Before a new homeowner sits down to enjoy the view on the patio of their new home, they have taken a journey that involves waiting for a new home to be built and dealing with all the financing headaches that go along with a home purchase.  The process of financing a home purchase is often stressful, and that's why so many New Home Builders are offering Financing solutions to help make it easy for consumers to combine purchase and financing of their new home under one brand roof. It makes sense that a home buyer who has vested their trust in a Home Builder might extend that trust to a financing product. However, home buying consumers also have many competing offers to finance their new home. They can work with a large financial institution, a regional retail bank or a Mortgage Broker in their market. If they prefer digital engagement, there are plenty of digital Mortgage solutions evolving and they are spending big money on consumer advertising. Mortgage Marketers, like all Marketers are probably spending some time thinking about how to design a "referable experience" for their new home customers. Happy customers are a referral source for both Mortgage products and the new home brand they've purchased. When you think about increasing referrals, you need to back up and think about the experience that produces those referrals. Here are some Marketing resources to help stay top of mind, design referable customer experiences and serve up content that matters to your prospective financing customers. We hope you find some ideas you can integrate into your Mortgage Marketing: 1.) Gather your team for a lunch n' learn to listen to David Cooperstein (former CMO Practice Lead, Forrester Research) discuss Customer Experience design in this 30 minute podcast on Sound Cloud.  If you can't spare time during the work day, pour yourself a glass of wine (or a cup of tea) and learn from this content in the quiet and comfort of your home office over the weekend. Either way, Experience is the new "business currency" and the more you know, the better you can differentiate yours. 2.) Consistent social posts keep people thinking about your Mortgage brand. Marketers sometimes run out of inspirations to create a social post, so we love this 37 Post Ideas for your Mortgage business from Top Left Creative. 3.) Hubspot's case study about how inbound Marketing fuels PennyMac's brand is an inspiration for anyone who thinks they could/should be investing more of their Marketing budget into "Inbound Marketing". We are a huge fan of Hubspot who is known for educating Marketers and Consumers to help them get the most of out of their HubSpot Marketing software. 4.)The challenge of marketing Mortgage products is that it's an information intensive process combined with the stress of one of the biggest financial purchases anyone will ever make. Building trust is an imperative. It's not always easy to build trust digitally so the creative Mortgage professional in this short 15 minute video podcast, started using video to communicate with his customers. Sounds like a lot of work, yet his success makes this idea worth considering,we think. 15 minute video interview discusses using video to guide clients through the mortgage transaction process. 5.) Blog, Blog, Blog is what we hear most about when we are researching ways to increase traffic to our site, grow leads and generate revenues. But blogging takes time and you want to know who your audience is so you can  speak to them with relevant information. It's not always easy when you are targeting home buying consumers who span all ages, lifestyles, life stages, etc. Blogs are about sharing and educating, rather than selling and you have to plan ahead to keep pace with people who are thirsty for content to help them buy a mortgage product. This is a good list of 51 blog ideas for Mortgage professionals. Even if you are a Corporate Mortgage brand with a nicely staffed Marketing team, this is a well-organized list of blog topics that make it easy to provide content that all Mortgage buyers will be interested in. Thanks for stopping by and we hope you are able to use something in this post to enhance your Mortgage Marketing. If you want to offer a tangible brand touch to your customers and prospects, surf on over to our Mortgage Marketing e-Store at builderpromotions.com. A thoughtful brand gift can tell your new customers that you appreciate being able to help them with one of life's biggest purchases. Brand appreciation comes in many forms. Thanks for checking out our content. See you next time! Cheers, Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger Builder Promotions is a builder-centric solution that consolidates branded marketing supplies and Community print collateral to support the entire new home buyer journey. We are more than our products. We are your Community Marketing Partner. Engage us to discuss your Mortgage Marketing challenges at info@builderpromotions.com or talk to us by calling 800.388.3565.  

