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“Just Get’em In.”

June 12, 2013 – 10:16 AM

3 Reasons Why Generation Y May be Avoiding Your Model Home

“Just get’em in.”  It’s a tacky car sales line that no longer works  in that arena, so why maintain this mentality when it comes to your model home?  Generation Y home buyers—people born in 1977 or later—stated in a recent survey they prefer a highly energy efficient home that will provide lower utility bills throughout the time they own the home over a lower-priced home without energy efficient features.  Why do they know this?  They are savvy researchers, already know what you have to offer, and hate being sold.

Here are 3 reasons why people  may continue to search from home and avoid your sales force all together.

1) Agents pretend they are not selling when they are clearly selling. 

Sales make the for-profit world go round.  Everybody knows it.  So if you are someone who is paid to sell, why act otherwise?  Let us avoid small chat over my (admittedly stylish) shoes, the weather, and the baseball game I didn’t watch anyway.  The honest and most respected approach to an informed Gen Y like myself looks like this:  I would like to see if there is an opportunity to do business together. Any other approach and the customer can spot you as a two-bit liar from a mile away.

2) Salespeople forget the customer may actually know as much as they do.

Sites like Zillow.com and Trulia.com have become a great equalizer in the housing industry.  Not only have your customers shopped the available inventory (and probably have been for months if not years) but they have thoroughly explored your website along with competitors’ sites.  They have already seen your branding, have read customer reviews at sites like angieslist.com and read the numerous blogs out there about the home building experience.  The customer can literally be searching your site and reviews while touring your model.  Be truthful and treat your client like the informed consumer they are.

3) Salespeople still use closing techniques.

We’ve all seen the movie Glengarry Glen Ross which depicts two days in the lives of four real estate salesmen and how they become desperate when the corporate office sends a trainer to “motivate” them, otherwise they face being fired.  In this era, people have options including making a purchase online and not interfacing with anyone at all.  While this might not be the case in the home building industry yet, increasingly buyers who detect closing techniques are far less likely to buy from you, let alone trust you.  A survey in Neil Rackham’s Spin Selling (McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing) indicates they may not even return your calls.  Think of all those wasted marketing dollars.

Purchasing a home is not only one of, if not the biggest monetary decisions in one’s lifetime but has  also become an emotional decision based on a lifestyle your consumer has already carefully researched and chosen.  Baring this in mind might help agents pull Gen Y-er’s off their laptop and into the sales center.


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What is Responsive Design?

June 5, 2013 – 9:21 PM

The term responsive design is a hot topic with anyone who’s serious about their online presence and it seems like everyone is beginning to offer it in one form or another, yet you may still be asking what IS responsive design? I hope to answer that question in the next few paragraphs and hopefully both of us will come out of this exercise better for the experience.

Mobile browsing is set to outpace desktop browsing in three to five years and shows no signs of slowing. Given we have a multitude of browsers each with their own aspect ratio and viewable area, how do we make something that works for each device? If you have noticed how many manufacturers releasing new devices multiple times a year, creating device specific site(s) hardly seems reasonable, so what do we do? Enter responsive design.

The following techniques are found in almost every responsive site:

Leveraging Media queries in your CSS:

Media queries allow you to ask a device what type of device, browser and browser window dimensions. Using this information, we can choose how to best display the content. We can also make more drastic changes to our page layout by setting “thresholds” for browser sizes at which we need to make a more drastic layout change, this is called a breakpoint.

Implementing Fluid Grids:

Fluid Grids allow your site to expand to fill or shrink to fit (within limits, we’ll get into this later) to the size of your devices browser.

Flexible media & Images:

A flexible image or media element is an image or video element which can be displayed at full size if space permits, yet it can also scale down proportionately in order to display equally well on a device with a smaller viewable area.

