Ep 297: Less Is More

Market Proof Marketing · Ep 297: Less is MoreIn this episode, Kevin Oakly, Andrew Peek and Julie Jarnagin discuss the lack of data being used by large corporations in regards to their marketing strategies as well as their frustrating experience with GA4 so far. They muse on the cascading effect on the economy of monthly mortgage payments being 20% higher than they were a year ago and how the low used homes inventory is causing realtors in a frenzy to reach out to builders for their listings.Story Time (04:41)Julie is being spammed by Hidden Valley Ranch emails.Kevin helped a builder problem solve: 6 leads to 54 (18 walk-ins + 36 online leads) Andrew finds that GA4 is still pretty clunky and has odds and ends to work out.News (31:10)Housing Market Update: The Typical U.S. Homebuyer’s Monthly Payment Is Up Nearly 20% From a Year Ago As Prices Rise (https://www.redfin.com/news/housing-market-update-monthly-mortgage-payments-near-record-high/) Mortgage demand drops again after FHA loan interest rate hits 21-year high (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/09/mortgage-demand-drops-again-after-fha-loan-interest-rate-hits-21-year-high.html) Over 80% of Americans think it's a bad time to buy a house (https://www.businessinsider.com/house-price-outlook-homes-real-estate-investing-fannie-mae-survey-2023-8)Elon Musk’s X aims to win back advertisers with new brand safety technology deal (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/08/elon-musks-x-aims-to-win-back-advertisers-signs-deal-with-ias.html)Favorites (48:45)Andrew's favorite is the kids are back to schoolKevin: Is loving his new refrigerated meals and especially is impressed with the quality of the meat.Julie loves the new backpack she got for her son to go back to school with that has an insulated pocket in the front for lunch.Questions? Comments? Email [email protected] or call 404-369-2595 and we’ll address them on the next episode. More insights, discussions, and opportunities can be found at Do You Convert All Access or on the Market Proof Marketing Facebook group.Subscribe on iTunesFollow on SpotifyListen On StitcherA weekly new home marketing podcast for home builders and developers. Each week Kevin Oakley, Andrew Peek, Jackie Lipinski, Julie Jarnagin, and other team members from Do You Convert will break down the headlines, share best practices and stories from the front line, and perform a deep dive on a relevant marketing topic. We’re here to help you – not to sell you!Transcript: KevinWelcome to episode 297. I'm Kevin Oakley. And with me today is Julie Jarnagin and Andrew Peek, because Beth Russell went full on Miley Cyrus with her voice today. I didn't know thats a thing.AndrewAnd?KevinWe were conversing this morning. And I was like, huh, You're talking about you've gone for Miley Cyrus and she's like, Sorry, that was a mom joke, which I didn't realize mom jokes were a thing. So I just was happy that we have equal opportunity bashing adult jokes.AndrewI, I support it. Yeah. Miley has a pretty low voice, little boy raspy. It's not that. Well.JulieHer kid has been sick and so apparently it got passed down.AndrewIt's this is the beginning. Schools just started. So.JulieYeah, that's true. That's true. It's going to hit all of us.AndrewIt will only get worse.KevinNo one else in my family got an apology covered. That was shocking.JulieGood.AndrewGood.KevinTotally. Totally in the clear. All right, story time. Who's going first?JulieI can go.AndrewOh your first.JulieMine is kind of. Kind of random. So just randomly in my email, I got an email, like a marketing email from Hidden Valley Ranch. I was like, How in the world did I end up on this list? Is it a really, really old list I was on from like, maybe I got a recipe or maybe they sold it.JulieSomebody? I don't know. I just thought it was funny that I got it because I was like, That's random. Then I woke up the next morning. I had two from them overnight, so that was my third. Then within the span of like less than 48 hours, I had six different marketing emails from Hidden Valley Ranch, and I would try to and I would try to unsubscribe and I would keep getting them.JulieAnd so finally I just had to hit the like, this is spam button in my email, you know, quit sending them to me because it's just a reminder, not that you're Hidden Valley Ranch, but don't if you have a list and you haven't sent any emails and you just start spamming, don't do that. You need to send emails consistently on some kind of normal basis so people are expecting them.JulieAnd don't just send six in a day about Hidden Valley Ranch because.AndrewIt's like they're it's like a marketing automation just exploding.JulieCrazy.AndrewThe more, you know, thank me. What could they even promote? Like, do you get like a 36 pack of of all these.KevinOh no they they cross promote using recipes like sour cream or something. Yeah. Like you know you can ads you