83 Creating a Digital Marketing Strategy - Vithya Kuckreja Oct 20 2021

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: We are excited today to welcome to the show Vithya Kuckreja from Blue Tangerine. She's our Director of Paid Search. So yes, she is a Blue Tangerine too. Full disclosure, but we're excited to have her. Welcome, Vithya.

Vithya Kuckreja: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be on here.

Greg Bray: Well, Vithya, I know not everybody who listens knows you yet, so why don't you give us a little bit of background. Tell us about yourself.

Vithya Kuckreja: [00:01:00] Yeah, absolutely. So, I've been in digital marketing for probably close to 13 years now. My journey into digital marketing was a little bit less traditional.

My undergrad was in electrical engineering and I was working at some engineering jobs and the jobs were always in like a basement, down in somewhere really cold, and I didn't get to talk to a lot of people, and I was like, you know what? I love working with people and I love marketing.

So, got my MBA in marketing and then started in digital marketing and just love it so much. Part of it is that I like to shop online too. I just love understanding how people shop for things, how do they find things. It's been a fun ride.

Kevin Weitzel: All right. Being the mouth-breathing knuckle dragger than I am, I know that this session is going to get a little pinch nerdy. Do me a favor before we get to that high level 10 black belt nerd level, I need you to break down something in your personal life that we can learn about you [00:02:00] on this podcast that isn't work-related.

Vithya Kuckreja: Okay, I'm going to break it down. However, I'm probably just going to up that nerd factor again, because something that a lot of people may not know just from working with me is I'm a huge sci-fi fan. I love sci-fi. That's one of my favorite genres of like TV and movies. I love Battlestar Galactica.

I'm a big Trekkie. So yeah, I'm probably not going to make myself sound any cooler.

Kevin Weitzel: Farscape?

Vithya Kuckreja: Yes.

Kevin Weitzel: Tiny little pinch offshoot of that Farscape is that one of my good friends, Rex Reeb, of Rex Reeb Realtor, whatever his company is called, he actually before that was a machinist and he made the gun that it was used on Farscape. It looks like a big, giant gold revolver.

Vithya Kuckreja: What? Oh my gosh.

Kevin Weitzel: He made it. I've actually held that. I'll send you a picture of it.

Vithya Kuckreja: You should totally send me a picture of that. That sounds awesome. Yeah. Something that someone didn't know. Yep.

Greg Bray: I'm just having flashbacks to the engineering [00:03:00] building in college because I took one electrical engineering class for computer science.

We built little circuit boards and had the little on-off gates and everything else. I didn't realize that the jobs also match the engineering building as far as being in the basement and no windows and no people. I thought that was just the building there, but evidently, that's part of the whole ecosystem. There you go. We're glad you found the light and came up out of the basement and got into marketing.

So, today Vithya, what I wanted to talk about with you, and one of the reasons we invited you on, is we wanted to get more into some of the digital strategies. A lot of our builders don't know where to start or what to do, or even what digital strategy means. Let's talk a little bit about what is a digital strategy and how does somebody get started, or what's involved in creating one? What are your thoughts on that?

Vithya Kuckreja: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think of a digital strategy as a plan that you put together for your business to achieve the goals for your business [00:04:00] across carefully selected channels. Really what that entails is just looking at your business holistically and seeing where does the customer actually get to your site?

What are the different touchpoints that a customer goes through to get to your site? Then within those touchpoints, how do we message to make sure that we're addressing the solution that a customer is looking for. Like, are they looking for a second home? Are they looking for a retirement home?

What are the things that the customer is looking for? How can we reach them in the most impactful way with our messaging, and then putting a plan together of how we do that. So that's how I think of the digital strategy.

Greg Bray: Is that a book or is it a one-pager?

Vithya Kuckreja: Definitely not. What I have found actually is that when you get a little too detailed, then you kind of lose focus on what you're really trying to achieve. So, what I've found is that across our home builder [00:05:00] clients, it's more successful when there's four or five channels that you're focusing on, and within those channels, you're really understanding the key metrics that you're trying to achieve, what are the major goals that you're trying to achieve and keeping it more simple. So, not a book as much, but it is thoughtfully planned out and it's carefully thought about, but it's not to get too much into the weeds for the plan.