It works a little something like this, imagine you’re looking for news on http://www.bostonglobe.com/ from your laptop, you will most likely get a layout with full size pictures, weather, a full size masthead and all the trimmings. Whats happening in the background is first off a “Media Query in CSS, which asks your laptop, what kind of device are you, what is your os, browser and also what are the dimensions of your browser window. Once the site knows what type of device, browser and dimensions you’re viewing at, it can give you a layout which makes the most of your space, which is where a flexible grid comes in to play.

full 3 column version

fig 1. ~ This is the widest layout using a full 3 columns in its layout

A flexible grid is like an accordion, which can expand and contract to fit the available space, whether your browser window is 1200px wide or a mere 800, a flexible grid has got you covered. The grid is basically a set of columns which hold the contents of a site in a neat and orderly fashion, regardless of the width of the window its being viewed within (Laptop1168px wide fig.1). The flexible grid works well on larger browser windows, yet when things start to get small, our media query and its breakpoints have our back.

2 column version

fig.2 ~ This is the in-between layout consisting of only 2 columns

When a browser window gets small, such as a tablet or a mobile phone, the layout we were looking at on a laptop would be impossibly small and illegible on tablet or phone, so the media query says, if the browser is smaller than 768px, wide, change our grid from 3 columns to 2 (this could be a tablet fig.2), if the browser is less than 600px, stack all the content on the site in a single column (which is what happens on a mobile phone fig.3)

fig 3. ~ This is the smallest layout consisting of only 1 column

These are the basics of responsive design, the broader topic of responsive design and its implementation can become complicated quite quickly, yet for the purpose of this introductory article we’ve covered the basics. If you would like to read more about responsive design, try the articles below.

Wikipedia: Responisive design
Smashing Magazine on Responsive Design

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“Big Data” Shifts Business Trends

May 31, 2013 – 11:00 AM

The New Information Age

We are just beginning to wrap our heads around the vast amounts of information available to us in this new information age. With computer processor speed doubling every 18 months along with increasing storage capacity, we can afford the means to assess data in its entirety. This phenomena is known as “Big Data” which refers to our new found ability to crunch a vast quantity of information, analyze it instantly, and draw some astonishing conclusions.

Collecting information is just the beginning of creating the ability of artificial intelligence as we saw way back in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey
 

HAL 9000 (a computer) decides what’s best…………….

Gone Are The Days Of Traditional Statistical Analysis

In the old days, statisticians would have a hypothesis and test it with a random sample of a population. The greater the size sample of the population being measured, the more accuracy of the sample being a representation of the entire populace. This would reinforce the notion of “causality”, that being, we as humans have a yearning desire to try to understand the world around us. What causes things to happen? For example, say we have a theory that someone buys a home because they eat eggs in the morning.  As you can imagine, there’s a fair amount of people who get up in the morning, fix themselves some eggs for breakfast and go off into their day. And, of people who purchase homes, it can be said that there may be a high degree that they also had eggs for breakfast. Thus, eating eggs causes home sales? So, is it realistic to prove this preposterous hypothesis with a statistical analysis? However, if one was to gather a random sample of new homeowners, there would be proof that would suggest that egg consumption yields new home buying behavior. This type analysis is known as causality as opposed to correlation and takes the form of trying to understand a phenomena, coming up with a hypothesis, and proving it through statistic analysis.

Causality vs. Correlation Analysis

Statistical Analysis vs Causality

Some things are best left to try not to understand

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Within a correlation model of understanding, we are able to assess just pure raw data and observe correlations without trying to understand the cause of an event. What this enables businesses to do, is to view highly correlated events and capitalize from their relatedness. In other words, if a given situation yields outcomes with a high degree of correlation, then why bother trying to understand why?

In the book, Big Data – A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think the author explains how retailers are just beginning to understand their abilities to assess data for what its worth and understand the correlations of relationships. An illustration of this is how Walmart now sells Pop Tarts during times that precede a natural disaster. They observed that during times where people are preparing for hurricanes and/or a natural disaster, that not only did typical disaster items such as batteries, flash lights, and water sales spike but so did Pop Tarts sales. They then began to merchandise disaster related items and Pop Tarts in stores in order to make it easier for their customers to shop. Now who would have hypothesized that Pop Tarts would be a necessary item for preparing for a Tornado or Hurricane? In hind sight, it maybe easy to explain because of the product ease of use for their customers. However, if one removes the urge to try to understand what causes certain correlated events and just accepts the raw data and that these correlations exist, then a new era of marketing has begun using this strategy.

