This week on The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast, Maureen Ladley of John Burns Research and Consulting joins Greg and Kevin to discuss how consumer research can guide home builders in making insightful, data-driven decisions.
Home builders, regardless of size, can benefit from hearing about home buyers’ experiences. Maureen says,
“These are two things that I don’t care any size builder you are, if you were building one or two custom homes a year, if you were building a whole fleet of homes as a production builder, anybody can do these two activities. One is to talk with your buyers or talk with the folks in contract and keep it simple. Ask for feedback. What did you like about this experience? What would you like to have gone differently, and do you have anything else to share?”
Open-ended questions to home buyers can be especially valuable to learn about the positives and negatives of customers’ journeys. Maureen explains,
“And the secret to interviews is to ask a question and stop talking. Let silence hang there for a sec if it needs to. That last question, is there anything else you’d like to share with me, and then stop talking, really nets some gold because it might be, oh, you know, I wasn’t going to mention this, but X, Y, Z. And then, you find out that something’s really not working the way that you intended. Anybody can do that at any size. Don’t be afraid to talk to people. My feeling is if they’re having those thoughts anyway, I’d rather have them voice them out loud so that we can do something about it rather than have that thought alone.”
Home builders considering whether consumer research would be of value should ask themselves two questions. Maureen says,
“Ways I tell people next to understand if this is an opportunity for you is, is the cost, and I mean time and money, is the cost of doing consumer research less than the benefit you would receive from doing research? Then the second one is, do you have the internal will to make changes based on what the report tells you? If you don’t, then you can just save all that time and money if you’re not going to culturally be able to shift and use it.”
Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about the advantages of home builder consumer research.
About the Guest:
Maureen has over 20 years of experience in real estate consumer research consulting and has worked on for-sale and rental housing, urban and suburban, from entry-level to 55+ housing. Prior to joining John Burns Research and Consulting, Maureen ran her own consumer research agency and previously led strategic and operational marketing for Centex’s Southwest divisions, using consumer research to uncover opportunities at the market and neighborhood levels.
Companies reach out to Maureen when they have questions or need deep insight into consumer preferences. If a company is trying a new product, location, or demographic mix in your community, reach out to her to help clarify consumer preferences on home design, design trends, features, and brand preferences.
