203 Building Trust With Homebuyers - Barbara Wray Feb 7 2024

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 today to have joining us on the show, Barbara Wray. Barbara is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Growth at Wick Marketing. Welcome, Barbara. Thanks for being with us.

Barbara Wray: Thank you for having me.

Greg Bray: Well, Barbara, let's start out and just help people get to know you a little bit. Give us that quick background overview about yourself.

Barbara Wray: So, as you said, I work for Wick Marketing, which I have done for 18 years [00:01:00] now. I started with the firm as a writer and moved into a different role in 2009. For those in the home building industry, that was kind of an important year. So, they needed less of the writing that I was doing, and I moved one of our largest clients into the social media space. Which was really new at that time, pre-advertising, pre-all of that. Over time, grew our team. In recent years have moved into the role that I have now, which is new business development and growth and education of our team around the home building industry as well.

Kevin Weitzel: Before we dive into all that stuff though, could you please let our listeners know something personal about you that they'll learn exclusively on our podcast that has nothing to do with work or the home building industry?

Barbara Wray: Yes. So, I'm from Kent, Ohio. And when I left Kent, unwittingly left in what ended up being one of the most major blizzards in that period of time. And so therefore, my friend and I, who left together, ended up [00:02:00] spending three nights in a gas station bathroom in Verona, Kentucky.

Kevin Weitzel: When was that? Was that 77? 79? When was that?

Barbara Wray: 78.

Kevin Weitzel: That was the big blizzard. Here's a little fact, Greg. You ready for this one? During that blizzard, 'cause we lived in a trailer at the time, it covered literally the entire back half of our trailer. But the week prior to that, there was a nasty sleet and ice storm that hit, and I was from Kalamazoo. We got the lake effect stuff up there.

Me and my friends, we ice skated to school. Unbeknownst to us that when the roads are frozen over, there is no school. But we did get to say that we had legitimately ice skated to school and I did it once in my life. So, there we go.

Greg Bray: I'm just hoping that gas station bathrooms were different than they are now.

Barbara Wray: They were different, but not necessarily in a good way. However, it was safe from the elements. So, I'll take it.

Greg Bray: That's probably a story that's got a lot more that could be said about it, but we're going to move on. Well, Barbara, tell us a little bit more about, you know, you mentioned kind of where you started, but was it always your interest to [00:03:00] be in marketing and with an agency and in the home building industry? Or what kind of got you started in this industry?

Barbara Wray: Well, a great question, and no, not really. But I was doing a fair amount of freelance writing for different publications. I was editor for a number of different magazines. So, I come from the being a writer side of our business. And a mutual friend introduced me to Amy Wick, and she said, you two need to know each other.

She was doing some of the marketing work at that time. She was wanting to step off and do some different kind of work. That was 18 years ago, I started doing writing with Amy, and ever since have continued to do a lot of work for her, went on as a full-time employee somewhere along the line in all of that. Our agency is primarily focused in residential real estate, has been since day one, and so that was the work that was in front of me to do.

The client that I did most of my work on at the time was Pardee Homes out of L.A. which is now Tri Pointe Homes. Fabulous [00:04:00] client and fabulous people that I've worked with there over the years as well. And in particular, I worked on an internal newsletter for them where I did a lot of interviews, including these legacy pieces with people who had been with the company 25 years or more.

So, the depth of insight that I got to the culture, to the industry, to all kinds of things really gave me an education. One about that company, but also about the industry generally, that continues to inform my point of view and just kind of hooked me to the industry generally. And that's an area then that in my role now we continue to grow and evolve the people that we work with because we do bring so many years of expertise in doing that successfully.

Greg Bray: Well, Barbara, just give us a little bit more detail then about Wick Marketing, a little more about what you guys do and you've already kind of hinted that you work with residential real estate, but give us that quick overview of the agency.

Barbara Wray: Yes. So, in 95, Amy Wick founded the organization. Then [00:05:00] and still we focus primarily on residential real estate. That's not our only area that we do work in. But what we particularly focus on is building or reinvigorating brands, in providing creative that is built on strategy and that performs for our clients, and in building strong, long-term relationships with our clients.

