Influential Home Builder Content Strategies - Nicole Curtis

Greg Bray: And we are excited to have joining us today, Nicole Curtis. Nicole is the CEO of House of Influence. Welcome, Nicole. Thanks for being with us today.

Nicole Curtis: Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Greg Bray: Well, Nicole, for those who haven't had a chance to, uh, get to know you before, let's get that quick background and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Nicole Curtis: Yeah, love it. [00:01:00] So, I'm Nicole Curtis, founder of House of Influence. Just a little bit of background. In the past 12 years, I've worked for corporate marketing companies, and the past six years worked for a local small home builder. And after a corporate layoff, I felt the nudge to start my own marketing studio. So, here we are. I'm two months in. House of Influence was designed specifically for small boutique home builders, interior designers, and creative entrepreneurs. And so, today I combine that experience with deep love of storytelling, content creation, and helping builders grow with clarity and confidence.

Kevin Weitzel: All right, new company, new outlook. Before we jump into that, though, please give our listeners just some interesting factoid about yourself that has nothing to do with work, family, or the home building industry at all.

Nicole Curtis: Love it. Let's see. I think most people would think I'm probably pretty outgoing and social, but I am such a homebody. I love being home. I love going to bed at 8:00 PM. I love cooking and [00:02:00] baking. So, that's something probably most people don't know.

Kevin Weitzel: Wow.

Nicole Curtis: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: 8:00 PM.

Nicole Curtis: 8:00 PM.

Kevin Weitzel: Now, does it matter what time zone you're in, because 8:00 PM to me is like, that's just getting the evening started.

Nicole Curtis: I'm so exhausted from my little kids, my job. I'm like, goodnight. See you tomorrow.

Kevin Weitzel: That means your internal clock has shifted, so you probably get up considerably earlier than the average. Correct?

Nicole Curtis: That is true. I'm up at 4:30 5:00 every morning, so. Yep.

Kevin Weitzel: I think you missed your calling. You should have gone on the Marine Corps or something because they get up that time all every day.

Nicole Curtis: That's right. That's right.

Greg Bray: It's the little kids thing that you lose all control of whatever your plan was.

Nicole Curtis: Exactly. Isn't that the truth?

Greg Bray: Well, Nicole, tell us a little bit more about House of Influence and the types of services you're trying to provide as you work with builders.

Nicole Curtis: Yeah, love it. So, House of Influence is really a fractional marketing and brand strategy studio, like I said, for home builders and interior designers. Where I lead everything from brand messaging and content strategy to social [00:03:00] media consulting. I really like to focus on creative direction and building that builder-ready, focused marketing blueprint.

Greg Bray: So, as you are talking to a builder and you're starting to say, okay, we want to do a marketing strategy, what are the kinds of things that you would start with? What kinds of questions would you ask them to kind of get that discussion moving?

Nicole Curtis: Yeah. So, I really always like to start with clarity. I think clarity guides the rest of everything that happens after that. And so, with a home builder, I really like to ask, Who is your buyer? And I don't want home builders to say everybody. That is not your buyer. Every single builder has a different product type to offer. They have a different audience, they have a different buyer experience. And so, I like to ask, what problem are you trying to solve? You know, who are the people you envision living in your home, and what makes your product or your buyer experience meaningfully different from those around you? So, once we really establish that clarity, everything else flows from that, so the [00:04:00] content creation, website structure, all of that.

Greg Bray: So, as you go around the idea of, who are you trying to get, what are you trying to sell them, what then is part of your process to kind of drill down on the next layer? What are some of the things that you want to know or that they need to be thinking about?

Nicole Curtis: Well, I think it's also important to really know about their team dynamics. I think when I worked for a home builder, a lot of things that separate you from your competitors are the experience you offer, but your people. Your people really set you apart. So, I like to learn, what are your salespeople like? I like to go in and sit with the sales team, learn a little bit about that. I like to be immersed in these communities. Every community is different. So, I really just like to sit with the team and better understand their overall goals, their founding story. All of that really frames everything you do from there.

