A few years ago the NAHB and MetLife Mature Market Institute conducted a comprehensive study dedicated specifically to analyze where 55+ households live, the characteristics of their homes, communities, where they moved to and from, as well as other key demographic information.

The key findings of the study are quite interesting and are reminders that knowing what others, in this case, the 55+/AQ demographic, should not solely be based on historical behavior, if at all.  We are living longer. We are having children later in life. We are getting married more than once and having kids with each.  To put it plainly, the Baby Boomers of today are not like the Age Qualified for our parent’s era nor our grandparents

Did you know?

• The majority of 55+ households do not live in age-qualified (i.e., age-restricted) or other communities occupied mostly by 55+ households.
• Senior-related housing accounts for 8% for buyers 53 to 62 years old
• One in five buyers aged 53 to 62 purchased a multi-generational home.
• The share of households age 55+ is projected to grow annually, and to account for nearly 45% of all U.S. households by the year 2020.
• Buyers 53 to 71 (Baby Boomers) made up the second largest generational group of home buyers at 32 percent.
• The desire to be close to family and friends is often a driver for the 55+ households.
• The share of 55+ single-family customers who work at home continues to rise and will increase the demand for office space inside the home.
• Convenience to a job (46 percent), quality of school districts (33 percent), and distance to schools (31 percent) were a few of the most important factors to buyers 38 to 52 years. (Important to know because of the multi-generational living and aging-in-place homeowners)

Links to 55+/Age Qualified resources used:

Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends Report (NAR)

Housing Trends Update for the 55+ Market

ENGAGE. INSPIRE. MOTIVATE.

We’re a marketing consultancy focused on helping clients tell their stories in ways that will engage, inspire, and motivate their customers to trust them, buy from them and tell others about them. We believe the most important part of a company’s brand position and marketing campaign is their story. Your story is where you engage with your customer. It’s what connects them to you, and it’s what inspires them and motivates them to do business with you. So, what’s your story? And how are you telling it?

Our story is simple. We’re a diverse group of master storytellers, ideators, thought leaders, and marketing experts who have over 25 years of experience, vision, and passion to develop communications and marketing programs across a variety of verticals. Our mission is to make a positive difference with everyone we interact with and contribute to the greater good of all. We are dreamers, creators, and doers. We live for creating big ideas. We know how to make them work no matter what the budget or timeline. We’ve heard that saying “it can’t be done.” We just don’t believe it.

We’ve been through several real estate cycles. We’ve celebrated the good times. And cried in our beer (or in our cases, wine). There’s pretty much nothing we haven’t seen or done in development and homebuilding. Through it all, we’ve been proud to be part of an industry that has been part of the lifeblood of our country. We’re excited that the industry is, once again, moving forward to create homes and communities where people can create their own stories. And we’re excited to bring our knowledge, experience, and passion for engaging customers and making a difference to your team.

If you’re ready for a passionate group of professionals who knows and understands your business and can become an extension of your marketing team, let’s engage. We’re just a click away. www.engagemarketing.biz.

USING LIVE VIDEO TO ENGAGE CUSTOMERS

If you’re looking for ways to boost engagement with customers, followers, and potential prospects in your community make sure you include live video as part of your marketing communications plan. Consumers are engaging more with live videos and are being significantly influenced by them. According to a Livestream survey, 80 percent of brand audiences would rather watch a brand’s live video than read their blog posts. Plus, 67 percent of live video viewers feel more compelled to come to visit a business or attend an event after they watch it on a live video.

These numbers only point to one thing – new home communities can effectively leverage live streaming videos to engage and influence their target audiences. The question is how? Take a look at some of these useful tips on how you can successfully use live streaming to promote your community.

1. Quality Video Creates Positive Engagement – The quality of live streaming that is so appealing to viewers is that it provides unfiltered access to your brand. All too often, social media content can come across as scripted and reads as a sales pitch rather than focusing on creating a meaningful conversation with the audience. Studies have shown that potential clients are more likely to spend money with brands they trust. While traditional social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook have helped to bridge that gap; live streaming provides an unscripted, un-edited glance into what your brand is all about.
2. Don’t go Live Without a Plan– Live streaming has a huge potential for new home community marketing, but it’s going to require some diligent planning to ensure your live stream is as flawless as possible. Remember that you’re broadcasting live, so there is little room for error. The best way to avoid any issues is to prepare. Create a video storyboard to help you create the broadcast to organize your thoughts and to create a sequence for your video. During your broadcast, you can follow along with your storyboard to stay on track.
3. Get to Know Your Platform– Also, it’s a good idea to get familiar with your video streaming platform, i.e. YouTube, Facebook LIVE, etc. before you press that record button. The process is slightly different on the mobile and desktop version of the various platforms so get comfortable with both. Facebook provides a preview of your video, so you can check how your lighting and framing looks before you broadcast to the public. Keep in mind the preview will not necessarily match the quality of the final broadcast so a solid work is creating a temporary (fake) Facebook page and broadcasting there to view how a final broadcast will look
4. Get Techy – Make sure you have the right tech for the job. This really depends on the complexity of your video. But for starters, your internet speed is key to your success. Since a live broadcast requires a lot of bandwidth, make sure to have a fast connection. If possible, try for a connection through an ethernet cable instead of WIFI for stability. Now if you’re simply shooting straight from your mobile phone, you can skip ahead to the next tip. But if you’re looking to ramp up your game, you can stream from a laptop and use software likeOBS or Wirecast that allow you to switch between multiple cameras, audio sources, overlay graphics, and much more.
5. Get Talking– Just like any online content, you need to spread the word to grow your audience. You should create a promotional strategy for every stage of the broadcast — before, during, and after. Use Facebook and other social media channels to promote the live broadcast two-to-three days before, one day before, and the day of the event for best results. You can post about your upcoming broadcast on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn or you can schedule the broadcast on Facebook to generate an announcement and allow people to sign up for a reminder.

