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.
Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.
Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.
Greg Bray: And we are excited to have joining us today, Maureen Ladley. Maureen is the VP of Consumer Consulting at John Burns Research and Consulting. Welcome, Maureen. Thanks for joining us today.
Maureen Ladley: Hey, thank you.
Greg Bray: Well, Maureen, let's start off with that quick introduction and background for those who haven't had a chance to meet you yet. Tell us just a little bit about yourself.
Maureen Ladley: Oh, sure. As you said, I'm Vice President of Consumer Consulting at John Burns [00:01:00] Research and Consulting. Have joined the firm relatively recently. Before that, my background is entirely with production home builders, and I had my own research firm just before this. My roles with production home building were always in marketing, sales, and then increasingly, research, which is how I got to where I am today.
Kevin Weitzel: All right, so before we take a deeper dive into that, we need to know some interesting fact about yourself that has nothing to do with work, family, or the home building industry.
Maureen Ladley: Oh, yes. So, for 10 years, I was a competitive whale boat rower up in the San Francisco Bay area. Have rowed across San Francisco Bay on multiple occasions and up and down the estuary in Oakland too many times to recall. So, that's something that you only get in the Bay Area. Nobody's ever heard of this sport before. Greatest recreational sport there is on the planet.
Kevin Weitzel: We talking about like [00:02:00] those little skiffs with a sliding seat?
Maureen Ladley: No, this is not the elegant crew boats where it's classy. This is more blue-collar beer-brawler rowing. You're in a 2000-pound lifesaving boat. Its technical name for the boat is a Coast Guard Monomoy surf boat, modified for racing, if you can get all that in. People who are in the Sea Scouts know these boats because it's the same boat but with a sail planted in it, so that they can go. What I love about them is their lifesaving boats. Like we've got a mountain, the bay. You can punch a hole in the bottom, and they won't sink to the bottom of the bay. And the biggest risk is trying not to get run over by container ships when you're out there in the bay because those things move really quickly. But it's an amazing sport and it's had a long history in the bay and don't look for it here in Southern California because you just won't find it.
Kevin Weitzel: You said you used to, so what do you do now as a hobby?
Maureen Ladley: If anybody has like a strange esoteric sport to [00:03:00] recommend, I'm all in. I don't look like it, but being six feet tall, I was one of the power rowers because just by virtue of me leaning back on an oar, they bring a lot of leverage. Oh, in college I played inner tube water polo, so clearly something weird and water related, I'm all in. So, you know, I'm open for new suggestions, but my hands gave up after 10 years of this. They're like, yeah, you're done.
Kevin Weitzel: That's cool.
Maureen Ladley: But that's okay. You've got to find something different to do. The thing I love about whale boat rowing is, for the team that I was on, we had a couple of women who were in their seventies and still out there slaying. One of them, to make up for lack of rowers, she would do our race and then go jump in somebody else's boat, so they had a proper amount of rowers or do the race again because she'd do women and masters. I'm like, I hope to be that fit, you know, when I'm her age.
Kevin Weitzel: Maureen, I am a spring chicken at 54. I still participate in inner tube water, [00:04:00] meaning scrap the polo part. I just loaf around in an inner tube in the water.
Maureen Ladley: You're all in. You just need some team members and like a ball to throw at something.
Kevin Weitzel: That takes too much effort. I'm not throwing a ball. Bring me a martini, maybe, but throwing a ball not going to happen.
Maureen Ladley: You have a much better approach to water-based sport. Oh yeah, I can see this. So.
Greg Bray: Well, Maureen, tell us a little bit more about John Burns Research and Consulting, especially since that might not be the name that comes to mind right away, but give us a little more background about the company, the kinds of services you guys are offering right now.
Maureen Ladley: Oh, thank you so much for asking. The name today, as you see over my shoulder, is John Burns Research and Consulting. People also know it as JBREC for the initials or John Burns. Back early, early on in the company, it was John Burns Real Estate Consulting, which is where the JBREC comes from, and I've known the company for that long. But really, the important thing to take away is the company has two sides of the business, and they feed off of each other. We have research [00:05:00] and we have consulting.
