No doubt that if you asked 100 home builders & home builder marketing professionals around the country about their marketing practices and policies you might get 100 different answers. In today’s marketing environment there are indeed countless approaches and many reasons behind why some would choose one route and others would choose another. Lord knows I’ve heard them all. Some are based on hard data and facts and some are based on hunches. Some make a lot of sense and some leave you scratching your head.

This blog post was inspired by many years of working with home builders across the nation and most recently one builder that my company recently had the pleasure of working with (well, almost worked with). You see the builder in question approached us to get a proposal for some SEO work and after 2 weeks of research we provided them with a proposal and a solution to their problem. They wanted to virtually take over their market in the search engine results for the areas in which they build homes. A noble & lofty goal given that this particular market was very competitive and several major players were already in that space but at the end of the day it was doable.

So we have a problem and we have a viable solution. Done deal right? Nope. Last month the home sales for that area began to drop and the home builder lost two thirds of their expected sales for a six week period of time. That’s enough to get any home builders attention and I understand that but what makes me shake my head in confusion is the decision that this builder made and as I eluded to earlier, many many home builders make when sales begin to drop.

Pull the marketing budget.

Or at the very least halt all marketing efforts until things change. Why, why why? Can someone, anyone tell me the thinking behind this? Here’s a few things I know. Regardless of what the market says there is ALWAYS a buyer. They may not be coming in droves but they are ALWAYS there. With that being said when is it ever a bad thing to make sure you’re found when they’re looking even if it means you spent something to get that buyer? When can you not afford to have a first page presence in the search engines if that means that you get the most qualified buyer even when the market takes a dive?

After I spoke with the aforementioned builder about their decision I checked to see the traffic in their area, the area that they would’ve owned. I found that nearly 4 thousand people were searching for new homes in June. Even if that number is down by 50% that’s still 4000 searches. Wouldn’t just one of those buyers make a huge difference in your ROI?

You see, optimizing your site is a long term investment that ensures your presence in the search engine results regardless of what the market is doing. This means that when the market is good, you’re selling homes and when the market is bad, you’re still selling homes because you’re there when they’re looking.

So I ask these questions and I am seeking some helpful responses. Why would you pull your marketing efforts and budget in down times? Why would you not want to secure a piece of the buyers pie be it ever so small?

Allow me to offer some answers that I suspect are out there.
1.) You don’t believe in the Internets ability to perform.
2.) You think you have a deep grasp of buyer practices.
3.) You’re waiting to see what another builds does.

Please offer your input on this as it will no doubt be a learning experience for everyone especially for those marketing professionals that lose their job during these times.

Don’t forget to comment and thanks for visiting the Matrix.

Probably the most common question I get from clients is “What in the world do I write in a blog?” Aside from the perceived terror of posting regularly on Facebook or Twitter it seems that blogging on any kind of regular basis strikes the most fear in people. I get that. I was a bit intimidated myself when I first began but then I just realized that I was thinking way too hard about the whole thing. Stressing for no big reason. So I just took a great big chill pill and sat down and started putting thoughts to Notepad. I decided that I was just going to have fun with my blog. And it works! Uhh, I think it works. So here’s the best advice I can offer for all you new bloggers to the world of the home building blogoshere, RELAX!

Some say that you should post to your blog at least 3 times a week. Yea! Like I have the time to do that? Maybe 3 times a week for a professional blogger but not this chap. Anyway, who made that rule? Is it written in some kind of blogger bible somewhere? Is that the magic blog number? I think not and if you’re stressing because you just can’t come up with content for 3 blogs a week, stop it! I blog when I have something to say, have an opinion to share, have a lesson to offer or even when I want to rant about something. Healthy cynicism used constructively is a good thing and people love that.

You need to see your blog as your company playground. A place to be yourself because as I’ve said a million times, people want to to see the personality behind your brand and your blog is the place to display all of your imperfect, raw and uncut glory. If all you wish to portray is your perfect well rounded self then just turn your blog off now, we get enough of that in American politics.

