Pinpointing Your Ideal Home Buyers - Jamie Adams

Greg Bray: And we're excited to have joining us today, Jamie Adams. Jamie is the owner at JK Premier Marketing. Welcome, Jamie. Thanks for being with us.

Jamie Adams: Yeah, Greg, Kevin, thank you for having me today.

Greg Bray: Well, Jamie, let's start off with the quick background and overview and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jamie Adams: Yeah. So, I own [00:01:00] JK Premier Marketing. We've been in business since 2014. What kind of makes the business unique is that we hire all military spouses and transition veterans. And so, everything that we do is done by our military families. So, we offer the traditional marketing services, but it's done by those who have really been the backbone of America. So, very, very proud of that and very honored to work with them.

Kevin Weitzel: That's super cool. All right. Before we get more into that, which is already an interesting factoid about you, but let's hear an interesting factoid about you that has nothing to do with work, the home building industry, or your family.

Jamie Adams: Oh, I got a good one for you. Okay. I was raised Mennonite. Do you know what Mennonite is?

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah.

Jamie Adams: Yeah. So, think Amish here. But I was raised Mennonite until I was 14. So, very traditional. You know, the way you dress, the women did not work outside of the home. So, little interesting fact, but here's the best part about it. You know, I'm a business [00:02:00] owner. I'm in my forties now. But I have all of these interesting talents. I can quilt, I can can, I can bake yeast bread. I just won third place in the state fair here in North Carolina for homemade yeast rolls. So, that's my interesting fact. I have a lot of just good old basic talents that really are kind of useless unless you're entering the state fair.

Kevin Weitzel: 4H, you got it covered.

Jamie Adams: Yeah, exactly. So, you need something quilted. I got you.

Greg Bray: Well, Jamie, how did you go from quilting into being a marketing agency owner?

Jamie Adams: Oh, my. That's a super long story. I won't worry you with that. But the quick version of it was I ended up going into bible school when I graduated high school, and then ended up being a children's pastor and a school teacher. Lived in Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina moved me in '06, and that's how I ended up in North Carolina. And then there, I married into military. So, my husband was special forces at the time, and so ended up at Fort Bragg there in North [00:03:00] Carolina.

Now I'm up here in Raleigh. So, I moved a little north and sitting in Raleigh now, but got into marketing whenever some circumstances happened where he was deploying and we were expecting our first child, and I needed to work. And so, I started my own company after working for other people. So, that was kind of that in a nutshell.

Greg Bray: All right. Well, tell us a little more about some of the experiences you have specifically with home builder clients, and kind of the types of marketing strategies you've looked at for builders when you're having those initial conversations.

Jamie Adams: Yeah, well, so I actually grew up, my dad was a builder, and then my brother is a builder right now. My husband is a builder, and then worked for multiple builders just in the industry itself. And so, just had a big background with the building industry. And when I started JK Premier Marketing in Fayetteville, there at Fort Bragg in 2014, some of my first clients were builders.

And so, I just have known this industry for such a long time. I can talk about the meat and potatoes of it. And [00:04:00] so, we work really well together, but we also have a very high taste level, and my builders love aesthetics. They love the way a brand looks, or the wrapped truck looks. And so, we have a very high taste level and are able to kind of deliver, I call it, they love their Gucci, right? So, we like to make them look Gucci and look really nice. So, we resonate very well with them there.

Greg Bray: So, as you think about these builders, often marketing is not their strength. They come with the construction knowledge and the ability to make beautiful homes, but talking about it, sharing it out there, getting people interested. What are the things that you see builders kind of needing help with from a marketing standpoint, especially at that kind of initial conversation level?

Jamie Adams: Yeah. Builders, they hate tech for the most part. I mean, they just don't have time to deal with it. They enjoy what they do, the blood, sweat, and tears out there. And so, marketing can be a bore, number one. And number two, they just don't want to deal with it. And [00:05:00] so, that's where marketing companies can come in very strong, is that we're able to kind of handle all the nerd work, if you will, kind of pick all that up for them and be able to kind of handle and fill in those gaps for them.