can add a ranch packet to sour cream and make them.JulieIt was a lot of recipes, I think. So I don't know how I ended up on it, but they were aggressive fun.KevinIs there a preferred email cadence like as well? I got this email today from someone said, Hey, my onsite team doesn't ever want marketing to send emails because they said, We don't want to overwhelm our customers with too much communication when it comes to too from marketing, what do what do we think?JulieI personally, I say twice a month from from marketing, maybe once a month. If you can't do two good once a month, do one good one a month, and probably no more than two a month. That's me. You all may have a different.KevinNumber two is my cap from marketing.AndrewLike and I like that I gave props to Opendoor a while ago where they gave a lot of value in their email. They're like, your new offer. Your new offer. I think it's every three weeks and it's there's value in there. They probably see that I open it. And so that's why they're giving me maybe I have an accelerated cadence compared to someone else.AndrewYeah, I think twice. And then maybe some type of like trigger that helps you slow down that cadence. Like, okay, now they're a purchased let's not give them all of the marketing emails, maybe they switch different list whatever maybe. But I think we all agree lean on less versus more from marketing.JulieWell, less as long as it's not non or randomly have a new just when we think that everybody needs some, I feel like it needs some kind of plan and strategy around it instead of when we get to it, because that usually means never until we're panicking. And then people get it and they're like, Wait, who is this?JulieWhat is this? If you do have a cadence, they at least are used to seeing you pop up in their inbox and it's not so insulting. I don't know if it's things are awkward, but with Hidden Valley Ranch Spammy.AndrewYeah.KevinYeah. It's one of those areas that as an industry we still don't use data properly, I think, to clearly find like, you know, from the time something becomes a lead to the time they decide to go on an appointment, I would argue that you you could if you to your point, if you had the great content, Julie, if you had, let's say, 15 amazing in-depth articles, slash blogs with photo galleries and or videos or virtual walkthroughs, about 15 different stories of customers who chose your homes and love them.KevinI think you could send one of those a month if they're good enough or sorry, one of those a week if they're good enough over 15 weeks. But the signal of once they once you go to an appointment, you're kind of transitioned to another phase. And while it might still be interesting to get those, you might then have to do the work of saying where are the best three that they haven't already seen and spacing them out more because there's now it's it's still going to be interesting just like people love watching issue TV even though they already know where they're going to move or you know, they just bought something.KevinThey still want to, but they don't need to be deluged with it in the same way. And of course, all those ideally would have the signal of go here in view more if you want, let the customer binge them, but then know not to send them because they've already seen them in an ideal world.AndrewSo maybe.KevinI'll write. Mine comes from a call early this week because I feel like this is happening a lot, not just with the builders that we work with, but but around the country where traffic is still high. In fact, the aggregate data set from homebuilder data, it's about the same as where it was in February, March in terms of traffic to homebuilder websites, lead volume depending on the price point an area some some places are down.KevinBut if you look at year over year, most people are still up tens. And so you're talking about a struggling neighborhood. And this last month in June, they had six leads in there. So this particular better uses lasso. When you use lasso and you're analyzing lead volume, a reminder that you typically have to go look in two places.KevinYou have to go look into the individual community project. And that's going to let you see all of the online leads that have transitioned to on site through an appointment as well as walk in traffic. And then you're going have to go to the online sales bucket project and look at the leads that have come in just for that neighbor.KevinThen you have to add the two together. So we started out looking in the project folder. First thing was that no one on the call immediately kind of already had their finger on the pulse of what the lead volume was for the community, which is marketers. We should always, especially the ones that are high focus, like this is a neighborhood that I taken over the call from Jacqui, the Penske issue on maternity leave, but they're like, Oh yeah, we talk about this one like every time.KevinSo