Builder Success

Hear it straight from the builder’s themselves – who’s having success and why.

Chances are, you might have some pretty basic, black and white renderings of your floor plans and elevations. But is that truly enough to display your stunning home designs? Today’s home buyers crave new technology and shopping experiences; and according to a  Bokka Group study, about 85% of home buyers today say that high quality renderings and photo galleries are influential in their purchase decisions. We’ve come a long way in the art of home renderings and they are almost unrecognizable compared to their predecessors.  Check out some examples of how far the building industry has come below!

   Rendering Circa 1975

                                     Today’s BDX Photo-Real Rendering

Renderings are often the first impression a buyer will see from your homes and we’ve made setting the buying mood simple. In addition to standard color renderings, you can add a third dimension like watercolor effects or choose between day and night lighting. And if you’re holding back because of price, it’s time to take another look at your options — technology and expertise have come a long way in recent years. Not only has the quality of renderings improved significantly, but prices have also come down making photo-real options more affordable than ever. Our renderings are specifically tailored to your individual needs. A typical 3D industry standard rendering offers a clear and unique perspective of your home or community and includes:

  • Near photo-realism
  • Regionally compliant landscaping
  • Customizable backgrounds
  • Night/day options
  • Quick-turnaround delivery

BDX is an industry leader in the art of renderings and even has recently partnered with Payne Family Homes in the St. Jude’s Hospital Dream Home Fundraiser. In fact, we are excited that we were able to donate one of recent renderings of the dream home to become the poster for St. Jude’s Hospital’s Dream Home to help sell advance tickets. (Read more about it here)

Professional and realistic renderings are wonderful statement pieces to add to your website and sales centers and provide authentic pictures of the new home life to help get buyers excited. Renderings not only bring your homes and communities to life but also visually engage online and in-person visitors.  Want to see examples of builders who are doing it right? Check out the BDX renderings gallery here.

If you’re ready to paint your homes in a whole new light, contact info@thebdx.com and check our Renderings page.

Over the past two years, Builders Digital Experience has conducted extensive home shopper research in conjunction with our Start Fresh. Buy New. initiative to help builders understand what motivates, inspires and leads shoppers to take action.  This year, we expanded our study to not only include shoppers, but also consumers who bought a home in 2013, to learn about their buying and/or shopping process and what they think about new construction vs. resale.

Prospective Home Shoppers

53% of shoppers are considering new construction over resale as they begin their home search. This number has increased by 3% over the past year. To put this into perspective, if just 3% of these people bought a new truly home, it would mean 126,277 new homes across the country and $30 billion worth of business for builders.  What a tremendous opportunity for the home building industry!

Increases in income, favorable home prices and simply being tired of their current home all play large roles in triggering the home shopping process.  But don’t think that the process will be a short one.  We’ve found again that the buying cycle is getting longer. More than two-thirds of shoppers plan to take 9 months or more before making a purchase decision. This makes lead nurturing critical to your marketing efforts so be sure to consider a steady stream of communications to send to your prospects.

What are these shoppers looking for in a home?  Quality construction, safer neighborhoods, better floor plans and lower maintenance costs are top purchase considerations so be sure to emphasize these features in your marketing materials.  Consider removing rooms people don’t use from your floor plans and add that space into places where they spend the most time, such as a separate media room or into a larger master suite or closet.

Real Estate Agents

You may be surprised that 48% of agents across the country prefer selling “New” homes but often feel it is hard to learn about new properties, inventories and promotions.  Agents crave information, and before they bring a buyer to your community, they want to understand your commission policy.  Publish your policy on both your website and your listings, and when possible, make sure you include buyer registration guidelines and standard commission percentages.

By keeping your listings up to date with this information, an agent is more informed and knows what to expect when working with you.  This transparency will both endear you to agents in your market and get their buyers into your sales office.

Recent Home Buyers

We are losing 34% of shoppers who actually prefer new construction to resale.  We call this group the “lost shoppers”. Why is this happening? We all know all of the benefits a new home provides versus a resale.  But some consumers have concerns and doubts about quality of construction, neighborhood safety and the price tag of the home.  A house is the biggest purchase a person will ever make and they want to be confident in the decision they have made for years to come.  Alleviate their doubts by highlighting building certifications and standards you build to (i.e. LEED, Energy Star, local building requirements) as well as nationally recognized professional designations you have and professional associations your belong to.

