Why your builder should love the internet
Hopefully, you do not need convincing as to why you need to implement or improve your online sales program. However, it is always good to look at the facts and forecast the future to adapt your program for things to come.
Let’s take a look at a few of these facts directly related to the homebuilding industry:
- Over 80% of homebuyers start their home search online That is a large percentage of your exact market. Shoppers are also frequenting the website more often to research a potential purchase and to look for additional information over their entire sales cycle.
- Over 27% of American adults use the internet to research real estateThis is a large portion of the adult population. This number has doubled since 2000 and is only increasing as the use of the internet increases.
- Homebuilders determined that the highest quality leads come from their websiteOnline customers are more informed, serious shoppers who can make a quicker decision than walk in traffic. Specifically, online customers who have been qualified and well taken care of tend to write a contract 30% of the time.
- The faster you follow up with a customer, the more likely they are to purchaseWhen a customer receives a fast and courteous response to an online request, the conversion ratio increases dramatically. This is not easily accomplished by the traditional onsite sales agent.
- Builders are not allocating enough marketing dollars to online sources to keep up with the demandStudies show the lack of marketing dollars allocated to online marketing. Similar studies also show that the amount spent for online marketing will almost double by 2010.
- Less than 10% of builders have a dedicated person to handle leads from online sourcesLeads are coming in over the web with little to no conversions because builders are not handling them quickly or effectively. A large segment of the market is undervalued.
Builders must anticipate the increase of online shoppers and the growing expectations for these potential homebuyers.
A recent survey conducted for the National Association of Home Builders Institute of Residential Marketing by Harris Interactive suggests that builders need to boost their online-marketing dollar allocations and improve their Internet presence. This study also revealed alarming trends in the lack of online contact from the builder to the consumer. Builders are missing an easy opportunity to connect with the target audience and would benefit by having a staff person dedicated to handling Internet leads and only 8 percent of participating builders claimed having a dedicated Internet salesperson to handle leads.
This revealing study is screaming one thing loud and clear – most homebuilders are not taking advantage of the large amount of people searching online for their new home. The exciting news is that there is an immense amount of opportunity for builders who are willing to channel their marketing efforts where the buyers are. Not only that, but builders put a program in place to effectively manage online customers will be well ahead of their competition.
A second study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project conducted in 2006 shows the increasing numbers of internet users who are using the web to research their next residence. The study shows that 39% of internet users have looked online for information about a place to live – double the overall number of Americans who had done so in 2000. This number has steadily increased over the past six years and is poised to increase at a higher rate.
Not only that, more than half of internet users ages 19-29 use the web to research housing. This is a forecast of things to come. Those who have grown up in the information age will be more likely to start their search online. Are you ready for those customers? The real question is, will you evolve to deliver on this new buyer’s expectations. The same old song and dance will not work anymore.
SEO Secrets for Homebuilders
I am excited to announce a new series from Blair Kuhnen. Blair is a former product marketing executive at leading ecommerce businesses, led business to consumer marketing for a top 5 U.S. home builder, consults with production homebuilders, and writes about marketing best practices. I will be posting informative articles from Blair perodically – be sure to stop by and visit his website – FloorPop
SEO Secrets for HomebuildersHomebuilders are always looking for ways to drive traffic to their websites, preferably without added expense. While everyone seems to know that search engine optimization is important for homebuilders, most ad agencies and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms shroud search engine optimization under a veil of secrecy. Let’s make SEO a little more transparent.I believe SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) should be part of every builders marketing mix. Here’s the big SEO secret for homebuilders: You can do it yourself and even get a strong ranking. However, you may find it both easier and more cost effective to implement your SEO strategy using a third party.I am not a SEO guru, so I took a crash course and got some excellent one-on-one coaching from Directory One’s, CEO, Phillip O’Hara. O’Hara has been doing this for years and operates one of the largest SEO/SEM agencies in the Southwest.Keep in mind that search engines like sites that are coded in basic HTML. Not really a secret, but many builders make basic SEO mistakes such as using flash introductions that can kill your chances for a good search ranking. Make sure search engines can see your site the way you want them to. You want your pages to be search engine friendly. You can check them using the Lynx Viewer. Go to http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html to check your site. Also, make your site easy for the search engine bots to crawl. A site map page is a good idea for making it easy to crawl.Assuming the search engines can see your whole site correctly, it’s time to go to work and think about your SEO strategy. How are you going to end up at the top of the search result pages? You can if you stay targeted. Your chances of being #1 for “Real Estate in Los Angeles” is pretty close to zero, but you might be able to be #1 for “New Homes in Temecula.” Assuming I build in Temecula, I know which search result click is more important to me. Okay, so how do you do it?
First off, you want to optimize for Google™. Why? As O’Hara put it, “The real traffic is on Google.” In fact, 55% of all Internet searches are through Google. Compare this to 23% for Yahoo! and 8% through MSN. This makes the task much easier. While the algorithm Google™ uses to rank sites is a secret, some guidelines are clear. Top 5 SEO Secrets for Homebuilders I asked O’Hara to share with me his thoughts along the lines of: “If I had limited time, what would be the 4 or 5 things I would be certain to do to get a good ranking in Google?” Here’s O’Hara’s top 5 recommendations:
- Your title tag. The title tag is the html tag that determines what is displayed in the “blue” title bar on your browser. Google™ relies heavily on this element. The key phrase you want to be found by should be there (e.g., “Preston Builders – New Homes in Temecula”).