I'll say as far as working with builders, and this is something where we work not only with builders, but we do HVAC to plastic surgeons. I mean, we work with a lot of different industries. The biggest piece of advice when it comes to marketing is really knowing who the heck you're selling to. If you think about it, that we're going to go out fishing right now and we decide we want to catch fish today, we can throw out a net, and we can catch some big fish, some little fish, some trash, right? Or we could grab a harpoon, and we could go after a very specific fish. And so, that's the biggest advice I can tell my builders is, first of all, know who is buying your homes. Who are you building for?

You know, right now I have two builders. They're down in Naples, Marco Island area, and they build luxury homes. They do about $5 million homes and up. It was two sons whose [00:06:00] fathers owned companies before, and now they're merging. So, when they came to us for marketing, I asked them, I said, who's your audience? Who are you building for? Well, they're building for an older generation, and they're building for those, you know, about age 55 and up. They have a high taste level, and they want something that's beautiful, but also functions. So the marketing has to match that.

Whenever we create stuff, we want to make sure that the images and the people we use in our marketing reflects the people who are buying these homes. When we use fonts, we want to make sure it's easy on the eye, they can read it. We want to make sure we have heavier weights and colors. So, when it comes to creating marketing, and this goes across from a vehicle wrap all the way to community signage or even social media ads, you want to make sure you know who you are advertising to.

Because we all know the home that you're building, whether you're playing the big box game or you're doing very high custom with triple crown molding, whatever game you are playing, that marketing has to match that audience that you're [00:07:00] advertising to. Don't throw out the net and catch a little bit of everything, or you're just going to burn cash, if that makes sense.

Greg Bray: Are there examples of mistakes you've seen where you find, gosh, this big disconnect where you're trying to go after audience A, but your messaging is all about the things they don't care about. Have you run into those types of situations?

Jamie Adams: Yes. And I'll tell you, and this is not just the building industry. I mean, this is any business owner getting started. Businesses forget who pays the bills, who's buying from them. And they make the company themselves the focus, versus the customer. And what I mean by that is, my builders are known for this, and I got a couple other industries that are like this, but they are all about the logo reflecting them. They're all about the brand reflecting them, and that's important, that's important. But at the same time, you have to make sure that it's something that's resonating with the people who are buying from you. That's the first and foremost goal. And so, a lot of times I'll see they're creating [00:08:00] marketing, or they're creating imagery, or they're even building houses that, quite frankly, just aren't selling to the market that they're trying to go to. So, that's a mistake.

And then the second mistake is just not even knowing who they're selling to. For example, you need to know if you're building homes for senior living versus starter families. You need to know if you want that person with the high taste level versus, you know, a smaller home with a boutique builder. So, you've got to know who you're building for. Don't just build everything and anything. You really got to know the taste level from amenities to what they're attracted to, and then reflecting them in all of your marketing, reflecting them in those colors, reflecting them, because it's about them at the end of the day. You've got to think about that customer.

Kevin Weitzel: Now, are you tying that all in with, you know, like a specific website collateral, or are you looking at using a certain photography style or a certain photographer? How are you putting in the imagery into that messaging?

Jamie Adams: So, I'll give you the example of those who are building the luxury homes right now, the two clients I have right now, they're doing this [00:09:00] merger. You know, it's Marco Island, it's Naples. So, we're really wanting to reflect first the coast and everything that they're doing. But coastal colors can be light, so we want to make sure we have heavier, darker colors on everything that we're using because that customer, when they go to buy, we need to make sure they can read it, they can see it. So, that's pretty much in everything we do, Kevin.

