How New Home Star Drives Buyers to Its Clients’ Communities

Building brand awareness among buyers

New Home Star is the largest private seller of new homes in America, with $1 billion in sales, but it’s not a builder. Instead, it provides more than two dozen builders across 22 states with sales support and marketing expertise for their communities.

Chris Laskowski, marketing manager for New Home Star, says the company’s core principle is to create a more favorable thought process that positions its clients’ brands as the ones home buyers prefer.

“In our case, that means presenting our builders’ communities in a way that makes sense and aligns with buyers so they can make the right decisions,” he clarified.

To generate a favorable thought process when marketing planned communities, Laskowski focuses on increasing brand awareness — and exposure — of his clients’ homes among buyers.

How to attract new construction home shoppers

One of Laskowski’s recent clients was the master-planned community of Lake Carolina in Columbia, SC. It includes a private lake, miles of shoreline and bike trails, access to award-winning schools and many other desirable features, but the builder struggled to attract buyers. They approached New Home Star to increase traffic to their sales centers.

“Lake Carolina was looking to leverage a nationwide network of experts who are able to provide exceptional marketing campaigns,” Laskowski explained. “They had solid marketing going for their community, but they didn’t have the marketing expertise and resources, so they came to us to create the highest-ROI campaigns possible.”

In evaluating Lake Carolina’s marketing performance, Laskowski discovered that prospective buyers simply didn’t know about the community. He started looking for ways to increase Lake Carolina’s brand awareness.

Laskowski knew what Zillow Group offered consumers — he used Zillow during his own home search — and wondered if there were any solutions for builders.

When he saw an industry trade magazine article about Promoted Communities, a new construction advertising platform on Zillow and Trulia, Laskowski’s interest was piqued.

“What I saw seemed like an affordable rate for smaller and mid-size builders, so I told my team, ‘Let’s get in touch,’” he recalled.

Reaching buyers where they search

Laskowski connected with Zillow Group sales reps who demonstrated Promoted Communities’ full scope of features and capabilities. Laskowski then followed up with a meeting at Zillow’s booth during the International Builders Show. He liked what he heard — especially about being able to display the entire community and floor plans, as well as the option to get exclusive leads — and decided to give the Promoted Communities program a try, using the Lake Carolina community as his test case. If it performed well, New Home Star would add more communities to its feed.

“More than ninety percent of home searches start online and the majority are people looking for resale homes,” Laskowski said. “Promoted Communities allows us to get in touch with that majority in a way we haven’t been able to before.”

Laskowski worked with his Zillow account manager to set up his feed and integrate it with his website to streamline the upload process. From that point, New Home Star agents only had to add their clients’ homes or properties one time.

Competing and succeeding through brand building

For Laskowski and the Lake Carolina community, advertising on Zillow and Trulia has been “a huge success.”

“In the two months we’ve been with Promoted Communities, we’ve already had two sales in Lake Carolina.” Laskowski remarked. “I couldn’t believe it when I found out how many sales Lake Carolina got. I told my team there, ‘Show me your CRM because those numbers are unbelievable.’”

One significant contributor to New Home Star’s success with the Lake Carolina community is its ability to compete with existing homes through the ads it runs on Zillow and Trulia. Promoted Communities allows us to get in touch with that majority in a way we haven’t been able to before.

“We’re able to more aggressively market against resale homes, which we weren’t able to do before — and I believe that starts with Zillow,” Laskowski stated. “Now when buyers search, our homes are also populating the results. It’s a powerful thing to have Promoted Communities.”

Another key benefit the platform delivers to New Home Star and its clients is the ability to distinguish themselves from the competition.

“Promoted Communities allows us to display our own images and branded collateral on each listing,” Laskowski pointed out. “When you’re just looking at a price point, a new home will be more expensive, but this program is a way for us to market effectively against that by allowing builders to explain the cost of a new home in their own words.”

The ROI that Lake Carolina has seen from Promoted Communities is one of the most important confirmations of New Home Star’s online marketing strategy.

New Home Star by the numbers

2 sales attributed to Promoted Communities within the first three months

30 leads per month through Zillow Group

$6.58 cost per contact

6 communities New Home Star has committed to add since the Lake Carolina success

“Despite the offering Lake Carolina has — the amazing community and great amenities — the message just wasn’t getting out there,” Laskowski remarked. “Now that new construction is fed into the Zillow and Trulia listings, builders’ homes get exposed to buyers in the same impression that a resale home does, which is a new benefit for us. Promoted Communities has worked out phenomenally well.”

Have your own Promoted Communities success story to share? Tell us about it to be considered for a feature! Or to learn more, go to our Builder Advertising Page or give us a call at 877-419-0589.