Kevin Weitzel: And I know what I want as a consumer. Like, I don't want to live next door to any yapping kids, yapping dogs. I don't want to deal with any of that stuff, even though I'm half deaf. So, it's not even about the sound. I also don't want to have to [00:05:00] climb any stairs. I don't want to spend over a million bucks. So, do you go in with your home builder and let them tell you the story of who they think it is, or do you help them kind of peel back that onion?

Nicole Curtis: I like to hear their story first, and then we kind of peel back those layers. So, they might have an idea in their mind of who they're, you know, gearing their content towards, but there's a lot of clarity to be found when you sit down and you say, okay. A lot of home builders are like, I want anybody who wants to buy my home to buy a home. That's not the case. What does your community offer? What are your product offerings? What are the type of people that already live in this community? You know, there's a lot of things that you really need to uncover with these builders. They might think they're gearing their content towards one type of people, when in reality, that whole strategy needs to shift.

Greg Bray: So why, Nicole, does somebody need an outsource kind of partner for these types of things? Why can't they just do it all themselves in-house, or can they?

Nicole Curtis: That's a really great question. I think oftentimes marketing [00:06:00] departments within home builders are seen as a junk drawer, if you will. I've talked to so many industry favorites and partners, and they say oftentimes within a home building organization, anything that comes up, any project, they don't know who's going to accomplish that, they pass it off to marketing. And it's not marketing's job to do everything, because when you try to do everything, it's not done well. I think marketing needs to focus on a few big pieces internally and do those well, and outsource the rest.

And so, for me, I really like to keep what requires internal knowledge inside, and what requires specialization, you can outsource. So, things like video, photography, content creation, social media strategy that can be done outside the walls of your business. SEO and paid ads, those kinds of things. So, I really like to guide these marketing departments to really focus on what can you move the needle on and what can you do well. And then, you can always outsource the rest, especially when your marketing department has one or two people.

Kevin Weitzel: So, let me ask you [00:07:00] this. Budget is always going to determine what you can and can't do. You know, to hire somebody full-time has x number of dollars that are just saddled with it before you do any outreach of any sort. Do you find that you are going to cater or are better fit with a builder type based on, well, we're big enough to have some dollars to where we want to actually start to grow and expand, but we're not so big where we can have an entire department that we have, you know, full-time staff with assistance and everybody else. Where is that sweet spot?

Nicole Curtis: Well, I think that's kind of where my specialty comes in, because there are small home builders who have one or two people that can only manage so much. But with House of Influence, I have that six years of home building experience. I know exactly what your buyers, you know, are looking for, what kind of content they can relate to. And so, if you are a team of a small people, find somebody who you can outsource that understands your business and can support you in that way.

I think it's great when there's a home builder who has a team of six, and everybody has their own lanes. That's amazing, when you have a content creation team, and you have, you know, X, Y, [00:08:00] Z. But if you're a small home builder, rely on these other partners that you can outsource things to, and you can kind of work it as a full team together. And a slower cost too, because you don't have the overhead. You're not paying for benefits; you're not paying for all of those things. So, it honestly is a cheaper option to outsource a lot of these items.

Kevin Weitzel: Hey, you pay as you go.

Nicole Curtis: Exactly. Exactly.

Kevin Weitzel: Instead of paying them while they sit.

Nicole Curtis: Yeah, right. That's exactly right.

Greg Bray: It's funny, I recently was at a conference, and one of the presenters was talking about, you know, improving your marketing team with some AI things and such. And they said, Let me put up this org chart of this small marketing department. And they put up something that had 25 people in it. And I'm like, this is not the world that we live in, in home building, where most builders do not have 25 people in their in-house marketing department.

Nicole Curtis: That is not common.

Greg Bray: Like you said, this is typically that one to three, maybe four, kind of people at a lot of builders until you get, you know, obviously big nationals or something different. But it really is [00:09:00] this balance of what skills do you have? What skills do you need? But I see this challenge of always trying to find the one person who knows how to do all of it.

