies due to the task-oriented nature of the industry. Bahlr Media operates by setting and reaching long and short-term goals and taking whatever action is deemed necessary to achieve that goal. Our goal was to generate as many highly-qualified leads as possible, and once that goal was reached, we set a new goal to decrease the cost per lead and increase the efficiency of the campaigns as much as possible. These campaigns are ongoing and will continue to be optimized over time.
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