John Burns New Home Insights Podcast

Ahead of speaking at the upcoming Housing Design Summit, I chatted with Dean Wehrli and John Burns on the New Home Insights Podcast about effective digital marketing strategies.

"It's right there in the name. It's social media. If you're going to use it as purely a megaphone, you're not being very social."

The new home industry has lost market share, capturing only about 10% of total homes sales compared to the historical norm, which is closer to 15%. While most builders are effectively using social media to drive sales, I believe that social media can play a major role in turning that trend around.

Transcript:

Dean Wehrli: This is New Home Insights, the John Burns Real Estate Consulting Podcast. I'll be your host Dean Wehrli. As the title promises, we're going to bring you insights into everything housing. Latest trends, innovations, observations, and issues of the day. We'll bring in colleagues here at John Burns and also some major industry players from all across the country. This podcast is going to be quick, fun, but also hopefully make you think. So see here every couple of weeks. Now let's get to it. Welcome to New Home Insights by John Burns Consulting. I'm your host, Dean Worley. Today, I have an extremely special guest, Will Duderstadt from MI Homes. Will, please say hi.

Will Duderstadt: Hello. Thank you, Dean. That's a heck of an introduction. Let me tell you.

Dean Wehrli: Let me tell the folks something about you before we tell them about the topic. You work for MI Homes in Columbus, Ohio, but you are actually one of the nation's leading builders of single-family homes. I'll be honest with you, you're bigger than I thought I realized. You've delivered over 100,000 homes, and you oversee all of these social media and internet outreach for 16 divisions in 11 states. I'm not going to lie. That's a bigger footprint than I thought.

Will Duderstadt: Man, I'm impressed when you say it.

Dean Wehrli: you should be. It's so and you're mostly in kind of the Midwest, the South, am I right?

Will Duderstadt: Yeah, we stretch out to Texas, up to Minnesota, down to Florida, and it's a blessing to me that we're only in two time zones. But it's a nice density across those two.

Dean Wehrli: Okay. And as you might have guessed from Will's kind of CV and what he does for MI Homes, we are today going to talk about social media, specifically about social media.

Will Duderstadt: I thought we were going to talk about billboards.

Dean Wehrli: We could do that too. Old, old fashioned. We're going to talk about old media that no one uses or cares about anymore. That'd be a good podcast. We'll do that next podcast. But it's social media outreach and it's specifically kind of how you get the attention of the younger potential home buyers.

Will Duderstadt: Okay.

Dean Wehrli: You know who we're talking about.

Will Duderstadt: Right.

Dean Wehrli: The M word, I think.

Will Duderstadt: Well, younger is relative, right? So it's unfair to put young on a single generation or even a single cohort because It all really depends on who you've traditionally been marketing to. And younger might mean that you're now starting to sell to people that are in their 30s, which may not qualify as traditional millennials.

Dean Wehrli: Well, okay, that's a good question then. So when you think of outreach to younger and potential home buyers, what are you thinking? Are you thinking 20s and 30s or not that young?

Will Duderstadt: I kind of use that terrible cliche where you're only as old as you feel. And it's probably more about traits that a younger mindset might have, regardless of whether they are 20, 30, or 40. I'll be honest, I know plenty of guys and gals in their 40s and 50s that are just as air quote hip as those that are in their 25s, which means They're consuming similar media as somebody in their 20s. Yeah. And they're really reacting with it in a way that's very similar to someone in their 20s. So. it is cliche, but it's certainly a mindset. And that can be a challenge, I think, for a lot of marketers to understand what are those traits and think about these people as complex individuals rather than just, a drop down on the Facebook ad interface that they want to target.

Dean Wehrli: Yeah, that's a good point because it does make that target, those targeted buyers or that pool of potential buyers much more diverse than we might think. I mean, you don't have to be 24 to listen to 21 pilots. I chose a band from Columbus, by the way. I did that on purpose. And go to raves and stuff like that. Somebody's in their 50s doing that stuff. Or just, in this case specifically, you know, they're attending to Facebook and whatever, Twitter, et cetera.