Greg Bray: You used the word channels several times already. Let's define that, please. What do you mean when you say channels?

Vithya Kuckreja: Yes. So, in the digital world, how we think about channels is I would say like the different areas that people come through to your site. So for instance, someone can come through to your site from an email they got. Or someone can come through to your site from, they went to Google, and they searched for something, or they discover your site on their Facebook feed. They come across an ad. So, all of those different [00:06:00] ways that customers come to your site in the digital world we call that channels.

Greg Bray: So, when you talk about the different channels then, these choices of how you go about deciding which ones to use, where they fit, how to prioritize, what really starts to matter for a home builder? How do they decide which one of those channels they should use or put into that strategy?

Vithya Kuckreja: Great question. 90% of home shoppers start that decision-making process online. Within that decision-making process online, so much of it starts with a Google search. In that channel mix, what we see for our home builder clients, is that organic search and paid search make up a big portion of that channel mix.

Then after that, what we see is on the organic paid social side, it's just where customers are. Customers are on Google searching, or customers are on their [00:07:00] phone looking at their social media feeds. Those are the kind of places that typically we see are the starting points that we try to reach out to those potential customers.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm just going to talk about the gorilla that's in this room, i.e. I'm a gorilla. If I put myself in the shoes of a less than sophisticated home builder that maybe doesn't get anything that you're talking about right now, but they know from just all the buzz, the industry buzz is out there, they know that I gotta have that stuff. Where do they start? What do they do?

Vithya Kuckreja: Great question. So, I think, just start. The most basic channel to start with is on Google paid search. The reason why I say that is because the barrier to entry is not as high. So, Google paid search, you can quickly start up an account, a campaign, and really get people to your site through that channel. Some of the other channels might need a little bit more of implementation as far as making sure your website is optimized for [00:08:00] that and things like that, but paid search, you can quickly come up to speed.

Greg Bray: So, if we're starting with paid search for this Builder Kevin, shall we say?

You said paid search, right? So, help us understand what that means a little bit more for someone who's maybe not familiar with it.

Vithya Kuckreja: Yeah, absolutely. So when a potential customer, they go onto Google and they search for a new home in Denver, Colorado. There'll be some listings that kind of come up on the search engine results pages, and typically those top three or four results are what we call paid search results. Oftentimes Google will put like a little ad label by it, and then underneath, there'll be a set of listings on that first page and we call those organic listings. So, the paid search listings, what Google is doing is it's working with all of these advertisers that are saying, [00:09:00] when a potential customer types something into the search box, I want my ad to show up. So, all of these retailers and advertisers or home builders, we're all saying, I want my ad to show up for that particular query.

Then what Google does is, when you think of a typical art auction, someone has a piece of art and they're like, I'll pay $5 for that piece of art, and someone says, I'll pay $10 for that piece of art. Then whoever has the most bid wins that piece of art. In Google, for that real estate, what happens is, all of us are saying, I'll pay this much for that placement, but then Google also looks into how relevant are pages, how relevant are businesses to what that person typed into Google.

So, that goes into that auction system and then we show up for those results. Basically, as a home builder, what we're doing is we're giving Google these signals of saying, Hey, we want to show up for these types of queries, and then Google kind [00:10:00] of marries that up with, Hey, are you relevant for that query? How much are you willing to pay for that query? What is everybody else in that marketplace going to do? Then we show up on those search engine results pages for those.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm going to preface this with an apology to our listening audience that if I'm dumbing this down too much, it's only because I'm a simple man. I'm a real basic guy. All right. So anyway, from what I'm hearing from you, if you had somebody like Broad Street Homes and they use synergy steel and they want to differentiate that, they don't want to just be known as a home builder Broad Street Homes. They want to be known as Broad Street Homes that uses the synergy steel product. Their interior walls are built out of steel versus being made out of wood. Is that what you're saying? You could utilize paid search to differentiate that factor?

