Market Proof Marketing Podcast
As a birthday gift, I landed an early guest spot (Episode 7!) of what is sure to be the top podcast for new home marketing professionals, "Market Proof Marketing".
"Would you ever outsource taking photos of your family vacation and making witty comments on Facebook? Of course not."
I join Kevin Oakley and Andrew Peek of Do You Convert to talk how to stand out from the crowd online, my proudest tweet of all time, and that social media likes are free (so hand them out like candy).
Transcript:
Kevin Oakley: Welcome to MarketProof Marketing, the weekly podcast from the marketing minds at doconvert.com, where we talk about the current state of all things digital and how they impact home builders and developers around the globe. I'm Kevin Oakley, and as always, we have Dr. Andrew Peek.
Andrew Peek: Dr. Andrew Peek, yeah, that was last week. I was the ad doctor last week, wasn't I?
Kevin Oakley: I was curious to see if you would have a new nickname this week or not.
Andrew Peek: I know, I have not had a new nickname this week. I should get one every week or just be the doctor, Andrew P. There you go.
Kevin Oakley: How was your week, Andrew?
Andrew Peek: It's been a fun week. A new community launch going really well. It's been a fun one. When did we start on that project? That was like, I don't even know. It's been a while.
Kevin Oakley: Oh, I know all the details about this one because I've been talking about it as an example with all of our builder partners who are either in process or thinking about doing new community launches soon, just because anytime you can have a live case study. So we started in July.
Andrew Peek: And July, that's what it was.
Kevin Oakley: The project, we'll link to it in the show notes. It's BridgewaterSC for South Carolina.com is the website there currently. But they're off to the races now. They started scheduling pricing appointments at this point, just about a little less than 48 hours ago. And they've got a few on the board.
Andrew Peek: Quite a few. Quite a few. It's pretty cool. I'm going to say the total amount, 60 plus already less than 48 hours. And it's probably changed by now.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, we're up to 70 plus. And I'll do one last little check see here. We're using a different tool this time because they had 3,800 people on the original VIP list. And so the tool that we are using is an online scheduling tool and just to help with the volume and making sure that we can process people without them having to wait on hold or something worse. So I can do a real quick check and see.
Andrew Peek: Yeah, and I'll quickly talk about how we generated those leads. Starting July, all those leads came from Facebook or Google AdWords going to a landing page. And then about, I believe it was about four months ago, we switched to the main website where we had a lot more. Once we started to have more information, we could give them more context as far as here's a site map, here is some expected amenities, all that, as far as being not super specific on what will or will not be there. And we still kept generating leads then, but very efficient as far as the cost per lead starting at the beginning. I think on average for like the first month, everything was around like $4 per lead, which is really nice. And the landing page had a really big impact on that, converting that like 12-ish percent, if I remember correctly.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, I think you're right. And to the point that after we had gotten roughly 2000 or so people on that list, we, I want to say maybe November, we shifted people over to the main website simply to try to drop that conversion rate lower and say, hey, quantity wise, we've got plenty of people here on this list now. Let's focus on getting the highest quality people on the list. It's like to your point, just giving a little bit more information on the main website itself. But they have added more. I can't get the exact count, but we're probably at this point looking. Right now, you cannot schedule an appointment with this developer slash builder until after April 1st, until after Easter. It's not possible. And they have two salespeople, each willing to hold up to 8 appointments A day.
Andrew Peek: Wow, they're busy. Eight A day. Man.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, you do that. Do the math there. That's a lot of appointments. So yeah, and then I got some details on stats on the podcast here to share with you, Andrew. We have now had well over 1000 downloads in total across the six episodes, but we've also had people from 30 different states in the US and four different Canadian provinces download the podcast. And we're even gaining a real following in Australia about 20 or so folks in Australia are religious listeners now. So in Australia, they have a product called Vegemite. Are you familiar with this product?
Andrew Peek: I have no idea what that is, but it's kind of terrifying.
Kevin Oakley: It comes in either a tube or a jar. And I think it's like made from a, one of you listeners can write in and show at doconvert.com and educate us. But I think it's made from a yeast byproduct. during the course of making beer.
Andrew Peek: Sounds terrible.
Kevin Oakley: And you spread it over toast and so you can make a Vegemite sandwich. And I got a joke for you, Andrew. Do you think you would like a Vegemite sandwich?
Andrew Peek: So this is like beer leftover spread sandwich thing. I don't think I would enjoy that. No, I don't think so.
Kevin Oakley: You have Vegemite. I have Vegemite. So let's play a little game. Between this week and next week, what I want everyone who's listening to this episode to do is think about your network of real estate connections. And I would love to try to get someone from either North Dakota, South Dakota, or Nebraska to download the podcast. So that is the mission between this week and next week. All right, let's move on to story time. Andrew? You take it away.
Andrew Peek: Yeah, this is a good one because I think it relates to something we'll bring up later. So I was on the Instagram and I was going through the stories, which is interesting. I used to not like those. Now I think they're actually kind of entertaining compared to just going through the feed. And I got this ad from Nike and I, full disclosure, I was on Nike's website within the past month. I don't know, looking at a pair of shoes or something. And it was an ad for one shoe says, rep your team. It's a Florida State shoe. I went to Florida State, graduated 2010. I'm like, oh.
Kevin Oakley: Go Buckeyes. This
Andrew Peek: is what they actually have, Buckeye shoes as well, and this is the same series, except of course your colors. And so this is Florida State Garnet in Gold. Beautiful shoe, right? And I'm like, that's kind of weird. I've never looked at the shoe. It's a basketball trainer shoe. I don't play basketball. So it's not like in a category as far as remarketing. that I looked at that shoe and now they're showing me that shoe. So I'm like, okay, how did they do this? My Facebook profile does say I went to Florida State. I'm sure I've had locations where it's Florida State they could tag that. Or did they or did Nike just say, okay, anyone in Florida who is this age range gets to see this ad? Or did they go and they're targeting and go, okay, graduates of Florida State or interested in Florida State. And now they'll see this, see this ad. I thought it was interesting.
Kevin Oakley: That's that's some pretty sneaky stuff there.
Andrew Peek: It is sneaky. It was done well. I like it's it's not like, Hey, you like Florida State. You like shoes? Here you go. Yeah, it was. I thought it was pretty cool. And I wasn't too creeped out by it, but it is. If you think about like how they showed that to me, they likely did do all those things as far as where I went to school with Facebook's targeting that is available where I live currently. my age, gender, all that. It's kind of a
Kevin Oakley: variation, although more interesting than the t-shirt companies that were all over the place, I feel like a year ago, you know, like, oh my gosh, there's a t-shirt that says Oakley family forever, or I'm proud of my name, Oakley. And you're like, how did, you know, and then you see all these Oakleys from around the world commenting or peaks in your case.
Andrew Peek: That's funny. I remember seeing those or like the birthday months, because you could do like on Facebook, you could target by birthday months, or even you could do by recently engaged, recently married, all those things, or even recently had a child, all that, however they get that information. I don't know. It's creepy, but it's good for us advertisers because we could go after people who are looking to move or who are.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah. And like you said, Instagram story.