Include a Quality Built section on your website that explains your company’s beliefs in building a quality product, warranties you provide, safety features and product lines that are used in your homes.  A Frequently Asked Questions document explaining the building process, what to expect and local statutory requirements will help educate shoppers and build trust with you and your company.  Also, reiterate the low costs of living and hassle free lifestyle that comes with a new home.

Over two-thirds of these “lost shoppers” say that the national real estate sites were their most trusted resources for finding a home but local sites also play a huge role.  So if you want to convince this group of shoppers to buy new, advertise where they spend time…on real estate sites such as New Home Source, Move New Homes and realtor.com®, to name a few!

We found that buyers also relied heavily on real estate agents with 86% of ALL recent buyers using one.  One thing “lost shoppers” have in common is that 91% of them used an agent.  Knowing this, it is important to build strong relationships with your local agents as it will help you convert “new preferers” to “new buyers”.

These insights are just the tip of the iceberg. We have a full suite of research resources and tools that are available for our clients and are happy to talk with any builder about how this information can shape your business. For more information, contact BDX at Info@theBDX.com.

 

By Jamie Lintner, BDX Advertising Manager 

IP Targeting vs. Geo Targeting. This war has been waged in the online space since the inception of banner advertising. On one hand you have the publishers who stand by IP targeting, the idea that targeting the unique location that a user is browsing from increases the relevancy of the ad itself. On the other you have targeted ads based off of the search parameters of that same user. Both have extreme merit depending on the type of product being advertised.

In the home building vertical, this targeting can have a significant impact on performance.  Consumers moving from Austin to San Francisco want to see homes and builders in San Francisco. We pulled the stats below to help quantify this lift and better understand the impact of ONLY running an IP targeted campaign via Google or other exchange.

To calculate these numbers, I pulled a 3 month sample that included 15 of BDX’s largest advertisers from all parts of the country. I then subdivided traffic into 3 unique performance buckets of data; impressions served in market (Consumers in Austin looking for Austin Homes), targeted delivery to the state (Consumers living in Texas looking for Austin Homes), and targeted delivery to users out of state (isolating people with a desire to relocate across state lines). No data-group contains any duplicate areas.

I assumed that performance would be equivalent for all areas regardless of the geography where the ad was served. In reality, performance is far stronger for users shopping for a home in a different state. As a home builder your ad is 42% more likely to be clicked on by a user out of state than by one in-state, meaning that an IP targeting campaign completely ignores the group of users that is statistically far more likely to engage with your brand.

On average, impressions to the local geo-area (bucket #1) delivered 55% of total delivery and 47% of total clicks. Users in the remainder of the state (bucket #2) were served 12% of total impressions and represented 11% of all clicks. Lastly, users across the nation were served 33% of all geo-targeted impressions but they represented an astonishing 41% of total clicks.

 

 

 

 

 

My best guess as to why there are different levels of performance between data groups is the vast difference in shopping urgency. Home shoppers already in the market will casually browse for a new home. Maybe they have strong intentions to move in the coming months or maybe they’re like my wife; just looking around for that perfect home in ten years. By comparison, out of state users appear to have a much stronger sense of urgency when shopping for a home, potentially due to a job relocation or change in lifestyle.

I’m a perfect case study for an out of state shopper. My wife recently took an out of state job and we had two weeks to find a home. Naturally we reached out to countless communities, apartment complexes, and anyone with a bedroom. Our search was more intentful and motivated than in-state shoppers who weren’t in such dire straits. What home builder wouldn’t dream of such a client?

Is your ad campaign effectively being tailored to the right audience through other online sources? At BDX we are constantly striving  to improve all ad campaigns for home builders and provide guidance on where your ads will perform best.  To learn more about the different types of campaign targeting, please see our previous blog post, Getting the Most from your Exchange Network. For information on starting your own ad campaign contact Info@theBDX.com.

By Jay McKenzie, Director, Content and Social Media, BDX

Most builders agree social media has moved well past the fad stage to assume its rightful place as a core tool to drive their business.

At BDX, our team of professional social media agents manages more than 30 social media channels for our brands. We also manage social media for an increasing number of top builders across the nation.

As we conduct social media reviews for our builders (or share the latest on social media for builders at industry events or webinars) I speak often with builders from all regions and buyer segments.

