Top New Home Sales & Marketing Tips for 2015

Eighteen of the industry’s leading professionals gave us their best advice for a successful 2015, and we compiled it all here for you. Give your sales and marketing a boost and stay ahead of the competition with these top tips! Here are the experts in alphabetical order...

1) "Give Credence to Each Customer: Great service is not just smart business – it’s a moral obligation. Service is not a department. It’s your business. Treat every customer as if they have 10,000 Twitter followers."

-Myers Barnes, Myers Barnes Associates

2) "Focus on RESPONSIVENESS in 2015. The National Association of REALTORS® does a survey each year to new home buyers; it covers a whole gamut of information from demographics to buying behaviors. They ask buyers about the traits they are looking for in a sales person. Amongst the obvious of market knowledge, honesty and integrity, along with understanding of the purchase process, is RESPONSIVENESS. Market conditions are good for the most part, but so is competition. If you aren’t responding in a timely, thoughtful manner, your competition will. Have a system in place and make the effort to fine-tune and develop a sale process that will impress, delight and engage your prospective home buyers."

-Dave Betcher, Lasso CRM

3) “2015 is going to be all about personalization and customization in new home sales. There is no one-size-fits-all method anymore. Your sales presentations must be individualized for each and every person that walks through your sales office. The only way to master this type of personalized presentation is through powerful questioning, listening and discovery. Savvy sales people will be able to use this line of questioning to tailor their presentations to meet the specific needs, wants and desires of their prospects. If you want to succeed in sales in 2015, you will need to work very hard to identify what is REALLY important to your clients and then master your presentation skills and delivery.”

- Melinda Brody, Melinda Brody & Co.

4) “Love what you do and what you create. Your buyers and team can feel the difference. Love begets love whether that is in an email, a video, a text message or a chat. If you put that one ingredient in all that you do it's a game changer in 2015.”

- Ronda Conger, CBH Homes

5) “There is nothing more powerful than helping your prospective buyers make an educated purchasing decision. By giving them the tools to ask the right questions, and by showing them specifically what sets your company apart, you not only gain trust but you eliminate the room for miscommunication throughout the process. There is no reason why every builder shouldn’t be able to tell a buyer, from day one to move-in, what to expect when working with their company. My advice - make it simple and exciting. Celebrate milestones in the process with your buyers. You are building someone’s home. It’s where they will live their life and make their memories and you have the opportunity to make the experience a positive one.”

- Mollie Elkman, Group Two Advertising

6) “Capture is the keyword in 2015! Capture attention. Capture online home shoppers. Capture website suspects. Capture prospects and nurture them to the settlement table. There is so much activity online today that many builders are overlooking because they never even know it is there. Home shoppers do the bulk of their searching online and their unconscious goal is to eliminate choices, not to pick you. If they eliminate you because your site is poorly built, your product doesn’t show well, or any other reason, the gig is up and you didn’t even know that lead existed. Every builder in 2015 who hopes to capture the returning market for new homes needs to take steps to capture online leads, methodically nurture them and coach them to the closing table. Nothing does that better than a great CRM and marketing automation software.”

- Brian Flook, Power Marketing

7) “Marketing in 2015 is all about your website. Far more cost-effective and trackable than traditional advertising, online marketing extends your reach, allowing you to cast a wider net when it comes to grabbing leads. We recommend pairing your Facebook ads and Google Adwords with ad-specific landing pages to ramp up your ads' success at converting clicks into actual leads.”

- Chip Johnson, Builder Designs

8) “Digital Marketing Engagement and Interaction for 2015 is more advanced than it has been in previous years. The technology has gotten more advanced and interconnected, but the business process is easier and is more widely accepted by a variety of people. Keys to success in 2015 include: 1) Effectively tracking user behavior and engagement online, both on your website and on your social sites. 2) Creating engaging content and an effective content strategy that encourages involvement in your online community. 3) Pinpointing the return on investment for your online and offline marketing tactics. Driving higher quality traffic, generating better leads, and spending time being more effective while focusing on what makes your company great.

- Mitch Levinson, mRELEVANCE

9) “2015 is the year of personalization – ‘high tech’ meets ‘high touch.’ I’m all about maximizing efficiencies and leveraging technology to communicate with more people. But you can’t do that at the expense of personalization. Your prospects are savvier than ever – so make sure all of your communication is timely, targeted and relevant.”

- Mike Lyon, Do You Convert

10) "By most accounts, 2015 looks like a year full of promise for those in new home sales. But, if we are to live up to our full potential and help our prospects to move into the home of their dreams, we are going to have to raise the professionalism bar by systematizing and supporting our sales teams like never before. For those of us in sales management, let’s vow not to leave our sales people out in the field alone without a weekly planned encounter. Each and every week, we should be working with them on their very specific and time oriented goals (not our quotas). We should be giving them a road map on how to reach those goals and check points along the way. As sales leaders, we cannot allow excuses. We should hold our sales people accountable and then celebrate their successes as they improve, grow, and achieve."