Now photography is something different. Photography is photography. I need a good picture that can sell that product within three seconds. The toilet lid needs to be down. Lights need to be turned on. I mean, there's some basic stuff that it's just like, oh, don't let the real estate agent do the photography. Please don't let them do it, you know? Send down a professional who knows what they're doing. Today, with AI, you could even stage it. So, photography is just its own animal. If you don't have good pictures, you're already starting off on a bad foot.

But as far as the brand and the marketing itself, again, we're reflecting that in everything. You guys are both familiar with the term, the ethos of your company, the culture, the feel of your company. Home builders, [00:10:00] they love branding. They love the culture and the look of the product that they build, and that needs to resonate in everything they do, and it needs to reflect the customer who we're selling to. We want to make sure it's reflecting that.

So, again, my luxury home guys, they should not be showing Gen Z on any of their imagery. This needs to be my Gen X and my Boomers. That's who needs to be in this imagery. We need to have smiling faces. People are enjoying it. So, there's simple things like that where you're telling that visual story and that visual story is resonating with your customer. Who the heck do you want to sell to? Who is that buyer, that home buyer? Make sure those things are reflecting them.

Greg Bray: When you talk to builders about identifying this customer, this buyer persona, if you will, do you find that it's, Hey, let's talk about, oh, I want to design a product, say for first-time home buyers, and then they define the persona and then the product? Or do they say, oh, you know what, I've built this kind of a house. This is the [00:11:00] kind of house I want to build. Who do you think might want to buy it? And let's go define them after we've already got a product defined. Is there a right or wrong in that order, or can you do it either way, or does it matter?

Jamie Adams: You know, this gets into just business 101. It's coming down to your strategy. Are you playing the quantity game or are you playing the quality game? I've got my builders split. I've got my builders who they throw up the big box homes, and they're turning and burning. Right? And then I have my builders, and it's actually the majority of them, where they really want to build a quality house. They really want to use just high-grade materials. They want to have a lot of cuts in the design. They want to have great amenities, and yet the market is not, you know, pulling the price of what they want.

So, there's a balance scheme there, and you've really got to figure out where you're going to fall into. Because if you do decide that you're going to be that custom builder or just that builder who maybe you do have your production homes, but you're wanting to put the quality materials in it and put the detail into it. You've got to realize, you know, what's gonna be a [00:12:00] loss leader there or what's going to pay the bills? So, that's a business question, and that's something that we can definitely walk our builders through. But whatever that decision is, now the marketing has to reflect that. Otherwise, you're just going to burn cash.

If you're building a home, you pick out a lot, it's a great deal, and you've put in a lot of amenities, you know, you've got a lot of overhead in this home, and then you're not able to pull the comps that you need for it, and it doesn't sell for what it is. I mean, that's just business 101. This is a lot of smart strategy of business plus marketing coming in and then supporting that, if that makes sense.

Greg Bray: Absolutely. You mentioned that you work with builders, but you've also got some other clients. Are there some things that are like well-known, easy, obvious things that happen in other industries that maybe home building hasn't been paying attention to, or could learn from?

Jamie Adams: There are. Of course, everyone's on the whole AI bandwagon right now. Instead of saying that, this is actually what I would throw at our builders. I would say make sure that things are custom [00:13:00] and that the marketing company that you're working with is really listening and not doing cookie-cutter. Greg, when you and I spoke, that's one of the things I appreciated about you with Blue Tangerine.

You met with me, you talked with me, you listened to what our needs were, and it was very customized, even the proposal you sent over. So, I would say versus saying, Hey, these are all the bells and whistles we need to be doing as the builder industry, it really comes down to what's most beneficial to you, number one. And then I'm going to swing right back to that audience. And number two, is your audience even there? I mean, I've got builders who are wanting to throw things, you know, on Instagram and TikTok. And at the end of the day, is that where your builder is? If you are going after a more mature audience, they're on Facebook looking at the grandkids, that's where they're at. So, you need to know where your audience is at as well.