Will Duderstadt: Right, So here's a really interesting one. You know, a lot of people will put this solely on the shoulders of millennials, but there's a certain draw today for consumers to want to interact with businesses that are local, that have handcrafted kind of products or bespoke services that typically have a story behind them. And I'm not a millennial, and I enjoy the heck out of that, right? I want to understand what it took to make a particular thing. And that's firmly in the mind of that consumer. Like I said earlier, someone in their 50s can appreciate that just as much as somebody in their 20s. But that really needs to inform the kind of content that you're going to create, which platform you'll distribute it on, I'm sure we'll talk about. But how you choose to tell that story and how you want to highlight that is really the goal.

Dean Wehrli: Let's start with platforms then. Let's start with sort of what are those key social media right now that you reach those, well, that you, I guess, I guess, we can twist this, not really talking about just potential, younger potential home buyers, but home buyers in terms of social media. What are the key ones? I mean, we think we know them, but what are they really?

Will Duderstadt: you could look at it a couple ways, and this will probably sound like a politician's answer, but where is your audience, right? And so many marketers will immediately jump to, Facebook has the best cost per lead, or Twitter has the highest engagement, Instagram's great for photos, All that's really irrelevant if your target customer isn't spending time on those platforms. So you really got to invest some time and do some legwork and talk to people and focus group and where are they spending time? The answer is probably going to be one of those three, right? Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Those are going to be the most popular. I hate to crush anybody who's listening's hopes and dreams of becoming a Snapchat marketer, because that's probably not right for home builders at this point.

Dean Wehrli: MySpace is already over it, I think. They've gone through the 12 stages.

Will Duderstadt: Yeah. But to your point, if you think about this purely as an age play, well, then you're probably going to go try and run ads on Fortnite, because that's where younger people are, right? But is that where they're consuming information, or is that where they expect to receive advertisements or sponsored content about things not immediately related to what they're there to do in that app. I favor the top three, right? Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I think as home builders, we have content that's really portable to all three. And maybe I'm lucky, but my audience is certainly on all three of those platforms.

Dean Wehrli: That's good. That's good. Are you on though? I mean, how, those have been the kind of the big three. for a little while now, but in the new tech world, things can change amazingly rapidly again. Let's all remember MySpace and pour some of our 40 onto the ground. But do they, are you just on the lookout for what's hottest and what might be changing? I mean, Instagram seems like it very quickly became bigger than Facebook, you know, just in a very short time.

Will Duderstadt: Well, I mean, that's clearly a job of a digital marketer is to always at least be aware of what's happening. to go out and test it, give it a run, and see if it has any business applications. At the same time, you can't jump on too quickly, and you got to be ready to let go. So for example, I keep a folder on my iPhone of apps, and I call it my social graveyard. And I put all the stuff there that just doesn't make sense to be using anymore. But I keep them as a reminder that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of attempts to get in front of a marketer and come up with the greatest new version of Facebook or Instagram. And the vast majority are going to fail.

Dean Wehrli: Yeah, that makes sense. Are there any others besides the big three that are at all worth it or that you spend any time with besides those big three?

Will Duderstadt: Yeah, you know, my second tier there would be Pinterest and House, which, you know, have Instagram-like qualities, but have, I think, a different intent. where somebody could consume Instagram content and then probably take a natural next step, like calling me or submitting a lead. Hals and Pinterest are more aspirational. So it's an opportunity to get in front of somebody before they're even thinking about moving, right? They're just dreaming. And when it is time to move, hopefully we're still in their idea book or on their pin board, and they circle back and say, you know, I like what they did three years ago. They might be worth checking out as somebody who can build a home for me.

Dean Wehrli: And is that like, I'll be honest with you, I don't, I've never been on Pinterest. I don't crochet. So I don't scrapbook. But I mean, what are you doing on there? Let me generalize that a little bit. How are you connecting with buyers on these kind of social media? That is, I mean, just literally what is the message and physically sort of, I guess, what are you doing?

Will Duderstadt: it is the most passive, easiest message to really pull together. It's my best of real. So we build amazing homes. So many home builders build amazing homes. And we spend a couple bucks, sometimes more than a couple bucks, to take some pretty spectacular photos of them. but we treat them very literally as the thing that they are, right? We attach them to our model home, and then when that model closes, we just destroy those photos. But on Pinterest, they can really be setting a tone for what our overall style might be, or what kind of home exteriors we like to build. It becomes... probably almost like a gateway drug, right? Fall in love with all these things that we've ever done. And yeah, we might not do that exact thing again, but I'm willing to bet my quality is going to be the same as it was two years ago.