We still have Tri Pointe Homes as a client today, for example. We don't like to let our clients go once we get them. Our client service is a very important part of the commitment of what we do, but that married with the part where we really understand and have a passion for the home building and the master planned development space is something that really helps us to bring more value to our clients.

Greg Bray: So, the reason we wanted to talk to you today, Barbara, is you guys recently did a research study about homebuyers and we wanted to dive in a little bit deeper into that. But first, tell us what got you interested in doing some of that research in the first place.

Barbara Wray: Yeah. Greg, I love that [00:06:00] question. We've been doing this a long time thinking that, you know, we're pretty good at knowing what buyers want and all of that. And then this thing happened called a pandemic. All bets seemed to be off. Everything about so much of our worlds changed, not just specific to home building. But we realized it was really time for us to ask the questions of what do people need, what do they want.

And I know you're probably familiar with the America at Home Study that was out there studying what do people want in their home. We don't build the homes, but we help people find them and want them and move through that process. And so, we figured it was time for us to really take a pulse check on what's going on with home buyers around the process of buying homes right now so that we could do a better job of marketing and helping our clients to market to that consumer. So, that's what prompted our wanting to do research and have something actually specific that we could use to inform our strategies.

Greg Bray: So, when you say homebuyers, who did you go after? Was there any kind [00:07:00] of qualification of who you were going to ask or anything like that?

Barbara Wray: Yeah. So, I think that's a great question. The people that we spoke to came from a number of different places, sources if you will. Some were through clients or other builders and developers that we have relationships with that wanted us to survey their lists of people who were interested in buying a home and their recent homebuyers.

So, we used those people in the group, as well as just some more general, larger groups of people, two groups, one people who purchased new homes between November 22 and March of 23, and then people who, at that time of the survey, which was fielded late March of 23 through April, said that they were planning to buy within the next two years.

So, it was people who bought and people who were prospects during that period of time. And we talked with people across the country, with the exception of a few states that got left [00:08:00] out, with a margin of error at 2.6 percent and a 95 percent confidence level. It was a total of 1347 respondents replied to the survey.

Greg Bray: Well, and I recently learned through some of the research we did what a 95 percent confidence level actually means. Which was pretty cool. But Kevin that means if they did it again, there's a 95 percent chance they would get the exact same result. That's what I learned. The easy way to understand what that means. Now you already knew that but it was new for me.

Kevin Weitzel: No, actually I didn't know that. That's new news to me. I love it.

Greg Bray: So, Barbara, what is it that you found out? Let's just start there. What's some of the big ahas or things you discovered?

Barbara Wray: Yeah. When the results came back to us and we did our initial meeting with our survey partner, we were all kind of just quiet for a minute because we weren't expecting necessarily to learn what we found.

Two of the key metrics that came back that still we talk about a lot and are [00:09:00] doing a lot of work around this, one of them is the fact that normally, these attitudinal groups will sort out into three or four similarly sized segments. We had it sort out into three, which was not anything that stood out, but that one of those groups, rather than being around 33% was 22%. And that is the only group of people who fell into this group that we labeled confident and satisfied.

The other people did not have that same reaction to the buying process or their satisfaction with their homebuying decision. They fell into two other groups. And then the part where, although we learned that 77% of the buyers prioritized trust as something that they wanted to experience with their homebuilders, we only had 21% say that they highly trusted their homebuilders.

Kevin Weitzel: Wait a second. So, you mean to tell me that 22% were satisfied [00:10:00] and 21% had trust or felt that they had trust with their builder?

Barbara Wray: That's right.

Kevin Weitzel: What kind of grade is that? I'm not really good at math. I don't know numbers. Let's say you're in elementary school and you submitted this paper, what kind of grade would these home builders be getting with this? A B or a C? I don't know. I don't get it.

Barbara Wray: I don't think it's either of those. No.

Kevin Weitzel: I don't think it is either. That's not good. Those are not awesome numbers. That tells us that we're not establishing trust with our clients, right?