However, there are many ways to view the world, and one must be cautious as they develop ways to assess given circumstances of events. “Big Data” as some may have us to believe is not the cure all, but can be used in significant ways to observe the patterns of our society. This can be another great tool in ones tool box to be able to predict market trends, product sales, and any other activities if the right data is obtainable and accurate.(Read More – Big Data News Roundup: Correlation vs. Causation)

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New HTML5 Interactive Floor Plans

January 4, 2013 – 3:45 PM

We are very pleased to be getting the notoriety of our new HTML5 Interactive Floor plans! As we approach the International Builders’ Show this month, it’s nice to be able to have articles such the one written by ConstrucTECH (click on picture below for full article):

HTML5 Interactive Floor Plan Article

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Start The Dialogue With Future Customers

June 15, 2012 – 4:30 PM

Engaging At A Prospective Level – Creating Dialogue

Dialogue marketing is a term that has emerged in recent years to describe companies’ efforts to engage willing consumers in an ongoing dialogue to create lasting relationships. For example, based on data, marketers target groups of consumers who exhibit a propensity to buy and invite them to connect with the company in a variety of ways. The engagement process provides value to both the consumer and the company. Marketers use these opportunities as automated data collection points. The companies use the data to further customize their marketing messages and personalize the experience for their consumers and market segments. In exchange for sharing opinions, buying patterns, product preferences, etc., consumers receive perks such as discounts, tips, and free trials as well as appropriate and valuable messaging from the company.

History of Dialogue Marketing

Dialogue marketing can track its roots to permission marketing and relationship marketing, and is similar to engagement marketing and double-loop marketing. A direct reaction to traditional push marketing, the goal of dialogue marketing is to develop ongoing and long-lasting relationships with the right consumers.

Dialogue marketing is based on the premise that engaging consumers in relevant and personal conversations is more important than ever. As technology arms consumers with new ways to ignore messaging, disconnect from branding and disengage from the marketplace altogether; marketers believe that connecting on a personal level with consumers who do or will buy because the company resonates with them helps companies differentiate themselves and stand out as leaders in the marketplace.

Gone Are The Days Of Push Marketing

Online Engagement

When one can provide content online that is of value to a prospective client, they tend to be more inclined to be willing to exchange more information about themselves and their interests. Now more than ever, we have to differentiate ourselves from the sea of information that is online. For example, in order to capture any interest at all, a website must be able to convey the message of a company’s product or services with in six seconds of viewing. On top of that, there needs to be interactive triggers that will engage the viewer. This can as simple as more detailed product information as a link, or as complex as using an interactive floor planning tool.

Interactive Space Planner

Click On Image To Go To Space Planner

We have witnessed but a vast many changes in the way we go to market, from the push marketing styles of the 1950′s to one of engagement through the use of many forms of today’s media. The key to reaching today’s consumer is to first have a product that is right for the targeted demographics. However, this is only the first step of a well thought out market strategy. Part of any successful marketing plan is to be able to have an engaging process that begins the critical first steps of building the initial relationship. This means a marketing plan that has key ingredients which will provide value-based online content to begin the all important beginning steps of the customer relationship – the dialogue.

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Hybrid Marketing For Home Builders

June 12, 2012 – 4:57 PM

Combine Traditional Media with an Interactive Digital Experience

Today we’re seeing a combination of forces merging into a singular platform that allows for a prospective homeowner to be more informed, engaged, and excited about their new home  even before they set foot in the community. With the varied tools available online from social media to interactive floor plans, one can easily get a fairly good grasp of a the type of home they are interested in purchasing. What can trigger this interest is the use of traditional media formats such as T.V., Radio, Print, and Outdoor. However traditional campaigns can be tricky in measuring the return on investment.

With a Hybrid Marketing approach, greater emphasis is placed on the reliance of a prospect seeking key informational components of the buying process. These components can be related to the geographical area, community, plat map, floor plans, and other critical areas to be considered when making a home purchase decision. One of these areas would be the actual floor plan selection and the associative options with that plan. Interactive Floor Plans (IFP) is a perfect way to engage a prospective homeowner online to make various option selections at their leisure.  In making these selections, the prospective client can save their favorite floor plans to their e-mail address which in turn begins the Hybrid Marketing Cycle from a Pull Marketing style approach.