In each case, I ask builders what metrics they track for social media and how they track it. Their answers vary widely and many seek our advice on what to track. Here’s a recommended, two-tier approach to tracking the core social media metrics that most impact your firm’s success:

Tier One: Musts Benchmark your firm against major competitors. Set goals. Actively manage to goal. Measure month-over-over month and year-over-year; week-over-week is overkill for most builders.

1)      Reputation Management – Like it or not, buyers, shoppers, Realtors and others are talking about your brand, the homes you build and service you provide. You can’t share great comments or reply to concerns if you’re not listening. In addition to listening and responding courteously and promptly, track what’s being said and trends in both positive and negative comments over time.  Tracking complaints can help you root out and fix any recurring issue.

2)      Audience Growth – Many builders believe a Fan will stop following them once they buy, build or settle in. That seems logical, but I see less evidence than you might think. Plus, smart builders make heroes of current and recent homebuyers. You want testimonials to share with future home shoppers and doing so also keep owners in the fold. Measure total fan growth overall and by social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, etc.)

3)      Reach – According to a top Facebook exec, the average post by a brand reaches 16% of Fans. Facebook has billions of dollars of cost. Advertising accounts for more than 90% of Facebook’s revenue and the 1 billion user platform faces intense shareholder scrutiny. By an astounding coincidence, your reach soars when you invest $10 per day to promote your best posts. I wait to see which Posts get the most Likes/Shares organically for a day or two, and then back one with $10 a day for 4-5 days. Do this four or five times a month. It’s a big reason why BDX’s social media fan base grew 5x last year. It’s also a popular service we offer our social media clients.

4)      Referring Source and Traffic – Which social media platforms are driving the most traffic to your website and to your blog from your social media posts and how is each trending?

5)      Engagement – How many Likes and comments are you earning? This is a function of the quality and relevance of your posts and how many people see them (see Reach, above).

6)      Shares – The big payoff from engagement. You want fans to like and share your posts, especially posts that contain links back to your website and blog, which send their friends back to you.

7)      Conversion – Hopefully, you’re using the many great and free features of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools – and setting goals for key conversion events that drive your business. Set goals, track them obsessively: visits to your site from your major social media accounts, pages viewed, time-on-site. Focus on vital actions that will ultimately drive sales: lead forms completed, newsletter sign-ups, driving directions viewed, printed or sent to a smart phone, phone number reveals or clicks, model home and sales center hours and address, etc.

Tier Two: Valuable to Track/Manage

Other Valuable Metrics

  • First-time and returning visitors – Ask how BDX can help you re-target and re-connect with visitors to your listings on BDX and your website
  • Bounce rate
  • Click-thru rate
  • Cost per click
  • First-touch, last-touch and assisted conversions
  • Influence – Klout and Kred offer you a free measure of your social media influence and clout. Is it increasing? How do you compare to other builders?

This list of metrics is just a fraction of what can be tracked and the list could go on and on! Let us know what metrics that you track not mentioned here and we’ll share them with our builders and credit you.

Jay McKenzie heads up content and social media for BDX. His team of social media agents focuses solely on home builders. For a free review of your social media or to discuss how BDX can assist you in fully leveraging the fast-changing world of social media email info@thebdx.com.

 

We are pleased to announce that the editors of MSN.com and realtor.com have selected 14 BDX builders to be featured in a major slideshow that recognizes some of the nation’s outstanding new model homes.

The theme for the slideshow is “New Homes for the New Year” and both sites sought to reflect model homes that showcase the latest trends in new home design, construction and décor. BDX was excited to work with the editors of MSN and realtor.com on this exciting project — each home in these slideshows had previously been recognized by NewHomeSource as one of our national Homes of the Week.

Featured builders in the slideshows include: KB Homes, Traton Homes, McCaffrey Homes, London Bay Homes, Schumacher Homes, David Weekley Homes, The Burnsteads, Brookfield Homes of Hawaii, Richmond American, Kettler Forlines, The Jones Company, Century Communities, American West, and K. Hovnanian Homes. Congrats to all of these builders!

So how do we choose the next “Home of The Week”? If you think one of your homes has what it takes, be sure that your NewHomeSource.com listing is up to date with photos of exceptional quality.  Not only will it help you to be considered for the next Home of the Week email, but also will help drive and engage traffic on your listing. If you would like to be considered for Home of the Week and put the spotlight on your homes, contact us today.