Barbara Wray: Exactly. Among many issues, there is if you think about it for a minute and you're operating a business where only 21 % of your customers highly trust you, what else is that doing? One, it's likely getting in the way of making sales. But if that's how your brand is regarded over the long haul, it devalues the brand. Midterm, it is making life more difficult for your staff if they're managing social media comments or PR, if they're the construction [00:11:00] superintendent trying to deal with the person as the home is being built, or customer experience or customer service teams that are managing things as they come up or through the walkthrough.

I had a really poignant conversation with an attorney that's in a ULI group that I'm in, and he was talking about how their percentage of builder defect lawsuits has doubled over the last couple of years firm-wide. I said, so tell me what you see is the correlation between my survey that we're talking about and what you just said. I'm paraphrasing him, but he said, it's pretty easy. People don't tend to sue people that they trust. So, it becomes a millions dollar issue in an industry or in a single organization if trust is not where it can and should be.

Kevin Weitzel: That's not just a pizza party in the office then. It's much bigger.

Barbara Wray: It's a little bigger.

Greg Bray: Just to flip the numbers because I know sometimes when people are listening to audio-only numbers get a little hard [00:12:00] to follow sometimes, right? If you throw too many numbers at folks. But you're saying that 21% trusted the builder, which means 79% did not have what they felt was trust with the builder, the person they're buying a home from, one of the largest purchases that they're ever going to make in their lives, a hugely emotional purchase that they're going to make, something that they will deal with every day because they live in it, 79% don't feel like they can trust what's going on.

I can only imagine the implications of all of that. Like you said, because everything they're told they question or want validation or need to come back and check up and make sure you're really going to do what you told me you're going to do, which is just extra communication, extra overhead, extra work for the builder to keep this moving forward. And it sounds like that this isn't specific to a certain kind of builder. Is this like custom homes versus production? Or did you have any insights that [00:13:00] way on how it broke out?

Barbara Wray: It's a great question. So, we did not survey people who purchased custom. So, I can't speak to that specifically. But what I can tell you is that these segments appeared virtually the same across all price points. So, it's not just an entry-level price point issue. It's not just a high-end home issue. It showed up across the board.

And of interest probably to some of the people who will be listening to this, we also thought, well, maybe it's special for the 55-plus buyers and 55-plus communities. Maybe they know more and they're happier and whatever. Not necessarily true. The demographics just were not the story here at all. It was these attitudes and how they sorted out.

Kevin Weitzel: So, I've got just a quick little comment and then a follow-up question, which is almost satirical in its nature. One is auto dealers run into the same problem. They have a hard time establishing trust because everybody knows that, you know, that doc fee is [00:14:00] just a fluffy fee they put on there that they can charge you. That's what they put it on there for. It's a just because fee.

What a lot of auto dealers have done is they've actually put cameras in their service bays to literally videotape the entire service process. So, if anybody ever questions it, they did it, number one, to cover their butt, you know, in legal cases. And then two, to show that, yes, we are doing all the things that we promised that we said we were going to do. So, that's a big plus. So, what are home builders doing besides putting a tagline on their website, we're the builder you can trust. What can they do to help change this mindset?

Barbara Wray: I think it's a great question. And I've had the opportunity since we first released this survey at PCBC last year, to talk with a lot of people, whether it's been our clients, one-on-one conversations, it's been preparing for other podcasts and webinars and this kind of thing.

What I'm hearing that's so interesting from a lot of people is that there are some organizations that already know that trust is the thing they need to pay attention to. They [00:15:00] have people or a person on their team who's accountable for watching that and making sure that every touch point in that buyer experience is showing up the way they want it to for their brand. They're investing heavily in sales training. They are making sure that they're scrubbing their advertising and their website and their other marketing to be sure that it is providing the opportunity for buyers to have a positive experience at every one of those touch points.

All the things, Greg, that you talked about. About the big scary decision and the big important decision, it is to buy a new home. That whole process is a mystery to a lot of people and they know they need to get it right, but they don't know what that is necessarily. And so, what we're working with some builders, and some already do a great job with this, is mapping out the buying process.