Andrew Peek: Instagram stories. Yeah. It was a much more creative place to put it.
Kevin Oakley: I haven't seen real data on this, but a lot of people that I talk to or follow have been talking about that right now, the swipe up on an Instagram story has the highest CTR of any online advertising. It's a little bit of a misnomer though, because your reach is obviously much smaller for most of us, even as a brand. And so if you're If you're getting a 10% click through rate, but 30 people are seeing it or 100 people are seeing it, you know, obviously it's a high quality conversion, but the quantity isn't great.
Andrew Peek: Yeah, any metric is only important amongst other metrics that it's being compared against. Oh, that's fancy. So click the rate and low volume doesn't really mean anything. It's like, it's neat, but you know, what actually happens is important.
Kevin Oakley: my story is on the importance of smell. And this is just, this is nuts to me. If you would have told me at any point else in my life that at one point I was going to spend $200 on a bottle of cologne, I would have laughed in your face for a long time because there's just, it's not that important to me. I think I've had the same kind of cologne since I was 21 or something. And it's, you know, I thought $60 a bottle seemed to seem like a lot, to be honest with you. But a couple weeks ago when I stayed at the Addition Hotel in New York City, there was a particular scent in that hotel and in that room and all of the soaps and shampoos and everything had that same smell to it. It was a very pleasing smell. And so I thought, you know, I'll just steal a bottle of lotion and take it home. It'll just be something, you know, I'll use it here and there. My wife smelled it and was like, what was that? is the most amazing smell. And I started thinking more about, That's awesome. Yeah, I really like it too. But her reaction, I was like, this is really good. Started to run out of that lotion. So I Googled, you know, the addition hotel smell. Where do I get this thing at? And of course, I found a blog post written like 2 1/2 years ago called I smell like hotel dash that's totally normal or something like that. And this lady has chronicled her search for this smell because originally it was a custom created smell just for that hotel. You couldn't buy it anywhere else by a local company in New York City called Les Labeau. If I'm saying that wrong, I apologize. And Les Labeau is a custom crafted scent, apothecary or something is what they call themselves. And they started bottling this scent off of another name. It is called for those of you, Jackie, who works with us, actually ordered a tester and she agrees with me that this smells amazing. It's called the Noir 29 is the name of it. Yeah, it is. It is easily like people are selling those little lotion bottles that I stole on eBay for like $13 a piece. Wow.
Andrew Peek: And that's like an ounce or something.
Kevin Oakley: Like it's nothing. Yeah, it's nothing. so we ended up buying a bottle of this for over $200. And it made me think of a book by Martin Lidstrom that I read several years ago called Biology, Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. And even pulled up a quick article about it. And you know, some of what he has to share about the insights of the importance of smell. It's just, it's super interesting. And while I'm pulling that up, you know, it just was like, why don't home builders do this? one other thing that I've done for a while, Andrew, is that the smell of a green apple makes a room appear larger.
Andrew Peek: Interesting.
Kevin Oakley: Isn't that weird? So smells have power, but you know, one of the things that you hear from different trainers and coaches and experts is that, well, smell doesn't really have that big of an impact on the overall experience or purchasing behavior. And I've always kind of disagreed with that in the sense of if there's a rotten diaper in your sales office, I guarantee you that is having an impact greater than 3 to 5% on that experience.
Andrew Peek: I think that's a good way to put it. If for people who would be skeptics as far as like thinking like, oh, that cannot increase that or that cannot affect on the positive, just to counter that argument with like what you just said, if there's a rotten diaper, if the if XYZ, if there's a bad smell, that will have a negative experience. And I think people are willing to accept that. But if it's true that way, it has to be true on the positive side. Wherever they have the smell sad, in the models, everywhere, really?
Kevin Oakley: I would just have it, you know, gentle. You don't want to overpower with scent either. That could definitely be a turn off. But just throughout the model home in general, Because I think smell, and this is the quote that I wanted to pull from Lindstrom, really does have something to do with memory. for the rest of my life, when I smell this particular scent, I will always think of the addition hotel in New York City.
Andrew Peek: For sure.
Kevin Oakley: And for home builders, you know, who are trying to always do something with design to be a memory point in a model home, I think the smell, as long as it's a really good one, like this one is, could work. So this is Lindstrom's quote. He says, Test results have shown a 40% improvement in our mood when we're exposed to a pleasant fragrance, particularly if the fragrant taps into a joyful memory. So his suggestion is think about popular smells like cinnamon, cranberry, nutmeg, pine, frankincense, holiday type things, which is assuming that most people have good holiday memories. I hope so. But builders do this already, Andrew, with paint colors. It's very frequent. at the higher end for custom builders to have like a particular gray paint tone that they include as standard in their homes. And they'll call it like a branded term or make up the name. Even though oftentimes when you take a swatch of it to the store, they'll be like, oh yeah, that's Olympus white. Like it's not anything unique, but they're just calling it something unique. And I think you could do the same thing with smells.
Andrew Peek: I think you can complete all the senses. Yeah, you get the smell, get the air temperature correctly in the. in the home. all of it, all of it. That's the same with we talked, I think we talked about this a while ago, the summit in Phoenix, the Biltmore there. Same thing that there's a very distinct smell at that, at the resort where we had the summit last year.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, and resorts, resorts aren't doing that for no reason. We have so much news to cover today and we have an amazing guest, but we're going to try to do it all. I know we've had some people, Andrew, say, like, I love this podcast. There's just so much to go through. And we, sorry, not sorry, I guess. We're still going to talk about it all.
Andrew Peek: Sorry.
Kevin Oakley: Okay, what's up? What's up first in the news machine?
Andrew Peek: First, let's do the boring ones and then jump to the first one.
Kevin Oakley: Okay.
Andrew Peek: All right, we'll skip to the boring ones. The boring ones we could kind of go through and then we'll go to the exciting one.
Kevin Oakley: Okay.
Andrew Peek: Here we go. This one's really, well, no, not here. This one is super exciting to me.
Kevin Oakley: As soon as you said that, I was like, this is my favorite one.
Andrew Peek: I'm actually, and I'm going to confuse you because I'm not doing that one. I'm doing this one on AdWords.
Kevin Oakley: Oh, now AdWords is super boring. Yes, so I'm in improvement now.
Andrew Peek: This one here, I've said like they need to do this like years ago. AdWords is finally letting you in their interface have notes this year it's coming out. So like if you make a change today, 323, updated pricing or added these new keywords in the interface itself, you don't have to have an Excel file somewhere. You could actually log, hey, I did this, which is amazing. You'd think that would be like, oh, of course we have that, but now they actually have it. I'm super pumped up for that. Another one, they'll have a performance score, which is an aggregate of all your metrics compared to other people.
Kevin Oakley: Where would they have gotten that idea from?
Andrew Peek: I know, that's interesting. I think it's someone named Mark Zuckerberg. You have your relevance score on Facebook, which really says how relevant your ad is, your ad itself compared to the targeting and how those are meshing together, which is essentially a performance score. So this is the same thing for your account. The only thing we don't know with Google is how honest is it? In my opinion, as far as like, oh, you need to spend more? Like, what is there? How do you get that up? Are you chasing a number that really doesn't mean anything? Because I mean, really at the end of the day, it's like, are we getting leads? Are we getting points? Are we getting sales? And does it fit our goals as far as we're paying cost per lead?
