With new-home sales booming, many marketers are busier than ever trying to take full advantage of this strong market. It feels great to finish your day with a long list of items marked off your to-do list. With sales numbers high, it can start to feel like you’re doing all the right things. But have you taken a moment to step back and look at what’s on that to-do list? What are you spending your days on? Where is your team spending their time? Are you staying focused on your number one goal—driving qualified traffic that converts into sales?
Don’t let the pace of a great market stop you from taking an objective look at your marketing resources. Here are a few places you could be wasting your efforts:
Here at Do You Convert, we love metrics and tracking. However, that doesn’t mean you need to spend time crunching numbers that don’t matter. The wrong metrics or metrics that are overly complicated can be a distraction from the numbers that really matter. If you’re still entering numbers into a spreadsheet by hand, is it something that could be generated through a Lasso CRM report or Google Data Studio report? Now is the time to evaluate whether you’re tracking the right numbers in the most efficient way possible.
We get it. Shooting videos, writing blog posts, and recording podcasts are all awesome… and time consuming. If you’re taking the time to create content, make sure you start with the basics first. Do you have great photography of your homes? Does your website function well and have up-to-date information for homebuyers? If you have a solid process for keeping those things up-to-date, it might be time to dive into some of the other areas of content creation. Also, don’t forget to use the content across multiple platforms – social media, blog posts, email marketing, etc. – to get the most out of your hard work.
Having our calendars filled with meetings can make us feel productive, but in some situations, it’s merely a waste of time. Take a look at every meeting you attend in a month. Is it information you could get elsewhere? Is there someone else at your organization who could contribute more to the meeting than you can? Do meetings in your own department have the right people in them? Protect your time and the time of your people by keeping everyone focused on their top priorities.
We love the sales team, and we want to support them the best we can. However, if the majority of your role becomes filling any request thrown at you, you’re going to spend your time being busy, not effective. Learn to communicate your marketing strategies well, and help people understand that the sales and marketing departments will be the most successful when they work together to solve problems.
Marketing Directors, are you communicating with your team about how their time is spent? Your team telling you they’re “busy” isn’t enough. A task you assume takes minutes, might take a large portion of their day. Ask them to break down a typical day for you. If your brightest stars are spending all their time on administrative work, it might be time to use their talents in new ways. While the market is hot, it could be your opportunity to give them a project that lets them shine and benefits the company.
Builders who stuck their toes in the water on things like remote showing access and virtual showings had a head start when things changed in March. They were adapting, not starting from scratch. You can help create a culture of innovation and a willingness to change in your company by taking some measured risks and continually looking for ways to grow.
This is an exciting time to be in homebuilding. Use it to reevaluate how you’re spending your time, and you’ll be ready for whatever comes next.
