Privacy Policy For Home BuildersAs the BDX continues to expand its advertising solutions we’ve noticed many builders do not have a privacy policy clearly accessible on their website. This is an important if not often overlooked feature for a professional website.

The privacy policy serves as a disclosure, informing consumers of what data can be collected as they visit the website. If your website is designed to capture first party information such as a name, email, address, and/or any financial information it definitely needs a privacy policy that outlines how that data is captured and what is done with it.

Sites that use third party tracking data or vendors such as Google Analytics, Google AdSense, BDX BeBack or CRM solutions also need to have a privacy policy accessible on every page.

How California’s Privacy Laws Affect Your Business– No Matter What State You Are In

The state of California’s laws around privacy policies applies to any website that collects data about Californian residents. The act has a very broad scope, well beyond California’s border. Neither the web server nor the company that created the web site has to be in California to be under the scope of the law. The web site only has to be accessible by California residents. This means that if you build in Florida but have traffic from consumers in California your website needs to adhere to those laws regarding privacy and disclosure.

Fortunately there are several tools and templates available for companies to use to develop their own privacy policy. Your web developer should also be able to help with language and include a privacy policy as a standard part of their operation.

To review privacy policy templates click:  https://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/

Builder Advertising on FacebookIn 2011 Facebook became the largest Ad Network of all publishers representing almost 1/3 of display inventory.  Historically, I’ve not been too thrilled with Facebook performance. It’s had a reputation for high bot traffic, low clicks and relatively poor backend conversion.  I’m also convinced that to be successful with Facebook an advertiser needs a series of creative offerings since the high-frequency can result in ads getting stale quickly and losing their initial performance.

However, through some recent updates we can now retarget BDX new home shoppers in the Facebook marketplace ad position.  I was skeptical at first, but with the success of retargeting it was definitely worth a test and I’ve been quite pleased with initial results.

We started the initial test running a ‘generic’ ad driving people back to NHS.  We then rolled out a series of Market Specific ads leveraging our creative best practices. Since then Facebook Retargeting is one of our strongest advertising channels in terms of total conversion and bounce rate is in line with what we’ve seen with other retargeting ads.  That’s a big win.

What I think is most exciting is that our participating BeBack advertisers can also take advantage of this opportunity.  We’re extending Facebook retargeting as part of the BeBack offering at no additional cost for our builders.  Now, a builder truly can reach their users ‘everywhere’ and at the same rate as their previous campaign.

In addition to increased reach and improved conversion this is a big opportunity for builders to leverage the social aspect of Facebook.   Imagine retargeting a consumer who’s visited your website with an ad on Facebook and asking them to ‘fan’ your brand or to share ‘the home of their dreams’ or get their friends opinion on one plan vs. another.  Their truly is a whole litany of marketing strategies that can be applied to BeBack –  especially when incorporating a social component.

For more information about BDX BeBack retargeting or how to integrate Facebook Ads with your existing BeBack campaign contact your local sales rep or email info@thebdx.com.

Thane Tennison is Advertising Manager for the Builders Digital Experience and manages advertising for hundreds of homebuilding brands across a network of over a dozen real estate websites.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen it yet, but Realtor.com is launching a new redesign of the Search Result pages.  Currently the site is only in beta with plans for a full launch later this week.  The Realtor.com Product Team has adjusted the layout to improve navigation and help consumers better manage the thousands of homes available via the MLS.

With the redesign they’ve also changed the layout to include a 300×250 ad position at the top of the page.  When I first saw this position I thought ‘this is the perfect place for video.’  The 300×250 ad position closely mirrors that of the 3:4 formats you’d see with traditional TVs.  The above the fold placement and proximity to content further peaked my interest.

I’m a fan of video ads because it’s captivating. And, when reaching a consumer who’s in the market video can help them picture the home they’re looking for and make them aware of amenities they may not have considered.