Kevin Oakley: So don't they already have a quality score?
Andrew Peek: Correct. And that is the, that's at the keyword level, that metric you're going to pull up. But that quality score takes into account your ad, the landing page, like it takes into account everything. but it's for that keyword. So this is kind of like the same thing, I guess, except for the account level.
Kevin Oakley: Well, I think it's going to be a lot more sneaky, like you said, because we, again, I think this is now officially A recurring theme on the podcast of Google reps, you know, reaching out to people, making recommendations, trying to be quote unquote helpful. The ability to have a account quality score, in essence, that would basically permanently keep you out of five out of 10 unless you agree to spend the amount of money Google wants you to could really mess with people's heads, I think, if they don't understand it.
Andrew Peek: Yeah, or maybe you're not running YouTube ads, maybe you don't have remarketing, maybe you're not doing all these things that they say you need to do. And that's the only way to get your performance score up, which would be, I think the important note on here is if you are VP marketing, sales, marketing, whatever manager, like don't use that performance score to say, is the person who manages that effective or not? Because we don't know the reasons behind that number. The real reasons.
Kevin Oakley: It's like LinkedIn, you know, always trying to remind me that I'm 99% complete with my profile. If I would just do one more thing, I might, I don't think you can actually get to 100%. I don't think so. Okay, that was a good boring one. Would anything else boring to cover?
Andrew Peek: Here's a super boring one. Calls to action. Are they important? Kevin Oakley, are they important?
Kevin Oakley: Oh, man.
Andrew Peek: I think you could just say learn more or request for sure.
Kevin Oakley: I was so happy to see this one. This comes from AdWeek. And so to see this but not have it be from our industry, I was just like, hallelujah. So the headline is your users don't need to, in quotes, learn more. subheading boost engagement with more contextual calls to action. And so it's basically saying you actually need to be really specific with your calls to action. And I've ranted against the get more, learn more requests. Information requests is my absolutely all time least favorite call to action. If I see information requests on your website, we will not be friends until you change it.
Andrew Peek: It's like, what does that even mean? I don't even know.
Kevin Oakley: But their examples are pretty simple, but again, they're saying, hey, changing, instead of saying read more to read report, if you're trying to get people to download the report, saying read report, which is more specific, increase click-through rates on that by 44.5%. And so for home builders here, what we talk about all the times is if you're on a community page, Why not, instead of saying, do you have a question? Why does your call to action not say, do you have a question about this community? Do you have a question about this floor plan? You know, just making it, but go read the article for the sake of time, because we all are going to talk for this last one for a long time. But it's a great article. And please, for the love, do not have get information or information requests on your website.
Andrew Peek: Don't do it.
Kevin Oakley: All right. What's the second to last, least fun, important topic we have?
Andrew Peek: Second to last, least. That's a very long, descriptive. And this one, I'm reading this, I'm like, yes, that makes sense. Inventory homes are hot. That is what sells spec homes, quick delivery, homes already built, whatever you want to call it. They're hot, which is, I think that makes sense. People don't want to wait. There's a lot of demand for homes. There's not as much inventory, right? So it makes, I mean, it's, I don't know. To me, this is. It does make sense, but.
Kevin Oakley: Really? Man, no, I, no. So let me unborify it for you. The thing here is inventory homes for a lot of builders is a really scary thing. And so maybe it's because of riding through the downturn and the previous up markets that when I start to see a major publication like the Washington Post talking about inventory homes being hot, And then home builders seen that article and thinking to themselves, we need to build more inventory homes. It just makes me a little bit nervous about the market. And I've, this is kind of tied in with, I have gotten no less than three emails this week from home builders, mostly national, where they're offering 35, $40,000 incentives. And I haven't seen that in a long time. So I'm not by any means trying to call a turn in the market or anything, but I am saying, Merely the idea of, it's like they say, when everyone's talking about buying gold, you better not buy gold because the bubble's about to hit. I just thought that was interesting. And I also like this quote. Lots of people like not having to pick everything. They're happy to go with the choices the builders made for their house. They're still getting a new house. And typically it has the most popular upgrades for that price and neighborhood. And that is the reason I feel so strongly about that quote in particular is That's true if the person making the selections on your inventory homes knows what the heck they're doing and has guidelines and parameters that they are following when making those choices.
Andrew Peek: Very true. We see it all the time where it's like, hey, we have these three inventory spec homes available and they're not selling. And then we look at it and it's like, oh, well. Here's why. They're 75,000 more than what has sold in the past three months, four months, whatever.
Kevin Oakley: That's being generous. I mean, we've seen it where it's a $200,000 price difference from what their inventory is to where their starting prices in the neighborhood are. And this is, it's really tough, especially because builders want to push the inventory first. They tend to be higher up the page. And a lot of pages aren't getting more than 50% of the page is not even being viewed. And so if all they're looking at is this inventory that is marked up really high with too many options over spec for the market, we see it affect bounce rates on ads all the time. We're running an ad and yeah, it's, you can't say starting from the three hundreds and then take them to a page where the 1st 3 houses they see are in the fours or fives.
Andrew Peek: Yeah, that does not work.
Kevin Oakley: Doesn't work. So just please make sure that there is some process in place for making sure that they're not putting in too many options, that they're picking popular upgrades for that price neighborhood and not just saying, well, I can't make every house the same, so let's just do stuff different to be different or because I like it, have some reason. Some method to the madness. Okay. What is the fun one? What's the one we've been billing all this anticipation for?
Andrew Peek: Everyone's deleting their Facebook accounts. Facebook is going away. We're all going back to MySpace. I think. We're even, what's that? What's that LiveJournal? I don't know, Zanga. All those. We're going back to the Stone Age and Web 2.0. Facebook is going away. That's what's, that's my prediction. There's going to be no Facebook.
Kevin Oakley: Facebook's dying. Seen that article about how to delete your Facebook account once and for all. Everyone's, you know, what's causing all this, Andrew? What's all the chaos coming from?
Andrew Peek: It's like the trend of the past years, like everyone's getting hacked. In this case, though, Facebook was not hacked, sort of. If you read all the super nerdy details about it, which I definitely recommend you do on your own, because there's just so many of them. No one's information is private. And so I think this really is like built on the foundation of the Trump election, Clinton election, all this stuff, and then how the Facebook ads were used. Facebook ads and Facebook profiles and organic information on Facebook was used to try to manipulate public opinion. And so now all this trust is not there because it came out like, was it Cambridge Analytica, had built their own essentially super database by scraping the information from Facebook that Facebook allowed them to get along with hundreds of other developers way back when they didn't have much control over what information like the games and applications that connected to Facebook could get. And so they just got everything. So they took that and they combined it with other sources and they built essentially this database of who you are if you're in there and then they use that to do what they wanted which is what happens everywhere and every company does it at least that's on the interwebs that has the abilities like Amazon's doing it eBay's doing it like they're all guilty if that's even the word but you do click the yes I agree to the terms of service all those things I don't know I my personal opinion on this is in a month from now It's not going to be gone. It won't be away. But I think the hashtag delete Facebook, whatever the trending hashtag was, won't be there. The people that did delete their Facebook accounts, they really weren't on there anyway. So it's like, okay, stop it. Go away. Go away.