The research half is where we're constantly looking at different factors that influence the economy, the industry, construction practices, and we do everything from the macro economy to how lumber is performing. None of this is me, this is other people within the firm. And we have real people in the markets, boots on the ground, to conduct research. Then we have consulting, and on the consulting side of the business, which is more where I am, we work with client companies to figure out specific business questions that they have. And we have experts in a range of topics. So, for any consulting need, we curate a specific solution.
So, then it comes to me, and I really sit on two parts of the business, on the consulting side and on the new Home Trends Institute Group. And if you haven't seen it, New Home Trends Institute is the design and product-themed research group, and we've got a design lens for [00:06:00] visual, inspiration, and reference. We connect people through our councils and our Trends Summit, and we do actually design consulting for clients. I can talk about how that has added to my research work here, but that's the preponderance of what we do. So, you will see very different subscription programs on the JBREC side and then specifically within the New Home Trends Institute side. But we could spend the whole podcast talking about all the different things they do, but that's the highlight.
Kevin Weitzel: Well, I've only been in the industry for about 10 years, and I can tell you that right up there with Thor and Zeus is a seat, a throne, for John Burns himself, who I consider a god in this industry, and here's why. I have quoted him at least a dozen times in this podcast alone, plus in many webinars that I've been in, and I will use this quote to the day that I die. If you are still doing business today, the way you did business 10 years ago, in 10 years, you will no longer be relevant if you are even in [00:07:00] business. I love that quote because it just nails down to so many, and not just the home building industry, but just industry in general, just business management. I really have admired him since day one.
Maureen Ladley: That's solid advice, and I so appreciate you sharing because I'd not heard that before, but I believe it's true. It sounds like some great advice that we would get from him.
Greg Bray: So, Maureen, your background, even before being with John Burns, is about this research, understanding the consumer. What got you interested in just trying to learn more, and how to go about finding some of those answers?
Maureen Ladley: I think I've always naturally been inclined this way, but how I got started, I was a marketing person at a division. My boss, man, a few words, walked into my office, looked at me one day, and said, You're doing focus groups, turned around, and walked out again. That was my intro into consumer research. So, from that, that particular group went on from doing focus groups, which I had the help of the division. [00:08:00] I did fabulously well, thanks to my support group, and then further learning how to do them right, and in fact, we did quite well on the first one. It was right, but it was for the division.
Then that company went on to have very formalized processes for different approaches to research, more of what I do now, the very specific, you know, somebody has a need in this location because they're trying something new. And we also did these massive market-level evaluations that combined focus groups, you know, second-party data, and massive layers of surveys to try to figure out opportunity in the market. So, I came to it first internally, from the builder found out I liked it and was good at it. And then, since leaving that company, I've taken pains to educate and polish my trade.
Greg Bray: So, when you talk about doing focus groups right, what are the ways that maybe builders have approached focus groups [00:09:00] wrong or consumer research in general from the wrong approach? Is it the wrong question? Is it the wrong process? Is it all of the above?
Maureen Ladley: It can just be minor mistakes. All of this research, it doesn't matter what the assignment is, what the client type is, everything I build on a foundation of identifying your specific objective, goals on why we're doing this research, getting clear identity on the target audience, whose opinion matters versus who doesn't. Then what are the questions we need to know from this group? Where you can get into trouble is asking people whose opinions don't matter, or even still, not asking anybody anything when you're trying something new.
In home building, depending on what the assignment is, houses come with a pretty high bar for income qualification, so you have to be careful when working with gathering who your sample is or who's involved in the focus group, that you get the right people in there. That can be one of the biggest problems. [00:10:00] And then secondly, ask leading questions. Not asking research questions like you love our product, don't you, it's not a research question.
Kevin Weitzel: So, let's put me in the shoes of a builder that is three generations deep, you know, they've been building the homes the same way for 50 years. Why would any research cause them to change the direction of their boat, to put different oars in the water, if you will?
Maureen Ladley: Yeah. People do not come to me for what is their core business or what's going great. You know, you do not need to talk to me if you're out there doing the same thing and it's still working. But back to your quote that John said about your business, you wouldn't still be that many generations in if you weren't keeping current. Where people come to me is if they're looking to build a new product, trying out a new location, and they have some feeling they need to check in, or building for a new demographic. It's really that new. It is so much cheaper to test this in the design phase than to [00:11:00] fix the problem after you've built it.