We often espouse the benefits of how display provides ‘consideration for search’ but video takes it to the next level by allowing advertisers to highlight multiple features.  Consider pans across home plans, green spaces and community amenities.  With an ad like this, I’ve changed the search from looking for a home to looking for a neighborhood or a lifestyle.

Moving beyond the value of ‘just a home’ is important for builders and developers as they try to differentiate their product from the re-sale market. Online video ads are an easy and cost effective way to achieve this goal – especially if the materials are already produced.

Brad Smith, our Director of Video production has done a great blog series on video best practices. When translating video to an ad there are a few best practices I’d encourage.

  1. The video should tell your story WITHOUT SOUND. A lot of publishers have restrictions on video ads to improve the user experience.  Can you imagine shopping for homes while a work only to be interrupted by a loud video ad popping up?  The video should work independent of sound and the VO should highlight new points.  Considered graphics to capture key elements.
  2. Maintain a consistent Call-To-Action.  I like using space at the bottom of the ad to provide a consistent CTA for my home shoppers.   Consumers should clearly know what action you want them to take and that maybe before the video ends.  On average consumers only watch about 50% of a video so having a consistent on-screen call to action is important.
  3. Keep your video ads short. The goal of the ad is to captivate and drive action. If you have a long format video you’re looking to drive traffic to consider a teaser video ad that directs the consumer to the full length video.  Keeping videos short also improves the load time for the ad and ensures that consumers will see your message instead moving onto the next page while it waits to load.

If you’ve run video ads in the past I’d be curious to learn about your experience and what worked and what didn’t. If you’ve not considered running video ads or would like more information about how to repurpose your existing videos for online marketing contact The BDX for more details.

For more information about this blog post or BDX Video ads, contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager or contact your local Representative.

Banner Ad Retargeting —  it’s the hottest buzz word for online marketers and a growing trend amongst many players in the online space, but what exactly is it and how does it work?

Imagine spending your marketing dollars by only getting in front of people who have some knowledge of your brand. Banner Ad Retargeting does just that. Simply put, it allows you to concentrate and maximize all of your efforts on your current pool of consumers. This process is quick and painless, involving only one short line of code on your website. When a user visits your site, that single line of code drops a cookie onto the user’s computer which triggers an alert for the Retargeting campaign to activate. Once they begin visiting other websites, your banner ads will follow them across the internet, serving as constant reinforcement for your brand and a means for them to return to your site. For the building industry,  BDX has created the builder BeBack program solely meant to retarget YOUR traffic in order to increase lead conversion for your home-properties.

“Just how many websites will our Retargeting campaign run on?”

This is the single most common question I receive from our clients regarding BeBack. My answer to this question is remarkably simple: “How big is the Internet?” Without fail, the follow up question is, “and just how can I be sure that my banners will hit our users on relevant sites?” The answer to this question is just as simple. We will only retarget users on sites that they themselves visit, so in a way, users are ONLY shown banners on sites that are relevant to their interests and lifestyle. What’s fascinating is that by filtering through the thousands of domains where our ads have run I’ve noticed that the interest of one user is typically very similar to all of the others. By doing this it’s easy to paint a very robust picture of the online foot-print a typical home-shopper leaves across cyberspace.

For our own marketing efforts, NewHome Source.com runs several hundreds of thousands of impressions each month across a little more than 26,000 unique domains. Many of these impressions appear on major, nationally recognized websites like careerbuilder.com, toysrus.com, homes.com, facebook.com, eonline.com, petfinder.com, Zillow.com, and webMD.com. By looking at just these domain names I can almost see this person in my head. I can tell that our he/she is more than likely female, late 20’s to mid 30’s, has young children, and is very career driven. For our builders, can you imagine a more qualified home-shopper that you’d like to reach?

