Over the past few months we have been going over a lot of tips and tricks to get your Craigslist.org postings for your new homes looking perfect but now we need to go over how to maintain those perfect postings.

NewHomesDirectory.com lists 700-1,000 postings a week on Craigslist and we are still growing.  The Craigslist crew here at NHD daily check each posting to make sure that they live up to the high standards we have before they are live for all the world to see.  When we check them we make sure that the follow items are always accurate: price, picture and correct community/other home information such as square footage, bath count, HOA information etc. within the description.

There are always certain things that we sometimes overlook when we get into the routine even though they may seem like common sense.  Make sure you check your spelling, grammar, whether the content is appropriate for your target audience, as well as length of posting.  A long or wordy posting can make buyers run away rather than want to buy.

Lastly, we make sure to change around the look of the postings very frequently because after awhile those who are looking for a new home on Craigslist will start to recognize the same posting and thus it will get flagged.  Depending on how many posts you maintain, you should change the wording and/or layout every other week.

In the words of W. Clement Stone “Success is achieved and maintained by those who try and keep trying.”

Happy posting!

W. Clement Stone quotation source: www.quotesdaddy.com

New home builders are faced with many challenges in today’s market. The days when people were entering lotteries to be able to buy the most recently released home is over and now new home builders main priority is getting their product in front of consumers.

You cannot sell a product to someone you have never had conversation with, right? So how do you reach out to homebuyers?  The internet is the best place to start of course, it offers powerful strategies which help you gain the traffic you need. While traffic generation strategies lead prospects to your site, it sometimes is difficult to convert that traffic into closed sales.

Some homebuyers are turning to Live Chat resources to get their sales team in front of more consumers and helping convert web traffic into real sales opportunities. With live chat the builder is able to take their website from a brochure to an online live sales center!

Maronda Homes has implemented a Live Chat service on their website by Active Sales Agent.com. Within hours of having the live chat on their site, the sales team was in conversation with new buyers! The estimated increase in lead generation is over 300% according to Active Sales Agent.com. With over 2.5% of unique visitors engaging in chats and over 80% of these chats results in contact information being obtained, live chat seems to be the bridge that closes the gap between web traffic and home sales.

With Active Sales Agent.com live chat services, new home builders are able to receive detailed analytics of the traffic on their site.  These analytics show which traffic sources are driving the most activity to their sales team and will allow home builders to refine their online marketing strategies.  We all know that you need to generate traffic to your site as a new home builder, now you have a solution to convert that traffic into a conversation with live chat!

The flagging situation on Craigslist.org reminds me somewhat of the classic game, Sorry!  Each color on the board is trying to get to their appointed “home” section in order to win the game but to do this you have to go around the whole board and hope that you don’t pick the wrong card that will make you move back multiple spaces or even worse send you back to the start.

The flagging system was made so that the moderators who flag posts are the users themselves.  In theory this is a great idea but it has gone completely awry with flagging software made in order to get rid of postings with certain key words and such, and people flagging other postings in order to knock out their competition.  Then there are well intentioned people who just don’t want spam within their area Craigslist.

Don’t get discouraged though, flagging programs are not allowed on Craigslist and they do try to stop them as much as possible.  But you have to take the proper measures to make sure that your posts don’t look like spam and that they aren’t spam in order to properly get your posting the views it deserves.  I’ll give you a few of my tricks I like to stick with in order to help keep flagging and looking like spam to a minimum.

1.    Terms of Use aren’t guidelines, they’re rules.
Take time to read over Craigslist’s Terms of Use and then abide by them.  It may seem like a no brainer but there are many people who wonder why their account has been blocked by Craigslist when they were clearly going against the Terms of Use on something they thought was tiny but in reality was a big deal to those seeing the postings and ultimately flagging it.

2.    Infomercials are meant for television not Craigslist.
Don’t take the information from your brochure that says “Lovely new home in quaint little village full of happy new homes waiting just for you!”  People on Craigslist want to get straight to the point, tell them the bed, bath, square footage, if there is a community pool, park, etc. up front.  Save the sweet talk for your website.

