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Each week our BDX digital marketing consultants and executives are out and about meeting with builders and helping them understand how they can use online marketing, media and technology solutions to improve their business. Here are some of the highlights from BDX in Action this week!

BDX in Action: Week of May 23, 2016

We had several great visits in Corpus Christi! Stopping by Hogan Homes with Mark Johnson while looking at some great views and MPM Homes with Mark Johnson. Then, seeing all of the great awards at Braselton Homes with Mark Johnson, Christine Blacklidge and Eric Newman!

Corpus - Mark Johnson at Hogan HomesCorpus - View from Hogan HomesCorpus - Mark Johnson with MPM Homes

Braselton Homes- AwardsCorpus- Mark Johnson, Christine Blacklidge, and Eric Newman at Braselton Homes

Christine Blacklidge and Alaina Latiolais were able to visit Port Aransas and tour Palmilla with Mandy & Ashley from Legacy Homes!

Port Aransas- Christine-Alaina with Mandy-Ashley at Legacy intPort Aransas- Touring Palmilla with Many&Ashley from Legacy Homes

We had a full house at Clayton Homes as BDX Director of Research, Julie Ward presented a webinar to showcase the findings from our Home Shopper Journey Study!

Julie Ward Full house at Clayton Homes

 

 

Are you tasked with enhancing your website’s visibility, attracting new customers, and building a brand that is as well-loved as your homes—all on a tight budget?

Consider moving user generated content to the top of your marketing agenda. In fact, put aside the means of generating content for a moment and think about the end result. You are going to build an online community of customers who are passionate about their homes and can’t wait to influence the next wave of new home buyers.

The fit couldn’t be more natural. For your customers, no other product will ever match the sentimental value of their homes. It’s where they have decided to raise their families and create lifelong memories. It’s where they live. For you, there is no marketing technique that will come more intuitively, because by nature, you are a community builder.

What is user generated content and why does it work?

User generated content (UGC) is any form of consumer-created online content including reviews, blogs, forum posts, and digital images. The content can live within your branded domain, on a third party site, or it can reside on a social media platform. The point of pursuing UGC is to invite prospects to experience your brand through the eyes of your customers.

Nothing your company can say directly to prospects will be as trusted or impactful.

UGC is especially vital to Gen Y/Millenials who will not make important purchases without consulting others’ opinions. But young home buyers aren’t the only believers in UGC. A recent study found that 70% of all consumers place peer recommendations and reviews above professionally written content.[Tweet This] This confirms the social proof theory – that people are automatically drawn to products others like and trust.

Why do you need to implement a UGC strategy ASAP?

Improved metrics like search rankings, clicks, and conversions barely scratch the surface of what UGC delivers. It’s such a powerful resource for homebuilders that it deserves a more persuasive case:

UGC enables you to grow your content, resulting in more organic (FREE) search traffic to your website. You know that, but you may not know that because much of your content will be written by consumers, your search engine results page (SERP) rankings will be higher for the key terms consumers actually use. Don’t you want to put your customers to work for you? When they’re happy in their homes, it’s their pleasure.

Your customers’ expressions of gratitude begin with marketing and continue in sales. Their recommendations and reviews distinguish you from competitors. Their positive experiences overcome skepticism, attract prospects, and affirm your value to current customers. Their stories influence friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp, diverting traffic to your website. There, your customers foster a community, answering questions and sharing experiences with people who value their opinions. When prospects are ready, your customers guide them to call your best representatives and to visit your model homes.

UGC is a complete loop of powerful marketing and sales efforts that hand-deliver ready-to-buy leads.[Tweet This] Costs are low, minimal effort is required from your marketing and sales teams, and it delivers maximum ROI. Ready to get started?