Savvy folks will reach out and just say, you know, we're looking to do this, can you help? I would say more than half the time, my clients come knowing roughly the kind of research that they want to do. Case in point. I have a client that reached out, and we wanted to do some survey work. But we talked enough that was clear she needed to have a focus group. We did it with realtors, a realtor focus group, ahead of it, just to make sure we knew all the questions that we should be asking in the survey, and that was very effective.
Greg Bray: So, Maureen, if somebody is sitting here going, okay, we want to try something new, we want to try a new product type. Maybe it's just an adjustment to a floor plan. Maybe it's a whole new audience. We've been selling to this type of group, we want to start selling to this other group. Do they need to come and say, alright, here's the things we want to do, prove it'll work? Or do they need to come and say, ah, we just think there might be [00:12:00] something better, help us figure out what it is? Are we trying to prove like, I think this is what we want to do, so we need to make sure it's okay, or is it more of a, I want to find out whether people really want to have this, you know, dog wash in the garage or not and kind of figure out if that's a thing we should even put in the home?
Maureen Ladley: It's all of the above, and it's usually big company profit driving questions that cause them to say, Ah, let's do this. Because everybody's doing their feasibility, everybody's doing their competitive audit, or you're not going to stay in business for very long. Some great examples have been a builder who wants to come into a master planned with a smaller cluster project, but they've never done that before. So, we want to test it, and we test maybe some concepts.
This is why I love realtor focus groups, is you can just run some concepts that you grabbed off an architect's shelf past them to see if this would work in this location, well-selected, proper realtors whose opinions [00:13:00] matter. But it could be that, or it could be we don't want to over-feature or put the wrong features in. Usually what happens when it comes to questions and features, we're usually testing a full floor plan and then throw in questions about oversized shower versus who wants a tub and the classic laundry upstairs or downstairs, you know, so those kinds of things we'll get into discussions while we're talking about floor plans, and that's usually how that works.
Greg Bray: How many people does it really take to get good opinions from, for your data to kind of be statistically significant, shall we say, right? Because all you have to do is ask Kevin what he wants, and he knows, and you're done.
Kevin Weitzel: You spoonfed that. All you need is one person. You ask me the question, and you get the right answer.
Maureen Ladley: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, for any assignment, including Kevin, we only need one person, and then that's fine. The thing I want to just back up and say is the qualitative research, the conversational research, it's easier way to think about [00:14:00] it, interviews, focus groups, and anything in between, which would be triads or any kind of conversational research you're having, you're using that a completely different way than you use surveys, which is where we get into the conversation about statistical analysis. So, when you're doing interviews or focus groups, you are listening for the range of opinions. A single comment can be as impactful as everybody else in the group agreeing. It's not a skill because it's not statistically valid. We'll come to surveys in a minute.
Most people use my same approach to research all the time, that what's the objective, who do we need to ask, what do we need to ask them. If you've ever asked anybody what they'd like to do for their birthday, you've already done all three of those things. You have an objective, which is to have somebody do something that will be fun for their birthday. You have a target audience, you know, the person you just asked, and you have your important question, which is, what would you like to do?
You know, so this is [00:15:00] just a formalized process of that, asking more people, you know, depending on whatever the conversation is. And from the feedback that you get, then you can decide, oh, is there something that we need to change or adjust, or, in the case of following it up with a survey, did we learn anything that we need to then now include in the survey itself? You know, such as, oh wow, everybody has a dog. Everybody wants a dog washing section as at least an option in the house. That's how you use conversational research.
For survey research, because that's the benefit is depth. You know, okay, we have this range of ideas, which ideas matter the most for our target customer? And we were just having this conversation with my favorite data analyst. And the simplest way to think about it is, for however your questions branch out, you end up with these buckets if it's just a straight multiple choice. So, you know, say we had [00:16:00] something that came up with maybe eight different choices. We want eight buckets of data at the end of it. You need to have a sample size that gives you, sort of ideally, at least 30 people for each bucket. It's easier for me to do this math if I say 25.
