Weekly Hotlinks – The Frozen Ponytail
Photo by joshbousel
There were some great articles last week:
- Seth Godin had a post on Brands, social, clutter and the sundae exploring social media and some of the mistakes a business should look to avoid
- Keithe Good had a post over on BHI’s blog on asking Are We Primed for a Recovery? I truly feel this is not the same rhetoric we saw back when everybody wished this problem would go away. We still have some major issues to work through – but I believe most builders have accepted the current market and are making extremely positive changes.
- There was a lot of buzz on this article – Twitter has made Dell $1 million in revenue I saw some great commentary. Basically – Twitter did not make Dell $1 mil – but the offers distributed by Twitter made Dell $1 mil. It has the same affect as offers by email, Adwords, telemarketing, and traditional advertising. However, the point is that Twitter can be a viable source of broadcasting the message.
- Here is a post on Successful Blogging Must Haves Similar to the Twitter conversation. Builders must realize that creating a blog is not a magic bullet. It must have a voice and an audience so people to take notice.
I hope everyone has great plans for the holiday! I will have a couple of re-posts of popular articles from this year and will be back on the “writing horse” after the 1st. I am also trying to wrap up 2 sales this week – motivated shoppers looking for a big Christmas present to themselves! We had a customer lock in at 4.7% – it’s a great time to buy!
Q.A. Where to start – with a limited budget?
I received this great question from Leigh on the East Coast:
I bought your book about a year ago and it has been my online marketing bible. At the time, I was the marketing director for a small-ish real estate firm. Eventually one of my builders needed more & more from me so that is now where I am now. I am dragging my builder (kicking & screaming… ha!) into this century with my marketing schedule, heavily revolved around reaching prospects online. This involves an immediate second release of their current website to include more methods to obtain consumer contact information. What advice do you have for a tech savvy marketing director starting a one-woman show from the ground floor up? Oh yeah — and with a limited budget!
It’s exciting, isn’t it! Starting from scratch. There are so many things to be done and so many possibilities, but you MUST focus on what will net you the best results first! By demonstrating a high ROI, you will be able to champion for more of the budget and convince them of the power of the internet. Here is how I would suggest starting your program.
- Website First — Make sure it has all of the information properly displayed and strong calls to action. Work on converting the “low hanging fruit” — Those who have already made it to your website.
- Online Process (this is a close 2nd) — Implement your CRM and fine tune your Online Sales Process to increase conversion rates of leads. Keep detailed statistics to show your builder how much he spends per lead, per appointment and per sale.
- Tap Your Database — Develop a monthly newsletter to email current prospects in your database. A little bit of time and $30 a month will go a long way.
- SEO — Increase you organic position on the search engines. This takes a little bit of time and/or money so you need to start now to gain the benefit in the long run.
- Supplement with PPC — Start you targeted Pay-Per-Click program on Google to drive immediate traffic.
- Listing Portals — List all or a portion of your inventory on the 3rd party listing services like Move.com, NewHomeSource.com or NewHomesDirectory.com. Start with the ones that get the most traffic in your area.
- In Your Spare Time — Take advantage of the free and powerful social networking sites like Facebook & Active Rain. Get your blog going and distribute great content through your own site and multiple profiles on these powerful networks.
The old question stands the test of time: How do you eat an Elephant?…one bite at a time!
Just make sure you don’t start with the butt!
Buildtopia Launches BT Lead
Buildtopia is launching BT Lead – a scaled “light” version of their BT Sales product (which is fantastic).
Here’s the quote from Beau Engman:
“With BuildTopia’s BT Lead, companies have a powerful sales and marketing tool, accessible any time, anywhere, at an effective cost,” said Beau Engman, President of BuildTopia. “Once the current cycle in the building industry has passed, BT Lead can be added to BuildTopia’s full sales and option management section, then to the construction management system for a fully integrated program. No lead management system in the home building industry has ever had that kind of scalability with one company.”
Hats off to these guys for shifting their product and providing a low cost solution. It’s a great sign that we are all in this together and the strong will survive.
You can view the full press release here >>
Weekly Hotlinks
Photo by joshbousel
Here are some hot articles from this past week.
- Love this post – very relevant – The 80/20 Rule for Social Networking. I actually have 2 Facebook accounts – one personal, and one professional.
- Jim at Newhomesdirectory.com has a great one about Space Optimization – The New Marketing Frontier This is a concept that explores dominating the search engine results.
- This one isn’t really related to homebuilding but will make you think – There’s Gold In Them iPhones. Some kid in his bedroom can make a million bucks just by writing a little application for the Apple phone.
- Here is a great one from 1000 Watt about replacing print with viable sources – Cut print, but fill the value vacuum – great quote from the article “They’ve stopped writing the big checks and sleep well for having done it.”
- Sad but necessary – NAHB Lays Off 52 Employees, Cuts Expenses by $11.5 Million I guess they are in the same boat as all of us. Learning how to become lean.
Twitter for home builders
Twitter is gaining some steam in the home building community. So is anybody listening? I think so…
Will consumers respond? I hope so… I do think that builders will have a better chance connecting with Realtors first – since this group might want to hear their message – especially if it will help them sell more homes. I say we just keep using it and we’ll see what starts to work.
For those of you still mystified by Twitter, see the video below.
Guy Kawasaki also has a great tutorial on how to pick up followers here…
How are you using Twitter? Is it working – any great testimonials?
P.S – follow me @mikelyon
