Dennis O'Neil - Speaker & Author on Internet Sales, Marketing, and Social Media for Home Builders

There’s a Difference between “Packaged” and “Canned”

dennisoneil — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:58:57 +0000

Packaged offerings benefit the buyer. Canned offerings benefit the seller.

When an offering is packaged, it’s done so with the buyer in mind. The package is a combination of products or services that affords the buyer additional value, often trading a little bit of decision making freedom for simplicity and that increased value. The buyer gets a little more of what they want, and foregoes a little of what’s less important to them.

When a product, service, or sales pitch is canned, its done so for the benefit of the seller. A canned sales pitch is a convenience for the seller. The salesperson is no longer required to put any thought into the presentation, pay any attention to the recipient of the presentation, or do anything different than the previous presentation. Any consumer benefit of canning is dumb luck, and not by design.

No relationship is built or maintained with canning.

Next time you’re streamlining your product, presentation, offering, whatever… ask yourself who will be benefiting from the change. You or your buyer? Ask yourself, “Am I packaging it, or canning it?”

Coming up for Air

dennisoneil — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:49:53 +0000

I’ve spent the last 4 months solid working without a break or a breath. We’ve been launching some great new websites for builders, creating new features that no one’s ever seen, and we’re in the middle of a few additional projects that are really going to empower builders of all sizes to take control of their sales and marketing. I am beyond excited about what 2012 will be, and can’t wait to share more about these new projects.

As a result of the hard and fast pace, I’m looking forward to coming up for air – raising my head and taking a fresh look around. We’ve been so busy getting things done, its time to check in on how everything else is going. I’m going to enjoy the next few months, filled with product announcements and fresh perspective.

Kicking off the year at the International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Builder Web Apps is sponsoring a presentation from the one and only new home sales trainer Jeff Shore. Jeff will be presenting and discussing the results of the Sales & Marketing Pulse 2012, a nationwide survey of sales and marketing managers on what’s hot, what’s not, and what’s really happening inside the sales offices. We’ve had hundreds of responses to the survey, collecting the details on everything from co-op percentages to social media. The preliminary review shows some trends that will surprise you.

If you’ll be in Orlando for the Builders Show, I invite you to be our guest on Wednesday afternoon, February 8th. The event is free. Full details and registration info can be found here. Seriously… When else are you going to see Jeff Shore for free?

Why Are People Ignoring Your Emails?

dennisoneil — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 03:13:33 +0000

In case you missed it, I had the opportunity to guest post for Jeff Shore’s newsletter a couple weeks ago. If you’re not already subscribed to Jeff’s weekly newsletter, you should be.

Click to read my thoughts on Why People are Ignoring Your Emails.

Thanks.

Salespeople – The Original Social Media

dennisoneil — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:30:02 +0000

Consider the phrase, “social media.” The “media” part refers to the content, the social content – the conversation.

Sales is conversation with a purpose.

I recently had the pleasure of spending some time with Matthew Shadbolt of The Corcoran Group after coaxing him to Baltimore to speak at SMC SalesCamp. Those of you that know, or know of, Matthew will know that he’s an amazing smart guy. He’s a talented marketer and the voice of The Corcoran Group’s social media efforts online.

With so much to learn from Matthew, I was eager to chat with him for as long as his patience could withstand. And being the true gentlemen that Matthew is, he graciously accommodated me.

I learned a lot about how he sees the role of social media in the buying process. This means I got to ask him about some of Corcoran’s salespeople. The story that I remember most is his description of one of the agency’s most popular salespeople. She’s wildly successful (hundreds of millions in dollar volume each year), and is regularly seen holding 2 cell phones at a time, one up to each ear… negotiating. Hard core, no?

The phones that she’s holding to her ears aren’t just any phone, either. They’re dumb phones. Yes, [insert gasp here] they’re flip phones.

You see, this agent doesn’t use social media, or the Internet (at least not directly). As I asked more about how this agent conducts business, I learned that she’s very active with international investments and buyers. She’s been in Manhattan real estate for decades, and everyone in Manhattan real estate knows who she is. She networks. She gets deals done. And she has a reputation that precedes her.