Nicole Curtis: Yes.

Greg Bray: Have you run into that as well, where people are trying to find that one person who knows all these different things and is an expert in everything?

Nicole Curtis: Absolutely. It's funny too, marketing is such a huge umbrella. I think there are also businesses who think I can do marketing, marketing is easy. But marketing is not easy. It requires a lot of strategy. I think if you can find people who have specialties, those are the type of people you want to rely on. Like I said, you can't do everything perfectly in-house.

Greg Bray: So, as you are working with the builder, then, to define where they're going, how do you help them kind of tell the story? Where does that fit in with both the buyer, maybe the communities, or the types of homes they're building? Who's responsible for defining that and kind of putting that together?

Nicole Curtis: So, for storytelling, I think it's so important to ingrain all of your teams into that. The salespeople know your buyers the best. They're the ones that are in the [00:10:00] community. They're the ones meeting with leads who walk in the door. And so, I think marketing teams really do need to rely on some of their salespeople to better understand the people who are walking in this store. They can help you frame a really great story.

And so, when I worked for a home builder, I would sit out in my communities with my sales team and just listen to stories they've had with buyer objections or those who are falling in love with the homes. And so, I always suggest really get ingrained within your business to understand the buyers coming through your door. And then, I've always relied heavily on social media to just tell a story. You know that social media is so important in the digital world today.

But that leads me to my next thing that I'd love to talk about is I think a lot of home builders are posting content to just post, right? They want to bring awareness to themselves. But when you post to just post, that's noise, and you're just wasting your time. But when there's a social media strategy, and you're tying that strategy to your end goals, that's where you'll really bring in those new leads, people who [00:11:00] want to buy from you. Yeah, overall, I just really like to ingrain people with their entire teams.

Greg Bray: So, drill down in that a little bit more for us, Nicole, what does a social media strategy look like beyond we need to post something once a week?

Nicole Curtis: A social media strategy is a full month. So, you don't want to just be, okay, we need to post three times a week, and one needs to be a reel, and one needs to be a carousel. No way. That is not a strategy. You need to look at your goals. What home types are you trying to sell right now? What is the community that you want to bring to the forefront? You need to establish those goals first, and then the strategy can flow from there. And then, I always like to rotate each week. So, one week we're focusing on, you know, how we make buyers feel.

So, storytelling with how buyers feel when they walk inside your homes. I also like to add in a layer of buyer education. That's so important too, because when you teach your audience something, they see you as a trusted advisor and they're gonna keep coming back. You know, there are so many first-time home buyers who don't really fully [00:12:00] understand the full home buying picture. They don't understand even the basics. But because we're ingrained in it every day, we just assume that they know what the home buying journey looks like.

And so, if you can ingrain education with your audience, you'll be seen as a thought leader, and they're going to keep coming back to you. Now, they might not be ready to purchase a home right now when they're consuming this content, but you're going to stay in the back of their mind. So, when they keep seeing your educational content that they're learning from, they're going to come back to you, and they're going to re-engage.

Kevin Weitzel: Let me ask you this. I hate to come out of left field on this one, but this one's bothered me for decades now. Do you ever find that there are builders out there that have a market base at their disposal? And I'm going to use Boulder as an example. Boulder, Colorado. You're from Colorado, right?

Nicole Curtis: Yep.

Kevin Weitzel: So, Boulder, Colorado. I went to a restaurant there, and every server in this restaurant was ripped, cut, in ridiculous shape. And keep in mind, I'm a former professional cyclist, so it's not like I walked in there like it's just a big old hunk of slab of meat here. [00:13:00] I'm a huggable athlete, is what it's more like. But anyway, the point being was that I actually had to ask my server. I'm like, does your boss like discriminate or something in the hiring practice, because everybody in here is like ripping in shape.

And he is like, nah, it's Boulder. Everybody's like this. So, when you have a community like that where everybody's in shape, everybody's into cycling, and snowshoeing and skiing and running, and everything else, can you miss the mark with the people that are outliers that don't quite cut the mustard, so to say?