Filtering through these domains has given us additional insight into not only who the shopper is, but where they’re shopping and how often. For the last two months, roughly 25% of all of our view thru conversions have come as a result of banners located on other real-estate sites. This tells me two things. First, consumers in this phase of the purchasing process are shopping multiple websites; gathering data and considering all of their options. For advertisers, having a broad reach across these sites is essential to stay top of mind and drive awareness. This is one of the main reasons we launched the Builder Vertical Ad Network – to help builders maximize reach though a single point of contact with guaranteed results.

Second, advertisers should consider looking beyond just real estate websites when reaching their customers. If they didn’t, advertisers run the risk of ignoring potentially all conversion traffic from other sites (75% in our case). That’s the benefit of Be Back; it allows marketers to target the audience and not the website. This allows for a more efficient media spend while reaching your most valuable prospects especially as their online search takes them through sites ranging in scope from small builder websites to massive real estate search engines.

Below are a few interesting websites where you probably wouldn’t do a direct media buy, but have resulted in a click to lead conversion with BeBack. What’s even more interesting is that many times the ad will redirect to an area that has nothing to do with the market from which they shopped. For example the conversion off of OhioRunner.com came from a Philadelphia banner, meaning that consumer was likely looking for a home in Pennsylvania while still living in Ohio.

           

 

 

 

 

For more information about this blog post or BDX BeBack retargeting, contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager or contact your local  Representative.

If you’ve done any type of online display advertising you’ve probably heard quite a bit about view thru and attribution beyond the click. TV, Radio, and billboards have all based their success on some level of view thru. Meaning, because a consumer was exposed to your ad, your message is top-of mind and they are more likely to take action. And it’s true, advertising does work. I’ve seen it over and over again.

However, when dealing with the online space simply being ‘top-of mind’ is not enough.  It’s easy to see that exposure and visibility have value but this can be difficult to quantify with real metrics. The real value comes in the breadth of analytics and measurement that are available to you, including tracking click activity and justifying ROI.   These forms of measurement allow you to track consumer engagement and optimize accordingly.

With more sophisticated ad tracking software, advertisers now have the ability to monitor View Thru and attribute value. A View Thru measure is made when a cookie is dropped on a consumer’s computer after being exposed to an ad. The cookie correlates with a corresponding cookie on the advertiser’s website and typically a ‘thank you’ page after conversion. By comparing the interaction between the two cookies, advertisers can now attribute exposure and measure activity beyond the click.

For a marketer the results can be fascinating, but I’d caution that they can also be misleading.  Over the past several years we’ve worked with several ad networks who espouse the overwhelming benefits of view thru and it’s easy to see why.  On average I’d say you could attribute a 5-10X lift in lead conversion from view thru compared to a traditional click.  Who wouldn’t be excited about going from $100/lead to $10?

However, it’s important to consider other factors when gauging success. For example, is simply seeing the ad what drove the user back, or would they probably have returned anyway?  Measuring lift in repeat traffic would be a better indicator of View Thru than just ‘exposure’.

We’ve also seen about 40% of the View Thru attribution occur the same day as the last impression served. That’s a strong argument for View Thru especially when the consumer had the ability to click the ad just moments before. To me, this is one of the most compelling cases for view thru but when I look deeper and consider the frequency of actual banner impressions served I become more skeptical. I find my reporting will attribute View Thru conversion to users that were exposed to 1-2 ads. I would never gauge success from one TV spot, so why would I do it with a banner?  In order to truly be top of mind with a consumer, the frequency of an ad needs to be much higher to truly leave a lasting ‘impression’.

We continue to test the value of View Thru but I haven’t found a formula that will satisfy my skepticism. We’re currently conducting an A-B test in select markets to gauge incremental lift and are adjusting flight terms to measure effects on View Thru and other attributions. More details on those findings to come.

If you’ve struggled to attribute value to View Thru I’d love to hear more about your findings and methodologies. I’m also curious to see what value you place on those conversions attributed to ‘View Thru’.

For more information about this blog post or display advertising with BDX, contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager or contact your local Sales Representative.

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