This week on The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast, Chris Ashley of Hakes Brothers joins Greg and Kevin to discuss how a top-notch website can help home builder digital marketers generate more quality leads.
The most important responsibility home builder digital marketers have is lead generation. Chris says,
“For me, as a marketing person, my job at the end of the day is I have to produce leads. Period. My role is to produce leads for either my online sales team or in some cases the sales team direct. But for me, it’s all about generating leads.”
As most home buyers begin their search for homes online, the best place to capture potential customers is through an exceptional home builder website. Chris explains,
“I start with the website, and I want the website to be a one-stop shop. If anybody has any information or any questions or anything on Hakes Brothers, that website needs to give them everything they need because you know what? I know that there’s thousands of buyers out there that are judging Hakes Brothers based on what they see online. There’s so much that they’re learning about us and finding out about us on our site before they even call us before they even show up to our model. So, I like to focus on the website.”
Digital marketers must evaluate metrics regularly to understand the quality of those leads, detect marketing effectiveness, and optimize future spend. Chris says,
“The one thing I will say is, measure, track, and report…Measuring weekly, I can diagnose problems quicker. Like I said, if something breaks, I don’t learn about it three months or three weeks later, I learn about it that week. Then I could jump in and say, Hey, listen, something’s off…So, measure weekly, pay attention, look for patterns. You’ve got to know your leads and you need to know everything about those leads. One, that’s going to inform your spend, your future spend. And then two, it’s just going to help you down the road and it’s going to inform decisions. For me, it’s been able to diagnose problems before they get out of hand.”
Listen to this week’s episode to learn how an outstanding website can help home builder digital marketers produce more valuable leads.
About the Guest:
Chris is an innovative homebuilding marketing executive with over 24 years of homebuilding marketing experience and 20 years of experience leading and directing creative homebuilding marketing teams. In his time, he has been a part of a homebuilding team that won the NHQ Gold National Housing Quality Award in 2019, and in 2020 that team was also recognized as Builder of the Year by ProBuilder Magazine.
He was recently recognized as Marketing Professional of the Year by the Home Builders Association of Greater Charlotte. He has received multiple NAHB Marketing Awards and many Homebuilding Marketing MAME Awards.
He is an academically trained graphic designer with extensive expertise in graphic design, digital media, email marketing, SEO, advertising, print ads, website design, content creation, and print and direct mail campaigns.
He has recently relocated from Charlotte, NC to Las Cruces, NM to take a new marketing position with Hakes Brothers Homes. He and his family are excited to start this new chapter.