- Place the exact string you want to be found by (e.g., “New Homes in Temecula”) in an H1 tag in the first paragraph of your page and make that string BOLD. Use your CSS file to define the font style and size you actually want.
- Add the exact string you want to found by to the “ALT” tag associated with the first relevant image on the page.
- Let your URL say it if you can. A keyword rich URL such as: http://www.floorpop.com/SEO_Secrets_for_Homebuilders.html will probably rank higher than http://www.floorpop.com/FloorPop030607.html. Both these pages will be posted at http://www.floorpop.com. Come back in a month and see which is on top in Google™.
- Continue to use your keyword strings in at least one or two other paragraphs including your final one. In the final paragraph italisize the key word string. You should have these words showing up regularly for a high ranking. http://www.keyworddensity.com can help you check your keyword density.
More SEO Secrets for Homebuilders
Can you do more? You can and should. When you hire a firm to do this for you, they do a lot more. My key SEO secrets for homebuilders recommendation is to focus on these five items as table stakes for getting a good ranking.
Keep in mind the goals of all search engines. According to O’Hara, “They want to give you the most current and relevant search results. They want living, breathing web sites to be ranked higher.” Show them you are alive by updating your content regularly. Your tenure (how many years have you been in Google) as a destination is also important.
SEO secrets for homebuilders are not really different than for other sites. These top 5 are those that will yield quick results. If you have the time or a third party helping, you should consider doing the following:
- Actively encourage other relevant sites to link to you. Page rank is hugely important. Your importance as a source of builder or new home information is inferred from the people who link to you. As more relevant sites link to you, your page rank and your chances of ending up on the first page of any search increases. This takes time and effort, but is crucial for the more competitive key phrases.
- Place your keyword combinations in your keyword and description metatags. While metatags are not used by many search engines, older style search engines still consider them. It’s easy and you only have to do it one time.
- Focus on the right keywords to get qualified traffic into your site. For most builders, these are “Builders”, “New Homes”, “Homes”, “Community Names”, “Builder Names” and “Place Names”. Other words might include: “Real Estate”, New Construction”, “Communities”, “Townhomes”, and “Condominiums.”
- Avoid doing stupid things that will ruin your search engine optimization efforts including: hidden text, doorway pages, automated submissions, link farms, key word stuffing or repeating content.
SEO Secrets for Homebuilders are not hard to implement, but it does take some time. Thankfully, it can be quite economical to outsource it.
Originally published in FloorPop
A Look At Tomorrow’s 1st Time Home Buyer
Great post by Jason Benesch over at the Real Estate Tomato Blog with a clever take on the future “first time homebuyer” and how to connect with this audience. Guess how? Be sure to read his post here>>
A great exerpt:
My generation has the mentality of avoiding paying menial costs, revealing our identity, and committing to membership. It is the convenience of the internet that is to blame. The past barriers of expense and membership are frequently circumvented by ‘gaming’ the system. Our approach is that we expect to be able to get the information and data we want without having to make any solid commitment. Our generation has learned how to seek out and find information online and we don’t stop until we are satisfied or exhausted….
If your business model does not in some way connect you to this growing market mentality, you are essentially alienating yourself from the next wave of first time home buyers.
Conversion Rates for the Online Sales Program
Most builders have the same questions about the success rate of an Online Sales Program. How many leads do you get each month? How many of those are converted to an appointment? How many appointments end up on contract? What are your statistics etc…
I would like to share what numbers I have seen personally and also what many other successful programs experience. Keep in mind, every market and builder is different. Use these statistics as benchmarks but your numbers may vary slightly.
1-3% Leads captured from online sources
You will have many sources to drive traffic. What most builders use to determine this number is the new unique visits each month, not the total “hits” or even return visits. It is important to determine how many new users you attracted and how many of those requested further information. Your web host should have these statistics on hand – if not, they should be able to install the software to track this for you. A lead is qualified as one individual who submitted a request or called in directly from an online source. Many sources are included but only the total unique visitor stats from your website is used as the number to get your ratio. This is the easiest way to measure overall conversion.
20-25% Leads converted to appointments
The total leads are from both online sources and incoming phone calls. The conversion ration is based on appointments that are kept, not appointments scheduled and not kept.
30-35% Appointments that write a contract
This number is based on leads that go on appointment and then write a contract and close on the home. You will see some contracts fall through so do not count the totals until the home is closed.
5-10% Increase in overall sales
You can expect to see an increase in the first year of this successful program. This does not take into consideration additional sales that are created from a stronger web presence. It is hard to truly determine direct sources from the internet.
20-25% Of total sales will be generated by this program
You can expect to see a good portion of sales generated through this program. Keep in mind; these are additional sales or sales that you will not lose to your competition. You might have had some of these sales before – but now you will be sure to keep these numbers high.
Remember, these numbers will continue to increase as more people use the internet as the primary source for their new home search.
