Advertising

By Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager, BDX

At BDX,  we strive to be pragmatic and let the data dictate the story. It’s exciting when you can double the ad performance of your clients and fundamentally change the way they think about online marketing.  That’s all we’ve ever tried to do – maximize performance.

Today the market is booming; builders are short on land and big on breaking ground. We launched new Grand Opening Packages earlier this year to help builders maximize their reach and create consideration for communities with little maturity and no brand equity. Many builders are seizing upon the boom, launching new online programs and really establishing an online presence in the marketplace.

Amazingly, others consider this increased activity as a hindrance to business. “We have too many leads!” “We have too much business! I don’t really need marketing anymore.” It’s an interesting dilemma. Advertising should drive sales, but if I’m hitting my sales goals do I need to advertise?

Does the lead car, set the cruise and enjoy the ride? No, work and forethought are required for market position. It’s easy to forget that while business is good everyone is doing just as good.  Now is the time to create consideration for search and give consumers a reason to shop your homes. Over 40% of consumers shopping any given market are relocating from outside areas. These consumers have little familiarity with local home builders and short sited savings can lead to long-term losses. Consider the buying cycle for new homes ranges from 9 – 12 months; many consumers shopping today will be buying after the market begins to cool.

We work with many builders who chose to create a strong online presence during the downturn and are now seeing the fruits of their labor. If you’d like more information about how builders are improving their web traffic through display advertising contact us at info@thebdx.com.

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.

By Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager, BDX

One of the greatest benefits of online advertising is the ability to track performance and make data driven decisions.  As a marketer these data points allow you to qualify performance, optimize spend and manage ROI.  However, without the proper tracking elements in place before you begin, it can be much harder to understand which advertising channels are driving the greatest value.

There are lots of software solutions to help online marketing managers track and analyze performance including Omniture, Webtrends, and Google Analytics; most of the builders we work with have Google Analytics installed.  The service is free and automatically integrates with other Google services such as paid search.  Google UTM Tracking Codes allow marketers the ability to track activity from third party sites like listings on NewHomeSource or a banner campaign. Tracking URLs are quick and easy to set up and can provide a wealth of information regarding performance of listings, banners, emails and more. At BDX, we’re a strong advocate of implementing tracking not only to help our clients highlight performance, but also to help us improve our products and services.  

The following is how you can implement tracking codes and keep them organized.

I recommend keeping a consistent naming convention. This will pay dividends when you want to look at performance over a long period of time or when comparing two different channels.  Google’s UTM codes are case sensitive so “BDX_listings” and “bdx_listings” can appear as two separate line items and distort actual performance.  A consistent naming convention will also help keep things organized. Having some campaigns labeled “Banners” and others “Display” will create a lot of extra work when reviewing performance.

WHAT TO TRACK:

Campaign Source:  Where are you receiving your traffic? For builders this could be from BDX, Realtor.com, NHSPro, Zip Realty, Trulia, Zillow etc.  Keeping the source consistent will also help you understand the services you have with each product. For example, if you have listings with BDX as well as a banner campaign you’d want keep the source for both as “BDX.”

Campaign Medium:  The medium is the type of service.  Listings, banner, email are the most common mediums used by builders.  By consolidating into these three buckets it’s easy to compare performance of all your banner campaigns or traffic from all or your listing services.

Campaign Name:  The third level of segmentation helps you differentiate creative and offers. If you’re running the same art across multiple networks this field should be the same for each network.  Many builders who advertise across multiple markets will identify the market here. It makes for any easy filter when you want to compare performance for a particular division.

Campaign Content: If you’re doing A/B testing between offers or have multiple links from the same source you could use the content filter to drill into performance for each link. For example, if you wanted to differentiate incoming traffic from Realtor.com listings vs. the Realtor.com Ryder Sign, you could differentiate using the “content” field.  For advertisers who want to review ad performance by size I’d also recommend this field.

As a marketing manager, you’ll need as much information as possible to manage and optimize performance and I would recommend adding UTM tracking to every link and paid media source.  However, starting with a plan and maintaining a clear naming convention will make it easier to review performance year over year and allow for greater and easier segmentation.                                                                                                     

Below is an example of how I would set up some common links used at BDX.

 

With tracking codes in place, you will be better equipped to make the smart decisions and optimize for a better ROI.  For example, you might find that you’re getting a great rate and a lot of traffic from one advertising vendor but the traffic tends to have a high bounce rate and those consumers don’t convert into home sales while other more expensive channels drive more value and therefore may have a better return.  You may decide you want to test a new marketing initiative and need an established benchmark to gauge success and justify the program.

  If you have questions about setting up tracking links or creating campaign goals in Google Analytics please feel free to contact me.

Thane Tennison is the Advertising Manager for the BDX and manages hundreds of home builder brands across a network of over a dozen real estate websites.

 

 

 

 

By Ryan Folgate, BDX Advertising Coordinator 

NewHomeSourceProfessional.com is the BDX website for real estate professionals to attain all the information they need to find data on new communities in their market. Data not often available on the MLS can be found on the site as well as the physical New Home Source Professional (NHS Pro) printed map. 

