Industry Trends

By BDX Guest Blogger, Carol Morgan, mRELEVANCE

Last month, LinkedIn reached the 200 million members worldwide milestone. This comes as no surprise since the online professional networking site has plenty to offer for those of any status in the work force, from recent college graduates to seasoned business professionals.

One of the newest, and most useful, features of LinkedIn is the endorsement sections. This section is easier to use than the lengthy testimonials section and because of this has become quite popular. Endorsements allow professionals to validate and recognize the skills and expertise their peers have added to their profile. Reward your business partners and coworkers for their mastery of a skill by giving them recognition through an endorsement. This feature is the perfect opportunity to do so without having to write out a full recommendation.

Here’s a quick overview of how to endorse your peers:

  • At the top of a connection’s profile, you’ll see recommended endorsements, simply click on the skills you want to endorse them for
  • In addition, you can suggest additional skills
  • Endorsements can also be made in the new Skills & Expertise section

If you’ve been endorsed, you will receive a notification from LinkedIn both by email and when you log into the site. You can view who has endorsed you for each skill by viewing your own Skills & Expertise section, where you can also accept any new skills recommended by your colleagues or include additional skills.

While the new endorsements section is great for recognizing other’s achievements and expertise, it does raise a few questions when it comes to business etiquette.

  • If someone endorses me, do I have to endorse them? Endorsing someone isn’t time consuming, and it’s always good to return positive favors!
  • What if someone endorses me, but I don’t want others to see it? Simply click on their face next to the skill they have endorsed you for. Then, you’ll be able to select the hide endorsement button.
  • Is endorsing someone even worth my time? On the whole, I wouldn’t suggest going on an endorsing spree, but if your peer has done exceptionally well at something or if you know they are looking for a new job in a specific field, endorsing them could potentially help them out.

For more tips and tricks when it comes to social media and business etiquette online, be sure to visit www.MarketingRELEVANCE.com.

How can a business accurately quantify the effect that their efforts have on consumer awareness? In most cases you simply hope that all of the dollars you spend on marketing and advertising show tangible effects on sales or on some other meaningful call to action. However, through our Retargeting efforts, we can accurately pinpoint how much more valuable a consumer is that has shopped your site and seen your products versus someone who has never run across your business. The results can sometimes be startling.

Several months ago we began a campaign dedicated to serving banner ads on general real estate sites with the goal to drive traffic for our builders and convert home shoppers into new home shoppers.  The results were fair, with click thru rates marginally above the industry average (.20%, or 2 clicks/1,000 impressions).

However, as the campaign progressed and we became more in tune with the ins and outs of Retargeting, we came across something interesting. Simply sending banner ads to websites that may be in your line of business may drive large volume in terms of impressions, but it may not be the best way to go about things. The real value comes when your banners follow those consumers who have shopped your site and THEN go to visit other sites.

For example, our real estate campaign received an impressive amount of volume from Homes.com, but we saw low performance in terms of click-through’s and consumer action.  The click-through rate hovered around a .10% and did not merit additional dollars towards this website. However, when we had users who had already shopped our site and were then retargeted on Homes.com, we saw an incredible lift in performance. In the month of October, our Retargeted users are more than 10 times more likely to click one of our banners than a new consumer would on the same website. We saw an even more extreme example on Hotpads.com, a highly valued partner in our Vertical Ad Network. Historically our campaign dedicated to getting new traffic on this site averaged a .20CTR. In the month of October, our pool of Retargeted users is averaging a 2.79CTR. 10X that of our regular campaign and 27 times the industry average!

From all of this, we can deduce that while a traditional campaign dedicated to new users certainly has merit, performance will not be as strong as it could be when targeted to pre-existing users. It’s obvious that in the world of online banner ads, there’s no better resource for your business than the people who have already shopped your site and are familiar with your product and brand.