So, I would actually say, as a word of caution, don't just jump on trends, don't just jump on what everybody's doing. Again, this has to do with your strategy, your audience, and the game that you're playing. And so, those things need to come in. So, that marketing company that you [00:14:00] want to work with or that consultant you want to work with, they need to make sure that they're really listening and customizing the strategy for you specifically. I know that didn't specifically answer your question versus we're just not going to jump on the cookie-cutter wagon.

Kevin Weitzel: But it kind of did, and here's why it kind of did. Because I was worried that, depending on the answer that possibly home builders are going to have to be like, whoa, Jamie just said we need to go find out what all these plastic surgeons are doing. So, now we need to implement this in what we're doing. So, I'm actually glad you went to direct statement because I was worried.

Jamie Adams: You already know this. You know, when people come to me with social media, everybody wants to do social media, right? And if you're selling purses and shoes, that's impulse buying. I can sell you all day long on social media, but if you're a lawyer, they're not on social media looking for the lawyer. You can do some brand awareness for sure, but bringing in immediate leads is not going to happen there.

So, it's really understanding too. What's appropriate for your specific industry? Just because everyone's doing this or that doesn't mean it's appropriate for your [00:15:00] specific, first, industry, second of all, for your audience, and third of all, for the strategy that you're using for your own company. So, unless you want to go out there and just set some cash on fire, you really need to have someone guiding you and directing you through that, and just really walking through what's specific to you. You know, we're trying to fill up the bathtub with water. We've got the faucet and water's coming through, but darn it, that drain's open, right? Why? So, you need to make sure you're being specific with things.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, you need to make sure you even install the drain in the first place. Otherwise, the water literally has nowhere to go.

Jamie Adams: Hey, I wouldn't mind having my bathtub overflowing, though, either. If we're talking about business, let's do it.

Greg Bray: Kevin has so much money, he heats his house by burning his money.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah, that's what I've got.

Greg Bray: Jamie, as you find this audience product fit, I think is kind of what we've been talking about. What are ways to decide that it's working or not? What are some of the metrics you use to say, okay, we tried this message? Are we getting the right people? Are we [00:16:00] connecting in the right ways? How do you measure effectiveness of some of these campaigns?

Jamie Adams: Yeah, that's a loaded question right there. For my home builders, I'm going to just go meat and potatoes here. It's really about is your inventory moving and how long is it sitting on the market. I know that sounds so basic, and you're expecting me to talk about analytics and website visits and yada yada, right? But at the end of the day, this is about moving that inventory. And if it's not moving, it's not moving. And it could be more than just your marketing.

I had a builder come to me, about last January, and they've had a neighborhood where they were a production builder putting about 20 homes, and they're just sitting. I mean, it's just been crickets, and they can't figure out what's going on. You know, at the end of the day, a product has to move, and marketing is not a miracle. Marketing is going to help you. Marketing is going to, you know, move the needle, and it's absolutely necessary. But there's a lot of things where you have to take a look at, Hey, is it only because my real estate agent is lazy? Is it because my social media posts aren't resonating? [00:17:00] There's a lot there.

Now, with that said, marketing in itself is proven to work when you know that people know your name, when they have recall of who you are, when they are referring you, when people are talking about you, and also whenever it's reflecting who you are and your values. My builders, they've got a lot of heart in this. This isn't just a business; this is something that's reflecting them. This is something that they want to walk away from a house and say, this is a good project, this is something that I'm proud of. And so, that marketing needs to reflect that as well. It needs to reflect who you are as a builder, whether that's craftsmanship or quality or lifestyle, whatever the foundation is that you just poured, we need to make sure that it's reflecting that.

And so, marketing is coming alongside and saying, this is who you are, this is the position that you're taking within the market, and this is what you're known for. That's that harpoon going after that barracuda, right? We all want to catch the barracuda. So, we're going to grab that harpoon and go after the [00:18:00] barracuda. So, it should be reflecting I'm building for senior living. You know, my master bedroom is downstairs. There's no stairs in this home, right? It's things like that. We're close to grocery, we're close to shopping, we're close to lifestyles. So, the marketing is what's getting the message out that we build for this specific customer.