Vithya Kuckreja: You definitely can. You definitely can. It's just the types of queries that you're going to tell Google that you want to show up for. You can tell Google, Hey, I want to show up for this particular type of query or this particular type of query. [00:11:00] Google does do its own little magic on its own backend, where it will go, you wanted to show for this queer, but we also think you'd be a little bit relevant for this type of query that someone types in too. There's a little bit of that from Google too, but yes, we can provide Google those signals of, Hey, I want to show up for this.

Kevin Weitzel: As part of that strategy, I know that you can buy words or whatever that basically are like, I could buy my competitor's website as a term. Is that considered taboo tacky in today's world?

Like I know when I see the paid search ones that are, if I Google search Bose speakers and JBL speakers comes up. I'm going to avoid the JBL one because I know all they did was just bought the Bose speaker ad. Is that how people are shopping or do they see those ads and they're just like, that's are ones that they're landing on. Is there data that supports that if you do utilize that it is providing that channel of traffic into your website?

Vithya Kuckreja: Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So, as far as bidding on competitor keywords and things like [00:12:00] that, what we see from the metrics, is that we sometimes see that it'll drive your costs up and it might not convert, or sometimes we see that it does convert. So, it depends on the type of query, and it also depends on who you're competing with. You have to consider your budget as well. So, for instance, if you're a mid-sized home builder and you're trying to bid on a top-tier, top three builder term, it might not be what your customer's looking for any way.

You might be able to win a little bit better on a more relevant kind of keywords. Let's say you're a solar powered home builder. You want to stay focused on, I want to find people who are interested in buying a solar powered home, maybe not just a big box home builder.

You want to be more strategic with the types of queries that you're going after. What we've seen across our portfolio is that the more and more that you [00:13:00] understand who your potential customer is, like, why are they buying that home? Are they buying that home because they need more space for their family or are they buying that home because they really want a solar powered home?

Are they buying a home cause they're an empty nester that wants to downsize? So, all of those things go into the types of keywords, the types of queries that you'll bid on in Google, and what we found is that the more strategic and more planned out you are in the idea of who your customer is, the better success you have.

Greg Bray: So, once we're ready to move beyond paid search, what else fits into that digital strategy? Is there a hierarchy to it or is it totally independent and unique to everybody?

Vithya Kuckreja: What's interesting is that I feel like in my career let's say five years ago or something, the different channels were way more siloed from each other. Like you would do one thing in one, and then maybe you wouldn't focus on another, but what we see [00:14:00] in a lot of the metrics and we look at Google analytics a lot for our clients and other tools as well, what we see is that the customer journey and that path to buying a home it's so multi-touch that there's a lot of different channels that a potential customer goes through before they actually close on that home.

So, really it's a little bit less I would say siloed, or one channel is the most important. What's more important now is getting in front of the right audience at the right time within all of these different channels. For instance, for our home builder clients for paid Facebook ads and for our paid search ads, and even for some of our geofencing ads, we're always trying to identify who's the right audience? What are the types of things that they like as far as lifestyle interests?

What income level are they in? What's the geographic location that they're in and all of those [00:15:00] things are factoring in more than the hierarchy of the actual channels. It's more of what are the audiences across all these channels and how do we make sure that message is appropriate across these channels, and how do we get in front of these people at the right time?

Greg Bray: Based on that then, it's sounds like you're saying though, that this potential buyer is going to be at different points in their journey potentially across different channels.

So, do you find, for example, that an ad for geofencing is very different than an ad on Facebook, or for a retargeting ad or something like that, because, Hey, maybe they're at a different spot in the journey, so, we're going to show them a different message?

Vithya Kuckreja: That's exactly what it is, Greg. What we find is that with the customer, the different touchpoints they are in their journey, the message has to change a little bit. So, on our paid media team, we have a little bit of a joke where we say you don't [00:16:00] ask someone to marry you on the first date.

You just don't. You don't ask them to marry you on the first date. What that means is the first time that someone's going through that customer journey, we're not saying right away, here's a home instead of telling them about what's so great about our homes, what's so great about our community, all those things.

So, the message really is important to what stage they are in the funnel. So, at the top of the funnel, they're just getting to know us. We're kind of like shaking their hand. We're this home builder, this is what we're about. Then in the middle of their journey, they kind of know a little bit more about us.