Nicole Curtis: Yeah. You can't just tailor your content to one specific person, in one specific community. That's such a good point. You need to be a little bit more broad with that and ensure that your content is hitting, you know, maybe families, you know, outside of like first-time home buyers, that type of thing.

Greg Bray: So, Nicole, I need to just take a minute here and clarify something that Kevin said. Kevin, you said, I don't like to come out of left field. I'm confused. I thought you loved living in left field.

Kevin Weitzel: I live in left field. I'm the person that brings in all the craziness. You're right, Greg. You're right. Alright. Okay.

Greg Bray: Sorry, I was just confused there for a second [00:14:00] about that. So, alright. So, Nicole, when you see some of these things that people are posting, we'll stay on the social media angle here for a second with the storytelling. What is it that you see that you're just like, oh, they're just posting just a post? Can you tell that when you're looking at content? Is there something that just screams no strategy to you when you look at it?

Nicole Curtis: So, if we're talking about home building specifically, I think social media content within home building is just blasted with incentives all of the time. We don't need that anymore. Every home builder is offering the same incentive every week. That doesn't differentiate you. Home buyers expect incentives. Now that's not separating you from the crowd.

And so, one, when I just see a home builder posting, we have a 4.99% interest rate, you're just posting to post. You need to start telling stories. Why should people come visit your community? What separates your salespeople from the rest? I used to love highlighting salespeople. I used to love showcasing the community [00:15:00] that surrounds these homes.

I think what's so important now with social media, too, is you got to grab them with a good hook. Something like three reasons you should come tour model home today. And then they're going to swipe through and learn more about that. You want to engage them and keep them engaged, to consume your entire post. So, my biggest thing is you need to navigate away from sharing your incentives.

And don't be afraid to take risks either. Take risks with your social media content. I think home builders have always done the same type of thing for so long. Try new things. Try to figure out what your audience is engaging with. Watch those view times. Watch how many people are saving. You know, they say that saves now on social media are the new likes. So, it doesn't matter if your post gets five likes, but it has 12 shares. That means somebody is consuming that content and sees it so valuable that they want to come back and consume it again.

Greg Bray: I think the thing about incentives is a great reminder. I don't know of anybody who goes, I don't care what that house looks like, if I can get a 4.99% rate, I'm there. They have to fall in [00:16:00] love with the home first.

Nicole Curtis: They do. They do. Yep. They have to fall in love with the home. They have to envision themselves there. They have to envision their families there, their dogs. It's not just, okay, I'm going to go look at this house because they have a killer deal. It's not that.

Kevin Weitzel: And what is this 4.99 you guys keep talking about? I only know 2.25%. You'll have to pry it from a cold, dead hands.

Greg Bray: Nicole, you mentioned a couple of things that you look at. Are there other key metrics that you recommend marketers are paying attention to, just kind of in their day-to-day operational tracking and monitoring?

Nicole Curtis: Yeah, I think you really need to focus on your website. So, you need to watch your website visitors, and correlate that to your campaigns that you're running, because that'll help showcase what content you should be focusing on moving forward. So, your website is just full of gold. Watch your website users, watch your conversion rate. Watch your website conversion rate from leads to appointments. I mean, the list goes on and on. You need to be married to your analytics at this point.

I think if we're talking about [00:17:00] social media, I'll go back to that, analytics with social media. Shares are important, views are important, but at the end of the day. There's a little thing I like to talk about called vanity metrics. And I think in a social media world, so many people want a high number of likes, and they want a high number of views.

But if you are seeing 2000 views and no conversion, what good is that 2000 number? But if you are seeing, say, a reel, you get 350 views, but you're seeing 12 shares and four DMs, those 350 views obviously matter way more because it is focused on the people that you are converting. So, we need to do away with the vanity metrics. Those make your ego feel really, really good, but they are not going to grow your business.