So, typically, we are looking for somewhere between 220 and 340 is how this usually shakes out. But we can, if you've got an especially challenging audience to reach, we have ways to test it to see, you know, this is a sample size we think we need, and we can test each question to see did we get a response that's reliable at the end of the day.
With focus groups, you can do a couple of them. Focus groups are always different. This is crazy. You can recruit two groups, have the same recruiting criteria, both groups will be completely different. But that's the goal. You want that range. So, surveys are where you get statistical stuff, focus groups are where you get the juicy bits.[00:17:00]
Kevin Weitzel: So, when you're talking about multiple groups, in different demographics, especially, do builders ever get surprised or do you see that reaction where they're like, wow, I didn't know that this was the case, what these results are going to be? I mean, or are they coming in with this confirmation, they're just looking for a confirmation bias that just says, here's what we think the market is, so just tell us that we're right?
Maureen Ladley: I wouldn't want to say they're coming in with confirmation bias. Everybody I work with these are smart, deeply experienced people, so they have a good idea and they're smart enough to know we might not know everything. So when they come to me, they generally have a hypothesis, but they want to test it, you know, especially when you're not the millennial, you're not the Gen Z, you're not the urban buyer. That's where it gets dangerous is when a builder thinks they're like all of their buyers. That's where builders get into trouble, from my experience.
I have had companies where the person who's engaged me has somebody who's not truly aligned with the fact that we're doing consumer research. That's happened before, but that's [00:18:00] an internal company problem. If they're coming to me, if they're engaging in this kind of research, because it takes time, it takes money, and it's more interactive than some sort of classic study where, you know, I've been this person where I give my outside researcher the data, they do the study and come back to me, you know, and it takes very little of my time. Consumer research, I need a little more of your attention as we go back and forth to design the research and conduct the research.
Greg Bray: So, Maureen, I can't say that I know that this is a fact or if it's an urban legend, but back in business school, my recollection is that McDonald's would do all kinds of research to figure out which corner to put the next restaurant on and Burger King would simply buy the lot across the street from McDonald's.
Maureen Ladley: I've heard that too. Yeah.
Greg Bray: So, are there builders that are in both of those camps? You got the builders out there that are doing all the, oh, this is the new trend, this is the new thing, and then there's other builders that just kind of wait a few months until they see what the competition's building and then they just kind of learn from it that way and [00:19:00] piggyback?
Maureen Ladley: This isn't really a question that I can comment on from my perspective. The assignments that I get don't represent a trend because they're specific to what that home builder needs on that specific day for that specific question. I've done everything from master planned to individual community to marketing campaigns to websites to whatever the question is, then we answer that. So, I can't really say. But isn't that what master plans are?
This is again, personal opinion, but I've seen some master plans that are so awesome. I imagine that that's the most similar we have, and you know, with home builders, there's so many factors in how you choose location that's right for you. It just depends on what you're trying to accomplish. So, I have heard that rumor about Burger King. I'm sure it happens within our industry, but, you know, if you're trying to follow along with somebody, our land acquisitions are a little bigger than what Burger King might [00:20:00] face, so I think there's a little more to it than that.
Kevin Weitzel: That kind of brings me to, at least what I find is an interesting point, is that I think you have basically three prompts. You have your development and production side, which is your product, you know, what kind of product you bring into market, what area of town are you going to put it in, you know, what, dirt is it being built on? You also have the sales process, which is what technique do you use in selling? Are you doing a timeshare style where you just loop everybody into a room, give them a pitch, and then try to close as many as you can? Or is it a one-time, you know, everybody's an individual. So, if we eliminate that sales process, then we go to the marketing. Do you ever find, with your research, that you are finding builders that quite possibly might have the right product, but aren't marketing it in the most succinct manner?
Maureen Ladley: Ooh, again, that would be outside of the assignments that I get, but I see the reverse more. I'll give you some context for it. One of the times that I get called because there's a problem is if somebody would like me to do lost buyer interviews [00:21:00] where people came, we saw, we thought they were going to buy, and they didn't, or they came, they saw, they bought something else. So, what I typically find is that possibly sales is doing a great job. Some other part of the business process didn't go well, or that the product is good, but it's not as good as something somebody else has. So, I think that that's the closest that I get to this.