Dean Wehrli: So it gives you a chance to kind of let them know what kind of builder you are, what typically your homes are typically going to look like, almost like what your ethos is. that fair?

Will Duderstadt: Yep, Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of home builders also go out of their way to have at least one wow feature in many of their model homes. The goal is to stand out as you're touring a bunch of different home builders. You want to be memorable for that one thing, right? It might be quirky. You put a weird material on the wall or the ceiling, or you have a very ornate piece of furniture in that particular model. This is doing the same exact thing, right? Take that photo of that wow item and get it online. The most, again, I'm air quoting, the most viral photo that MI has on Pinterest. Actually, it might be on House, not certain. It's on over 10,000 idea boards. And you would have never looked at that photo and said 10,000 people are going to fall in love with it. But it's a real stately, classy room that has drapes that must be 22 feet tall. And people are just wowed by it. And they aspire to live there someday. So they're putting it to their idea board so they can keep looking at that and they can use it to inform their personal style.

Dean Wehrli: And you know, I guess, is the, I think you used the word a minute ago, the story. I mean, is that what you're trying to do? You're trying to get your story out in your messaging?

Will Duderstadt: I think so. You know, it's hard to stand out as a home builder with a convincing story about the product. product. We all have origin stories, how our building company came to be, the principles that were built upon. But trying to at least romance the product itself is a place where a lot of builders are challenged. So it's a very visual business. Let's get that out there, right? Let's leverage that. If we have commentary about why we designed something a certain way or the overall kind of kind of look we were going for in a particular room, that only adds to that story. And from now the demand marketing side, or the actual like, I need leads to sustain, if one out of 100 of these people click through to our website, There's A litany of things that we're going to continue doing, right? We're going to tag them with a remarketing pixel so we can show them ads over the next 30 days. We might get them to recognize that we build in their neighborhood or not far from them. So we're bridging those gaps like mini conversion by mini conversion every step of the way.

Dean Wehrli: Is there that kind of interaction? Like will you actually be talking, conversing with them essentially on like a Facebook for instance and going have a back and forth with potential buyers?

Will Duderstadt: Oh gosh, I mean, if a home builder isn't, hang up the podcast and get to work.

Dean Wehrli: Don't tell him that. Finish the podcast and then go ahead. Finish the podcast.

Will Duderstadt: The whole point, I mean, it's right there in the name. It's social media. So if you're going to attempt to use social media as purely a megaphone, I'm only telling you things and you aren't actually being social, meaning you thank people and you respond to people and you like other people's stuff, well then you're not I'm not being very social.

Dean Wehrli: Okay, you don't have to name names, but do you see some builders do that and use it as a?

Will Duderstadt: I do, absolutely.

Dean Wehrli: Okay, that's interesting.

Will Duderstadt: Yeah, it's a megaphone. It is the digital billboard. Yeah. See, I just took it full circle. There you go.

Dean Wehrli: So yeah.

Will Duderstadt: They're just putting up a message.

Dean Wehrli: And that's not going to be effective with these folks?

Will Duderstadt: It's not. No. And I tell you, should go do this. but it's hard, right? People are going to respond or comment and they're going to ask you bizarre things like, where did you get that blue vase in the background? And I don't have a clue, right? But you don't just ignore that. You still recognize it. Hey, yeah, you're right. That is an awesome blue vase. Here's a link to several that are similar that I found on Google. Or our designer is so good that there's probably not another one like it in the world. You know, have fun with that. Just don't ignore people.

Dean Wehrli: So there's a constant give and take. So you must be attending to these and staff as well, folks who work with you, just constantly. I mean, especially these days where 24-7 is by exaggeration, but certainly not normal quote unquote business hours, I'm guessing.

Will Duderstadt: I mean, you're right. it goes well outside of business hours. But at the same time, we aren't Wendy's and we aren't Apple. So we're not getting millions of mentions. It's just as if we were just very popular on social, right? What I imagine maybe a Kim Kardashian puts up.

Dean Wehrli: You're an influencer. You need to start getting some paydays for mentioning some sponsorship stuff going on here.

Will Duderstadt: A payday for us is if someone falls in love and wants to come live in one of our homes.