3.    Pictures, pictures, pictures!
If you’ve read a few of my previous blogs, you’ll come to find that having at least one quality picture with your posting is something the I highly recommend for all of our postings.  If it is a drawing of a home it looks more like the home is not yet built, people want something now that is why they are looking now so show the picture of the home.

4.    Last but not least, don’t over post.
Posting the same thing in different areas of Craigslist won’t get you more customers it will just get you flagged.  Stick to posting in the area the home is actually located and if you feel the urge to repost it then wait 48 hours or longer.

Happy posting!

In the words of Penelope Lively, “Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are.”

As a company, NewHomesDirectory.com wants to make sure you know what we can do to help you sell your new homes but we also want to make sure you know the faces behind the website as well.  By doing funny company videos, welcome videos or introduction videos we have opened up our company to our consumers so they always have an idea of who we are.

This is a great idea for every company to do.  It gives your customers a sense of trust and lets them become a part of your company in a fun way.  Take time to capture the funny moments in the office, that are relative to your business of course, such as Halloween costume contests or a short video about some innovative new ideas that your company is coming up with.  The sky is the limit and we have many outlets in which you can showcase your videos including YouTube.

Just make sure you don’t go over board and forget about working only to film everyone in the office.  And always make sure your content is appropriate so it lifts your company’s image instead of pulling it down.

Check out our latest video, The Ladies of NewHomesDirectory.com.

From the design and logo of Craigslist.org to the people who are looking for a new home we can obviously see that their whole motto is keep it simple.

I recently put this motto to the test because if this is true then those who post within the real estate section might be scaring away potential new home buyers rather than pulling them in with their ads that clearly give the information from a brochure you get while looking at model homes.  Don’t get me wrong, I think it is very important for those who are browsing to get all the information possible about your new homes and community but maybe we should try going about it with a simplistic perspective.

I posted an ad on Craigslist.org with information that was upfront and very informative but still to the point.  Think of an ad that a home owner trying to sell their own home would put up just with a hint of professionalism.  Then I made an ad that looks typical of a real estate agent meaning lots of information about the home and community, and a catchy title.  As an end result both the test communities were very close in their numbers but I did notice a slight lead in the community who had the least amount of filler information versus the highly worded ad.

Based on my results your best bet is to make your ads have a nice medium between the real estate agents ad and the “for sale by owner” ad.  Here are a few tips and tricks to help you do just that:

• Bullet point the important information people are searching for such as bedroom count, bathroom count, square footage, HOA cost (if any), community amenities such as a pool, park(s), greenbelt(s) and so on.
• Try to avoid words such as amenities or using your community name too often as it might seem like a real estate agent is posting the ad and most people do not use the word amenities when speaking about their communities pool.
• Highlight the fact that you are selling a new home in your title but be sure to include something about your community in the title as well.  Example: New home with community pool for sale
• Don’t be afraid to post your price in the area where Craigslist asks for the home price.  Putting the price within the ad description is very hard to find especially if your ad has lots of content to it.
• Put as many quality pictures within the ad as possible.
• It’s perfectly fine to use some of your brochure information or phrases within the ad just made sure it isn’t an overwhelming amount of information.

Happy posting!

In the home building industry, the challenge is to get the word out and show that owning a new home doesn’t mean that you are paying an arm and a leg.  For a long time we have adjusted the way we market to potential new homebuyer’s, case and point billboards, newspaper ads, television commercials…  I could go on but I don’t like to dwell in the past.  All of these ways to draw in a new homebuyer were great, 10 or 20 years ago.  It’s time to re-adjust yet again but this time let’s take our efforts to Craigslist.org.

Craigslist has been the leader in classified websites and lately it has been given the reputation as the biggest hub for scammers.  Just like anything in life there are risks but the reward at the end of this risk is the lead you get from your Craigslist ad.  With about 50 million unique visitors each month it seems as though potential new homebuyers have become very savvy on Craigslist and can spot a scam versus the real deal or in other words, you.

Now that we have cleared up our fears about Craigslist here are a few pointers to get you started:

• Set-up an account with Craigslist.org.
• Research the area you are looking to post in, look at what others are using for titles and descriptions.  Try to make your posts have a similar theme but still make each post your own so that it grabs the attention of someone looking for a new home.
• Use keywords that most new homebuyers are searching for such as new home, pool, bedroom count, etc. in your title and description.
• Abide by Craigslist.org’s Terms of Use, the last thing you want is to be banned from Craigslist.
• Make sure that you put at least one picture per posting.
• List bedroom count, square footage, price, etc. in your postings.
• Lastly, don’t forget to put in contact information or how you would like to be contacted within your description.

