Month: June 2013

From Mike Blake of The Mike Blake Group

I think we can all agree that the use of the Internet to access information has not only changed how we acquire and consume products, but also changed the way we conduct our daily lives.

A traditional “view of economic behavior is that the two most important activities are producing and consuming.”  However today, a new economic behavior of connecting to people, creating and distributing information has emerged. I characterize access to information, interacting with others and distribution of information as the “connectivity age”.

Today, how consumers use information and multiple forms of communication to express themselves is a driving force behind changes in consumer buying behavior. The question is how do we adapt to the challenges of marketing and selling homes in this new age of connectivity?

First we must understand that the connectivity age has gained momentum with the proliferate use of smart devices. According to most technology experts, the use of connected devices like desktop computers will become obsolete in the next 10 years. Handheld smart devices are redefining business to consumer sales and in fact destroyed some aspects of traditional selling.  Consumers are using access to volumes of information found on the Internet to collect information, conduct research, compare options, refine a solution and in some cases bypass salespeople all together.

In fact, historic access to information has created an “information equilibrium” not previously seen before in history!  When buyers and sellers have equal access to information the dynamics of the sales processes changes.

In more complex sales environments such as home sales, equal access to information creates a sales environment which requires a more sophisticated set of selling and marketing skills to engage and influence buyer decision-making.

Equal access to information changed the home sales environment in three significant areas.

  1. Buyers can wait until they are further down the buying cycle before making contact with a builder representative.
  2. The sales cycle has become longer.
  3. On site salespeople are at a significant disadvantage when prospects do finally connect with a builder representative.

A key aspect to thrive in this new environment is finding ways to reach, connect and dialogue with potential customers earlier in the buying cycle.  This process is best achieved through the Internet. Companies that understand this challenge and develop activities to reach these prospects will thrive in our new “connectivity age”.


Mike Blake

The Mike Blake Group

www.mikeblakegroup.com

“Inspiring Top Performers”

mikeblake@ultimatesalesdriver.com

To help you better navigate your way through the “connectivity age” be sure to contact The BDX at info@thebdx.com

Come hear Mike Blake and BDX’s Chad Bria speak at the SEBC show in July when they present: “Buyers Vs. Sellers – Are You Ready?”. Click here for details: http://www.sebcshow.com

When you list your homes with BDX, you can rest assured knowing that your communities are going to be showcased on over 300 real estate websites with one simple marketing decision. We deliver results – in the form of over 80,000 leads per month to our builders. And the home buyer connections don’t stop there – we also deliver website click-thrus, walk-in traffic, social shares, phone calls and more. Our average builder sees a 3X return on their BDX investment just through these trackable actions alone!

Our flagship new home websites, NewHomeSource.com and MoveNewHomes.com, are also attracting more attention than ever. These sites are receiving over 1.4 million visits a month and home buyer leads from the sites have grown over 32% year over year.  Potential home buyers who fill out lead forms on these sites are also highly qualified – 1 out of 3 will buy a home within a year and 1 in 4 will visit a new home community within a week.

Some of this success can be attributed to BHI’s recent “Start Fresh. Buy New.” marketing initiative. This campaign, centered around the website, www.StartFreshBuyNew.com, helps educate buyers about the benefits of buying a new home and then directs them to our sites to begin their search for their dream home. (Click here for more information on the campaign’s recent success)

Are you missing out on leads and home buyer interest? Do you want to find out how to list your homes with BDX? Contact us at info@thebdx.com to get started today.

Check back next week for another update on “What’s New At BDX”.

 

By BDX Guest Blogger, Carol Morgan, mRELEVANCE

How many fans does your Facebook page have? 100? 500? 1,000? 10,000? Now, how many of those “fans” are actually engaging with your company? More likely than not, not as many as you’d like. While gaining new fans on any social media site these days can be done through social media advertising, actually getting them to like, comment, retweet, share, etc. is something that must be done organically. And, according to Hubspot, photos are a great way to engage fans and solve this challenge. In fact, Facebook posts that include photos receive 53 percent more likes and 104 percent more comments than the average post.

Sounds impressive? It is. However, Facebook isn’t the only place marketers are seeing picture engagement. The rise of Pinterest and Instagram over the past year has also played an important role in determining that pictures really are worth more than one thousand words.

By posting more photos on Facebook, you’re not only increasing engagement, but also increasing EdgeRank, which is Facebook’s visibility algorithm based on user interaction. The higher your EdgeRank, the more likely it is your content is showing up in your followers’ newsfeeds.

Does this mean that your page should strictly start posting photos? No. Variety is still essential. Just like no one wants to see a Facebook page filled with just text statuses, they also don’t want to see just photos. However, you can spice up your links by posting a photo from your post as the main status with the link URL in the description or comments section. In fact, by posting a photo with a link, you are increasing your odds of getting a click through by 84 percent.

So, what’s the main takeaway? Photos are important. Make sure you are taking lots of them and sharing them everywhere you can in order to get the most bang for your buck in terms of social media.