I’m a proponent of social media in many cases, but I’ve never believed it to be a magic potion, and it’s certainly not for everyone. But how exactly is it ignored by one of Manhattan’s most successful agents?

Social media tools (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc) do not create dialogue. They only facilitate it. They give us a place to have the conversation or a means in which the conversation travels. Perhaps we should start calling them social mediums. Mediums do not create conversation. People do.

A quick Google search on the benefits of social media returns roughly a bajillion results. Overall though, most agree that main deliverable, not the scalability, or the amplification, but the jewel at the end of the effort; the feature at the end of the benefit…. is conversation. The ability to connect with another person or persons and speak with them on a direct one-to-one level.

You see, that Corcoran Group agent with two phones to her ears doesn’t need the social mediums to amplify her efforts. She built her network the old fashioned way. She’s connected one-to-one with thousands of people.

Salespeople. The original social media.

Great Uses of Video to Sell New Homes

dennisoneil — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:06:20 +0000

Here are five of my favorite uses of video for Real Estate and new home marketing. They’re not all my favorite for the same reason, and they’re not all fit for every purpose. Some have a unique twist, some are just a better way to do a tour, and the last couple have shock value rarely used in our commonly bland and overly “legalese-speaking” profession. However, all of them challenge us to do something different. To avoid the typical, the “bad-music-paired-with-poor-moving-photos” version of video. These are all memorable.

If you can’t see the videos, click here.

Fun, Short enough for a commercial.

A personal tour (no vertigo from spinning cameras)

Edgey, and most definitely memorable:

Over the top:

Way over the top:

Do you have any favorites I’ve left out?

How Does Your Website Traffic Measure Up?

dennisoneil — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:00:58 +0000

Just like every market is different, every builder is different. This means how best to judge a successful campaign or online initiative will be different for every builder.

Despite my best efforts to convince builders to compete against themselves when determining their success, most builders still ask, “So how am I doing compared to other builders?” While there’s no perfect average, the chart below provides some great benchmarks to compare your website’s performance.

Home Builder Website Performance Statistics

A couple observations jump out at me:

With just one exception, there’s a steady rise in the percentage of mobile traffic
With Apple & Android clearly ruling the mobile traffic sample, mobile websites should focus on providing the rich experience that these phones support rather than dumbing down a site just so it works on less sophisticated phones.

Even greater detail will be available to those builders who opt-in to the data sample. If you’d like to participate, complete this form found here.

Why You Might be Wasting Your Time with Email Marketing.

dennisoneil — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 13:37:28 +0000

Its no secret I’m a big fan of what opportunities the mobile web presents for home builders. What I didn’t quite expect was a recent wake-up call on how closely email marketing is linked to mobile.

We recently sent out an email promotion for an apartment management client. The day after the email went out to a couple thousand leads, I eagerly visited the client’s Google Analytics dashboard. I was anxious to see the fruits of our labor – a big ‘ol mountain peak in the traffic chart as of the flood of leads came running back to the website for more. Only, this time I was more than disappointed. No mountain. There was barely a blip on the total traffic chart.

I was a little more than disappointed. This was the first email the client had sent in a long time, and the list was a prime database of leads who had contacted them. They should’ve been hungry for this email. They should’ve responded en masse and blitzed the website for more details. The creative came from a third party. It was good. It should’ve resonated, but it didn’t look like it did. So, a little dumbfounded, I moved on.

Perhaps it was my disappointment that caused me not to look in the client’s MailChimp account that day, but whatever the reason, I didn’t do it right then. Today, however, I did go there. And I struck gold. The kind of “a-ha” that makes you wonder how you’ve passed over the conclusion so many times. I had all the pieces of the puzzle, but never completely put them together. There it was now. In the MailChimp stats was the data detailing the most popular email software used by the list of leads. Take a look at the screen shot below.

27.3% from iPhones!