Kevin Weitzel: If you're catching barracuda with a harpoon, you are frigging Aquaman because that would be freakishly fantastic. Those things are fast. You just painted a picture in my brain that I can't get out of it. Now, speaking of painting pictures and imagery, and a little thing that can be manipulated through AI, are you utilizing any AI in your strategies with your builders? Is there anything that you recommend your builders to take a look at?

Jamie Adams: AI has a little ways to come yet. It's getting there, but I don't know that it's the all-in-one solution, either. It's great for due diligence and market reports. It's great for figuring out what a specific audience wants. Like, for example, senior living, what are the things they're looking [00:19:00] for in homes, et cetera. We leverage it definitely for helping us come up with some good copy and fine-tuning it, but it's just a tool in your toolbox. I don't know that it's necessarily something that is taking over. And for my builders, again, they're not real big fans of technology. I do think they can use it to write some emails and get that off their plate, so that works great.

So, my husband was trying to use, he's designing some plans right now, and this AI software promised to do things up to code, and sometimes it's so smart, it's dumb. So, right now, I think AI has got a little way to come. I mean, we're ending here at 2025, so maybe by next year I'll be like, oh yeah, AI's the way to go. But right now, I think it can be a little more frustrating than it can be helpful for this specific industry.

Greg Bray: So, Jamie, for that builder who's listening, who's like, you know what, I haven't really paid attention to my marketing, what are two or three quick things that they could do tomorrow to help them either evaluate where they're at or something to kind of just get that process started and moving?

Jamie Adams: [00:20:00] Yeah. The biggest thing is in the military we call it, and, Kevin, you'll know this, you got to take a knee, right? Whenever you're in the heat of battle, the worst thing to happen is you get sucked in, right? You get drawn out, and then you're done. And so, you always want to take a knee, pause, breathe, and clear your head. And that's not just for the building industry. I mean, that's for any business where you just got to take a moment to stop and really evaluate what you're doing.

For my builders, it's really the game of finding that lot you can afford. It's in a good school district. You know, what's the square footage we're going to build? What are the amenities we're going to put in it? There's a lot of pieces to this puzzle. It's not just a, Hey, let's buy a bunch of lots and throw things up, right? Because people have to want your product at the end of the day. So, there's a lot of factors that happen there.

So, I would say, don't just keep looking for the next deal or the next place to build. You're doing this because, one, you love it, but number two, you got bills to pay. I mean, we all want to be profitable. We all want to have good margins. So, take a knee and really [00:21:00] stop and think, what is the product I'm building? Are there areas where I can lean up, things that are unnecessary that, at the end of the day, really don't sell the house? I like it, but really doesn't make a difference to my home buyer.

And I'll give you an example. Our younger home buyers right now, they are very visual. They don't know a whole lot about the grade of materials that you're using, so they don't really appreciate the grade of materials you're using. So, if you decide, Hey, I want a quality home, I want this home to stand the test of time, I'm going to put a little extra money into the materials that I'm using. Well, then you've got to educate the buyers. Those need to be discerning buyers, not buyers who are only buying based off a visual look. They can do the big box homes if they want to.

But if you're really putting in the time, the money, and the thought into what you are building, then you've got to have an educated, discerning home buyer, one who appreciates that, one who's looking for that. So, if that's the strategy you're using, the game that you're playing, then take a knee and make sure that everything that you're doing is resonating with that home buyer, [00:22:00] that target audience that you're trying to sell to. And that's my biggest advice, and that's the one I would give today, is just take a moment and evaluate who are you building for? Are you building what they want? And is there anything that you are doing that is or isn't necessary?