Consider these three ideas for your first UGC campaign:

  1. Dream Room Challenge – Homebuyers tour your models, but they don’t get to see the creative ways that your customers bring their unique visions to life—until now. Incentivize your new homeowners to showcase their favorite rooms with pictures or videos on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and your site. Promote the competition on your site and through social media, and entice participation by awarding a design center shopping spree.
  1. Custom Build Showcase – Encourage customers to show off their one-of-a-kind builds, whether it’s a unique art niche, a home gym, or a balcony with an inspiring view.
  1. Lifestyle Photo Contest – Incentivize customers to post photos of themselves enjoying their homes, hosting parties or barbecues, cooking in their gourmet kitchens, or enjoying family time in their media rooms.

Our social media and SEO teams would love to talk to you about your strategy to attract and engage home buyers online. Email us if you’re ready to talk.

Part 1 in our Series: 6 Technology Trends Builders Can’t Ignore in 2016

A convergence of digital and online technologies is beginning to profoundly transform our industry. Six technology trends in particular will revolutionize homebuilding, from marketing and sales to design and construction. What we do with these technologies will enhance buyers’ perceptions of our brand and engagement with our people, as well as their lifestyles, comfort, and security when they move into our homes and communities. The next generation of homebuyers expects us to embrace the promises of these six technologies as they do, and will reward our innovation with loyalty and brand advocacy. The first post in the series focuses on the Digital Customer Experience.

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Creating a comprehensive digital customer experience requires measuring and improving the experience at every customer touch point: marketing, sales, construction, field, and warranty. It’s about being everywhere your customer expects you to be – on every device, through every sales channel – in order to improve engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.

Research proves that delivering a superior customer experience in the digital age is critical to your success:

  • By 2017, 89% of executives expect the customer experience to be the prime basis for competition. [Tweet This] Gartner, 2014
  • “Digitally mature” companies have significantly better business performance. MIT & Capgemini Consulting
  • Just 5% of companies say they do digital well enough to make it a competitive advantage. Forrester, 2015
  • Companies can use digital customer care to boost satisfaction by 33%. McKinsey, 2015

The digital customer experience is the accumulation of seamless interactions across the customer’s journey that adds up to a best-in-class reputation for those that deliver it. Reaching payoff requires substantial investments in marketing strategies, technologies, mobile apps, and services.

CEOs may be reluctant to embrace digital, especially when customer service scores are currently satisfactory or better. Potential incremental gains are lower, with a lower possible return on investment. This scenario is highly prevalent in our industry, and leaves good builders vulnerable to those delivering poorer service, but with the capital to turn things around. In any case, providing projections on near-term returns may be difficult, but the macro-economic case is compelling.

Why invest heavily in a digital customer experience?

According to Forrester Research’s 2007-2014 Customer Experience Index studies, the top ten customer experience leaders generated a total return over this seven-year period of 77.7%. [Tweet This] The S&P 500 Index generated a 51.5% total return during that period. On the other hand, the bottom ten customer experience laggards generated a paltry -2.5% return. To underline this finding, in one of America’s strongest bull market runs, companies offering the worst customer service experienced negative returns.

Digital experience benefits work their way to the bottom line, beginning with improved retention, repeat business, and referrals. Customers are less price sensitive in the models they choose and are more trusting in your ability to make added options smart long-term investments. Customers are happier, marketing costs are lowered as word-of-mouth generates more leads, and your expenses associated with detractors and PR crises are reduced. All of this can result in dramatic revenue growth and higher margins.

Begin with a consistent customer service ethos.

The first step in this process is to review your customers’ experiences along their journey from home shopping to warranty repairs. Train all of your front-line personnel to be willing to see issues from the customer’s perspective and make sure they are committed to delivering on expectations. They must value honesty, integrity, and fairness, and they must behave consistently, so that the customer recognizes your organization’s customer service ethos in each interaction.

Deliver a seamless communication experience.

Once a commitment to customer service values is in place, you can begin formulating your messaging for every step in the sales cycle. Marketing messaging, as well as how you listen and respond to customers, your corporate objectives, graphic design, and application functions must be standardized across communication channels. If you’re where most builders are in this process today, you will be evolving from multi-channel leveraging of several channels and devices, to Omni-channel integration of a personalized, consistent experience across all channels and devices. Start slowly and methodically, standardizing your current channels and devices before integrating new ones.