Jaime Lintner, BDX Ad Ops Assistant, helps manages over 30 million ad impressions per month across a network of real estate websites for hundreds of homebuilders. For more information about advertising on the BDX websites and our network of affiliates, email info@thebdx or contact your local sales rep.

If you’ve been following any of the news in online advertising, you’ll see that Google has been making an aggressive push to further its display advertising business. Already recognized as leader in organic and paid search advertising Google’s next frontier is display.

Display ads allow for the pull strategy of Internet marketing but have the same benefits of traditional advertising. i.e. I was exposed to a billboard and now that brand is top of mind for future purchase or action. In online marketing that’s referred to as View Thru, and there is a tremendous amount of evidence to show that it has a positive effect on a consumer’s search and purchasing behavior.

A report we reference often is from ComScore which shows an increase in branded keyword search and direct traffic to websites from advertisers who use display ads even though a consumer may not have clicked on the banner. i.e. I saw an online banner for a builder, didn’t click but later went Google and typed in that specific builder’s name, not just a ‘general’ search term. On, NewHomeSource we’ve also seen a lift in lead conversion from builders who advertiser with banner ads reinforcing ComScore’s findings.

With Google seeing significant value and opportunity in the space, shouldn’t you? Or maybe this whole online thing is still a fad.

For more information about launching your builder Online Advertising campaign contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager for the BDX.

Thane Tennison
Ad Operations Manager
“Harnessing the Power of Collaboration”

11900 Ranch Road 620 North
Austin, TX 78750
Direct: 512-651-8903
Cell: 512-787-7083
Email: ttennison@builderhomesite.com <mailto:ttennison@builderhomesite.com>

www.thebdx.com

newhomesource.com

newhomes.move.com

By Tim Costello, CEO, BDX

Newhomesource.com has been collecting and analyzing online home buyer traffic and trends for over a decade. As has been the case in housing for as long as anyone can remember, January is the start to the online home buying season. January’s results can be used as a reasonable surrogate for the coming year’s home sales and consumer traffic.

In comparing online search traffic for both new and used homes, this January NewHome Source has estimated that there are 20-25% fewer consumers searching for homes this year than in 2010. While at first that seems like a fifth year of bad news, we must remember that last year’s January traffic was inflated by government incentives. Once those incentives disappeared in April of 2010 traffic consumer interest sank and we all know how the year ended.

This year’s numbers are not influenced by unnatural government intervention, so one would expect consumer traffic to behave in a more traditional seasonal pattern. If this holds true, we should expect improving year over year comparisons starting this April. So while we all wish there were more consumers confident of their economic situation and looking for new homes, it might actually not all be bad news. While 2011 may be starting out slow, it may also finish with a comparative bang providing the industry with its first real growth in many years.

Tim Costello is currently President and Chief Executive Officer of BDX, Inc., and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Builder Homesite, Inc. You can follow Tim on twitter: @bylinetim for his insights on the homebuilding industry.

BDX is excited to announce that we are now the exclusive provider of new home listings for HomeJunction’s SpatialMatch.com, the first real estate search platform to fully enable geospatial map-based search. Now home buyers using SpatialMatch’s neighborhood and lifestyle search technology to find homes in areas that ‘fit’ their lifestyle needs will also have access to thousands of new home community listings through the extensive BDX network.

“We are very excited to add this national footprint of high quality new construction listings from BDX,” said John Perkins, chief executive officer of Home Junction, Inc., creators of SpatialMatch™. “Giving home buyers access to the new construction data and listings from BDX on SpatialMatch allows for a better user experience and a more effective team approach between resale agents and new home builders”.

The alliance also allows BDX to provide another distribution outlet for builders interested in reaching new home shoppers online, and is part of a larger BDX effort designed to help builders “List Once and Be Everywhere”. In addition to hundreds of partner sites, the BDX network includes NewHomeSource and Move New Homes, the number one and number two new home websites*. Collectively, the BDX network reaches over 40 million potential new home buyers each month.