Dean Wehrli: So builders actually strikes me and builder building industry is just perfect for Instagram, isn't it? Because like you just said, than a minute ago, it's so, we have ready-made pictures and wonderful pictures that are perfect for talking about our product.

Will Duderstadt: Think about this. Like if you made almost any other product in the world, if you made iPhones, if you made coffee cups, you'd have to have like a studio photo shoot to get product photography. All a home builder really needs to do is go to that model home. And it is set up to be picture perfect every day of the week. You can, in a skilled hand, take an iPhone X in portrait mode and just about crush any angle of a model home, and you're going to get some pretty impressive Instagram-worthy photos. Do you want to blow it up and put it on all sorts of different pieces of signage? Probably not, but for Instagram, it is spot on.

Dean Wehrli: You've never seen my pictures from field work where I take pictures of the models of the other homes. I tend to cut up roofs and show like about 1/2 a mile of the asphalt in front of the home. That's kind of bad.

Will Duderstadt: I'm not good.

Dean Wehrli: I'm not good. I'm a horrible photographer. Okay, let's switch a little bit. Does to old media, I'm doing the air quotes there as well.

Will Duderstadt: Yep.

Dean Wehrli: Does that work at all? Does it work at all with the younger buyers? Is there still a place for old media? And if so, how much longer, honestly?

Will Duderstadt: So what do you put in your air quotes of old media?

Dean Wehrli: I mean, honestly, I think the first thing I think of is newspapers.

Will Duderstadt: Okay. If your audience is reading newspapers, then you probably need to be in the newspaper. Newspapers have changed though, right? Because you might have that 40 to 50 year old buyer who every day of the week is thinking like a millennial, right? They're on social, they want that kind of content, they're consuming content in that way. But maybe they've also migrated away from the New York Times, but still want to read something tangible. So it has turned into some of these underground papers or culture kind of papers that exist in almost every major city at this point. Again, the content that's in there is all the style of content we're talking about for social. It's story-driven, it's purpose-driven, it's what drives us as a company, what matters to us. And if you've got to port that over into print every once in a while, I absolutely do think it works. The caveat of make sure that your users, your audience, is actually reading that thing before you go and buy in.

Dean Wehrli: Yeah, that culture magazine or the, you know, the downtown. town fill in the name of the city review kind of a thing. Okay. So you're still doing print media? You're still, and that still has an audience there?

Will Duderstadt: I believe it does, yeah. You know, your mileage is going to vary. It depends on the community, depends on the city itself, and it depends on the content because you can't go old school advertorials into these and say from the low 300s, it has to be emotional and it has to be compelling.

Dean Wehrli: Okay. And I imagine it also varies by who your audience is, right? I mean, sometimes it's not just social. You are, this home or this neighborhood is going to have a very specific audience. And right, I imagine you would gear your media buys to that, to that perceived audience.

Will Duderstadt: Absolutely, yes. And it's funny, because you say media buys, and I guess I think about that in two buckets, you know. helping that local media company who chooses print, helping them to generate content might be different than making a true ad buy. I think of an example we had in a community, an MI community, where we felt like we did the right thing in a couple instances. We bought an old golf course and we were doing what we do. We were building a neighborhood, but we really felt for the people that yesterday were living on a golf course with golf course views. So we went out and made sure we were doing right by each of those neighbors. And in one particular instance, there was a really large tree that had sentimental value to the homeowner. And we went out of our way not only to make sure that it was safe, but if you go to that neighborhood today, the sidewalk takes the craziest loop around this tree that anyone would look at and say, that's the worst engineering job ever. But we did it for the right reasons. Now, Could we advertise that? Could we generate content about how we did this thing out of kindness for somebody? Absolutely not, right? That sounds self-serving and kind of sleazy. But can we help some of these news outlets be aware and then let them cover it and give them appropriate access to highlight those things? Absolutely.

Dean Wehrli: Okay, so it's kind of like the politician who doesn't say nice things about themselves, but make sure they have folks to say nice things about them.

Will Duderstadt: All right, that sums it up.

Dean Wehrli: I mean, I get it. You don't want to be seen as tooting your own horn. Current politics may be accepted for one person who does that a lot. But in terms of the old method, it was always make sure you have lots of people out there saying great things about you.

