More Omaha Home Builders Should Use Permission Marketing

May 22, 2008 · Filed Under Omaha Housing Market · Comment

I’d like to challenge more Omaha home builders to use permission marketing.

Permission marketing means that the marketer delivers anticipated, personal and relevant messages to the people who want to get those messages.

The key word here is want.

Your potential customers should want to get your updates. Your customers want to know all sorts of things. Things like:

New floor plans
New homes for sale
New lots for sale
Price drops on existing homes for sale
New options
New contractors that you’re trying out
New vendors whose products are going into your homes
What you think about the latest home trends

Yes, Omaha home builders, your customers (and potential customers) are interested in hearing what you have to say. You’re the expert home builder, after all. What you have to say on the subject has to be worth something, especially to people who are considering plunking down $200,000 to $1,000,000 on what you sell.

How does permission marketing benefit your home building business?

Well, permission marketing, done right, can help Omaha home builders avoid that whole request for proposal/price shopping stage of the game.

Selling anything, including homes, on the basis of price alone is a losing proposition for the seller. When you and the other folks in your field fail to differentiate yourselves from one another, you’re not selling a home, you’re just selling a commodity. When a bunch of people are just selling commodities, cheap guy wins.

If you can skip over the RFP stage, you’re already ahead of other Omaha home builders. While they’re fielding calls and talking to people who want to dicker over $500 here and $2000 there, you have customers who are waiting to see what you’re thinking, doing and selling. They’re interested enough in your product to permit you to market to them.

And please, make it easy for your customers to sign up for your updates. RSS feeds are an excellent way to do this, especially if you implement a blog into your website. Jeff Davis, an affordable search engine optimization consultant, can do this for you for a good price.

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Regency Homes Owner Talks About Omaha Housing Market

As many of you watching the housing market in Omaha and the rest of the United States know, the last few years in the homebuilding market have been hard ones. Times are a bit lean for the crowded Omaha home building market and Omaha home builders who, in the past, didn’t look ahead and prepare for today’s downturn were courting disaster.

Just recently, in February of 2008, Gateway Homes filed for bankrupcy, leaving over 140 creditors holding the bag and wondering how exactly they were going to get paid for work they did for that homebuilder. While that case is working its way through the legal system, both people who paid for a new Gateway home and people who actually contracted with Gateway Homes are now realizing the folly in not researching the financial details and background of the Omaha home builder that you’re dealing with.

While new home sales numbers in the Omaha area aren’t terrible, Regency Homes owner Dennis Van Moorleghem, who has a good sense of old-time PR but hasn’t taken advantage of the advantages that the Internet has to offer, has stated that Regency Homes has taken steps to get through the lean times.

By doing what most other smart home builders in the Omaha area are doing, and reducing the amount of spec homes they put on a slow market, Regency Homes is definitely on the right track to staying in business.

According to Dennis Van Moorleghem:

Normally, we’d run 50 to 60 houses - specs. We’re down to about 18.

If you look at the past market upswings and downturns, you’ll notice that after every slowdown a new “buyer” comes forward to bring a new focus to what homebuilders build. According to Van Moorleghem:

It’s going to be a whole new buyer and everybody in the country is trying to figure it out.

Regency Homes is betting that in 2009 - when the market is expected to rise again - the new home buyer in Omaha will want a smaller, more energy-efficient home that sells for less than $250,000 but doesn’t skimp on the extra features that new home buyers expect.

They want granite. They want stone. They want fireplaces.

With today’s low interest rates and ample inventory available to choose from in the Omaha market, buyers are in the driver’s seat. Despite that, local builders have gone on record saying that they expect the market to bottom out in fall of 2008 and that 2009 will be the turnaround year.

Tags: omaha home builders, omaha housing forecast, Omaha Housing Market, Regency Homes Omaha