Getting Personal Can Improve Traffic 200% or More

Do you get lots of leads but find that most of them won't even respond to you? How are you going to convince Web site visitors to visit your communities when they don't even respond to your communications? There's a trade secret you should be aware of.

Get Personal and Consumers Respond.

Consumers respond to those who treat them as individuals. If you treat your leads as individuals and get personal, they will respond to you remarkably well. If you are going to get personal, you need to know something about your leads and be aware of what you don't know about them.

Start collecting more information about those who visit your website and take the time to consider what you can learn from each and every lead. Doing this takes an investment, but most of it is just taking the time to get personal.

Let me explain…

First, let me assume you already have someone responsible for following up on Internet leads. If you don't you might read this and consider putting a process in place for the future. To many builders this is the critical step. I asked Natalie Harris, Vice President of Marketing for David Weekley Homes, why putting such people and a process in place was necessary. According to Harris, "We've created a position (about 2 years ago) whose sole purpose is to develop dialog with these leads, creating a more personal contact, while establishing the lead's needs and in turn a more qualified prospect for our Sales Consultants. In our case, developing the Internet Neighborhood Advisor is necessary and has proven to be a strong value to David Weekley Homes' and continues to add sales to our bottom line."

How to Get More Personal

Many builders have implemented auto-responders on their Web sites, but most auto-responders simply don't cut it. "Auto-responses tend to be frustrating for prospects requesting information from a Web site. By opting to not have canned auto-responses, our leads are able to get to the 'real' information quicker, therefore making the Web experience more satisfying and informative.", said Harris.

Now, let's talk about how you can get personal and start getting better results today. First look at all the objective information you have about each lead. They gave you their name and email address, but what else did they tell you? Did they tell you where they live, their phone number, or leave comments? Use this to tailor your message and appeal to your visitors needs.

You could ask these and many questions, but if you ask too many things, don't expect to get folks to complete your online registration form (unless you are blessed with a hot market). You can get much more personal by improving your Web site tracking. What might you track?

·         Which communities did they look at?

·         How many communities did they request information about?

·         Did they print out driving directions or printer friendly community / plan pages?

·         Did they look at quick delivery homes?

By using this information, you can respond in a systematic, yet individualized way. If you can be systematic and you have a methodology, then using a system to respond becomes possible. Auto-responses can become individualized.

The Payoff

If you take the time to get personal with your Internet leads they will be much more likely to respond or show up as physical traffic. Builders with personalized responses have demonstrated that they can improve responses and ultimately traffic by 200% or more. Are you getting too many leads to be able to give this level of personalization? Look at systems that can help you do this. Use what your system learns about your users to personalize your messages. If you would like to see a demonstration of one such system we call FOCUS, please call us at 972-661-1975.

Originally Published: November 3, 2004 - http://www.floorpop.com/Floorpop110304.html