Will Duderstadt: And nothing has changed, right? You still want a lot of people saying great things.

Dean Wehrli: Very true. What kind of, what kind of metrics? This one always confuses me. Are there metrics to really understand, yeah, we are reaching the people we want to reach and we have some kind of quantification of that. Is that out there?

Will Duderstadt: Man, that is a good one. Everybody, oh man, especially in the digital space, this cracks me up. Everybody wants more likes, right? You probably want likes on this podcast.

Dean Wehrli: Sure.

Will Duderstadt: It feels great.

Dean Wehrli: Hint, hint, listeners.

Will Duderstadt: Exactly. Everyone, please go like this podcast before I tell you what I'm about to tell you. Likes are so meaningless, right? They cost nothing to give. They certainly have no value once we receive them. We can't take them over to the bank and pay our mortgage with them. But it is a nice indication that somebody has enjoyed our content. So many of these social networks, right, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, they're all really incented to get their users more and more addicted to the platform. And every time that little plus one pops up, that's like the dopamine firing off in your brain as a user that like, oh yeah, I got to go back. I need more of these things. I crave it. So I kind of chuckle when you look at those top line social metrics. They have so little value, right? They're intended to keep stickiness on the Facebooks of the world. But a good marketer is going to take a step back and use that in the context of what their reach was. You know, if you got 5 likes on a piece of content, but only 10 people even saw that content, that's actually pretty good. Compared to five likes after a million people saw the content, so using it as kind of a gauge as to what content people are actually responding to, what content people like or enjoy, it really almost becomes the cheapest user research that you could ever do. And then just keep doing the stuff that has a really high engagement rate and stop doing the stuff that has a low one.

Dean Wehrli: So that's when your key metrics is sort of that engagement rate.

Will Duderstadt: It has to be the first step, right? Don't get bogged down in your raw number of likes. Look at that engagement as your top level.

Dean Wehrli: Okay. That does make sense.

Will Duderstadt: From there, hopefully, hopefully your listeners are all very astute marketers. So before they even plan or execute a campaign, they're saying, this is the purpose. This is what I'm aiming for. An awareness campaign has far different needs or KPIs than a lead generation campaign. So you can wait to define it at the end and just change it to suit whatever the performance was, but that's cheating, right? So such a mark from the beginning. And make it a game, with your coworkers or in your office, throw down some bets on what you think an engagement rate might be or what you think a click-through rate might be. And I think that gets people a lot more in tune with what's reasonable, right? What's expected for certain pieces of content. And then everyone's got a little bit of skin in the game to make sure that it hits some of those marks that people are gambling on.

Dean Wehrli: Yeah. And are you trying to speak the language, for again, if you're going off the younger buyers, do you use the word bro a lot? Are you, message specific like that, sort of strategically?

Will Duderstadt: Certainly, voice has to change as you go across different platforms. Twitter demands that you say just less overall things, right, with their character count. I don't know that any home builder should be going down to bro level or slice of Za.

Dean Wehrli: Oh, God, I hate that one.

Will Duderstadt: Me too. It's a little off-brand, but can we get more casual? Can we get more conversational? Absolutely. And that does need to vary by social channel.

Dean Wehrli: But it is interesting that you, again, coming back to storytelling, it does seem like the media, when I see it, they are more about telling the story of who they are and what they're doing as opposed to, like you said, that kind of traditional old school, we cut this amount off and, you know, come by our home right now kind of stuff.

Will Duderstadt: Yeah, Well, how's that emotional?

Dean Wehrli: Yeah.

Will Duderstadt: That's very transactional. That's a Walmart play, right?

Dean Wehrli: Yeah. You still see that, though. I'll be honest. I still see a lot of that.

Will Duderstadt: Yeah, I do too. I do too. But I think there's reasons why the Teslas and the Apples and the Zappos of the world are so successful because they're telling a story about each individual item. I mean, you can watch. You watch videos about how the iPad metal frame is being milled out in a factory that just blows my mind that could actually exist. It looks like a clean room. And that gets you pretty darn attached to a physical object before you even buy it, right? Because you're so enamored with how precise it's been crafted and how neat it looks. Zappos does the same thing, I think, from a content standpoint. I use them all the time as an example. Do you buy shoes online?

Dean Wehrli: No, I don't.