Kevin Oakley: Well, didn't one of Anath who works, one of the builders we partner with in the DC area, who just deleted their Facebook page?
Andrew Peek: Oh, Elon, Mr. Tesla. He, both their company pages. He deleted. Yeah, that'd be interesting to see over the weekend if any other larger companies delete it. So that's for SpaceX and Tesla deleted their Facebook page. But for me, what's interesting is if you read anything about Tesla or SpaceX, it is from his personal profiles on Twitter, which ties into our cast for today. But so, I mean, how important is their Facebook page in the scheme of the company for them? I don't know. It's, I don't know.
Kevin Oakley: It's, I think it's, I mean, Elon's definitely a guy who will take action what he believes in, but I also feel like some of that is PR. I mean, the guy will do anything similarly to Jeff Bezos. They'll do, you know, hey, 60 minutes, look at these drones. They're going to be delivering packages at any moment. Who knows? It could happen. And three years later, no drones delivering anything. I just think Elon tends to just love getting as much conversation out there about it as possible. But so deleting Facebook is a thing that's going around there. Marketers are scared. We've had that topic come up a couple of times. What's going to happen if Facebook goes away? One, yes, the stock is down. from its high pretty steeply from 180, 190 down to 160. Five years ago, it was at $27. So it still has quite a ways to fall if you were invested in it a while ago. Hey, being called in front of the government to answer questions about anything is never good for your company either.
Andrew Peek: I just hope it's not Mark. there's this funny joke about him. I wish I had the quote because it was amazing. They're like this teenage robot boy thing. I'm like, that is Mark. If you, if you've never seen an interview of him or him speaking, you'd be like, I believe that this dude did make Facebook. Like there's no doubt this guy is able to make whatever he wants. I mean, he's To make it, you have to have genius, right? As far as in my mind. And of course, there's like circumstance around like the timing of it and all that stuff.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, did you not watch that? He didn't make anything. He just stole it from someone else.
Andrew Peek: He stole it, right? Yeah, we could all just make stuff like that. No big deal. But yeah, it's that would be I would love to see if he had to actually testify. I'm sure he wouldn't.
Kevin Oakley: No, I think he's going to. I think him or Cheryl will end up in, yeah, I do. And that'll be kind of the low watermark for Facebook for a while. But I just, no matter what happens, hey, we can't fall in love with any single platform or channel. As long as you've got good content and a way to get that content to go out there, you're in good shape. But No matter what it is, it's going to be something on your phone or a device that is still what is getting everyone's eyeballs. So we've seen articles about talking about, hey, Instagram, this is their time to shine. Well, that's weird because they're owned by Facebook. So I think you also just have to remember that at the end of the day, the people buying your house may not be people who are walking the halls of Walmart, but most of America is. That's just, I'm not trying to make any judgments here. I'm just saying America equals Walmart. That's the average American is the person walking in the Walmart aisle and they don't understand or care that Instagram is connected to Facebook. Okay, this is a problem. I'll delete my Facebook account, but I'm going to go straight over to this other.
Andrew Peek: Place that I like. I've asked people about this and the majority have no idea what this is going on. I think part of the has to do with like, it didn't say like Facebook hacked for the headlines. It's all like, and Facebook has been in the news for so long there. It's almost noise. I think yet another thing that Facebook is involved with, they're just like, whatever. I don't even have enough time to pay attention to it. So I think most of the public, unless they're on the platforms all the time and are more, I don't know what the word would be, but like that are more interested in this type of thing at the tech level, don't really know or even care that much.
Kevin Oakley: And at the end of the day, guys, like Seth Godin has said, marketers are going to ruin everything. So we're going to over advertise. We're going to ruin it. Facebook's trying to prevent that from happening, but at some point, we'll kill it and we'll have to move on to the next thing.
Andrew Peek: That's right.
Kevin Oakley: Okay. Let's take a break and we've got a special guest coming up and I've got a clue for those of you who have been following today. Happy birthday to you. It's his birthday. It's his birthday. It's his birthday. All right, we'll be back in a few moments with Mr. Will Duderstadt. And we're back for this week's 360 topic discussion with our very special guest, Mr. Will Duderstadt. Will, thanks so much for joining us this week.
Will Duderstadt: Kevin, Andrew, thank you so much for having me.
Kevin Oakley: During the break, we sang happy birthday to Will properly. We did. We blew out the candles on the first try. How old are you today, sir?
Will Duderstadt: I'm still under 40. It's impolite to ask somebody their age. You should know that.
Kevin Oakley: That's good. That's good. So today we're going to talk about one and a half topics on the 360 topic discussion. The half topic, we have to have a discussion about Twitter.
Andrew Peek: We have to.
Kevin Oakley: Why anyone would really use it consistently, especially brands, especially home builders. And then we're going to talk about content marketing because Will is also an expert at that too. Let's talk about Twitter first.
Andrew Peek: Yeah, let's talk about Twitter because I had a short fling with Twitter way back when, and I haven't logged on since. I've seen it in the wild. How could a home builder use it? I know, Will, you're like a super fan, super Twitter man. Why do you love it so much? I guess, why do you like it so much? It is so hard for me to use. And I'm a young man here.
Kevin Oakley: You're a millennial.
Andrew Peek: I'm a millennial.
Will Duderstadt: Well, you know, you've got a couple questions that you asked in there. It's a lot of questions. Yeah, why I use it is definitely way different than if and how a home builder should use it. I'll be honest, I use it because I looked at the landscape, I looked at all these other new home marketers that were out there that had Facebook pages and Instagram accounts, and I realized none of them really use Twitter. So if you want to stand out, sometimes it's easiest to find your voice and to make a splash by going to the place where nobody else really has embraced it. Wow. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I wasn't a Twitter guy when I made that decision, but over time, I think it grew on me because it's a platform that doesn't require a mutual relationship for you to be able to communicate thoughts and ideas, which means I could listen to what Kevin has to say without Kevin, you know, needing to follow me back. And if you try and build relationships or friend people on Facebook, that aren't yet pages or established as brands, but still are like interesting people, that's really kind of awkward. And some people even get creeped out when there's just friend requests randomly showing up. So I've embraced that side of it. Right. And I keep, I think, a pretty good feed of people that I like to follow. And I hear a lot of really cool things. We get to engage in a lot of pretty neat conversation and there's people out there that challenge me in the way that I think. So that's really why I love that platform personally.
Andrew Peek: So one more question for you, Will, about your personal use of it. Do you know your most retweeted tweet off the top of your head, something that you put out there?
Will Duderstadt: That's a really great question.
Andrew Peek: And if you don't know it, then I think everyone will have to find you on Twitter and they can find it theirself.
Will Duderstadt: I do know one that did really well recently was something that was really sparked by HGTV and just watching all the ridiculous flip shows that are out there. And it was simply that every time a TV's mounted above a fireplace, an architect loses his wings.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, that was pretty good. I didn't like that.