If you’re company is looking to visually engage customers in order to increase your ROI, contact Marketing RELEVANCE.

 

A first of its kind campaign in the home building industry, “Start Fresh. Buy New.” was launched in the spring of 2013 and already thousands of home shoppers each day are responding positively to the advertising and are engaging with the interactive website, StartFreshBuyNew.com. The campaign highlights the numerous advantages of buying a new construction vs. a “used” (i.e. existing) home. StartFreshBuyNew.com includes educational facts, useful features such as a Cost Savings Calculator as well as intriguing diagrams on how energy efficient appliances and features operate. BDX is promoting the site through over 37 million advertisement impressions each week and reaching nearly 50% of new home shoppers. With over 50,000 weekly visits to the “Start Fresh. Buy New.” website, potential home buyers are now equipped with the knowledge of what attributes really make a new home more desirable than a used one. (Click here for more background information about the new campaign.)

While the site is informative and has already been nominated for design awards, “Start Fresh. Buy New.” also boasts some impressive results which prove visitor interest in new homes. The campaign is driving over 10,000 visits per month to NewHomeSource.com, a site that connects new home buyers with builders. In fact, new home searchers who spend time on the “Start Fresh. Buy New.” site are converting to leads on NewHomeSource.com at a rate of 40% higher than the site’s average visitor. With research predicting the demand for new homes to grow to nearly 1.2 million each year, the market is clearly rebounding and will benefit from this focus on new home buyer education.

“Start Fresh. Buy New” has also connected with Pinterest users to drive awareness of the perks of owning a new home. Pinterest users had the opportunity to win a grand prize by creating a board of their favorite pins from NewHomeSource.com as well as answering a few trivia questions. With nearly 4,000 followers of NewHomeSource.com on Pinterest, the sweepstakes was a hit with over 2,300 Pinboards created to promote new homes. In fact, just last week the grand prize of $10,000 was awarded to a young mother in Chicago, Illinois. (See the “Start Fresh. Buy New.” Facebook page for more on the story.)

The “Start Fresh. Buy New.” Pinterest page isn’t the only social media site getting attention from buyers either. The campaign’s Facebook page and Twitter account have also grown into platforms for buyers to connect with builder professionals and other buyers to speak about their experiences with their own new homes. (Wanna get social with “Start Fresh. Buy New.”? Follow our Twitter account for daily new home buying tips and inspirational home designs.)

The campaign has also gained national coverage and attention from over 360 publications including spotlights in The New York Times, The Austin Business Journal, The Financial Times and Builder Online.

 So what’s next? Following the success of our previous study last summer, we are currently gearing up to start our annual Home Buyer Insight Study which is going to expand beyond our original 25 markets. This year we will add Portland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Columbus and San Francisco to the study. So stay tuned! We will keep you posted on the results of this research and the progress of the campaign.

If you are a builder and want to get involved in the campaign, we have created a Builder Toolkit exclusively for BDX clients to leverage the campaign marketing resources and research. This toolkit can be found within BDXLive, our client portal. If you’re not a BDX client and are interested in finding out how we can help your business succeed, email us to learn more.

By Jamie Lintner, Advertising Accounts Manager, BDX 

Only a few months ago, Facebook unveiled its advertising solution that would allow global markets to bid in real time for placements across the single largest source of inventory on the web, the online Facebook Exchange (FBX).  Our BeBack Advertisers have already started leveraging this platform and performance of these ads has been excellent, typically over 100% greater than that of traditional Facebook market place ads. What’s more impressive than the Click-thru rate (CTR) is the significant backend conversion.  We’re seeing some of the lowest bounces and greatest time on site with FBX retargeting than with other channels and a significant lift compared to direct Facebook marketplace ads.

In the past two weeks, the Facebook Exchange began beta testing its most recent advertising innovation, running retargeted ads across users’ Facebook News Feed.  For the first time ever this update will assure advertisers that not only will their messages retarget a user, but the message itself will actively be seen several times a day in a location that users can’t and won’t ignore.

Today’s Facebook market place ads have strict limits on image size and character count and only allow 25 characters for a headline and 90 characters for the body of the ad to drive users back to your site. With News Feed ads, the character count within the body jumps from 90 characters to 500, and there is additional space to link back to your site alongside the image as well as within the body itself.  The image size is about the same, but the image will now be located in the news feed that a user checks dozens of times per day; this makes me think that performance will jump exponentially. Early findings from Facebook reveal Retargeted News Feed ads garner 20-40x higher CTR than typical FBX ads. Even if these metrics don’t hold at these astronomical levels, News Feed ads can and might be a game-changer.

BDX is currently testing the new format to ensure it delivers all the hype and if successful, will begin integrating existing BeBack advertisers into the new format. As always, our goal is to help our clients stay abreast of new product updates and to ensure we’re delivering value. More details on our findings to come.  Stay tuned!

Jamie Lintner is the BDX Advertising Accounts Manager and is responsible for monitoring all campaigns through BDX advertising channels.