Then we're introducing maybe some customer testimonials or something like that. Like, Hey, here's what other people are saying about us. Then at the bottom of the funnel, maybe we're ready to go on like our third date here. So, we're going to say, we have maybe some closing costs going on, you got to purchase now or something like that, like the sense of urgency. So, there's all those different stages in that [00:17:00] in that messaging that we go through.

Kevin Weitzel: That all makes sense, but I'm telling you right now, if you had a TV show about people getting married on the first date. Can imagine the train wrecks that would be on that show? I would watch that religiously.

Greg Bray: I knew Kevin was going to love the dating analogy. I just knew it.

Kevin Weitzel: I could watch those train wrecks all day long, but you see it on people's websites. That's the crazy part. They're like, oh, let's throw this mud against the wall and hope that it sticks, and let's see how this works, or they don't do anything at all and they just hope that it's just going to passively get better and it doesn't.

Greg Bray: So if they're throwing mud at the wall, Vithya, to take Kevin's analogy, how do we figure out what's actually sticking? How do we measure that? How do we decide is it working or is it not? Because I've talked to a lot of people say, oh yeah, I tried paid ads.

I tried this. It didn't work. They just say I tried it, it didn't work. Well, we know it works, so something was missing obviously. So, how do we figure that out?

Vithya Kuckreja: Yes. Absolutely. Great question. So, part of having [00:18:00] a really strong sound digital strategy is to identify what are your goals, and then actually measure as you're testing these different campaigns.

It's really important to continually measure, and the metrics that we usually use for our home builder clients, there are several different metrics, but I would say that there's four or five that are really important that we look at.

Those are, how's your click through rate performing? How is your cost per lead for these different ads that you're doing? What's the lead to close ratio? All those different factors go into all these different campaigns, and so it gives us a little bit more information and let's us be a little bit less myopic and more big picture about, okay, what is actually happening in the whole mix?

The other part that we look at is the conversion path. So, we look at in Google analytics and other tools that we have, what are the different touch [00:19:00] points that the customer came through and ultimately submitted a registration or they clicked the call the sales office, or they got directions.

What are the things that are really driving those kinds of goals? So, measuring that on a continual reoccurring basis, we're able to adjust accordingly, and so then we don't get into these kinds of situations where it's anecdotally, oh, my gosh, this didn't work.

We know that after we look at the data and when we look at those multi-touchpoint reports, we're like, oh wow, actually this got someone to this point and this point got them to actually call the sales office, so that was actually assisting the whole process. If we didn't have that first point, you may not have even gotten to that lead. So, yeah, it's really important to look at those key metrics and look at the conversion paths in the plan.

Greg Bray: And don't throw mud at your computer screen.

Vithya Kuckreja: Don't throw mud at your computer [00:20:00] screen. It never works.

Greg Bray: So, Vithya, is there ever a situation where you're talking to clients and they've fixated on I'll call it the shiny new object, right, the new tactic, the thing they're just hearing about and they really just want to do that and do that alone and how you address that is part of a bigger strategy discussion.

Vithya Kuckreja: I just absolutely love working with our home builder clients because for the most part, our home builder clients really have a sound understanding of just a sales and marketing strategy, and that totally translates to the digital side. Many of our home builder clients, they really just want to see, okay, what is the full thought out plan and what are the why's of what we're doing?

They love kind of tracking that with us and going, okay, wow, isn't that so cool that worked? Wow. Interesting. What I found is that our home builder clients are very collaborative [00:21:00] on the strategy and they're very much let's look at the whole picture. Let's look at what is really happening to you know getting these leads to the site.

Does that make sense? So, it's been really enjoyable working with our home builder clients on that. So, we haven't actually too many of those shiny object kind of moments because I think our home builder clients are so strong in looking at the whole picture.

Kevin Weitzel: How much does the narrative or the strategy and direction change from builder to builder? Regional? Is it the type of environment that they're in as far as their product offering? How much does it vary?

Vithya Kuckreja: It varies. It totally varies. It's very important, I think, that you can't do a cookie cutter kind of plan for each home builder because there's so many different nuances in the region and the types of home builder too.