Gen Z and millennials, buying a home right now at that age is a bit tough right now, but they're very visual. It's all about showcasing it off TikTok and showcasing it off Instagram, and they're really not thinking about the materials. Versus my Boomers and my Gen X, they want to buy a home. You know, they're thinking more into the future and they want more quality and high-grade materials. So, take a moment and really think about the product that you're selling, and is it reaching the audience, the home buyer that you're looking for, because that's how you're going to be most profitable. That's how you're going to be most strategic, and your marketing then just follows right in behind that.

Greg Bray: If I'm hearing you, it sounds like it's all about the right product for the right audience and getting that message in front of that audience.[00:23:00]

Jamie Adams: That's correct, Greg. Yep. Yep. People think marketing is a miracle. Marketing is not a miracle. When industries come to us, we're very selective about who we work with, simply because I might not be able to sell you. At the end of the day, it's about your product. Is it good?

I told you about the home builder that came to us with the 20 homes that had been sitting, right? He'd been sitting on those for, gosh, I want to say he was at 13 or 14 months at that point. For whatever reason, that inventory wasn't moving. And I told him, I said, that's a product issue, that's a location issue, or whatever is going on at the moment for that community. But I can spend your money, and I'd be happy to, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to run ads. Because at the end of the day, you've got bigger problems happening here.

So, we have to make sure that we can sell the product as well. So, marketing is not a miracle. Marketing should be there behind your strategy, and marketing is part of that strategy. So, like I said, Greg, when I met with you, you know, having a marketer who can sit there and listen to you and help you strategize and really [00:24:00] find out how are we going to position you? What are the messages, then the themes that we're going to use? What is the visual story we're going to use? It's all part of it, and that's important. And I think people think, oh, marketing is just going to bring all kinds of people and attract them. Well, if you've got a good product, it will. You know, so we got to look at what you're selling to and your model.

Kevin Weitzel: All right, so you started this in 2014, been doing it ever since. If you went back in a little time machine and you met this young Jamie, this little Mennonite girl in Louisiana, and you were going to give her advice on the home building industry, marketing in general, what advice would you give that young girl to help guide her in her pathway into taking on this journey?

Jamie Adams: Well, first of all, I got to correct you. So I was technically from Pennsylvania. That's where the Mennonites came in, was Pennsylvania. Yeah, yeah, we got a big pocket of Mennonite and Amish right there, and all the way up through Ohio. But, honestly, I would say that back [00:25:00] at that time when I first started, I was very glassy-eyed over all the new stuff that was coming out.

I mean, you guys remember Facebook and everything. I mean, social media was all the rage, and content marketing and email marketing. I mean, all these things. I would tell her, really stop and customize. Really stop, listen to the client, listen to what they need, help them understand who they're selling to, help them identify that, and then help them curate all the marketing assets that go along with it. Any business is, is guilty of that. We all do it where we see the next big thing, and we all feel like the pressure that we have to be a part of it, but it's really coming down to what's specific to that business. So, that's what I tell her is, hey, social media may or may not be for every industry or every person.

As far as the home builders themselves, really just helping them define who that audience is and then understanding how to portray themselves and market themselves to that home buyer. And that's what I would tell that Jamie. And I would also let her know that when she goes to put her [00:26:00] yeast rolls into the competition, maybe bake a $50 bill inside of it to get first place.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, that's awesome.

Greg Bray: The little secrets that come out sometimes. There we go.

Jamie Adams: Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Bray: Well, Jamie, thank you so much for spending time with us today. We appreciate your thoughts and insights. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, Jamie, what's the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Jamie Adams: Yeah, so they can actually find us at JK Premier Marketing, so that's J as in Juliet, K as in kilo, jkpremiermarketing.com. We'd be happy to talk with them, and like I just said, really dive into first strategy, defining who we're selling to and looking at our product before we do anything else. And just take that knee.

Greg Bray: Well, 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. [00:27:00]