What can people expect? And it can be a checklist, or it can be a video. It can be an app. It can be whatever it is that makes sense for that [00:16:00] particular builder or developer to use. But people really need that support. That was a huge issue in the research that showed up was that buyers did not feel they had the support that they needed, and support in the way of information and communication.

There are so many ways that we can help them have the information that we know they're going to need. Like, they're going to buy the home once, and maybe it's the first time or it's the second or third time, or it's the first time that it's been new. But their limited experience compared to the professionals that are doing this day in and day out and know what's coming next and know what people need to pay attention to.

And so, that sharing the what to expect part, and then just being helpful. They have to figure out what mover they're going to use. Do you have some trusted people you can refer them to? Just anything along the way that helps them feel like you're in it with them is really important in terms of trying to build that trust.

You know, and then there's the obvious stuff of like, be [00:17:00] responsible in the information you're conveying to people, make sure that it's accurate, make sure that everything's consistent. If the price is one thing here, it should be the same thing over there. All of that kind of information is really important too.

Kevin Weitzel: Did you segment it out to the construction versus the contracting process? Because I know that me as a consumer, I don't find a lack of trust in the actual product unless you're talking about just cheap Chinese junk. You know, if I'm talking about cars, if it's a quality car, it's a quality car. It doesn't matter who you're getting it from. It's the buying process that I personally have a problem with the trust on and it comes down to those doc fees and you need this special insurance on this one purchase. Is there any segmentation there is basically what that long-winded question was?

Barbara Wray: Well, I think it's a really important distinction to make. We only focused on the buying process. So, it is specifically about that. Not, how did the construction process go or the closing process even. It was about the getting the home bought part of things. That is a more fluid process. You're talking about [00:18:00] people talking to people. You're talking about an individual seeking information on their own because of the way that you're marketing your brand out there.

The website's a very important part of that. Could they find what they wanted? We know that the most important thing that buyers want when they come to the website first is pricing, and so that's one easy thing for builders to confirm with a fresh eye, going to their own website. Can I find what I'm looking for? Is it easy to tell the price, or am I supposed to sign up on a list and jump through some hoops before you're going to tell me what I actually want to know? Those kinds of hurdles, the more that those can be removed and the more people can be helped in getting the information that they're looking for, that all goes a long way in building trust and creating the kind of buyer experience that they're looking for.

Greg Bray: So, Barbara, that kind of opens up for me, a little interesting insight into when we use the word trust, what are we really getting into? There's a great book called The Speed of Trust [00:19:00] by Stephen Covey. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that, but highly recommend it. This is the son of Stephen Covey who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So, his son wrote this, but it's all about trust.

But it sounds like that when we like meet somebody that we don't know, they're a stranger, the idea, do you trust them or not? Right. A new company that you haven't worked with yet, do you trust them or not? That's where trust hasn't been established yet and we need to create it. There's the other reaction where. I know you and you lied to me or you violated my trust. That's a different kind of, I don't trust you.

It's one thing to say, I don't trust you yet because you haven'testablished it. It's another thing to say, I did, you broke my trust and now we're done. It sounds like we might be dealing more with the first one, right? That it's more of the, I'm still trying to figure out if I can trust you and I don't get everything I want, so I'm a little nervous and I'm uncomfortable. What are you hiding from me? [00:20:00] You know, what do I not know?

Would you say that that's a fair understanding of what this trust definition is? Or do you think it's because builders lied to them and now they're all angry because they got told something that wasn't true where like, oh, you told me it was 400,000, it's 600,000 for this house, and now I don't trust you anymore?

Barbara Wray: Yeah. Well, I think that's a great distinction. I don't think it's the second. Although, if that happened, certainly that would be showing up in our data as well. I like to think that it's a whole lot more about I'm new to this or pretty new to this, I'm coming in as this buyer, I know it's going to cost me a lot more than it would have cost me if I bought a year ago. The rates are starting to go up. The inflation is hitting me already. I'm getting headlines that are coming at me, telling me it's a terrible time to buy.