We find out amazing things when we talk to individuals because it's a more, I don't want to say intimate conversation, but there's things you wouldn't say in a focus group, and I wouldn't ask in a focus group. But if we're on the phone or Zoom together and I'm asking them, people will tell me a lot of things about their experience, and I would say that's closer. When I do marketing or branding research, we have a specific assignment: of is this message going to work? Or between [00:22:00] these messages, you know, what will work? How do we maximize the impact of this? It just goes back to either the home builder or the marketing agency's questions.
Greg Bray: Maureen, I have to imagine that there's some marketing folks sitting and listening to this and listening to what you describe and going, man, I wish I had that kind of data. I wish I could get those kinds of interviews. And now they need to go to somebody who controls the purse strings and make a case, this is why we should do this. What tips would you give to that marketing person who's trying to get some budget or get some attention to say, Hey, we could benefit from these types of insights and going out and learning these types of things about our buyers?
Maureen Ladley: Thank you so much. This question is so terrific because I've also been inside of division where we're actually doing it and getting challenged on by somebody else on how much it costs. But the first thing is really to identify what the problem is and if there's other ways [00:23:00] to solve it. So, that would be step one.
I'm a huge believer, and I'm going to slightly misquote that, but a problem well stated is a problem half solved. Quite often when I write things down or start to identify what the problem is and who do we need to talk to and what those questions are that we need answering, you know, if it becomes apparent that that answer is not forthcoming from a competitive audit or any of the other traditional research that you should be doing, or you know, we've got a problem, we don't know exactly why people aren't buying our product and we want to hear it in their words, then you know you've got something that consumer research could really help.
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? And I'll tell you a story. When I was in a [00:24:00] division, like I mentioned, this question came up. Wow. The survey research seems like a lot of money. This came from land. My division president asked accounting to run, this was for a public builder, to run the cost of carrying one unit of inventory from one quarter to the next. And it turns out it was about one and a half houses was all that my entire research project was costing. And his strongly held belief was that we would benefit much more than that. We would help ensure that our product was selling and that we weren't having to carry things over to a quarter they weren't scheduled for. So, it's a question you really have to ask yourself.
Then the second one is, 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.
Kevin Weitzel: That's a very simple have to versus get to methodology because when you use the [00:25:00] phrase, how much does it cost, you're not considering how much it can save you. Because if you spend 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars today, and it can save you 5 million or even bankruptcy down the road, that was money well spent.
Maureen Ladley: You're talking to the person who's delivering the research, so of course that's my opinion, but every firm is culturally different. You know, so you have to do what's right for you. But I just think there's so much opportunity. In engaging your buyer in the design and customer experience on this. It's well worth your doing.
Kevin Weitzel: As a follow-up, do you find that smaller builders might be in the wrong mindset to being able to leverage the data? Whereas your larger builders, you know, you take your Dr. Hortons or Lennars, they study everything. They know all the demographics, they know all the land grabs that are out there, or the opportunities, what can be optional, what can't be, what needs to be on their spreadsheet for what kind of time? I mean, they're mining every single bean in the equation. Obviously, can we look at those much larger builders and the fact that [00:26:00] they do look at that data when you're a smaller player, that you could reap the same rewards of that research.
Maureen Ladley: Yeah, and a lot of the bigger builders have their own internal departments that do this. They believe in it so much they're doing it themselves. So, the challenge of being small is, you know, you've got more than a full-time job already for everybody involved. So, there's probably a happy middle ground. You know, certainly the firm has clients at many, many size levels. But for me, who I work with, I tend to be focused on the division rather than the national office for a large national builder. I'm helping at the division level with their specific needs, and I'm helping with, I think more mid-size or regional builders is the sweet spot. They have to have capacity, they have to have people in multiple [00:27:00] roles.
Kevin Weitzel: Let me ask you this. What about for, let's say, you had a group of builders, a series of small builders, let's say five, 10 builders in a geographic area that all have a shared interest in maybe optioning a piece of land. Is it common practice for them to come as a group to you, or is that a no-no?