Best-of-breed businesses use data segmentation and marketing automation to perfect the experience, [Tweet This] delivering tailored messaging automatically to each distinct buyer persona. Work your way up to this summit by planning how to capture prospect data in a consistent manner across channels and devices.

Your journey toward creating a satisfying digital experience for your customers will be one of the most rewarding experiences you have in your career. We can help you make it a success. If you would like to learn more about how to get started, email BDX today or call us 1-866-651-8866.

Just a few years ago, the nation’s largest homebuilders pioneered the use of online home tours for our industry. 3D modeling was a quantum leap from traditional photos and video because it enabled home buyers to immerse themselves in a realistic experience.

Now we’re taking tours to the next level with 3D Matterport Tours. Our 3D cameras digitally recreate properties and transform them into virtual environments. Now, inviting online buyers to virtually explore homes can fit within any budget.

For builders, interactive model home tours are just the tip of the iceberg. Virtual Reality 3D Matterport tours engage buyers and capture their imaginations through every step of the home buying experience. [Tweet This]This technology maximizes the effectiveness of marketing dollars and expedites the sales process. Here are a few ways builders can use these tours in their business:

Model Home Tours

Your model may be in Dallas and your buyer may be in New Jersey. Yet she can enjoy a self-directed virtual tour, using a mouse to walk into every room and interact with the spaces. She can experience the overall design concept, flow, room dimensions, and even the quality of construction, all as if she were there. She can also use the dollhouse view to see the whole property at once or the floorplan view for a top-down perspective.

You can also provide buyers the benefits of a guided tour by using Mattertag™ Posts. These visual callouts provide detailed information about the features and finishes, making the tour an even more effective online sales tool. Mattertag Posts are informative without interrupting, and they are proven to drive longer engagement and more return visits.

Because VR tours are available to so many more potential buyers than model homes, the number of showings is typically multiplied.

Finished Homes: Capture Every Plan

A model can only present one of the infinite possible finished home designs. 3D Matterport Tours enable you to serve buyers with entirely different visions about flooring, elevations, finishes, and fixtures than what one model can show. Now the homes you build for customers become virtual models, demonstrating a wide range of available looks and features. By showcasing the full range of your building capabilities, you’re no longer limited to the imaginations of your buyers as they tour one possible iteration of a model.

Custom Home Showcase

For custom home builders, a portfolio of work is critical for referrals and building your client base. These luxurious showcases of workmanship, fine quality materials, and state-of-the-art technology are your strongest untapped sales asset. 3D tours make it possible for your prospects to tour them and to appreciate your capabilities as a builder, no matter what level of home they desire. Custom home tours add cachet to your brand, just as the BMW 7 Series makes every model below it more attractive. Showcasing custom homes also seduces homebuyers into falling in love with more elaborate and expensive options for their finish-outs.

Design Center Tours

Virtual tours have multiple applications in the marketing and homebuilding processes. Why not use a 3D Matterport Tour to allow buyers to tour your design center? During the buying process, enabling people to explore their choices in colors, textures, and materials for flooring, fixtures, and other options is a richer experience than comparing bulleted lists. In marketing, the term “theater of the mind” applies, as buyers respond emotionally to an experience more readily than they respond intellectually to plain information.  For that reason, this marketing “sizzle” will soon be a part of every serious homebuilder’s arsenal.

Pre-Drywall Blueprints

Buyers are wowed by Matterport’s immersive 3D experiences, but you should also consider using Matterport tours during the construction process to document the wiring, plumbing, and other interior elements before drywall is in place. This investment can be a valuable resource down the line and save time and money by painting a clear picture of what is “behind the walls”.

We’re reaching a technology tipping point in the marketing of our homes. 2D photos and virtual tours tell buyers what a property looks like. 3D Matterport Tours from BDX empower builders to show them what it feels like. By virtually immersing your buyers in their future homes, you can prove that you understand what it takes to earn their business in the 21st century. For more information and to get started with your 3D tour, email us today.