Think back to where we were at. We'd seen 10 interest rate hikes at the point in which we did this survey. So, people are in a stressed environment already. They need to find the [00:21:00] brand that they trust enough to help them get what they're trying really hard to get, that's getting harder to get for them.

I do think it's more of the things that you mentioned and it's, am I finding what I need? Can I get the information that's going to help me feel like I'm making a good decision here? Are people helping me along the way? Forty-five percent of the people said the most important thing they want is to be easy to work with. To me, that's table stakes. Like, let's at least do that for them and make sure that we're finding ways to be easy to work with.

I don't think, and I don't think anyone in this industry intends to do plan B that you talked about. You know, I don't think anybody's setting out to do that. I think it's a lot of small steps along the way that need attention and fine-tuning and intention to be sure that we're creating the buyer experience that people are craving in the industry right now. And I think that benefits all of us and each individual salesperson, company, [00:22:00] you name it when that part is done really well. Because if they're showing up better than the competition, that's what you want to do.

Greg Bray: But I could also see a trust issue. Like I'm getting all these messages from the media saying it's a bad time to buy. I walk into the sales office, it's the perfect time to buy right now. And it's like, well, wait a minute. That doesn't match. So, can I trust that statement? Right? So, you've got to do a little more than no, ignoree all of them. It's the perfect time to buy. It's always the perfect time to buy for the salesperson who's selling it. Right, Kevin?

Kevin Weitzel: Well, if your job is taking you from Orlando to Austin, then the perfect time to buy in Austin is when you're moving for that job. But other than that, when is the perfect time to buy? It isn't when the interest rates are really high and it's not when investors are coming in and buying up all the low-end stock.

Greg Bray: Well, Barbara, we've hammered trust a little bit. Were there any other key takeaways from the survey that you wanted to get in before we run out of time?

Barbara Wray: Yeah. We've kind of hit it also, but the two biggies are [00:23:00] around trust and then around just creating an experience that is what buyers are looking for right now, and to hit the high points of what they're looking for so that they fall into a confident and satisfied cohort rather than stressed, regretful, burdened and disappointed.

It's around knowledge and information and support and being helpful. Again, hit the high points of it. Help to anticipate what they are going to need to know. Make it easy for them to find that in your marketing. Make it easy for them to find that when they're having a conversation in person. Evaluate how the brand is showing up and how the people who represent the brand are showing up, and be sure that that's taking care of what the customer is looking for right now. I think that's kind of it in a nutshell, really.

Greg Bray: As you've shared some of these insights with builders, you know, with your clients and with others, have builders gone, Oh, that [00:24:00] explains it. Or have they been like, well, that must be everybody else? Of course, they trust me. Of course, we do it okay. It must be all the others. What types of reactions are you getting?

Barbara Wray: I've heard a little bit of what you just said. Of like, well, it must be everybody else. And I think that's kind of a human and natural response because everybody's probably working really hard to get in this part right anyway, right? But more than that, responses have been, oh, boy, that's bad. Like, I don't like the sounds of that and we better go take a look. That caught us by surprise. We better dig into this and be sure that we're showing up better than that.

It's been heartening, the responses, and I've had a lot of great conversations with people who are in the trenches doing this work. I've been really pleased to have those conversations go the way of an openness and a willingness to learn and apply and make some fine-tuning adjustments or big adjustments in their brands to try to do better.

One, it's how brands, strong brands are [00:25:00] made is in showing up in a way that's going to resonate for their customer. There's that and that strategy is really smart. It's also and we all know in the home building business, you know, nobody's winning if we're not selling homes. Right? And so, every path to that requires the buyer and it requires that buyer getting what they need from your brand as opposed to getting it better from another brand. So, it's a smart thing to pay attention to also. So, I think additionally, for that reason, people have been really quite open to it.

Greg Bray: As I think about some of the implications and symptoms of this challenge, I can imagine that one of the difficulties for a builder today is for them to find out if their buyers are feeling this way, they have to have gotten to the point where they've made a connection with this person in order to find out how they feel. And there's this whole other group that never made it to the point of [00:26:00] making contact, that didn't come into the sales, didn't reach out through the website, didn't make some type of contact. And that group, we can't ask them why, we can't talk to them, we can't get there.