cool, so many leads that we have. Last month. It's okay. Like, you know, they didn't know it, but we looked it up and they had 38 leads in the onsite project. And I was like, okay, cool. Well, we looked at where the lead sources were coming from, both in terms of like just phone call form submission as well as actual marketing source.KevinAnd then we go to June and there were six. It's like, Wow, that's a statistically significant difference. Like something changed what happened? And we go through the list and you want to guess what changed? Actually, I'm going to make a guess. You probably don't want to because you're like, I don't know, but.AndrewWhat's the number.KevinOf 6 to 38 leads just in the onsite project? What do you think.AndrewSix up to 38.JulieMM Oh, they increased more finished quick movements listed or I.KevinGuess.AndrewI think they just added them. They were there before that at everybody their close like they register them like, like they're like this. They had the same number. Maybe the number didn't change but they just decided like, well everyone's looking at me, I'm in the hot seat. I better add something in here.KevinWhich. Okay, so that's your final clue. For those of you playing at home, when leads start being put in the system by onsite agents, after there has been five or six months of intense scrutiny of said onsite agents, what's happened is there is a new one. There is a new onsite agent who doesn't know the game to be played and silly, silly salesperson.KevinYou're putting all of your walk in leads in the system. They don't know better. It's like I always go back to when I first started playing golf. It was the best golf I've ever played in my life, in my life, because I was just playing. I wasn't overthinking it. And then you start overthinking it. You start doing all these adjustments that are wrong.KevinTypically when you're new, you start playing worse, you get in your head. And so new salesperson now in the online bucket, we went back and there were 36 online leads for July for this neighborhood. And and so then we went back to the onsite project and just ran only the walk ins and there was eight of them. And then I'm really bad at Mass.KevinIt took me about 45 seconds to figure out that the total lead count for this struggling neighborhood was 54 in a 30 day period.JulieWow. Well.KevinThe one thing I always like to remind everyone is the way that we approach marketing and advertising and do you convert means that we don't have to consider at all unless our builder partner has chosen to do something that we don't recommend. We never have to wonder to ourselves. I wonder if those 54 people are interested or qualified in any sense of the word.KevinWhy don't we have to do that? And again, this is a really big deal because every ad we ever run talks about the location, price point and type of products that you are selling. So when those leads come across, they're not just like, you know, trying to collect a $50 scratch off ticket by entering in their contact information or entering to win a car or whatever the like.KevinSo to bring it all back down to the now that I've told you that journey, it was just like, wow, we don't have a struggling community from an advertising problem. We don't have a struggling community from a lead problem. What we have is an appointment to sale conversion challenge and with 54 people in a 30 day period, someone needs to give the sales team permission to screw it up.KevinAnd what I mean by that is just start getting sales. You know, they were like, Well, this is a hiring neighborhood. And we always get the feedback that a lot of customers are concerned about selling their existing home. I go make up and make up an existing home sale package incentive. Hey, no problem. What will we'll create? What is that?KevinMake it up. Just say, Well, will partner with three agents that we know are great agents and they're they've promised to do an enhanced listing package on any referral that we send over so you can pick any of those three agents. And then as the builder, you might have to pay an extra couple hundred bucks to them to make sure you get the best photographer that they typically would use an on site or do a little bit more advertising, whatever it is.KevinBut just say, yeah, we're just putting together the finishing touches of our list. Your home VIP experience. Let's just sign contingent upon using the details of that program and feeling comfortable selling your house or whatever. But something there's too much like, yeah, it's price. Yeah, but it and I think I talked about this last time so I'm not going to go into it but that builder that had a 6% performance sell ratio really changed some things around and got to a 20% that 11 sales to 51 sales.AndrewThat's a lot of.KevinNew cumulative leads for that incentive for people that are already in their system. And I was on a call with Jesse Suggs, online