  Over the last few years, many of our clients have asked us if we could help consolidate their print collateral with their branded marketing supplies. To meet that need, we recently launched BP Central Print Hub. We've combined the scale of a national wholesale printer with the personalized Division service our clients have come to expect from us. In this blog post we are sharing 7 questions you want to ask to get the right wholesale printer, if you are looking to consolidate. They are simple questions, but they will reveal a lot about your print partner's capabilities. 1.) What are my ordering options? Everyone has a different version of what "convenient" means in their work life, so knowing your ordering options is important when you are looking for a print management partner. Do you need an online ordering tool? Look for a company with a solid web presence. Do you need/like a bit of additional guidance for your order? Look for a company with the option to shepherd your order through the pre-press process with more rather than less communication. Do you want more options? Look for a partner that has both an online ordering option and is designed to engage with you via email or on the phone to offer production and creative support. 2.) Do you have an Environmental Policy? A majority of new home builders are initiating sustainable programs to make homes energy smart, water frugal and responsive to an increasingly eco-conscious consumer who cares about their environmental footprint. Does your print partner enable you to be consistent with those practices? Do they offer environmentally friendly accreditation or recycled stock options? Knowing your print partner's environmental policy lets you offer sustainable print collateral for new home Communities that advertise sustainable building benefits. Prospects for those communities will notice this small subtlety. 3.) What kind of Customer Service support is available? Email and chat-based customer service are convenient, and it's important to know when (and if) you'll actually be able to talk to a human being who knows your industry and can offer both print specification and creative support. Does your printer partner have a person dedicated to that? Is there a Production Manager you can access directly? Most Production Managers are protected by Customer Service Representatives, but in print there are many reasons why you would engage with your print partner to discuss Production timing, updates, edits, proofs, etc. The Production Manager is the person who is on top of your order's journey and should be able to tell you at any time, what the status us. Urgency, creative support, decision support and status checks are among the top reasons our clients reach out for human contact on their projects. Does a print partner make is easy to access these resources in whatever way is most convenient for you? 4.) Do you have a color management system? This may seem over simplistic, but it really matters. Does your print management partner have a system of checks and balances in place for ensuring their colors match? Knowing their color management system and certification is a good preview of the final printed products you'll receive. It's easy to assume everyone can answer this question, but the right partner will be able to give that information to you easily because they've talked about it in their own company and they've documented it in writing. 5.) Do you offer spot print? Whether you call it spot color print or 1 color print, spot color print is an important option for customers who want precise branding. While full color print is versatile, having the option to use spot color print is essential. Spot printing is not digital printing. Many printers will direct you to digital print which generally does not get the quality outcome that Builders need to merchandise a new home in print. 6.) Do you have a Digital Asset Management system? You want to find out how your digital art assets will be stored and what the process is to pull your design templates and update them for Division orders. Managing a distributed Marketing team across Divisions, means that you need to have a good system for managing your preapproved design templates and offer fast easy access to customize them by Community.  A Digital Asset Management system does not need to be complex or expensive, but it needs to be centrally managed so that Divisions can get what they need quickly and accurately to reach prospects in their specific markets. 7.) Is there a Designer on staff ?  You don't always need to go back to your  Agency to make a small tweak or update an address. A good wholesale printer will offer you easy access to a designer on staff who can get content updates and changes made for you quickly and cost-effectively at an hourly rate that is more reflective of wholesale printing rather than agency creative fees. There are many options out there. Be mindful that just because a printer has a web store and 1000's of products, doesn't mean you are consolidating. Large websites often look like one source, but they are using multiple printers. That's not a bad thing, but we notice that these types of companies do not have employees who are vested in the outcome in the same way that you have with one central print manufacturer. Local retail print shops that seem wonderfully personal are a retail business with retail pricing. Print Reps are often making commission on high margin print pricing. It's always questionable to me when a sign manufacturer is printing brochures. The scale of sign printing requires a completely different press than what is needed to print a brochure. You need a dedicated print solution for both.   Why Consolidation? A brief summary of our experience with procurement and consolidation in the New Home Builder industry: It used to be that cost savings were the major driver for consolidation, and dollar savings are still the number one outcome that companies are looking for. But, because labor is so tight in the new home building industry time is also a factor in consolidation. Marketers who can spend less time juggling multiple vendors, have more time to nurture and convert prospects to create homeowners for their Communities. So for Builder Marketers, economy of time is a close second to actual dollar savings. We launched BP Central Print Hub to help our clients consolidate and benefit from a national wholesale print collateral solution.  There's a difference between a large national print manufacturer and local retail print shops, print reps or other regional vendors, like sign companies, who offer print services. We've combined the scale of a national wholesale printer with the same builder-centric services our clients expect from us:

• Creative support
• Sourcing help
• Production care
• Logistics know-how

We hope you'll reach out to learn more as you explore ways to reduce your SG&A costs and control the way your brand appears in print collateral. Thanks for stopping by. Look forward to engaging with you soon. Cheers! Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger Marketing Blueprints   Marketing Blueprints is sponsored by Builder Promotions, the leading builder-centric platform consolidating branded marketing supplies and Community print collateral for new home builders nationwide. We are more than our products and services. We are your New Home Community Marketing partners.  