So, it's like, there's this temptation to say, oh, well, look, we surveyed all our buyers and they all love us. Well, yeah, they're the ones that stuck around to buy, so they're the ones that love us, right? It's the ones who looked at the website and said, gosh, I don't know what they're doing. I'm moving on to the next one. And we never had a chance to talk to them.

Do you feel like we could get stuck in a little bit of a self-fulfilling echo chamber, so to speak, if we only talk to these folks? I mean, that's what your survey did is you got outside of that group by going out there a little more randomly, right? Instead of just talking to our existing buyers that we already have as a builder.

Barbara Wray: Right. Yeah, I think it's a really good point that you make. The home buyer data was people who actually did buy in spite of whatever obstacles they encountered, they actually bought, and still of those who [00:27:00] bought only 22 percent were confident and satisfied. So, we can imagine and guess those who maybe started to but didn't aren't going to be in a better situation than that.

Of the prospects that we talked to, 81% who say they're going to be buying in the next 2 years said they're shopping now. So, those are people who are in the market, hitting the marketing, going into the sales offices, doing their research, whatever that looks like for them, already in market, evaluating the brands. And so, we did learn some things there.

In our survey, we worked, as I mentioned, directly with a few builders, and so they were able to look at how did their data stack up to the larger group. And that was fascinating to them to be able to see, oh, we're about the same, or we're really doing a lot better, but only with this segment of people. So, they got to drill down a little bit more to look at their buyers and their prospects.

And for some, it was [00:28:00] really helpful for them to see we have work to do with our prospects here and an opportunity because of it. Those are the people who are going to be sales over the next couple of years. Looking at the data and what it tells us about what people didn't like, or did like about the process, and making some fine-tuning adjustments for those 81% of the people who are in market and considering buying in the next two years is going to only help.

Greg Bray: Well, Barbara, I know we could talk about this for a lot longer because there's a lot of other insights and details. I do want to give a shout-out to Susan Baier's team at Audience Audit that you worked with because I think that's important to recognize that this was a real professionally done effort. This isn't just you guys sent out some emails and asked for a little SurveyMonkey thing to get filled out. We worked with Susan's team as well on some of our stuff, so we know her and they do a great job.

Barbara Wray: Yeah, I wanted to mention too, I know you'll ask for contact information, but at the wickmarketing.com/research site, people can [00:29:00] access the survey tool, a bunch of other stuff, but they can also see the webinar that Susan and I did to present the data and hear directly from her on interpretation of all of the data out of the survey.

Greg Bray: Say that URL one more time, Barbara.

Barbara Wray: wickmarketing.com/research.

Greg Bray: All right. That's where you need to go to get all the details. Because again, it's hard to hear numbers when we're just talking about it and really understand it. And that way you can dive in a little deeper and see some of that. So, Barbara, before we wrap up, any last thoughts or marketing advice that you wanted to leave with our listeners today, based on what you've learned?

Barbara Wray: Yeah, thank you for that. I think, and it's not new and it's not new because of the survey, but that it's just always about the customer, and the better we understand the customer, the better we can market to them, sell them and end up having more happy customers. So, keep them first and foremost in our thinking and do what we can do to build trust with them and create a better experience.

Greg Bray: And Barbara, if somebody wants to connect with you, what's the best [00:30:00] way for them to reach out and get in touch?

Barbara Wray: They can find me on LinkedIn, BarbaraWray, or Barbara, B A R B A R A@wickmarketing.com.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you again for joining with us, and thank you for doing all the work on this survey to share with the industry as a whole and help us all get a little better with some of these insights. I'm sure there's a lot of folks scratching their heads going, hmm, I wonder if that's us, right now.

Kevin Weitzel: If the numbers are 22% and 21%, the answer is yes, it is us. It's everybody. Everybody needs to work on this in our industry.

Greg Bray: I completely agree, Kevin. I think that's one of my big takeaways is that we've got a trust issue and we can all do better for sure. Thank you everybody for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. [00:31:00]