Maureen Ladley: Oh, well, it hasn't happened yet. I'm just hoping that people who are listening think, Oh, this is a great idea. Let's all get together and engage her. But master planned community developers do engage me, so that's as close as I get to that. But I've never had a group otherwise come together and say, we'd like to see what we can learn.
Kevin Weitzel: Kevin had, what was it? A great idea.
Greg Bray: It happens every so often, Kevin.
Kevin Weitzel: Every once in a while. Yeah.
Greg Bray: It just pops out. He gives away, he gives away tips on this podcast. That's why they come back every time. Well, Maureen, to the point of the smaller builder, are there some things that a builder could do on their own that would give them at least a dabble? I know they can't do what you do, but is it helpful to just put together like a SurveyMonkey thing and email it [00:28:00] out and at least get some feedback or something simple like that?
Maureen Ladley: So, on surveys, I've got stories about how off track you can get. But let's start with the happy news: what you can do. 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 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?
And the secret to interviews is 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 [00:29:00] know, I wasn't going to mention this, but X, Y, Z. And then, you found 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. So, interviews with very simple question buckets like that go well, I believe.
And the other thing I would love to see more builders do this is there's an activity I love. It's technically in the usability study camp. We call them walking focus groups. And that's when you have models at drywall with cabinet set before the designers put fancy stuff in. You can get a group of buyers or in contract, or people who look just like your buyers, same price, size, location, they bought recently, elsewhere. You can take them through in groups, through the model, and just [00:30:00] go, you know, what do you like? What don't you like? And what would you change if you could? I do some more. I've got papers they fill in, and we talk. But really, if you give people that experience and have your team follow along behind, it's amazing what you can find out either to adjust or fix, or confirm that everything's great. But I've never done these that we haven't found at least one thing that the builder considered, oh yeah, we should make that change. So, those are the two easiest ones.
The one that always concerns me is where we started, and that's with surveys. And the reason it scares me is I went with an advertising agency to meet a new client once, and it wasn't in home building, but they had had their activities director conduct a survey. She did a brilliant job, and the disaster was they hadn't thought to include any demographics or what I would say business identifying questions at the end. And the purpose of the survey was to [00:31:00] tease apart multiple different user types. We didn't have that, so the entire effort was to know purpose because there was nothing we could learn about it.
Every platform out there has some sort of survey functionality, but you have to remember that the experience has to be fun and compelling for people to stay with you, and the opportunity to introduce bias into questions gets higher when you're working with surveys. Not that you can't do it. Everybody I know was like so darn smart, you know, they can figure it out. But I would just say, be a little cautious with surveys and make sure that the experience for your customer is an engaging one. Nobody's required to answer your surveys.
Greg Bray: That's some great advice, Maureen. Any last thoughts or words that you wanted to make sure you got out to the audience today before we finish up?
Maureen Ladley: Just to not be afraid to talk to your customers. I have had [00:32:00] building leadership in my prior life when I was with a builder, be afraid that one person would hear somebody else comment and that would change their mind. I've never experienced that in this group. You know, those people are clearly having different arguments with their spouse than I've ever had, because nothing I ever said changed the mind there. I don't think people's minds get changed, and the value of what you hear from the group is so positive. And in fact, I've had people thank us afterwards, just say, this was amazing. So, don't be afraid to talk to customers. They're in it with you as allies.
Greg Bray: Well, Maureen, if somebody wants to connect with you and learn more, what's the best way for them to reach out and get in touch?
Maureen Ladley: Oh yeah, to reach out through our website, it's jbrec.com. So, the initials for the former John Burns Real Estate Consulting is jbrec.com, or catch me on LinkedIn. I love to connect that way, too. So, either way is the easiest way to get hold of me.
Greg Bray: Well, thanks again, Maureen, for your time today, and thank you [00:33:00] everybody, for listening to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.
Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.
This week on The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast, Rose Quint of the National Association of Home Builders joins Greg and Kevin to discuss the NAHB’s 2024 edition of What Home Buyers Really Want, a nationwide survey of recent and prospective home buyers.
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This week is a special episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast where we share a recorded webinar Greg did with Susan Baier of Audience Audit. In this webinar, they discuss the proprietary attitudinal research study that Blue Tangerine conducted to understand better how home buyers interact with home builders online.