What to say, what to say?
Several talking heads in our industry have already attempted to fuel the flames of creativity as it pertains to blog topics so I won’t do it again. (Although I will if you wish to contact me)

But I will say this, and listen carefully, stop thinking that your blog needs to be:

1.) Perfect: You’re shooting yourself in the foot if you try to hard to gussy it up all the time. You’re not writing a 5 page school essay so stop trying to be grammatically flawless. The people reading blogs these days are the same people that are using “words” like LOL, BRB, LMAO, GTG etc in their everyday lives and I guarantee that they could care less if your sentence is grammatically complete.

2.) Relevant to the industry: Really? Who says? Where’s that written? Not only that, but how boring is this approach? Why not share something about you, about the economy, about a new product you recently bought and liked, something educational, or like I said earlier; a rant? People are looking for reasons to engage and respond and if your blog just reads like more website copy then it ain’t gonna happen. How’s that for grammar?

3.) Riddled with keywords: Again, who says? More importantly why? Ok, ok I guess if the only reason you have a blog is to help you with SEO then go ahead and litter your blogs with keywords but then it’s not really an honest to goodness blog is it? It’s an SEO machine and if that’s your bag baby then more power to ya but whose to say that your non keyword content won’t attract consumers? Personally I’d rather do business with someone that I could sit and have a beer with over the person that’s all business all the time. Wouldn’t you? I’m jus sayin.

So there ya go. Andy Rooney once said “That life is like a roll of toilet paper – the closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.” So get to writing. The faster you start the faster you finish and the more comfortable you get.

Most of all, CHILL OUT. It’s not your company State of the Union Address.

Please share your thoughts – I wanna hear from you.

What’s more important: making your website search engine friendly or user-friendly?

Search engines rank your site…

But users must be able to find what they’ve come for… Does one trump the other? In short, the answer is a resounding NO!

Sadly, most builders’ websites do neither well.

I’m going to borrow an example from the current advertising world to try and make an analogy:

Best Buy has a new product line. And the company spent big bucks promoting it during the Winter Olympics. The product line: their Blue Label laptops. If you haven’t seen it, it’s basically Best Buy’s attempt (and it could really prove a winner) to respond directly to customer feedback. Based on customer surveys that asked computer users what features they’d most like to see in a laptop, Best Buy gathered all those wish lists and bundled the most popular features among them into this new line of laptops.

It may be a tall order, but Best Buy is betting that these user-designed laptops can’t lose in their market.

Back to my analogy…essentially this new line of “blue label” laptops is designed to be Best Buy’s most user-friendly machines. But underneath all this user-friendliness a machine also has to perform, and herein lies the relationship between search engine friendliness and usability.

Your website needs to be fine-tuned for search engines (site architecture, sophisticated but clean html, optimized graphics, meta tags, title tags, appropriate keyword density) but you have untold opportunity to work magic with users — as if this were a big blank canvas.

Maybe that’s too hard to believe?

Remember, one aspect of user-friendliness is ensuring that a site visitor finds what he or she expects to find after landing on your site. Do we know what that is?

It’s a good bet that a potential home buyer is looking for all or some of the following information:

• checking out your credentials
• wants to see your models
• want to learn about the surrounding community where your are homes are located

In addition to these bullet points, I have news for you: “what they’ve come for” may not be as easy to pin down as you might imagine.

From the moment one site visitor types a search query into Google, Bing or Yahoo! to the moment he or she clicks through to your site—they have expectations. They have expectations when they start shopping for a new home, in fact! They’ve already seen visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. For many people the idea of a “home” is intoxicating and can take our emotions and even our senses to very powerful places.

I suggest you consider these intangibles as much as you consider laying out all the technical specs of a house.

Listen to what BMW has to say:

“What you make people feel is just as important as what you make. At BMW we don’t just make cars, we make joy.”

If you can pull this off with your website while having it rank well in the search engines, then you will be among a very small percentage of builders.