Will Duderstadt: No, you got to.

Dean Wehrli: First of all, yeah, I've heard of those folks.

Will Duderstadt: You got to buy shoes online. Sorry.

Dean Wehrli: I feel bad now, bro.

Will Duderstadt: It's so free. You know, but for every pair of shoes, I'm wearing a pair of shoes I bought off at Zappos right now. For every pair of shoes, They have 5 videos. And one of them is like a guy walking, forward and then across the screen and then backwards. And then there's a video about the guy that just walked in him talking about what it felt like to walk in him. And this now becomes like way more than just, we have a leather size 13 shoe for $200. Yeah.

Dean Wehrli: So again, they're still telling the story. They're making an emotional connection.

Will Duderstadt: What's it like to wear?

Dean Wehrli: In the builder world then, does it always start with the beat up old pickup truck out in the country somewhere? When your grandfather founded the company? I've seen so many.

Will Duderstadt: That's the builder story. That's not the community or the product story.

Dean Wehrli: No, but don't you, you'll tell the builder story too, won't you, on social media?

Will Duderstadt: Sure. Separately, right?

Dean Wehrli: Yeah, okay.

Will Duderstadt: Because I think, especially when you look at these buyers, they're in so many different phases, right? Somebody that's a value evaluating different builders probably needs to see some content about the builder story and what that translates into today for that particular builder. But for somebody who's shopping resale, which a reminder, nine out of every 10 homes that are sold are resale. So instead of tripping over that one with all of our competition, we could be chasing the nine. that buyer that's comparing us to resale, now we have a more compelling story to talk about, right?

Dean Wehrli: Yeah.

Will Duderstadt: Modern floor plan layouts, modern building codes that exist, the latest fits and finishes.

Dean Wehrli: Yeah, warranties, smart tech, right?

Will Duderstadt: Yeah, exactly.

Dean Wehrli: Let's finish up with what I do want to specify younger buyers in this case. Are they all that different in terms of how you, and I think I know you answered, but I want to ask, in terms of how you reach them, how you communicate with them from relatively older buyers, what does and doesn't work for specifically for the younger buyers?

Will Duderstadt: So the short answer is they really aren't that different. What changes is where you talk to them and maybe a little bit of how you talk to them. no different within any individual age demographic, you're probably going to encounter the engineer or the lawyer type of personality that needs talked to in a much different way than the artistic kind of freeform personality. We're doing the same thing as we talk to people across generations. So it is very daunting sometimes when we talk about millennials or the younger the younger home buyers. But we really need to step back and free ourselves from all these preconceived notions that they're crazy different or they're disrupting the way people buy. If at our core, we're building really great content and then we're able to deliver it on the appropriate platform, then it's very much the same.

Dean Wehrli: Okay, I'm gonna end with a pitch for an app. You ready?

Will Duderstadt: Oh, oh, okay.

Dean Wehrli: Tinder for Homes. You swipe left. You swipe right. But I mean, it's fully, you fully look like you're making a date with a home and you just go boom, boom, boom. What do you think?

Will Duderstadt: I love it. I will invest. But unfortunately, during due diligence, we'll find that two other companies are already doing it.

Dean Wehrli: I was just going to say that, yeah.

Will Duderstadt: I'm confident you'll do it better.

Dean Wehrli: I'm just the idea guy. I don't know. I can do the technical stuff. That's beyond me.

Will Duderstadt: Well, we'll leave it to your listeners to go ahead and just Google that, because I think that's funny to show up in somebody's search history.

Dean Wehrli: They already are right now, as we say, probably. Well, Will, this has been phenomenal. This has been great. I really appreciate you sharing some time with us and talking about social media and home buying.

Will Duderstadt: Man, you bet. Time flies. I thought we were two minutes into this thing.

Dean Wehrli: I know. No. So hopefully you enjoyed this been Will. I'm going to get it right. Will Duderstadt from MI Home?

Will Duderstadt: Yes.

Dean Wehrli: Okay. I almost over-Germanized it, you know, Duderstadt, but I'm trying not to. And we've been talking about social media here on the John Burns Real Estate Consulting New Home Insights podcast. I'm Dean Whirley. Will, please say bye to the folks.

Will Duderstadt: Hey guys, we'll see you online.

Dean Wehrli: All right. See you guys.