During your broadcast, you can continue to promote your broadcast with social media. Encourage your team members to share with their networks as well. When the broadcast is finished, you can choose to save the video and create a post on your Facebook page or you can keep it private. Going live on Facebook is not as simple as posting an edited and polished video, but fortunately, Facebook has made it a pretty seamless process. If you needed another reason to go live, Facebook actually favors live video content on its platform, so you will get much more exposure on Facebook than other content like images or links. If you need assistance putting together a live video strategy and plan, we can help!

DON’T PREJUDGE. LISTEN.

By definition, research is “careful or diligent search”; “studious inquiry or examination; especially: investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revisions of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws.

Want to know why Millennials are looking for suburb-style living?  Ask and listen.  Want to know why eat-in kitchens, garage storage and smaller homes are on trend? Ask and listen.  Want to know why Baby Boomers & older Gen Xers want more dog parks and organic gardens and less golf and pickleball? Ask and listen.

In the real estate world research is often used as a means of learning what people want or need in a new home and new home community.  It is also a valuable resource for learning how those needs and desires grow and change as life grows and changes.

Two of my all-time favorite research ‘mistakes’ are not doing any and doing it with prejudgment.  Now granted, there are times when primary research may not be practical, however; secondary research is easily done in most cases.  But – when it comes to conducting your own primary research, during which you are gathering data in order to gain honest, first-hand insight and feedback, please don’t go into it with preconceived notions.  The interviews, surveys, observations and ethnographic research should be conducted with the intention of learning something new or specific about the participants or subject matter.  Don’t ask leading questions. Have an open conversation, be transparent about the research and then…just listen.

The idea of asking questions to learn something is quite simple.  The more difficult part of the task is being open to receiving the information without influencing or guiding responses with the goal of proving an assumption.  (We all know what assuming does)

Happy listening and learning!

“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”  ~ Albert Einstein

Photo credit Tim Pierce via Flikr

TIPS TO CAPTURE SUMMER SALES

It’s summer, school is out, families are going on vacations, and traffic to your model complex will begin to slow down. In order to continue a robust sales pace, you need to create excitement and engage your residents and prospective customers to come to the community and tour the models. Here are some tips to beat the summer blues and capture more sales!

• Increase your Social Media Image– Since school’s out and everyone has more free time on their hands, they will be spending more time on social media. It’s a great time to increase your activity on social media with engaging and shareable content that will engage, inspire and motivate your residents and potential customers to become loyal fans. Since summer is usually a very active time for cities to host outdoor events, make sure you are sharing local and regional content on all your social media pages. With the longer days, it’s the perfect time to take more photos and create more videos of your community, the models, amenities, and fun things that are going on in your neighborhoods and the city. Since more families are at home and creating their own memories in your community, make sure you include them in your social media with testimonials, videos and blog articles. People love to see themselves online, and they’ll be happy to share these memories with their social networks.
• Host Kid-Friendly Events – Families who are looking for a new home would love to include their children in the search process. A great way to get the family out to your community is to host a series of kid-friendly events that will allow the kids to come out and discover all the great things your community offers, leaving the parents free to tour the model homes and learn more about the community. Summer is a great time to host some signature events that become a summer tradition for the community. Some great ideas for getting families out include:
  • Summer movie nights
  • Summer carnivals
  • 4^thof July celebrations
  • Concerts under the stars
  • Arts & Crafts Fairs
  • Weekly Farmer’s Markets
  • Bikes & Hikes
• Make A Splash! – If you have a community pool and clubhouse, or community gardens, make sure that you activate them for the summer season. Whether it’s a low-key, wine and cheese party for active adults or an outdoor fun in the sun event for families, your pool, clubhouse and community garden is an integral component of your summer celebrations. If your community hosts poolside events for your residents, make sure you are inviting your best prospects to join in the fun!
• Keep Your Realtors Happy – During the summer, your local Realtor community can be a big asset in keeping traffic coming to your community. Since most corporate relocations take place during the summer, Realtors are usually very busy trying to assist relocating employees. One way to encourage loyalty and ensure that your community is on their short list of communities to show their prospects is to host summer Happy Hours to showcase your community to Realtors. Realtors love gathering, eating good food and drinking adult beverages! Another way to keep them engaged is to sponsor a Summer Sales Contest and give high-quality prizes to the Realtors who sell the most homes during the summer. Whatever you do, make sure your Realtors are happy and they will help you make summer sales sizzle!