The map was designed to offer customers and clients of NHS Pro, as a physical supplement to the website. The map has the same inventory on a per market basis as the website. It contains school districts, tax and community information, builder contact information and pricing. All of these tools have been designed specifically for agents to meet the needs of their clients.

The NHS Pro Map is now offered in eight markets and printed twice a year. These markets include: Atlanta, Phoenix, Washington D.C, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and Tampa. By producing a single market map twice a year, NHS Pro provides the most reliable and up-to-date listing information. Think of it as a physical MLS that you can fit in your glove box.

In addition to the listings and community information, the NHS Pro Map gives builders, MLS’, home builders associations (HBA), and any organization involved in the new home process, an opportunity to advertise and promote their communities. Many builders run both print and digital ads on New Home Source to not only persuade the reader to purchase a product or service but to support a lifestyle change. Maybe that means buying a home that is Green and good for the environment. Maybe it means buying a home in a development with a good school and parks for your children. Either way, builders want to connect with the reader on an emotional basis. This encourages the consumer to see the product or service offered as allowing them to achieve that desired lifestyle change.

The map ad can be very beneficial and valuable for any company competing for market share. In markets that have many big national builders with big national budgets, advertising on the map gives local builders an affordable option to market themselves.  This also gives new builders, who have not established themselves in a market, an opportunity to promote their brand to a specific audience. Small and large companies alike can expect their messages to be delivered directly to the hands of their target client. BDX works closely with local MLS offices and HBA’s to ensure that these maps are positioned for the best possible reception.   

For more information on advertising to local agents and builders with New Home Source Professional, contact your local sales rep or email info@thebdx.com.

Ryan Folgate is the Advertising Coordinator for the Builders Digital Experience and manages both traditional and digital advertising for the BDX and affiliate channels.

 

By Jamie Lintner, Advertising Accounts Manager, BDX

In the advertising industry there are two main tiers or “dimensions” that quantify advertising campaign performance. The first is the most basic and simply measures engagement with your content.  With this metric you put all of your eggs into the baskets that presumably provide the best Return On Investment (ROI), but it doesn’t tell the complete story as to how effective those clicks are. Click totals do not provide you with insight on what actions the users actually took once on-site. For example, you could run a campaign that has an incredibly high click thru rate that simultaneously has a high bounce rate, meaning your campaign generated little meaningful actions. The most sophisticated builders also look at actions to determine best performing campaigns.  This can be done by syncing up the click thru URL’s of your ads with your Google Analytics.

Executive Summary 

    

        
Advertiser Impressions* Clicks CTR Report Start Report End
BDX_Banner Ads

3,711,856

7,283

0.20%

 12/1/2012 3/31/2013

Google Analytics is a free tool that everyone has in some capacity, but not everyone actually fully utilizes. For advertising purposes, it allows you to see ad performance in a broader, two-dimensional scope. Not only can you see which sites and/or creative generated the most click traffic, but you can also parse out which ones resulted in strong site-activities like direct leads. Conversely it also allows you to see which channels have a high bounce rate. Thankfully this integration is actually quite simple and painless to use. All you need to do is append each click thru URL with a separate code that can be generated on the spot. This can be done at sites like this (http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1033867). Simply type in your domain name that would be used for the click thru, and then attach it with whatever identifiers you’d like to use to differentiate the ads. See the below example of a URL that has been appended. Once this is in place, I can query by source in my analytics for “BDX”, by medium for “banner”, or by campaign and am able to see how long the users that clicked on this particular ad stayed on site, how many pages they viewed, etc., and then compare them to campaigns running against similar channels.

Example of an Appended Link: http://www.testlink.com/?utm_source=BDX&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=CampaignA

 At BDX, we’ve recently unlocked a third dimension to quantify advertising performance for any type of ad placement. Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool when used to gauge performance of users that physically clicked an ad, however that leaves out any sort of reporting on the large percentage of users that DIDN’T physically click the ad. With our new PETRA tool, not only can we calculate how many people clicked on an ad or how many of those clicks resulted in leads and strong back-end activity, but also how many leads were generated by users who didn’t actually click. Traditionally view thru reporting is something that is calculated only for Retargeting campaigns, but PETRA allows us to sync up with all campaigns regardless of where the ads run. Quite literally, the sky is the limit as to how detailed this reporting can get. In the system we can name any event that we’d like to track for any particular site, i.e. Got to the Site, Filled out a Brochure, Converted to a lead, etc., and then track all actions taken by everyone that came into contact with an ad in some capacity. This is truly the definitive way to compare performance because it allows advertisers to measure a true cost per lead for any and all advertising channels.

Conversion Process Name Event Name Uniques Post Imp Post Click Total
Events Events Events
BDX  Conversions Search Result Page Landing 5,722 12,868 1,939 14,807
  Home Detail Page Landing 4,539 13,554 453 14,007
  Thank You Page Form 269 541 26 567

BDX advertising typically provides great value for builders, but there is still opportunity in optimizing these campaigns for the best possible ROI.  Want to get more from everyone advertising dollar you spend?  Talk to us, we can help.  For more information on advertising or integrating your existing ad campaigns with our PETRA reporting, please contact traffic@thebdx.com.

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