Will Duderstadt: And it's true. That's like the worst aspect of interior design that exists today. And I can't wait to see that trend go away.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, I mean, I've replied back on Twitter this already, but for those of you who are not Twitter people, I just, I lowered my fireplace mantle height so that it was more appropriately placed, right? That doesn't work. And then if my screen saver is a piece of art, then I'm totally... Perfect. No one lost any wings, right?
Will Duderstadt: Well, sure.
Kevin Oakley: I'm not.
Will Duderstadt: Sure, if that's what you need to tell yourself.
Kevin Oakley: Let's talk about Twitter use with companies and specifically home builders. Is anyone out there doing it well?
Will Duderstadt: Home builders, no, not really. And I think what cracks me up is that we hear so much from builders about how they want to have live chat on their website. They want to be available and they want to engage. Twitter, if that's the case, Twitter should be the easiest platform for a builder to jump on. It is basically a live chat service provider ready to go. I've responded to customers on New Year's Day with information about homes that we have for sale when they ask. So if you invite someone to engage with you, You don't have to go out and get a new vendor to do it or, you know, build things into your website. You could leverage a service like Twitter and really just start to crush that engagement. Real time communication.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, that makes sense. And we have seen builders kind of not flock, but they're definitely a lot of people trying Facebook Messenger as their live chat provider.
Will Duderstadt: Yeah, I support that. Absolutely. Anytime you can do something with a low barrier, either cost or resources, to get it off the ground to prove that your organization can do it, absolutely try that.
Kevin Oakley: And the good thing is now the Facebook Messenger has its own app, so when you delete Facebook, this week, you can still chat with Bill.
Andrew Peek: That's right. Yeah, we'll still be there hiding.
Will Duderstadt: So you guys are both already deleted.
Kevin Oakley: No, I just like to talk on Facebook about how I don't like Facebook.
Andrew Peek: And share articles about deleting Facebook on Facebook. Yeah, that cracks me up. That is great.
Kevin Oakley: No, that trend when we're just talking in the news, I mean, it just makes me laugh. I think people have to have something to like and something to hate. In fact, I think there's a book that came out recently about Just knowing more about what your customers hate is actually as important to know what they love. Anyway, I'll try to get us off on. That makes sense.
Andrew Peek: Philosophical. I like it.
Kevin Oakley: Anything else on Twitter? I have one last Twitter question, but do you have anything else, Andrew?
Andrew Peek: No, I don't. I don't. Yeah.
Will Duderstadt: Well, Andrew, let me tell you, when you decide to come back to the platform that doesn't sell all of your personal data, I will I will like every single one of your tweets for like a month straight. So built in engagement.
Andrew Peek: I might take you up on that challenge for April. April. I will tweet every day. I'm doing.
Will Duderstadt: Whoa.
Andrew Peek: And you better. You better like every single one of them.
Will Duderstadt: Oh, absolutely.
Kevin Oakley: Oh, he will. Because I like one of Will's famous. I don't know if you made it up, Will, but I'm going to attribute it to you is that likes are free. So he gives them out like free candy.
Andrew Peek: That's right.
Will Duderstadt: Don't be stingy. Exactly. No.
Kevin Oakley: I think there's a lot of genius to that. Okay. So this question is not about Twitter, but comes from Twitter and from Greg. So I had tweeted out to everyone on the platform, hey, Will's going to be on, what kind of question should we ask? And this was really the only serious one that says something about the folks that we hang out with there, I guess, Will. But Greg Swearingen, am I saying that right?
Will Duderstadt: Yeah, I know Greg.
Kevin Oakley: At GERG notes. He asked, what is a unique Google Analytics measurement you track that we may not have thought about?
Will Duderstadt: That is a great one.
Andrew Peek: I like that question because I might learn something new. I love it.
Kevin Oakley: You would have learned it earlier on Twitter.
Andrew Peek: See, I'm missing out. Yeah.
Will Duderstadt: And I intentionally didn't respond on Twitter because I didn't want to spoil the surprise of the podcast, right? I like it. Good. So I think a really overlooked, not for Andrew, but for the masses, an overlooked function or feature of Google Analytics is the ability to set custom events, either through code or with Google Tag Manager. And really anything that you could dream up to track, you can track. So this one is not a built-in feature or function. But I really like to measure how content is consumed. And probably one of the biggest pieces of content that builders specifically are trying to generate is photography around communities and inventory homes and model homes. So I really like tracking how many photos are viewed overall during a session, but also on individual product pages. And that becomes a real driver for, obviously, for your future content, right? that I keep taking 30 or 40 photos of homes, or do people only look at 10 of them anyways? And you can start to gauge where the most important photos are. Really helps you reorder any galleries that you might have and informs what you will have your photographer shoot on your next photo shoot.
Kevin Oakley: Okay, I'm gonna take us on a slightly sideways journey here, but what I love that, that's awesome. It makes me concerned about large pools of data and how we analyze it. And this is not, we promise we'll get to content marketing for everyone who's excited to hear we'll talk about that, because we are too. But I was watching a video that was posted somewhere yesterday. I'm not going to say who, because builders love to just gossip and say that's because they're X. But head of marketing for a top 10 home builder in the country was expressing up how they were going to be using large data sets in the future to better create content around the customer journey. Sounds really smart. And yeah, I was in it. It was like a 10 minute long video. And then around the seven minute mark, the individual started talking about how, you know, for instance, we're really starting to see that Facebook could be a way to get actual leads, not just build the brand. And I was like, I don't fault that person. I feel like it's, and I don't know how much of this you can talk about, Will, because you also work for a top 25 home builder, but just the large amounts of volume. And then if you come to that data with a certain perspective, like, and I'm just going to talk about the one you gave. How many pictures does someone view? I would, For me, I feel like you always have to go a little bit deeper. So I want to split that up into two things. One where a person stays on the page for a certain length of time or converts, and one where they don't. Because one of my own kind of things I would apply to that data is, well, if this is an early visit and they're looking at 10 different homes or 10 different floor plans because they don't really know what they like yet, they may only look at 10 photos. Does that make sense?
Will Duderstadt: Absolutely does. Context is everything.
Kevin Oakley: So all that to say, I just think, one, how you approach the data and how much you track. Sometimes you get that problem of too much data. And then how do you really, how are you thinking about that independently without applying your own thoughts to it? I'm not saying you are. I'm saying that other person that I watched on the video is kind of like, I can tell you're super smart, but you also seem you're drowning in data to the point where you couldn't recognize a trend that had started two years ago.
Will Duderstadt: Yeah, Kevin. So a lot of this is about, you know, keeping it in context and being aware of what else is occurring out there in the industry, having a lot of conversations with your peers. If you focus solely on the metrics and the reporting that you are gathering for your business, it'll never give you an entire view of what's happening. So you have to gut check that and validate that against a lot of other things that are out there. What I will say in the example that I used in my Google Analytics, where I try and monitor consumption of content, I could hand that report to a dozen different people and they're all gonna have a different key takeaway. So there's also important pieces of our business that are not reflected in a report like that. For example, what is the average number of photos that I have on listings to begin with? Because if it is low, I can't expect that my consumers are going to be engaging with a higher number of photos, right? If my average is 10, and I'm striving to get them to consume 30, my report's always gonna be giving me bad news. So you gotta keep an open mind and you really cannot get that tunnel vision of just your reporting.