I can give you a couple of examples, for instance, we have a wonderful home builder client that's a master [00:22:00] planned community and they have such a vibrant community and an offering, and the types of buyers that are purchasing in that community are very different from the type of customer who may be purchasing from another home builder that we have that's in California, that's more of a solar powered community.

So, the plan needs to be really different, and so for that master planned community, we really worked with the client to understand who are the main types of people who are coming to the community to buy. We identified that we have a investor type buyer, we have a retirement type person, we have someone who has family of two kids, who wants to be a little bit away from the congestion of the bigger city and wants to be more in like a master planned community with a lot of amenities.

There's these different buyers, even within that same community, and so we have to understand [00:23:00] who are those potential customers and why are they buying that type of home in that community, and then we have to message that differently. So, it changes the plan depending on what type of home builder you are, what type of region you're in, what you're offering, who's your end customer, all those things.

Greg Bray: As you've looked at builders that you're working with in a new situation, and you're doing an audit of what they've been doing and trying to understand where they've been, so you can figure out where to take them next, do you see any common mistakes that they've been making that you're like, Ooh, we can fix this really quick.

Vithya Kuckreja: Yes, definitely. One of the common things that I do see is on the keywords in some of the strategies for paid search or paid social, being a little too broad in the audiences. For instance, in the paid search, maybe doing keywords that are a little too broad when they could be a little bit more focused on the particular region you're in, making sure that you have a [00:24:00] seed list of keywords that you're going after that actually makes sense for the types of customers that come through the sales office and close on those homes.

 Then on the paid social side, some of the common things that I see is the ads being very generic or maybe the ads similar to what you would do in paid search when the ads that you would do in paid search, the message is going to be slightly different than what you do in paid social.

Like on a Facebook ad, someone may not be looking to buy a home, we're just intercepting them while they're scrolling on their feed. So, on a Facebook ad, it's really important for us to be a little bit more conversational, a little bit more Hey, did you know this about our community, or maybe put in a customer testimonial or something like that on our Facebook paid ad, where they may not know anything about buying a new home at that moment, they're not even looking maybe, they're just on their Facebook feed scrolling.

So, all of those little nuances, those types of things are the things that I see when we're auditing a [00:25:00] new account, we're going, Ooh, I'm so excited that we can get a little bit more refined and targeted and more on brand for what that home builder is about and also who that end customer is, what they're actually looking for.

On the team we get really excited about figuring out, why does that customer want to buy a home from this particular home builder? What are they looking for? What are we trying to solve for them? Buying a home is such a big event in someone's life, and we're really helping that person find that home, make memories with their families, and so it's really an important step and we have to understand what's going on with that.

Kevin Weitzel: Vithya, I need to ask you a question and I don't want any input from Greg. Nothing whatsoever. Greg's opinion does not get to come in. I just want to know your opinion.

Vithya Kuckreja: Yes.

Kevin Weitzel: You have a builder that has a craptastic website, and it's just horrible. You look at it, you're like, wow, this thing is bad. Do you help them out [00:26:00] with just getting traffic driven to that website, or do you just point blank say, do not spend money on this, I need you to spend the money on, Greg's shaking his hand like crazy over there, or do you tell them you need to redo this website? It is that bad. What is your advice there?

Vithya Kuckreja: Yes. When we're working with our clients, our home-builder clients, we really think of ourselves as like an extension of their marketing team. We do not hold back on telling folks, it will be more effective if you have an effective site, because it's the truth. Your site is the first impression, that first handshake that you have with that customer. You have to make it easy for the customer to find what they're looking for, and you have to also just make sure that you're on brand.

When a customer lands on that website, they go, ah, this is what they're about. They get that feel. Customers aren't going to verbalize that. It's such a feeling kind of thing. We have such a short window to get into their mind space and [00:27:00] especially with people becoming more and more savvy digitally. There's so many options for the customer, and so we gotta break through on all that noise and an effective, well laid out website really has to be important in that.

