Bowen Family Homes Launches Corporate Blog

The premier Atlanta home builder Bowen Family Homes recently launched a corporate blog. This is a big deal for a few reasons.

First and foremost, it shows that Bowen Family Homes is doing all that they can to reach out to their buyers. It's a known fact that home shoppers do most of their shopping online. They search for communities and homes in the areas they want to live and choose which homes to visit in person based on what they find online. Thus, if they can't find your homes online, you miss out on the potential sale. By launching a corporate blog, Bowen Family Homes is doing everything in their power to make sure shoppers find them online.

Secondly, this is a great customer service tool. A blog is much more interactive than a Web site. Visitors can leave comments and ask questions, and will get feedback to help guide them in their search for a new home. Making themselves more accessible to their customers will only increase customer satisfaction.

And thirdly, the blog is a great news source. This is the opportunity for Bowen Family Homes to publish information about everything going on in their communities and corporation. Many times incentives and grand opening events don't get the proper publicity, but by having the blog, the public can be informed of every important event and milestone.

If you would like to follow in Bowen Family Homes' footsteps and become social media savvy yourself, contact mRELEVANCE, LLC to see how Internet marketing for home builders can help you!

Two Can't Miss Seminars at the International Builders Show

Carol Flammer and Mitch Levinson, the founders of mRELEVANCE, are both presenting seminars at IBS that will help home builders get the most out of their Internet marketing dollars. For the builders, developers and other new home building industry professionals that have yet to embrace Web 2.0, attending these seminars will help teach you how to take your Internet marketing to the next level.

Mitch is presenting "Internet Tracking-What your Web Site Visitors are Telling You." At this seminar, attendees will learn how to analyze their tracking reports. Tracking reports tell you how visitors find your site, which pages they spend the most time one, how long they are spending on your site and more. By understanding these reports, builders can increase traffic to their site and keep visitors there longer. This is obviously extremely beneficial information for anyone in the new home building industry, so be sure to put this seminar on your IBS calendar. See Mitch on January 22 from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

While understanding Internet marketing for builders is important, it is just as important to know how to put your Web site in front home shoppers. This is why you need to put Carol's seminar, "Sell More Homes by Becoming a Social (Media) Butterfly," on your IBS calendar as well. She will be discussing different tactics that help increase search engine optimization and also search engine results page. Be sure to mark January 23 from 10:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. on your IBS calendar to see Carol's seminar.

Back to the Basics of New Home Marketing

New home builders and developers are continuing to refine marketing budgets and look for ways to differentiate themselves in a tough market. This is a great time to evaluate your marketing budget and go back to the basics of marketing. Take the time to review this simple exercise with your team and refocus your efforts where they will most benefit your company's goals.
Seven basic steps of marketing
1. Know your company
2. Know your market (top 3 competitors)
3. Know your buyers
4. Be ready to do business
5. Reach your buyers (target market)
6. Sell and manage sales
7. Monitor and control results
Once you have reviewed the 7 steps of marketing, look for ways to improve. Does your sales training have the tools and training they need to sell your homes? Are you doing a good job of differentiating your homes and communities from your competitors? Are there unmet needs in the market that you could fill? What are your core competencies? Can everyone on your team give the two sentence elevator speech on the company? How can you improve your marketing mix to reach your target market? Are you employing low cost solutions such as public relations, social media and Internet marketing.

How Quickly do You Respond to Buyers?

Recent Internet Marketing surveys show that homebuyers expect a faster response time from email. According to the California Association of Realtors Internet vs. Traditional Buyer Survey (2007- 2008), 94-percent of Internet buyers expected a response within 4 hours or less in 2007. This compares with 67-percent expecting a four hour turn around on response in 2006.

Is your current email marketing program set up to respond this quickly? Do you have a system in place to work a homebuyer lead through the system to become a sale? Does your Internet marketing program inspire homebuyers to take action?

Home Builders and Developers wishing to take their email marketing and Internet Marketing program to the next level should contact MLC New Home Marketing.

eBlast Management

It is important to stay in touch with clients, vendors and potential clients through the use of eBlasts. These are a powerful tool that can help homebuilders and developers reach their desired audiences when used effectively. However, when used improperly eBlasts and email marketing can become flagged as SPAM.
We recommend that you use a program such as iContact or Constant Contact for your eBlasts. Programs such as this provide you with many necessary features. You can time the release of your email, check to see who opened it, see the website links they opened and more. Best of all these programs provide one touch unsubscribe -- an important feature in today's world.
For more information on how you can use eBlasts to gather business intelligence on your homebuilding company, visit MLC New Home Marketing.