Kevin Oakley: That is some awesome deep thoughts. Thank you for allowing us to kind of go off the rabbit trail there. But let's get back to the topic of the week, which is content marketing. And I'll just kick it off here. Will, what is content marketing? Or when you said, Hey, I'd like to talk about content, which I was excited 'cause I think that's your jam. When someone says content marketing, what do you mean by that?
Will Duderstadt: You know, a lot of people confuse this term and this idea with just the publishing of content and somehow pushing more information is checking the box for content marketing. but it's really so much more, right? We are selling individual homes and communities and all the content that we can really build around what it is that we do and then where we publish that content becomes this bigger holistic picture of content marketing. One of the examples that I really like to use is Luckily, none of us are selling drill bits, but if we're in the business of selling drill bits, you could talk about the carbide tip, eighth inch drill bit, right? And that's the facts and the figures. That's a piece of content. That's legit. But if I instead published a lot of photos of the projects I could build that required me to use that drill bit, that now becomes this bigger picture and it expands the content that really is illustrating what you can do with my product. At the end of the day, nobody has a need for a drill bit. They have a need for a hole through a piece of wood. So you really need to readjust how you're creating that content and the way that you really distribute it.
Kevin Oakley: That makes me think about the blender company. I forget their brand. So it kind of works, kind of doesn't in their favor, but they started the Will It Blend set of YouTube videos. Who was that?
Will Duderstadt: Blended Tech was their name.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, right. So it's just, hey, we're going to shred everything that we can think of and see, will it blend? And I remember reading that case study, that guy had no money to market the product, but he just found the owner was in the shop blending up two-by-fours. And he was like, we should capture that. We should document it, make content out of that. So, okay, so we know the definition. Do you think content is more important now? than it has been in the past, or has it always been?
Will Duderstadt: It is so important. I can't even let you finish the question. I have to cut you off. It is so important right now. There is, you know, a lot of builders, they look to their competition and they say, well, you know, the top three guys aren't doing it, therefore I don't need to, or, you know, any of these other excuses. The reality is our customers are customers of millions of other brands and companies. Services like Zappos, which is like one of my gold standards for content, they take dozens of photos, multiple videos for a single pair of shoes. And what they're doing is they're building an expectation with customers that you can find every nuanced detail about a product online. So when that person goes from shopping for shoes on Monday to looking for a home on Tuesday, they aren't gonna reset their expectation and say, oh wait, now that I'm on real estate, I only get a price and a rendering.
Kevin Oakley: And it doesn't change.
Will Duderstadt: It does not, right.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, I mean, I think, If I had a nickel for every time I've heard a customer say, Why can't I just build my house online? I can build my car. Car is the big one. I can build a car, I can pick the trim level, I can pick the options, and then I get to spin it around and look at it, and I can get custom images. Why can't I do that with a house?
Andrew Peek: Definitely. It's made even worse because if they're looking at a rendering, they're like, I know you made this somewhere. Why can't I just play with this and make it my own? Yeah, I agree with that.
Will Duderstadt: So what you end up doing is you end up frustrating them more than anything else. So now not only have you not met their expectation, you've eroded it.
Kevin Oakley: But that's genius, Will, because now they're going to have to come out and visit your model home. Your walk-in traffic will go
Will Duderstadt: up with the roof. See, that's so sad. I know you're kidding, but there are so many people that still believe that. And one of my favorite books, written by one of my favorite people, Dennis O'Neill, who I think a lot of your listeners probably know, wrote a book about sales actualization to just the concept about selling the internet, right? Great book. I got this quote that I just repeat all the time. And he says that before the internet came along, salespeople were the gatekeepers of information. And that just sums things up so well, to be the gatekeeper. They were the internet.
Kevin Oakley: The sound right here, this was the sound of the internet for real estate agents. That's the big binder with all the MLS information.
Will Duderstadt: Right, that's right. But ultimately there's no value in just being the gatekeeper, right? Unless you're in a Ghostbusters film, all you do is distribute that information. You need to add value as a salesperson in a million other ways, right? Interpreting that content and being able to explain why a feature becomes a benefit, just holding on to it is, it's a terrible way to sell.
Kevin Oakley: So you think it's, You're avoiding my question, sir. Do you think content then is more important?
Will Duderstadt: It is absolutely more important now, yes.
Kevin Oakley: Vital. And unpack that for us. Why? Because we're, you said because we're being trained by other brands to demand it.
Will Duderstadt: Absolutely.
Kevin Oakley: Anything else?
Will Duderstadt: Yeah, the internet, through all of those expectations, have shifted this process of browsing versus actually buying, right? So when you're browsing and you're shopping and you're considering things, in the old world, that process required that you talk to somebody. And we as builders, we thought they've transitioned now into the actual buying process. We made that mistake. They're shopping, they're not yet buying. So the internet has allowed that entire process to really occur in the customer's home on their mobile device while they're sitting on the couch in the living room, right? If they can't. If they can't fulfill that desire to browse and shop and learn, they will not make it to the buying stage where now they actually do talk to us, right? They're gonna walk into that sales office far more informed and knowledgeable about what they want than they've ever been able to in the past. So that content is critical.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, it's so true. And it just made me think of a particular builder partner that, you know, they're fantastic to work with, they have an amazing product. And after working with him for a year, he was kind of like, Kevin, this is all, we've got a lot of appointments and sales that have come from the online process overall, but I just don't know like how much better is my marketing now than it used to be. And one of the things that I pointed him to was, you know, you spent less money, your appointments have tripled on average per month from your website. But to your point, Will, his walk-in traffic had actually increased by 10% from the previous year. And that was where I was like, if you talk to any builder of any size and say, if you could have all those things line up, including the walk-in traffic increase instead of decrease. It's like, walk away, man. You're on the right path.
Will Duderstadt: That's the trifecta.
Andrew Peek: Don't change anything. Yeah. Leave it running.
Kevin Oakley: But it's because of that content. I mean, it wasn't all what Do You Convert did. He really took a concerted effort to have videos and photography and content that is emotionally exciting enough to want to get in your car and go see.
Will Duderstadt: That's right. That's right. I would go as far as to say that if you're not representing this online, Are you really even doing it? Does that home even exist if it's not on Zillow or your website if there aren't photos of it?
Kevin Oakley: Oh, okay, so we just, how do we repackage that into a t-shirt meme? Because we could all make millions. So if a home is for sale, But not online.
Andrew Peek: Is it even real? I feel like there's a meme that is like something, is it even? There's one, I need to look at this.
Will Duderstadt: Well, I tell you, I got a t-shirt guy, so I'm gonna make that happen.
Andrew Peek: Do it.
Will Duderstadt: There you go.
Andrew Peek: I'll wear it and put a picture on Twitter in April and you could like it.
Will Duderstadt: Oh, I'm liking it.