 What we have noticed with our wonderful clients is that many times they're like, you know what, I do know that my website needs a little bit of love. It's just that I have all these other things that I need to get to and it's a busy time and busy world. Sometimes we'll scope out a little simple wire frame just to show like a client, hey, I know you may not be able to get to it right now, but here things we've seen from our expertise and best practices that will make your website a little bit stronger.

Clients have provided feedback that they appreciate that. That even if they're not able to get that new website in the budget this year, they appreciate that we're looking at it, and that we know what would make a difference.

Kevin Weitzel: Are you in line with that answer, Greg?

Greg Bray: I [00:28:00] am. I think it doesn't make any sense to spend money driving traffic to a site that's not going to convert your leads. You're just throwing your money out the window.

Kevin Weitzel: So, what you're saying is that there is a difference, 'cause a lot of people think, oh, I just need to drive traffic to my website. You don't need drive traffic, you want a website that doesn't just provide leads, you want those leads to convert and a less than stellar website experience will diminish those conversions. Correct?

Greg Bray: Absolutely. So, Vithya, just a couple more questions here.

Is there one channel out there that few people are taking advantage of, the missed opportunity that they could be looking at, that they haven't considered before?

Vithya Kuckreja: Yes. I think that Facebook and paid social ads is definitely an area that home builders should take more advantage of. Many of our clients have started out with paid search and some of these more traditional channels, but haven't branched out to the Facebook ads. Customers [00:29:00] spent so much time on Facebook and we have really good signals from Facebook of what type of audience we can go after. In Facebook there's anywhere between 50 or 60 audiences that are available for the housing vertical. So, you can really start to find the right audience and get in front of the right people, and so I think that's definitely a channel that homebuilders should take more advantage of.

Greg Bray: There's a lot of different stuff out there. How do you keep up? What are some of those sources or places to go learn about how these things work and keep in touch of the new advances coming out?

Vithya Kuckreja: Yes, absolutely. The Blue Tangerine paid media team definitely, actually, the whole team. We're all so excited about what we do. One of the exciting things about digital marketing is that there's always something going on. There's always something changing, and so you're always a student, always learning. We're always looking at our digital marketing publications, making sure that we're up-to-date there. We're also looking at major sites like Builder [00:30:00] Online and all the different homebuilders sites as well.

We're making sure that we are staying on top of those trade publications. Also, lots of research on YouTube and webinars and things like that. So, I would say, probably, 20% of our time is really spent, on just making sure that we're up to speed on what's going on in the industry.

What's so great also about our team is that everyone's really collaborative of I found that this is working really well. Have you checked this out yet? That's one of the advantages of working with an agency that specializes in home builder clients, that's not just worked with one home builder client, but actually has a portfolio of home builder clients.

We're constantly seeing things happening of what's working, what's not, and we're able to leverage that very quickly or pull back on things that aren't working very quickly. So, we just have a breadth of knowledge just because we have worked with a lot of different clients in the vertical.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Do you have [00:31:00] one last piece of marketing advice you'd like to leave with our listeners today? Something we didn't touch on yet?

Vithya Kuckreja: I think it's really important to think about how your customer feels about your brand. Like when they come across your brand, how do they feel? It's really important that that comes across in the messaging. I think it's really important to partner up with an agency or people that know how to message, and how that potential customer is going to feel when they buy that home.

So, for some of our clients, what we're finding is that we're having success with messaging that's more about the emotional benefits of the home, like chef inspired kitchen, spa like bathrooms, all these different things instead of just listing attributes about the property. Really getting into the mindset of why does someone want to live in this home. I think it's really important to partner up with people that have that same vision of wanting to solve something for your customer and make them feel good [00:32:00] about buying a home, which is a big event in someone's life.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you, Vithya, for sharing with us today. If someone wants to get in touch with you and connect, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Vithya Kuckreja: Yeah. The best way to reach out would be, you can always find me on LinkedIn, as well as my Blue Tangerine email address, so that's V I T H Y A dot kuckreja, K U C K R E J A @bluetangerine.com.

Greg Bray: We'll put that in the show notes too, for those that didn't have their pen ready to go. Thanks again Vithya for spending some time with us and sharing, and thank you everybody for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.