sales coach for another builder this morning. She did analysis for a builder and something like 80% of their sales were to people who had been in the system for over three months. All of the friction that's preventing sales is coming from the middle and the bottom of the funnel right now.KevinAnd that's likely to continue through the end of the year. And so just wake up, smell the coffee smell and then start adjusting accordingly because you're not. I have not. Maybe one of you two have. I haven't seen any promotion that anyone has done. 80 different builders, almost every state in the country over the last three months. That has significantly increased their lead volume.KevinAnd again, the only aspects there would be qualified leads, not just leads that are from performance max campaigns and mostly spam.AndrewDon't do that.KevinYou're not you're not going to convince anyone that today is the first day that they should start thinking about buying a house or moving.AndrewNo. And we'll we definitely have some news lined up to really support that.KevinLet's just jump into that one. Oh, we got it. So from a Business insider, over 80% of Americans think it's a bad time to buy a house, which coincidentally also means that the majority of Americans also think it's a bad time to sell a house. So sellers are also buyers and so they don't want to sell if they think it's a bad time to buy because most of them are going to have to buy.KevinSo 82% think it's a bad time to buy a new home. Affordability has plunged. So unless there is a reason to move, like even this goes back to I mean, you're someone text me this right now and I'm just I'm overdoing this point because it is so important. For the second half of this year, someone said, hey, what's your thoughts about success and failures around special inventory events, i.e. showcase of homes, liquidation event, year end sales, event, everything must go, etc. It's like, well, let's not call it everything must go or liquidation sale.KevinBut even in a good market, doing that consistently once a year and then at Heartland, we just that was the only incentive we did all year. Everything else was adjusting pricing to market. But every year we did basically a December to remember sales event. It was the only sales event of the year and that trick will work once.KevinSo I was just saying, you know, maybe end of summer and fall is a better time to get your stuff sold before the end of the year when everyone else is panicking. I kind of I don't mind that, but I said, Hey, just remember 70% of the buyers are probably already in the system. So it's communicating to those people you already know.KevinAnd they said back, we were thinking of doing this event for 75 to 90 days. What's your reaction to that?AndrewI I'm trying to figure out what I want to say out loud, but it feels like it's not a real event. Then it's garbage. Like it like I'm I view it negatively. Like it's not a real deal. It's just a fake promotion.KevinIt's too long. I feel like it's too long, especially knowing that the majority of people who will take advantage of that opportunity will be people they already know. So I said, Hey, probably doesn't need to be that long, you know, just heads up and said, Well, I think we're going to have to do longer because we don't do well.KevinFostering leads long term too, which I just wanted to say that's, that's an unacceptable.AndrewThat I misunderstand that they need it longer because they're not good at fostering leads.KevinBecause they think that, yeah, they're not good at nurturing leads longer term.AndrewOkay?KevinAnd so they feel like the salesman has to go for 90 days so that new leads can come in, have time to absorb the opportunity.AndrewEtc.. So they lose people after that when they're all leads aren't useful anymore, right? And you're like, No, no, no, that's your mortgage sitting there. You have your revenue.KevinEver been right now?AndrewYeah. Yeah. Interesting.KevinYeah. Back to the article. I kind of like merging story time. Article time.AndrewYeah, that's one's perfect. Unplanned. So that's fun.KevinThe average 30 year fixed mortgage rate has risen from under 5% to nearly 7%, according to Freddie Mac. With the Federal Reserve's most aggressive interest rate hiking campaign since the 1980s. I was born in 81, so the it's been a while and everyone's still kind of pessimistic now. But that doesn't mean that but that does mean by default the people who have to are more urgent.AndrewRight?JulieYeah, they have to. And I think it's such a good opportunity to just agree with them. But yeah, it is a terrible time to buy an existing house like. Yes, absolutely. You are completely right. It is a terrible time to buy an existing house. It's a great time to buy a new house because look at this great thing.JulieWe can do to help you and look how our how they hold their value. And it just is a good opener to a conversation to talk