Kevin Oakley: Okay, so let's just go through the basics and then we'll talk basic content that you feel like is now required. to exist and then we'll skirt into some advanced stuff at the end. But what are the basics? Like if you had a magic wand to require that every community or floor plan or inventory page on MI Home's website had to have X, what would be your wish?
Will Duderstadt: Foundational stuff, you know, just the facts. You got to start with the nitty gritty. an actual real price, no ranges, no from the 300s. Homes have prices, especially inventory, so it's got to be published. Actual real square footage. And when I say it to you guys, this sounds so obvious, but to so many others, I think they're still surprised by this. A lot of what we build has base square footage when you build a certain home, and then you start to add these different options. And If you're not updating that and making sure that it reflects the bonus room and the fifth bedroom that you're adding, suddenly your price per square footage, which many referral sites compute automatically, suddenly that looks terrible, right? You gotta manage the facts. Bedroom count, garage count, that's all absolutely required. From there, I say you look at resale listings, right? That sets our first bar, which means we're looking at 30 to 40 photos of a finished home. Those photos need to be, yes, the obvious entryway, kitchen, master suite, but also other things that customers care about. The storage space that's available throughout the house, the garage here in Ohio. You got to take a photo of the basement. And some of these things are not going to be innately attractive. But customers want to know that there is a linen closet and a walk-in closet and this extra storage space. So you can reflect that in photos much better than you can in some sort of written description.
Kevin Oakley: And I think a wide-angle lens... or an adapter for your phone or an app that will allow you to, I mean, for some of those spaces that you're talking about, you take out a normal point and shoot camera or your cell phone and try to document a closet or a powder room, it is not going to look attractive. So I think you're not trying to portray anything as not what it is, but your eye is a wide angle lens. That's why When we look at real estate shot with wide-angle photography, it just looks so much better.
Will Duderstadt: That's right. And you use it appropriately. You don't do the front elevation from the curb in an extreme fit.
Kevin Oakley: Right, Exactly.
Will Duderstadt: You know, from there, you got to get into video content. really before you even start to touch some of the VR, AR stuff that's out there. And I get that people are excited by VR and AR opportunities, but really basic, simple video is much, much easier to shoot. And people love to watch video. They consume it at an amazing clip. So a lot of builders that are out there that say they're investing in the goggles for their sales office and these augmented reality tools, I always wanna ask them, Why don't you have any videos on your YouTube channel? Because it's much cheaper to start there and I guarantee engagement.
Kevin Oakley: Well, let's talk about cheapness 'cause that's one of the things that we hear often is, I would do video, but I can't afford to do video. Is this just a guy from a top 25 builders saying it's cheap or...
Will Duderstadt: Can't it really be done? You can't afford to not do video at this point. And you just have to be smart about it. If you're going to wait until a quick move-in home is complete and ready now, and then you decide to shoot a video of it, and it has a shelf life of 20 days, right, before you sell it, yeah, that's not cost-effective. But if you're creating videos early enough in the process that you can repurpose across multiple mediums, so you're going to use it on your website, you're going to use it in email and social, it might be playing on a loop in your sales office. then it has more value than the cost that it took to actually create. So you've extended the life of that piece of content. Hopefully now it's a two or three month piece of content, but you've gotten way more eyeballs on it. So you gotta plan, you gotta think in advance, but really video, you're missing the boat if you aren't incorporating that into your content strategy.
Andrew Peek: Oh, for sure. 100% agree. And after they get the basics done, so they have pictures of their products. So let's say they are on the same level as a $50 shoe on, on Zappos. They're selling their, that's a whole new thing, right? You have pictures, you have the video. And so they could tell what it is. Um, as far as something more advanced or more interesting, I guess, is another way to put it type of content. Like maybe to put this big word out there, I don't like these buzzwords, but storytelling, um, through content because they home is, I mean, there's complete channels on TV. I haven't watched TV in a while, that are dedicated to homes. I feel like there's content every day that builders can be producing. That is interesting.
Will Duderstadt: I could not agree more. Homes just don't spring up out of the ground overnight.
Andrew Peek: Months and months.
Will Duderstadt: Newsflash, right?
Andrew Peek: And the mama home and the daddy home and this is where homes come from. No, I don't think it works like that. I hope.
Will Duderstadt: Are we gonna have that chat on this podcast? No. So literally every home that we build and every builder that's out there has a compelling and really interesting story. If you don't believe that, really jump on YouTube, turn on any of these cable shows, and they will make a 30 minute TV show about some of the most boring possible topics, right? And they'll follow people around. Reality TV is really based on telling somebody's story. So parallels, we have real people that are building our homes, that are drawing them, envisioning them, designing them, and they deserve a voice, right? And we can appeal to a certain emotion by highlighting the role that they play in building that home. There's A tremendous amount of technology and construction science that goes into building a home. And we can explain our role, and maybe we can demystify some of that for our customers. And that becomes a compelling story.
Kevin Oakley: I want to make a suggestion that we do bring your friend to work day if you're a marketer. Because I think that would help, I was just thinking as you were both talking, when I go and visit a builder, or I'm sure you see this, Will, when you go and visit different divisions at MI, you'll see something being done a certain way, construction-wise or decor-wise, and you're just kind of like, why do you do it that way? And the response is always like, well, I don't know. Isn't that how everyone does it? And you're like, no, it's not. So I think... Forget your kids, leave them at home. Bring a friend who's not part of the home building industry to one of your neighborhoods and one of your models and walk through with them and just watch through their eyes to get ideas on content.
Will Duderstadt: Kevin, I totally agree. Having someone second guess you is really quite powerful and it makes you better at what you're doing.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, not even second guessing, perhaps if they're from another builder, but also just like you said, that square footage comment of, We all think that's so basic. Do we even need to go there? But yeah, I mean, I'll never forget the first time I learned what a front door chime transformer looked like. I wouldn't have known what the heck that little weird looking thing was in the basement. It was the transformer for the front doorbell. Now I know. And so I think just all those things when people walk through the home and just what kind of things do they naturally want to know more about? I think I've heard you say before. at the builder's show, like hanging out in the model home. And if you hear a question come up two or three times during the course of an afternoon, we might wanna make some content about that somewhere on the site.
Will Duderstadt: That's right, spot on.
Kevin Oakley: I'm paying attention to you, sir.
Will Duderstadt: And not you. You too.
Kevin Oakley: All right.
Will Duderstadt: Is this, so hang on, is this the part where I get to tell you about all the things I dislike, like Steve Shoemaker did?
Kevin Oakley: That was so much fun. That's a special thing, Steve.
Will Duderstadt: Okay.
Kevin Oakley: So we are, and this is a tease, but we will record a separate 10-minute interview with each of our guests so that when Andrew or I decide to take vacation, every once in a while, we will do that. We'll have a compilation of three or four people all being asked the same six or seven questions, and one of those we'll make sure for you is what you hate. So you'll have an opportunity. What do you think about outsourcing content creation versus insourcing? How do you make that decision? Is there a right answer?