-Kimberly Mackey, New Homes Solutions

11) “2015 Design Studio Success Tips - Stop leaving money on the table: Get out in front of trends and lead with design. Trends move quicker than ever and design is ubiquitous: EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE is exposed to what’s trending! Don’t let only past product sales dictate the future. Steve Jobs said, 'People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.' Also, Don’t let purchasing strategies (which are critical to purchasing) drive your homebuyer pricing. Price to market demand and employ psychological pricing theory to increase per-home revenue and ensure your customers feel that they got a good value.”

- Jane Meagher, Success Strategies

12) “Become strategic with your social media marketing in 2015. Set goals for each site and each campaign and then determine tactics to reach your goals. Track your social media success on each site by looking at followers and interactions, and then track the leads that come to your website from social media. You may need to spend a little money on advertising or campaigns to convert your followers to leads. Remember that social media does not exist in a silo; use it as an integrated part of your full marketing campaign. Most of our clients receive leads each month from their social media efforts."

- Carol Morgan, mRELEVANCE

13) "Best in Class...that is what I experienced at IBS this year. From best salespeople and best builders to best seminars and best industry trade partners. Everyone was there to learn, enlighten and enhance our customers' experiences and journeys, as they enter into these newly energized building times. Best tips for 2015: 1) Understand and Lead the Lady; the largest influencing power in the new home purchase. 2) CRM; customer relationship management is a must, not a trend. 3) Creating Fans is creating loyalty and a pipeline of customers. 4) Continuing your education through NAHB with designations is both powerful & meaningful. 5) Model Homes are Stores; to be Open and Ready for New Home Shopping Experiences."

- Kerry Mulcrone, Kerry & Co.

14) “One newish mobile marketing strategy I’m excited to implement this year is ‘geo-fencing,’ where we target ads to home shoppers who have just left a competitor’s model home and, within 50 meters, show these shoppers an ad incentivizing a visit to our community. With websites, we’re seeing that most of the real estate sites coming online are parallax scrolling (one-page scrolling) websites and the use of big, gorgeous photos is a dominant trend. In the world of search, the lines have become so blurry it’s basically silly to make a distinction between search, social, and content. Finally, social ad spending is going up as marketers realize the need to nurture the overall ‘web presence’ instead of just focusing on the website.”

- Robert O'Shaughnessy, New Ground PR & Marketing

15) "You can only have a few areas of focus over any given time period to be really successful in any of them. This year, I would challenge you that one of them should be to make sure that all of your marketing efforts are integrated. The reality is that as the way we market to prospects has changed, many of you have simply 'bolted on' the new thing to your old program. Sure, you have a Google AdWords account, but you may hardly ever look at it (as long as you are on budget) – and the ads themselves are dated in their copy or design. Take a second look at everything you do and ask yourself what needs updated, what needs overhauled, and what should you put a bullet in. Create a 'stop doing list' so you have time to execute on your 'to do' list. It’s time to update your comprehensive marketing plan to really drive effectiveness in 2015."

- Kevin Oakley, Do You Convert

16) “If you want to sell more homes in 2015, take more pictures and shoot more videos! I cannot emphasize enough the importance of capturing compelling visual content for your digital and print marketing. Stop using the same stock photos everyone else uses and create custom content that will click with your customers. Whatever you are spending now on photography and videography isn’t enough. Double it for 2015 and cut something else that isn’t producing leads that convert into sales. Custom content can be leveraged so many ways it is easy to justify the expense and see a return on investment."

-Meredith Oliver, Creating WOW

17) “With the majority of homes searches beginning online, the top listing directories are getting the lion share of this traffic. In order to compete for their business, it is critical you have your home listings on each of these listings directories. At New Home Feed, we are proud to offer a one-stop solution making syndication simple! This is the fastest and easiest way to get your communities, plans, and homes in front of those that are making buying decisions."

- Rick Phillips, Graphic Language / New Home Feed

18) “2015 will see the return of the young buyer. Every trend is moving in favor of first-time buyers (supply, demand, mortgage rates, qualifying, rent prices, etc.). So far the presence of Millennials is more anecdotal and we’re definitely in the green shoots stage, but that’s changing rapidly. Builders would be wise to adapt both product design and their sales and marketing efforts to attract the more affluent first-timers. They are out there by the millions. It is only a question of who will capture this demographic.”

- Jeff Shore, Shore Consulting

What do you think? Do you have a favorite? Do you have an additional tip to share? Please comment below and let us know!