builder Success

From Mike Blake, The Blake Group

I met a potential home purchaser just inside my model home door.  We exchange pleasantries and I proceeded to walk and talk them through a model home demonstration.  I knew they walked into my model home that day because I controlled the area, community, company and plan information they needed to buy a home.

Their desire for research information and my need for their buying criteria created a win-win relationship.  The point is I controlled the sales process because I controlled the information.

As I provided more information they disclosed more of their buying criteria essentially moving them down the critical path sales processes.

That was 2003, now fast forward to 2013.  Almost 96% of potential customers look online before making contact with a realtor or builder salesperson.  According to a PEW study 57% use online research to narrow down their buying criteria.

Why is this significant?

We as sellers no longer have exclusive control of the information buyers need to research for a home solution.  In fact, the Internet has created a situation that I call – Information Equilibrium.

Buyers are responding to greater access to information by collecting information, prioritizing needs and wants, investigating solutions and refining solutions before making contact with a builder representative.  Essentially they use the Internet to gain more control of the buying process.

So what’s the solution?

  • As marketing people we need to understand what potential purchasers are looking for online.
  • We need to develop marketing strategies that capture the interest of potential purchasers during their online research phase.
  • We need to more effectively engage and create dialogue with potential purchasers before they narrow their buying criteria.
  • Salespeople need to discover and understand what information the purchaser has collected and its relevance.
  • Salespeople will be more effective if they quickly discover what stage in the buying process the customer has reached.
  • The above discovery process will insure that the sales process is positioned to address the buying criteria of the purchaser.

Buyer’s access to information is not a passing phenomenon.  If fact, access to information found on the web will likely be more influential as new generations enter into the market place.  Except in a high demand housing market consumer’s access to information will lengthen the buying cycle.  This will place greater emphasis on developing long-term communication activities that create or maintain a dialogue.

Essentially we need to become as prospect focused as we are customer focused.

In an exciting development for builders, agents and especially consumers who are pursuing the dream of home ownership, realtor.com®, the most engaging real estate website, is now featuring new home community listings from BDX. This is a fantastic opportunity for BDX clients to receive even more exposure to an audience of over 18 million every month*. Including new construction communities on a site like realtor.com®,  gives home buyers a complete and accurate picture of the available home options in their area.

Realtor.com® is already a trusted real estate resource with a dedicated audience spending nearly 29 minutes on the site and viewing over 25 pages*. BDX new home communities have spotlight sections in 3 main areas. These include:

  • The main search page right alongside resale homes
  • New plans will be displayed on area maps alongside other listings
  • Dedicated New Construction tabs where buyers can search by community and home plan/spec

 You will receive direct leads from your listings on realtor.com® as well as reporting through BDXLive on search views, detail page views, driving direction views, click-throughs to your website, and more. The ability to market new homes alongside pre-owned homes allows builders to gain more market share and cater to the 20% of homebuyers who enter the home shopping experience with a preference for new construction.

In the words of our own CEO, Tim Costello, “This is a watershed moment for the building industry, the builders who list all their communities with BDX, and especially buyers who are pursuing their dream of home ownership.”

If you haven’t already listed your new home communities with BDX, now is the time to do so! Increase your visibility, traffic and sales with one simple decision. We believe that in order to create the best search experience for consumers, we need to provide the most complete and accurate new home data. That is why in the coming months we will unveil additional advantages you will receive as a result of listing all of your communities with BDX. Don’t wait; schedule some time to talk with your BDX Digital Marketing Consultant today!

To learn more about this exciting opportunity and how it will benefit you, read more here and please register today for our webinar on August 29th.

*comScore: Quarterly average for desktop & mobile of Q2 for 2013 for realtor.com®

In order to connect with today’s home buyer, it is important to always keep your website and marketing materials up to date with the latest information and facts. But where do you find fresh and engaging content? Many builders are turning to our “Start Fresh. Buy New.” initiative and taking advantage of the campaign’s resources.

In case you haven’t heard, this year, BDX launched an initiative to promote new home advantages. The “Start Fresh. Buy New.” campaign is designed to educate and inspire home shoppers and encourage them to consider purchasing a new home (read more here). The campaign centers around the website: www.startfreshbuynew.com.

Including “Start Fresh. Buy New.” messages in your marketing can keep your buyers engaged and coming back for more. Here are some ways you can use “Start Fresh. Buy New.” in your next marketing campaign:

  • Include a new home statistic in your weekly/monthly newsletters. The “Start Fresh. Buy New.” site is packed with useful information, so you will have plenty to choose from!
  • Feature a link to the “Start Fresh. Buy New.” site on your homepage—it will not only drive the benefits of a new home, but also shows your commitment to your buyers to arm them with the most powerful information. Logos and other graphic elements are available in the Builder Toolkit that is available to all BDX clients from within our BDXLive client portal.
  • Connect with “Start Fresh. Buy New.” through your social media, and comment too! “Start Fresh. Buy New.” is an active participant in the social scene and frequently posts compelling content for you to share with your own followers. Click here for our facebook page to get started.
  • Download the “Start Fresh. Buy New.” videos via the BDX client Builder Toolkit and have them playing on a loop in your model home lobby. The videos are informative, humorous and most of all eye opening as they act as a great ice breaker for dialogue.
  • Implement a scavenger hunt game through your social media with incentives—featuring questions involving the real cost of a “used” home versus a new one; and have them search the “Start Fresh. Buy New.” site for the answers!

Nothing makes us happier than seeing these positive new home messages spread throughout your newsletters, websites and sales centers. How are you leveraging “Start Fresh. Buy New.”? Email us and let us know how you are using the Start Fresh. Buy New. campaign in your marketing — we can’t wait to hear from you.

If you are a builder and want to get involved in the campaign, your best resource is our Builder Toolkit created 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.

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.