Will Duderstadt: Yeah, I mean, it's not gonna be black and white, but I would ask people if they would choose to outsource, you know, you personally, Kevin, you're on Facebook, right? And would you ever outsource taking photos of your family vacation and making witty comments on Facebook? Of course not, right? No way. It's not off the way. It doesn't actually represent you or your family, and that's an awful lot of trust to give somebody else. So generally, my gut tells me, you got to do that yourself. Now, are there opportunities to outsource pieces like hiring a professional photographer or building a long-term relationship with a copywriter? Absolutely. But if you try and just, you know, write a check to solve this problem, it's going to bring more than it solves.
Kevin Oakley: Yeah, I don't think you can ever outsource the crafting of the story and knowing your customer part. I mean, executive producer title should always stay.
Andrew Peek: I think, and I haven't seen this, but having just with the quantity of photos and video that home builders can do, I'm surprised there's not more full-time photographers and video people.
Kevin Oakley: I would not be surprised. I'm not saying I know anything, but I might, but I would not be surprised if there are large organizations thinking about that right now. All right, Andrew, you got any, any final question you want to ask?
Andrew Peek: Still making terrible content. That's almost like what you don't like, except this is the rule. It has to be content related. What is terrible content that you see out there?
Kevin Oakley: And in this particular segment, Will, you have to name names. So we want to know the builder names. We want to know West City. We want to know who made this bad content.
Will Duderstadt: No, I'll do this. I'll absolutely do that. Builders are definitely making bad content and I'll name names. I'm making bad content. And, I keep my own wall of shame. It is what motivates me to ensure that we continue to make better and better content. But not long ago, I had someone take a photo of an inventory home, a quick move-in home and send it up to me. And they kindly requested that I Photoshop out the construction worker's **** crack. And Photoshop. It's a tremendous application, but it could not work miracles. So just the idea that we would even pull the trigger on that photo, right, or snap the shutter, that just continues to baffle me, right? Because there's so much that can be done on location with content. Yeah, my wall of shame is probably a little bit larger than I'd like to admit on a podcast that will be listened by-?
Kevin Oakley: At least 10 people.
Will Duderstadt: I think what we've established is my wife won't listen and Kevin's wife won't listen. I hope mine doesn't.
Kevin Oakley: You're right.
Will Duderstadt: You know, maybe someday I'll share my wall of shame, but yeah, there's absolutely still bad content out there, but you know, use that as fuel, embrace it, and you know, that's what's gonna drive us to be better.
Kevin Oakley: We're terrible podcast hosts. What do you even do from 9 to 5? We've said your company's name, but what is your job title? What is it that you actually do?
Will Duderstadt: I'm the marketing manager at MI Homes. I'm out of the corporate office. And as hopefully many of your listeners know, we build in 16 divisions across the east and central time zones. We're doing about 5,000 homes a year. And my job is to herd all of the cats that are involved in making sure our stuff looks awesome online. And that's a lot of content, a lot of website content, all of our social, our paid search, our organic. And at the end of the day, I need to make more and more leads for our sales team to be able to convert, right? And you know that all too well.
Kevin Oakley: Yep. Where do people find you online?
Will Duderstadt: You could just Google me. My parents blessed me with a very SEO friendly name. So there's not another Will Duderstadt out there, unlike Andrew Peak, who's being challenged with his two status. It's embarrassing. Yeah, but anywhere that somebody chooses to engage, I am there.
Kevin Oakley: Thanks again, Will, for joining us. We'll take a quick break. We'll be back with the question of the week. And we're back with this week's question of the week. This one's a little bit different, guys, because I can't tell you who it is. This is Mr. or Mrs. X. And this is what they have to say. They say, hey, Kevin, your podcast, they should have said, if you e-mail us, put Kevin and Andrew. Let's be nice. Your podcasts are awesome. I find myself in a new situation. I am outgrowing my role in my current company. I've been here for almost years, and I've grown my role during the time of the company. However, it may be time to find something with more responsibility and involvement. I'm also interested in product development, company-wide brand management. So you get the idea. I don't want to give too many details away here. They're looking for a new position or thinking about it. Do you have any idea of headhunters or how I should go about this process? Can you help? How can you help? Thank you. Okay, this is a tricky one. It is tricky. This is not a current builder client either, I should say, this. So obviously when we work with people for full clarity, we never, we just don't help people find positions or steal people from people we're working with. Just that's not a good practice to be in and we don't want to be there. But for those of you who have watched on LinkedIn, especially, I do love to play matchmaker. And there are always people looking. In fact, I had someone reach out to me today who is looking for a great sales and marketing person. And so, yes, you can always let us know if you are not a current client that you are looking to make a change. And we are always happy to help you. I mean, here's the thing. I think it's important in this case, this person feels like they've outgrown their organization, perhaps. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes too, you just realize that it's not a great fit. I've talked about this at the Builder Show. before, but you know, there are companies that are always innovative and they're pushing forward and that's just who they are in their DNA. And then there's companies who we're just going to always do things. We're going to build the same floor plans from the sixties. We're going to market them the same way. We think the internet's a fad. And if you're not that kind of marketer, you're never going to really be happy. And so, um, finding, finding a company where the culture and the type of products that they, um, build that you really believe in. Sometimes that's a reason to make a change too. I've heard it said, I think this is another Seth Godin quote, you know, if you're going to sell something, you might as well be a salesperson where the line is out the door or people really want the product. If you're going to be a marketer, why not be a marketer for a company that has one, a great product and two, actually believes in the benefit of marketing well. So Great question, Mr. or Mrs. X. Hopefully this will help others understand. Yeah, feel free to reach out, let us know. I frequently will post on LinkedIn if there are positions that I'm aware of that are open or if I have a great candidate that I know would be a great fit for someone else. So we're always happy to play matchmaker when appropriate to do so. Andrew, how would people submit a question? And is there any benefit to doing so, besides getting your answer.
Andrew Peek: Yes, to all that. So show at do you convert.com, that is S-H-O-W, like a show, at do you convert.com. And if we have your question on, you get a shirt, a beautiful shirt.
Kevin Oakley: You're actually wearing one.
Andrew Peek: I am wearing one. No one can know right now, but it is super comfy and it is awesome. Of course, I'm down here in Florida right now. It's about 72 degrees. Perfect weather. I hope no one is freezing when they're listening to this, but I think they might be. So yeah, I wear it all the time. It's great.
Kevin Oakley: And if you want to see a picture of the shirt, you can go to, we just created also a Facebook group, Market Proof Marketing. If you search groups there, If you know us and we know you well, we may invite you to that, but that's just going to be a place where in between episodes, you can post questions there. You can interact with each other. You'll also be able to see what these amazing shirts look like. Just make sure that if you do ask a question and you hear us, we'll reach out to you. We need to get that shipping information. And Andrew, by the way, Lauren, who asked a question a couple of weeks ago, lives in Canada. I found out that it's cheaper just to Like I'll just send you money, Lauren, because it's going to cost me like $34 to ship you a book and it has to go through customs. There's a forum. We're not doing any of that. So anytime we're giving something away, just know if you're in Canada, you may have to drive down here. If you're in Australia, we'll get you something digitally. That's all it's going to be. All right. Well, thanks so much for joining us again on Market Proof Marketing. Have a fantastic week.
