Weekend Enabler Technology Means Fun! Can You Position a Home Tour as Weekend Fun?

Have you heard the term,  "weekend enabler technology"?  I thought it sounded like another soundbite, but I realized that we use technology to enable our weekend fun more than we think!   Whether it's Open Table to create a gathering,  Fandango to schedule a family movie night or StubHub to get last minute tickets to a game or concert, mobile apps help us create and schedule weekend fun. When digital house hunters reward you by scheduling a visit to your sales center on their busy weekend, you want to be mindful that you are competing with precious weekend recreation. It pays to think about how you can curate a great customer experience to nurture this important advance through your sales funnel. So, how can builder marketers use weekend enabler technology to infuse convenience and fun into the sales model visit?  Curating a customer experience takes thoughtful design and smart execution, something our builder clients do with excellence.  But there's only so much time in the day and our clients are doing amazing work with historically lean marketing departments!   Given the staggering growth of mobile usage, we think it's the ideal time to launch a Builder Mobile App to help our clients brand the sales center customer experience from start to finish.  Our mobile app enables you to automate mobile marketing and makes it easy to curate a great customer experience, without adding marketing staff.  Think of it as a "Virtual Community Concierge". When home buyers you are nurturing decide to visit your sale centers, your Mobile App can make them feel like they are receiving a personalized service -- like they would get from a Concierge.  A Virtual Community Concierge could help prospects:

• Plan their sales model visits
• Click to call for a personalized tour
• Get on-the-go directions to sales models
• Experience your well-designed home environments in-person
• Locate your other sales centers in the region, not your competitors
• Search "around us" and find a place to relax and grab a bite or drink to imagine their lives in your new homes.
• Access your social media to talk about their visit.
• Engage with Builder "Internet Advisors" via call/email/text

I like this informative report from the National Association of Realtors and Google which puts the spotlight on the digital house hunt. I thought it worth sharing two key points about mobile house hunters:

• 89% of new home shoppers use a mobile search engine at the onset and throughout their research.
• Mobile applications are used by 68% of new home shoppers at the onset and throughout their research.

The report also lists the top reasons why digital house hunters use mobile in their search:

• Get general information about homes
• Get directions to an open house on-the-go
• Compare Prices/Features
• Search Inventory
• Contact a Sales Person or Agent
• Read customer reviews
• Research financing options
• Watch video content

Creating a mobile app is like any other marketing tactic.  You need to understand how and where your prospects engage with you and what they want from that engagement.  The good news is that the Home Building industry knows what consumers want from their mobile experience (see the above list).  There is endless data about what consumers want from a brand app. This report confirms in more detail What Consumers Need and Want from their Mobile engagement.  If you don't want to read the report, here's a thumbnail sketch with translation to the home buying process. What Do Consumers Really Need or Want...when it comes to Apps?

• Easy access to product information (homes) and store location (sales centers)
• Help planning and navigating Trips (on-the-go sales center directions)
• Ability to communicate in real-time (one click access to builder sales contacts)
• Proactive and relevant (to them) information and services within the context of their location at a particular time (around us GPS for your other sales models and places to grab a bite or drink in the neighborhood)

Do you agree that now is the time for builders to get into the Mobile game? A mobile app is standard fare for the digital enterprise and we have created a Builder template that is priced at $2400. Perhaps we can help take your Mobile aspirations from "wish list" to done and make it easy on your budget too. Cheers and thanks for joining the conversation! Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger Marketing Blueprints is sponsored by Builder Promotions, Inc.  In future posts, we'll talk about how companies incentivize App usage and share ideas for connecting App downloads to Sales Center visits.