That’s right . TWENTY-SEVEN PERCENT of the opens were on iPhones! Second only to Outlook 2007, and well above GMail and Yahoo. Shortly after I finished smacking my forehead I continued to wonder why I hadn’t put the pieces together before.

Of course, the number of people who read email on their phones is growing tremendously. Of course we think about what emails look like on phones. Only now, did it click. The immediate goal of many email promotions is to drive traffic back to your website.

If you don’t have a mobile friendly website or landing page, you’re providing a poor experience for a large percentage of your email marketing list.

For this particular client, we track the mobile website traffic inside a dedicated Google Analytics account; and that’s where I found the other part of the mountain.

Clearly, the impact of this will vary a little for every email database, but its changed the way I think about email marketing and mobile websites – and how inseparable they are. There is no way we’ll send another email blast for a client without first researching how their list reads email. I can’t imagine trying to drive traffic to a landing page without a mobile friendly option.

As if we needed another reason to make the case for mobile websites. The mobile web continues to impact everything we do… now including email marketing.

QR Codes. We Can Do SO Much Better.

dennisoneil — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:38:18 +0000

QR Codes seem to be all the talk these days, picking up a tremendous amount of steam in the last year especially.

The companies that sell this free technology are making claims about how “QR Codes are the future”, “QR Codes are a ‘must-have’”, “QR Codes Saved my Life,” etc.

If QR Codes are truly the future of the connection of the physical-to-virtual worlds, I’ll be surprised. I expect that they’re a short-lived transitional tool. As an aside, QR Codes were actually invented in 1994.

Technology is most beautiful, and most useful when its invisible. The process of needing to open an app on my phone, wait for my camera to focus, take a picture of a funky looking image, and then wait while having no idea what’s going to happen next is anything but invisible, beautiful, or natural.

So what are the alternatives?

Better:

My phone is smart. My Google Goggles app has the ability to take a picture of a painting and then tell me who paitned it and when. It doesn’t need me to speak “machine” to it with a QR Code. If my phone is smart enough to recognize that, and, even simpler, an phone number in an email, why can’t I just point my phone’s camera at text on a surface and have it recognize that?

Even Better:

NFC – Near Field Communications (NFC) is a technology that will be appearing in more phones later this year. NFC is a short distance wireless communication technology that will allow a user to “wave” their phone in front of an NFC enabled object to receive data, a link, download an app, etc. Its already part of Google’s Nexus S and it is rumored that it may be included on the iPhone 5. This type of activity will prove to be a lot more natural to most people.

If you are using QR codes, just a couple tips:

Its free to generate a QR code. You can do it in places like this or this.
Be sure to add tracking, like Google Analytics tags, to the URL you’re embedding in the QR Code. That will let you know how many people are actually using it.
Send people to a mobile website. If someone’s using a QR Code, they’re doing it from a mobile device. Send them to a mobile website, or at least a mobile friendly page on your full website (no flash, etc).
Tell me something new. If I go through the process of following the QR Code, the website should do more than tell me the same thing I just saw on your ad, business card, or whatever else you printed the QR Code on. Give me more details, information, etc. Make it worth my time.

While QR Codes may have their place for a little while, I don’t think they’ll have a long life in the mainstream. They’re still too clunky for the average user, and technology will quickly pass over their limitations with something a lot better. Something natural and invisible.

My Mobile Real Estate Predictions for 2011

dennisoneil — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:15:26 +0000

Photo Credit: Michael Stout

Over the years I’ve written down a number of opinions about the mobile Internet and home builders. In 2008, I wrote Homebuilder Mobile Marketing with Google discussing the impact Google’s Android platform would have on mobile usage (now with the greatest market share). In 2009, I wrote about how Foursquare would impact mobile real estate marketing. And more recently I wrote about mobile apps versus mobile websites for builders.

Why I got some things wrong over the years, I hit the mark quite a bit, too. I thought it might be fun to put some more skin in the game and outline a list of 2011 predictions for the mobile web and builders. Since 2011 is well under way, I’m going to revisit these in about 12 months time, maybe sooner, to see how I did.