Kevin Weitzel: I think vanity metrics, the problem is that you keep getting thrown this in your face by all these influencers out there. I have, you know, 3 million followers. I get this amount of views per thing. You're not competing against the influencers, you're competing against other home builders and used versus [00:18:00] new, so.

Nicole Curtis: And a lot of these people are buying their followers. Let's keep that in mind.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah, that's true. That is a fact. But what it comes down to is a lot of home builders tend to look at those metrics, and they don't matter. They truly don't. If they're not converting to somebody coming in person to say, I'd like to buy this house, or tell me more about it, or at least, you know, sending you an email, I'd like to know more information about it, it's for not.

Nicole Curtis: It doesn't matter. Yep.

Kevin Weitzel: What about AI, though? Because it doesn't matter if you're making cheese bread or cutting boards or homes, every single day you turn around, and everybody's cramming AI down your throat. You need to have AI. You need to have AI. But what do you say for those boutique builders that you know, don't even have their social media game on play?

Nicole Curtis: I mean, I'm always going to say that AI is a tool. It's not a replacement, especially for people in home building. AI should always amplify your voice and not replace your humanity. So I love to use AI as an assistant, especially since I've started this new business. I'm a team of one. It can help me be concise with my time. It [00:19:00] can help me learn more about something that I might not know, but it will never replace the human touch. I think the key is keeping the human touch, and AI should always enhance your voice, not replace it.

Kevin Weitzel: So, I shouldn't worry anymore that my girlfriend is going to leave me for her assistant Bob, her AI assistant, Bob, because she's always like, Bob told me this, Bob told me that. But you know what? Bob's not a real person. Bob just is an imaginary thing that, you know, just can churn out facts all day long and give her the right directions to a place, versus me just saying, yeah, I think it's around the corner over here.

Nicole Curtis: People don't want to buy from robots.

Kevin Weitzel: No, they don't.

Nicole Curtis: No.

Kevin Weitzel: Although she might leave me for Bob. I'm starting to worry, Nicole. I really am.

Greg Bray: Going to have to step up your game, Kevin.

Kevin Weitzel: I need to step up my game, and maybe I should get an AI assistant just to pay her compliments and stuff, right?

Greg Bray: That's right. Tell me what I should say if I were Bob.

Kevin Weitzel: Not just, you look beautiful today, but oh my goodness, that floral pattern looks amazing with your eye color, and the accents your hair coloration today. I don't know.

Nicole Curtis: It's great for compliments, that's for sure.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah.

Greg Bray: [00:20:00] I think we stray slightly from our focused topic.

Kevin Weitzel: We did a little bit. I'm worried, Greg.

Greg Bray: Nicole, for that builder who's listening today and they're like, this all sounds great, but I'm a little overwhelmed. I'm a department of one or two. There's a lot going on. Do you have some actionable tips of a couple of things that they could do right away, or things they should look at right now that might just give them something to try this week or the next couple weeks?

Nicole Curtis: Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is simplify your message. Confusion often loses customers. Clarity is what converts. So, clarify your message. I would also recommend show up consistently with your content. It does not need to be perfect. I think so many times people think that perfection is what matters with your content, and it's not. People like the relatable, raw, and real stuff as well. And then, I think the last thing I would say is create content that teaches, not just tells. Because builders who educate end up earning buyers' trust. [00:21:00]

Greg Bray: I love that. Educate with simplicity and clarity.

Nicole Curtis: Exactly.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, it's been great to learn from you today. Nicole, is there any last thoughts or words of advice that you wanted to share before we kind of finish up?

Nicole Curtis: Well, thank you so much for inviting me on. This was so much fun. I just would love to remind anybody listening to not be afraid to take risks. Don't lean on AI, lean on your team. Lean on that human element and just have fun with your content. Have fun.

Greg Bray: Well, Nicole, if somebody wants to learn more, get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Nicole Curtis: Yeah, anybody can email me at houseofinfluenceco@gmail.com, or you can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you, Nicole, and thank you, everybody, for listening today to the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you. [00:22:00]