Guidelines for Using the Internet to Improve Pre-sales

In the past 5 months we have discussed:

·         Changing the Marketing "Coming Soon" Communities,

·         Leveraging Virtual Reality in Marketing "Coming Soon" Communities,

·         Leveraging Video in Marketing "Coming Soon" Communities,

·         Building Your "Coming Soon" Interest Lists, and

·         Making Your "Coming Soon" Interest Lists Work.

This is the final installment in our six-part series covering advances in coming soon community marketing. In this issue, we summarize the key points of the series and leave you with a few simple guidelines for immediately improving your pre-sales.

Do these things and you will generate immediate results that will build over time.

1.      Focus on your media mix and interactive marketing efforts during your new community kick-off meetings. Starting with your target market, create an outreach chart to plan your media mix. The goal is to increase your points of contact with your target market to improve both your reach and frequency. There's not a single template for this no more than there is a single way to design your community amenities. You will need to take into account your target market, market conditions, and other factors. Review the first article in this series "Changing the Marketing 'Coming Soon' Communities" to learn more.

2.      Encourage consumers to visit your Web site to learn more and to register for your interest lists. For communities with strong amenities or in niche markets (e.g., urban in fill projects) it may make sense to build a dedicated site with its own URL tied back to your main site.

3.      Get the word out fast and develop interest lists quickly. Announce new communities to past leads, visitor traffic, and buyers through email and/or direct mail.

4.      Sell "new," "new," "new"! Consumers have favorite words, and a preferred on is "new." New community, new release, or new plans will all drive interest and physical traffic. Put your new communities on your Web site as quickly as you can and highlight them on your community map. Promote them through highly visible links.

5.      Make is easy to sign up for your new community interest lists. Do more than just provide information about the community and a "more information" link. Provide consumers with a link to your coming soon interest lists within each market with registration on the same page and watch your lists grow.

6.      Consider improving pre-visit experience and your on-site sales process with virtual reality ("VR") and video. Showing what will be through VR and delivering the raw emotion of a testimonial through video can help seal your sales.

7.      Build and manage your database. Make sure all your leads and interest list participants are in a common database and you have a way to track communications and physical traffic. Interested buyers are likely to sign up for more than one interest list. So, you need to manage the communications to avoid redundancy.

8.      Invest in e-mail campaign management tools or outsource to a trusted vendor who has experience managing pre-sale marketing campaigns.

None of these steps are difficult to learn. We can help you get started in a program that pays great dividends. Call us at 866-923-4026 to learn more.

SPECIAL NOTE: We also invite you to explore Lux Solutions' latest website project for D.R. Horton Homes at http://sfl.drhorton.com.

Originally Published: August 5, 2005 - http://www.floorpop.com/Floorpop080504.html