Separated into “likely to happen” categories, here it goes:

Pretty Confident:

Mobile website visits will be 10% or more of total website visits for the average builder.
Mobile traffic originating from organic search will represent 25% of total mobile traffic.
A major builder will offer special bonuses to nearby check-in’ers to come over for a model tour.
Most Builders will stop using QR Codes to direct people to non-mobile sites. (Hint: If your prospects are scanning a QR code, they’re doing it from a mobile device)

Maybe/Hopeful:

A Realtor incentive program will be launched incorporating geo-location to reward agents for model home check-ins.
A major builder will launch an app that includes geo-location data (nearby check-ins, specials, etc).

Tough Puts (I’m not a golfer, but I’m told this means “unlikely, but doable”):

A showcase of homes will take place incorporating a geo-location app or a tie-in with an existing geo-location service like Foursquare, Gowalla, or Facebook Places.
An innovative builder will release an iPad app in the App Store (not just for sales office use)
It will be commonplace for a mobile listing page to include a mobile optimized video of the property.

Some of these are less quantifiable than I’d like; i.e. “most”, “major”, “commonplace”, etc.

Am I missing something? Feel free to chime in and let me know your thoughts.

App, Schmap… Mobile Websites are Where its At! (sort of)

dennisoneil — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 18:03:37 +0000

The mobile Internet is still a young frontier for builders. While directories and large brokerages have invested in mobile apps beginning a couple years ago, most builders have just begun to dip their toe in the water. The benefit to a company with an “innovator/early adopter” approach to marketing technology is that, while they pay the occasional dumb tax, they also get paid with insight their competitors miss by waiting on the sidelines.

Recently, I’ve been seeing a solid trend across the mobile websites of clients – increasing organic search traffic. To be clear, I’m not talking about examples where users are Google-ing “ABC Homes.” We’ve seen a significant rise in broad keyphrases; “new homes in Washington,” “home builder in Florida,” etc.

In the past, the majority of traffic to a builder’s mobile website has been either direct traffic or a search for that builder’s name. Direct traffic describes people typing in ABChomes.com into the browser of their phone. They were directed there by a friend, or a sign, or some other ”unplugged” activity. When someone Googles your name, its nearly the same as direct traffic. They had already chosen YOU as their target.

What we’re seeing is traffic coming from broad phrases like those above — phrases builders typically target for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

So what’s the big deal about an increase in broad search organic traffic to mobile websites? Its an evolution in consumer behavior. The promise of mainstream mobile traffic is becoming real. Instead of seeking a specific target website, more consumers (a 300% increase in the last year from our sample) are using search on their phone to find homes. This means the mobile web broswer has been come a home search tool, not just a home information tool. This is territory previously owned by mobile “apps.”

So what’s a builder, broker, or marketer to do?

Look at your current website traffic data to see how many people are accessing your FULL website using a mobile device. If you’re a Google Analytics user, go to to VISITORS > MOBILE > MOBILE DEVICES in the left menu. Ignore the quality metrics like time-on-site and pages-per-visit, as you should expect them to be low when trying to navigate a full website via a mobile device.
If 5% or less of your traffic is coming from mobile, maybe you’re an active adult project, or in a rural area. Mobile is still coming to your town, but you’ve got some time if you want it.
If 5-10% of your traffic comes from mobile, you’re like many other builders. I recommend building a mobile site. That number will be growing.
If more than 10% of your traffic comes from mobile, I hope you already have a mobile site. Your potential customers clearly want you to have one.

What else does this signal?

The rise in organic search means that consumers are using search engines on their phone like they do on their desktop. This seems like a overly simple statement, but consider that advanced real estate searches on mobile phones are most often done through an app. No one uses an app to search the web on their home computer.
This is good for builders and brokers without the budget to build an app for every smart phone platform (iPhone, Androind, Blackberry, Windows) – a costly endeavor.

I am NOT saying that apps are dead in any way. For a long time to come, they will offer rich functionalities that will be tough, if not impossible, to replicate through a mobile website. However, 2010′s numbers are promising. It’s clear that mobile websites are a smart and viable alternative to mobile app development.