Happy posting!

Every video at NewHomesDirectory.com is made with the sole purpose of helping our new home builders get found on the internet and also it is yet another great tool that our new home builders can use to display their beautiful new homes to potential homebuyers.

The next generation of homebuyers are very internet savvy and want something more than a billboard or newspaper ad.  Let’s face it we are in the age of iPhones/Smart Phones that have applications that allow a user to do virtually anything right from their phone which includes looking at videos, social media and websites.  There are five videos that each have a theme:

• Scrapbook: When you look at a scrapbook you get a sense of someone’s creative/fun side to show off their pictures. That is the essence that we were trying to capture to display the scrapbook theme video.
• Photo Album: Imagine yourself sitting with your grandma admiring pictures of yourself and family members in her photo album with the smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies in the air. We want to give your new homebuyers this sense of “home” when they look at the photo album themed video.
• Film Strip: You’re a posh homebuilder in Los Angeles and you just built modern/hip condos meant for 20 something’s. To give your potential new homebuyers a mature vibe we suggest the film strip style theme.
• Bulletin Board: To give your new homebuyers a sense of care-free living we chose the bulletin board theme. You can use this theme for virtually any kind of homebuilder.
• Comic Book: Zap! Bang! After watching the comic book theme you have a sense that the homebuilder is funky and willing to take a few risks to reach potential new homebuyers.

If you would like to find out how you can get one of these amazing videos for your new home community contact us at NewHomesDirectory.com or by calling 866-540-6607.

I was just playing the comic book video Rebecca just made for Epcon Communities and saw a Jeff Shore / Jason Forrest Google video ad overlay.  Had to post it.  Very cool.

Many new homes builders use virtual tours as a way to captivate consumer’s attention to buy their homes.  But have you ever thought about another more cost effect and stylish way to showcase your beautiful new homes?

Using something as strange as a “comic book” theme to one of Epcon Communities new homes communities in one of our HD videos I want to show you how taking pictures of a beautiful new home and giving them a theme that you would never pick for selling new homes cannot only appeal to potential new home buyers but how it can also help them to choose you over some other builder who chose to do the same old “stuff”.

The best part about NewHomesDirectory.com HD videos is that each video is featured on our site as well as NewHomesDirectory.tv and YouTube.  Meaning more places that your new home community is found on and more traffic to you.  The hard work is already done for you, so what you are waiting for?

Research done by Eyeblaster, Microsoft Advertising, and comScore shows that the more a consumer engages your website, the higher the conversion.  Eyeblaster's 'Global Benchmark 2010' report examined billions of rich media impressions and found higher engagement resulted in higher conversions.  An increase in 'dwell rate' from 5% to 15% resulted in a 45% conversion increase.  Dwell rate was defined as a mouse over or some type of interaction with an ad.

Image provided by eMarketer.

Research also showed that high engagement led to a 39% increase in brand-related search engine searches and there are many studies that show brand related searches have a higher conversion than non-brand related studies.

What this means for home builders:

In order to get a lift in leads, there must be ample opportunity for a consumer to engage you.

Ways to increase consumer engagement are:

1. Good content - Site content should be comprehensive and relevant to the entire home shopping experience.  This means school info, utility info, neighborhood info, area info, etc.
2. Add video - This is the easiest and quickest component to increase engagement.  Consumers love video - the constant rising video stats prove it.
3. Have a blog - Post at least weekly and let consumers know the lights are on AND you're home.
4. Have a Facebook fan page and converse with consumers.
5. Have a Twitter account and converse with consumers.

Increasing consumer engagement takes time and money.  If you home builders want a lift in online conversions, you're going to have to allocate more of your budget to the online world.  From my perspective, as an industry, we're getting there slowly but we have a long way to go.  There is still way too much money spent on traditional media and not near enough online.  For goodness sake, all our consumers are online - spend the money there.  All the tools are here for us to succeed; we just need to use them.

Jim Adams - CEO