People with home projects are very hard to reach as their interest in renovating, decorating or building is often transitory.  Home projects often occupy peoples’ minds for a 1–2-year period, but for the years before and after they have other interests.

This consumer behaviour means that leads in this market are hard to uncover.   Their digital behaviour is often hidden from behavioural targeting until very late, and the field is then very crowded – you are competing with every other business, and often in an environment where you can demonstrate very little about your product and can only compete with price.

However, if we can communicate effectively in this period of “renovation obsession” then we are doing so at the optimal time.  Attention is high, the audience is receptive, and relevant messages are of interest.  This is the best time in which to reach out and establish your brand credentials.

Home Consumer Behaviour in the Pre-Purchase Research Funnel – A Guide for Marketers

Consumers in the home market typically go through a funnel type of process when researching for information and ideas in the home area.

At the wide end of the funnel – the top – a large number of consumers are “dreaming of renovating someday”, or “have an interest in design”.

In the middle of funnel, you get a smaller but still considerable and more active sub-segment of the market. These people are “having family discussions,” saving money, and making top-line enquiries with service providers.  This happens to be our best audience for media and communication products.

At the bottom of the purchase funnel, you get a critically active audience, that are selecting tiles, windows and tap-wear i.e., “the details” of any home project.

Many marketing programs take a mass market approach, reaching people before they even enter the funnel. This approach drives home a brand message so that when a consumer enters the market, they are already aware of the brand and go to the brand for the item that they want.  This approach works over a long period of time, however is too wasteful for many marketers – you have to reach millions of people who may never renovate or build at all, just to get the ones that will.

Many digital marketing programs like search marketing will try to target those at the end of funnel. Tactically this is a good time to market, but the cost of ranking for key search terms is prohibitive, and you have no means of establishing brand values or actually standing out from a cost-cutting pack.  If your product is unique or if people are not searching for your search term though lack of awareness that the product even exists then you are missing opportunity.  An example of this might be the customer who searches “skylights” as they may not be aware of a much better “automatic self-closing skylight”.

How can you establish product or brand awareness without the waste involved in either approach?

How can you establish product or brand awareness if your product is genuinely unique?

How can you distinguish your business from the pack.

The answer of course is to communicate brand messages before the ‘end of the funnel’ phase.  Preferably very direct and visual brand messages that give a sense of what the product is about.

This means that by the time their builder is asking for confirmation of ‘prime cost items’ the consumer is already aware of your product and has seen your messaging a number of times.  This messaging builds brand reputation and creates a perception of your business having size and significance in a particular sub-category of the market.  This allows them to distinguish your offering from other, potentially cut-price offerings, before they enter the lower end of the purchase funnel.

Communicating some product and brand awareness in the middle, i.e., when the customer moves from “dreaming about a project” to “doing”, makes sense.  Targeting here means you can establish a message and repeat it a number of times, before the consumer enters that tactical, ‘small end of the funnel’ part of the market.

The benefits are significant. Digital clicks and conversion rates increase because the customer has heard of your brand before.  Aside from this the customer has just “heard of your brand” and will thinks of your brand as having significance in the market. This increases online investigations, showroom visits, discussions with builders, and actual purchases.

The benefits multiply when cost is taken in to account.  Without spending the $500,000 plus required for a mass marketing campaign, you are able to present your brand in a “mass market” manner, just to the audience that matters – people with projects.

If you would like a consultation about reaching people with projects click here. 

At Universal Media Co, we are passionate about targeting the right audience and love helping businesses create marketing programs that are meaningful and relevant.  To learn more about this click here.