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Advertising Strategies for Today's Housing Market |
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Free Online Marketing HelpGE Appliances, Whirlpool and Moen are among the manufacturers offering Web-based tools to help builders sell more homes. Sales and marketing activities present many home builders with dilemmas. Although every successful company understands the importance of these efforts, funding them can put the squeeze on already-tight budgets, especially at smaller companies. Fortunately, fixture and appliance manufacturers understand this challenge and are stepping into the gap.In an effort to help their home-builder customers — and maintain their own sales volume — some manufacturers are offering Web-based business tools that provide support in areas such marketing, sales, design, construction and warranties. GE Appliances, Whirlpool and Moen are among the leaders of this trend. Their offerings include market statistics, customer preference surveys, appliance and parts tracking, and even questionnaires that help design-center employees guide buyers through product choices. Much of the content on GE Appliances' builder site, www.buildwithge.com, is aimed at helping design-center staff. The company will work with a builder's staff to create a customized virtual showroom. The GE Monogram site includes an online design center with photo galleries and renderings with different types and colors of kitchen appliances, www.monogram.com/home_gallery. "We have [computer-aided design] files of Monogram and Profile appliances for designers to use when specifying our products," says Alison Eckelkamp, manager of GE's public relations program. "We can also make our catalog available online and in disk format for designers to use." Whirlpool Corporation’s online tools are different but no less helpful. Its program for building professionals, called "The Inside Advantage", insideadvantage.com, offers information about product innovations and industry trends, as well as sales assistance and other services. For example, the company worked with SketchUp, a Google subsidiary, to create "virtual" appliances that design-center staff can drag and drop into a 3-D model of a home while sitting with the home buyer. If the buyer doesn't like the color or the size of the appliance, it can be deleted, and another appliance dragged into place. "Partnering with Google SketchUp has allowed us to further deliver on our promise to support trade professionals in every facet of their work," says Tom Halford, general manager of contract sales and marketing at Whirlpool Corporation. Moen’s builder-oriented Web site, builder.moen.com, offers assistance to design-center staff. There are Planogram templates to help design product option displays, an idea gallery of design-center innovations, and tips and tools for maximizing design-center layouts. Builders can register to receive announcements when new products are introduced or old ones discontinued. "If we have a product deletion, builders can receive automatic notification about the time frame when it will no longer be available, and also receive a list of suggested replacement items that we feel will be suitable substitutes," says Kathy Yates, manager of the builder target market for Moen. The marketing resources available on the Moen Web site include economic forecasts, as well as customized demographic reports for specific locations. There are also document templates that builders can customize with their own text, logo and graphics. These include invitations to open houses and other events, and thank-you notes that builders can print out or e-mail as PDF files. David Stienke, general manager of Denver-area Infinity Custom Homes, which builds approximately 100 homes a year, finds such tools a valuable resource. "Our brand is foremost in our mind, so we appreciate being able to use the resources of our manufacturing partners to easily create promotional materials with our own brand." The payoff for any builder, he says, is that they can now wage a more effective marketing campaign for minimal cost. "Using the resources of their manufacturing partners gives builders the opportunity to suddenly look bigger and more successful."
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