The largest home builders in the United States leverage audience insights from social media to steer strategic decisions that have an impact on all aspects of their businesses. The marketing departments of these builders at the forefront of their industry look to social data to answer their questions about potential homebuyers and the markets they live in. Facebook, in particular, offers a wealth of anonymized audience analytics that can help home builders to find key demographic, psychographic and geographic information about the home buyers of tomorrow.
When comparing two of the current top home builders head to head in Profiler, our latest premium offering, and we were able to find key points about both of the brand’s social followings.
Regions
Each builder has historically targeted different geographic areas to catalyze their growth. This is reflected in an analysis of the audiences that have an affinity for each company – as their top communities coincide with their locales of greatest market penetration. However, the greatest insight to be gleaned from the geographic analysis was the overt desire for Toll Brothers homes in Miami and Atlanta – two locales in which Lennar is the market leader. Lennar’s upside is a broad country-wide geographic distribution of buzz – as cities across the country clamor for Lennar’s more affordable home offerings.
Favorite Media
In comparing each audience’s media proclivities, a few key differences immediately rise to the surface. The Toll Brothers’ audience definitely skews to a life of sedentary leisure, while Lennar’s audience includes a more active bunch of home buyers. The evidence for this is simple: Toll Brothers’ audience prefers watching home renovation while Lennar’s audience is more of a Do It Yourself crowd. Toll’s audience likes reading about making their home beautiful, while Lennar’s like reading about making themselves beautiful. Toll’s audience likes reading Yelp reviews of restaurants and Lennar’s audience likes posting about their experiences on Instagram. How can this information be leveraged? Perhaps Toll Brothers uses this information to partner with the country’s top interior decorators to offer fully furnished homes to new home buyers. Perhaps Lennar does the opposite – and offers new constructions that include more ‘project’ based customizations – so home buyers can truly make their houses their homes.
Favorite Brands
The Lennar and Toll Brothers audiences are at odds over their favorite brands – and these preferences, again, speak volumes about the people with an affinity for the two home builder brands. The key difference here is in where the two audiences choose to shop. The stay-at-home Toll Brothers audience prefers shopping online with Wayfair – while Lennar’s audience chooses the brick and mortar experience of BB&B. Lennar’s audience tastes are also more regional – with a preference for Publix and Belk – two brands that do not have a coast to coast presence in the US. On the other hand, Toll Brothers’ audience has an affinity for Whole Foods and Nordstrom – two national brands – with blockbuster online presences.W hat can be leveraged here? Again Toll can learn from their audience’s stay-at-home ways – and ensure that new constructions are wired for the IoT progressions of the future. In a similar vein, Lennar can look to build developments closer to shopping hubs to provide convenience to the homebuyer who is looking to get out and be active.
Social media is the new community bulletin board – and home builders would be wise to listen to what the community has to say. Consumer activities on Facebook speak volumes about what people want in a new home – and with just a few minutes of data analysis, home builders can mine a treasure trove of information about the home buyers they are looking to target with their newest projects.
Want to learn more about how Profiler, our latest premium offering, can help businesses (like home builders) find powerful audience insights about Facebook’s billions of users? Learn more below.
