Item #2 on the list of ten things every builder should know: before you jump in, have a game plan. This is a big one.
As a builder, you would never build a new home without first having a proper floor plan. If it’s the first time you’ve put the floor plan into production, chances are you’ve spent countless hours in design, cost estimating and more. And even after the floor plan goes into production, you’re probably continuing to tweak the layout, adding a feature here or taking one away there, depending on the specific needs of the customer and/or the specific requirements of the build, be it zoning restrictions, setback requirements, etc. etc. My point is this: before you build a new home, you have a game plan (your floor plan!); a game plan that’s the product of weeks or even months of detailed thought and analysis; a game plan that is constantly being tweaked and refined as you move forward as a new home builder. This up front investment should pay your company handsome returns into the future; if not, perhaps you pull the floor plan from production. Most companies and builders alike apply this thoughtful, ROI-based approach to business decisions making on a daily basis. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to harnessing the vast power of the Internet to propel your company forward, most businesses and home builders who do make the leap (and not all do) jump right in, with no strategy at all.
This might not seem like a big deal at first glance. After all, how hard could it be, for instance, to manage a social media tool consisting of simple 140 character updates (more popularly known as “tweets”)? Or to manage a Facebook page? Pretty straight forward stuff, right? I mean if your kids can do it, you should be able to as well. Unfortunately, the Internet is an entirely different animal for businesses. You have a brand to manage. You have a specific set of customers you are trying to target. You might have a specific message you want to convey. And like any smart business, you’ll want to track your successes; more importantly, you’ll want to quickly identify any any potential failures so you can quickly fix them if and when they arise. Without a game plan, none of this is possible. Without a game plan, what once started as an effort to leverage the Internet quickly devolves into a disjointed, piecemeal effort that lacks cohesion and purpose: one that could damage your brand and significantly damage your reputation in the minds of your home buying customers.
So, where do you start? Well, before jumping in and creating that Twitter or Facebook account, get cozy, grab a warm cup of coffee or tea (for me, Four Barrel!), do some thinking and reflection and answer the following (*important*) questions: (1) what are my goals; (2) how do I get there; and (3) how do I measure my success?
Let’s start with question #1.
1.) What are my goals? Every home builder looking to leverage the Internet should absolutely start by asking themselves this very question. After all, if you don’t have a clearly defined vision for what you want to achieve, not only do you lack a framework for moving forward, you have no basis for tracking your performance once you do begin to move forward. Imagine, for instance, building a new home with no floor plan: not only would you not know what materials to order pre-build (and in what quantities), you would have no idea whether or not the finished product conformed to your original specs – because there were none! So start by asking yourself exactly what it is you want to achieve. Perhaps list a few goals. But don’t overreach in the beginning, and don’t muddle down these goals with vagaries and generalities. Be specific. Goals like “I want to have a social media presence” are vague and weak and don’t offer much help. More specific and concrete goals like “I want to use a Facebook account to increase my overall referral traffic by at least 5%, and I want this referral traffic to have a bounce rate of less than 35%” not only offer a clear vision for what you want to achieve online, but also a basis for judging your performance going forward.
2.) How do I get there? Put another way: given my goals and where I want to go in the future, what steps should I begin to take to get there? I’ll offer my suggestions here, but thankfully, by answering question #1 we at least have a basis for answering this question. But before getting too excited and thinking this is the easy question out of the three, you must first assess exactly where you are as a company? Sure, you want to increase your referral traffic by 5% and maintain a bounce rate of less than 35% for this referral traffic, but do you even have a website? It’s imperative to assess as honestly as possible where you are presently before you can determine what steps you need to take moving forward. Maybe you do have a website, but do you have tracking code installed so you can perform the necessary analytics to gauge changes in metrics such as referral traffic and bounce rates? Only by first fully understanding your present situation (point A), and by clearly defining your future goals (point B), can you begin to intelligently roadmap how to get most efficiently from point A to point B.
3.) How do I measure my success? (And don’t forget the more important corollary: how do I know whether to change direction sometime down the road?) Luckily for us, by answering questions #1 and #2, it should be pretty clear how to measure your success and to know if/when to change your approach. If you’ve chosen more qualitative goals that don’t lend themselves as nicely to easily trackable quantitative metrics, you might have to get more creative in gauging your success. For instance, maybe you wanted to create a social media presence to promote a brand message to a particular demographic segment. In this instance, surveys and questionnaires might work best. Or maybe your goal is to create a company website so that you rank in the top 10 organic results for a specified set of 50 keywords. In this case, you might want to track your weighted average search engine results page (SERP) on a weekly basis. Plot it on a graph and easily see how you’re progressing. For every goal, for every road map to get there, metrics exist for gauging your performance. Some are better than others, some contain more “noise” than others, but as long as you understand the inherent limitations for any given metric, you can leverage it to your advantage and add it to your toolbox of tools for tracking your performance. Just remember the old adage: garbage in, garbage out.
Hopefully these 3 questions get you going in the right direction. Remember, not everyone has to have the same exact game plan, just like not all builders have to share identical floor plans. But it is imperative to have some sort of formalized game plan: a clearly defined set of goals; a clear path for getting there; and a clear and transparent system for measuring your progress. Only then should you begin to think about creating that Facebook page or Twitter account.
Thoughts? Questions? Let me know in the comments!