We recently refreshed our homepage at www.builderpromotions.com! We've designed a visual look n' feel that tells new home builders they've arrived at a Marketing eco-system designed for the unique needs of New Home Community Marketing. The idea is that you spend less time managing vendors and more time cultivating new home buying prospects. Our platform is all about consolidation, simplicity and marketing happiness! We'd love to welcome you. Here's a quick tour:   Our builder category stores are organized to mirror the new home buyer journey. Website visuals make it easy to see what's in those category stores so you can find what you need quickly. We're already working with Division Marketing teams to develop, fun, contemporary and stylish welcome home gifts for 2018 closings. Our BP Custom Shopper™ team is busy helping Builder Marketers develop creative branded gifts to create connection at community events in Q1. This just in today! We've added a "Signing Day Supplies" e-Store to give our clients more options for new home buyer signing day staples:

• USB Drives that hold sales contracts, e-flyers and warranty information
• Writing Instruments with blue ink for signing
• Key Holders in gift boxes for home key presentation
• Document Portfolios to organize closing and warranty information

We're featuring a video of the week to share new home builder marketing ideas with you. Check out our first video post from our Sourcing Manager here. "Coming Soon" BP Central Print Hub. It's another consolidation service from Builder Promotions with simple localized support that enables Corporate Marketing to standardize print look n' feel, and Division Marketing teams to "localize" them for their Community brands. It's super easy just like the rest of our solutions. We are thrilled to be able to gift our clients with marketing happiness fueled by the magic of simplicity and devoted builder-centric service. Thanks for stopping by to learn more about how we help you. Cheers, Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger Marketing Blueprints is sponsored by Builder Promotions, Inc. the leading builder-centric e-Commerce platform and group buying service. Builder Promotions centralizes and consolidates purchases of marketing supplies and print collateral used to support the entire new home buyer journey. BP Custom Shopper™ is a signature service of Builder Promotions.

Last week BDX produced a really excellent webinar full of useful tactical tools to help you create leads for new home communities. If you didn't get a chance to watch the webinar, I'm sharing my link here with the recording. This webinar touches on five themes with tons of good tactical detail you can use to generate more leads for 2018. These are the themes they cover. The detail is worth the 45 minutes! 1. Attract new home shoppers with listings. 2. Ways to improve the performance of your listings. 3. Don't forget Real Estate Agents. 4. Invest in your website. 5. Create Unique lead generation content for your website.   Anyone reading this blog knows that I'm a big fan of WordStream's content. Builders are using PPC to drive home shoppers to their websites. WordStream produces rich content, on almost a daily basis, to help us do more with our digital assets to increase leads. I love this guide to landing page success. Are you using landing pages strategically? Maximizing this important piece of digital real estate within a website is a real art and a real science.  They cover both here in this guide.     A lot of Builders use their digital agencies to keep abreast of changes that Google makes to PPC advertising which can be very effective in drawing the right leads to your content. If you are a home builder Marketing Manager and you would like a summary of Google's Q4 change and to learn how it impacts your PPC budgeting, read this blog post by the team at WordStream. If you trust your Agency is doing this homework, you can pass on this post. I assume some of our readers are checking up on their Digital partners or using this information to manage their own PPC advertising. WordStream gets to the heart of the matter quickly in this post. All Marketers are faced with the challenge of helping digital shoppers find their content. The digital world has become as noisy as the real world. We all think about how to attract visitors to our digital real estate, how to educate them with the right content at the right time, when to deliver decision support, how to convert along the way and how to turn them into a loyal enthusiast for our brands. The buyer's journey is paved with a multitude of important tactics and an incredible volume of content to help prospects see your value and decide if your brand is a fit for them.  We hope you find these resources useful as you set out to update, improve, design, redesign or create a digital world for prospects that are looking for a home and would consider purchasing in your new home communities. Look for more resource lists in this blog over the next month to help you make 2018 a success. Next post we'll work with our friends at the Social Media Examiner to share current best practices for Instagram (where your millennial home shoppers are viewing your content). Thanks for joining in the conversation.  Cheers! Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger This blog, Marketing Blueprints, is sponsored by Builder Promotions. Builder Promotions is a builder-centric solution that centralizes and consolidates branded marketing supplies and print collateral used to support the entire new home buyer journey. We enable Corporate Marketing and Divisions Marketing teams to move together seamlessly to create a consistent customer experience in every market.