As the saved floor plan is sent to the prospect’s email address, a copy of the saved floor plan is sent to the builder for future reference. Not only does this allow for a better prepared sales agent, but a builder can begin to assess through analytics which types of floor plans and options are right for a given community. With this data, a builder can optimize the right floor plan / option mix in a community and cut costly plan maintenance for under performing floor plans.

Customer Discovery Center – The Meeting of Two Worlds (Digital / Print)

Here’s where the magic takes place! Instead of being handed a registration card as way to gain access into the model park, and agent is already prepared with the floor plans that a prospect has saved. If this is not the case, then an agent can walk the future homeowner through the Customer Discover Center. This is a large format presentation (1080p) on a wide screen of the community, site plan, interactive floor plans, key builder information, and more.

 

The prospect will be given the opportunity to view various floor plans and options. Upon various selections, the agent will then be able to print a customized eBrochure for the client to place into the Hybrid Kit. Of course, before the customized floor plan is printed, the agent asks if the prospetive homeowner would like to have the floor plan saved to their email address. In which case, an eLead has been entered into the sales agent’s system. This same saved floor plan can be forwarded by the prospective homeowner to family and friends which in turn can create referral sales.

With the Customer Discovery Center, Interactive Floor Plans, and Print On Demand, home builders can provide a very engaging platform for prospective home owners that allow for them to control the buying process. Gone are the days of push marketing that relies on factoring a small percentage of success of a massive expensive ad campaign. Now we can rely on solid data of our target market, and focus our valuable marketing resource dollars upon those who are truly interested in purchasing our products.

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Innovation with Personality

April 20, 2012 – 2:52 PM

What does personality have to do with innovation? I’d have to say, quite a bit. After all, the art of business boils down to a continuum of innovation and marketing. Let’s say you’re in the middle of an important innovation-phase of your business. Whether it’s an entirely new product-line or business management technology designed to help increase your bottom line, how you promote either one is best received by your customers or your inside team if branded as interesting, important, cost-effective and well, likable.

Look at Google, for instance. This amazing brand innovation could’ve been computer-stuffy, but instead it has personality, even through its “doodles”…Google’s famous homepage “Doodles” (the changing Google logo graphics) are well known and enjoyed by millions around the world as a way to mark an event or anniversary. But did you know that the very first Google Doodle was designed as a kind of “out of office” message?


In 1998 Brin and Page took the weekend off to go the “Burning Man Festival” in Nevada. The Burning Man doodle (shown above), was designed by the Google guys and added to the homepage to let their users know they were out of office and couldn’t fix technical issues like a server crash. And, so it goes…Google Doodles. They make me smile.

Like most people, I’m drawn to others who possess a fun and inspirational personality. They lift me up. They look at the world with optimism, even today. What it boils down to is “likability”. The same is true when searching to create a relationship with a company or service business. I want to get the feeling of, “man, I like you”. If I don’t get a warm fuzzy response to my request for services or feel no level of urgency or appreciation during a business transaction, I normally don’t refer or return. What would prompt me to pass along their information? I don’t want my friends and colleagues to deal with that “no relationship wanted” personality. No way.

5 Steps to Give your Innovation Personality:

  1. Determine benefits of the innovation and how it will make your audience feel – because it’s not always about the money.
  2. Use clever language to promote a program: Instead of “Customer Service Department” use “We Want you Satisfied Department”, or instead of “Customer Buying Program”, how about “Your Journey Home” program?
  3. Look at what other businesses do that draw you in. Who really speaks to you and provides that likability factor with their new product introductions? How do they do it?
  4. Lighten up and add flair to your message – ice breakers are welcome here.
  5. Be different and personal in your writing style. The old corporate-jargon is becoming ignorable!


Here’s the bottom line…

Yes, do get excited about your innovation, but carry that level of excitement over to your marketing department where its “personality” is born. We can all use more “doodles” in our work-a-day world.

 

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