through these things. So I don't think you're ever going to convince all these people that, oh, 80% of people are wrong. You know, everybody because they.KevinThink about the think about the psychology here of you think it's a bad time to buy and you see an ad that a builder runs that says 50, 75 grand off if you buy by the other month. I think I think your negativity bias is like, see, I told you it's bad time to buy. You don't think you're so much money.AndrewYeah, I.KevinWasn't going to buy, but now I can save 75 grant like again. It doesn't mean it doesn't work, but it doesn't work for the reason we tell ourselves. It works. When someone buys something that's on sale, that's because that's what they believe it's actually worth. Or they believe that there's some that like it's not the savings we justify that we tell our spouse, Hey, don't get mad at me.KevinI just saved us $100. But in our minds, we knew that that's not what we did.AndrewYeah, that's what it should be paid. I can see that reaction being like, oh, desperation. It's still overpriced. This as far as like if you're being kind of indoctrinated with like these articles like this where like 80% say it's bad time to buy, your reaction is to be correct with the rest of society. And so you're like, Well, I'll go along with that.AndrewI feel like they'll make me look smart. And like you said, Julie, like, well, the builders are the ones offering like these great incentives 5.25, five and a half, 4%, whatever. Like that's different than 7%, significantly different. So.KevinWell, and the other thing that's interesting about interest rates. Barbara Corcoran, you all know her from Shark Tank. Well, she's kind of got a thing that's going viral around the the U.S home industry right now because she's like everyone. You've got to buy a house now that rates are at 7% because when rates go down, the prices are going to go up.KevinSo what she's correlating to and it's not a crazy thought at all, is when rates were at four and a half and they went down to three. It took it took too long for most builders to figure this out. But builders are like, wait a minute, I can you know, I still remember people were like, how much should we raise prices by Kevin?KevinI mean, they just keep selling. What should we raise? And so I go, Just do the math of exactly what is the same payment and you can go there. Now it's the affordability around payment. You can just go to that price. You have to look at your cost, just go to that price. And so her argument is if you buy now and take that pain, you'll be better off because the rates go down, the prices of everything will go higher.KevinThat's not a guarantee, by the way, because if rates go down, it still means that there's bad things going on in the economy and the job market. It's earned.AndrewBut it's, I think to say kind of rudely my brain like that's like privilege problems, right? Like she's like I have X amount a bank account like I'm I'll deal with this and two years I'm out of the situation. But if you're stuck at 7% forever, you can't refi. Your financial situation doesn't change or drastically go up. Then you're kind of you could be stuck.AndrewSo for normal people, maybe not. But I, I definitely understand what she's what she's saying there. What's interesting is do we know anyone This is going way back. Remember Daw d0r the.KevinYork tracking the infrared tracking tool?AndrewYeah, I remember. They weren't that expensive to implement. And then, like, as we kind of got used to that and I'm not sure if there's any builders still using it, but there's a recommendation like put it, don't put it at the front door. But like in the primary bathroom or something or whatever, it'd be like, okay, real people and the model home will definitely go here versus someone going in and out, in and out deliveries, mail, etc., etc..AndrewInteresting. Having that data to kind of normalize like the salesperson. This is back to the first part of your story. Like leads went up. Now it's just a new you'll see a new sales agent on site. It's like, well, we've had 300 people come in, 200 people, a hundred people, whatever it is, that person has six, six. So that just kind of like normalize the data.AndrewBe interesting. So my little story is just like maybe it's it'll make you feel comfortable. J4 is still quirky. I don't, I don't like it. I don't get it. I was just on a call about an hour and a half ago. Really intelligent guy is like, Hey, we're seeing this like what is happening? And I'm sitting there like, Man, I wish I could be super smart right now and have the answer to this.AndrewI'm like, I have no idea. Like, let me just rebuild that report for you and maybe that will fix it. Like, I do not know, like essentially it was only charting one campaign, but the other campaigns were down here. The numbers were making sense. The ad and like, you know, everyone has the delay of the data. It seems like 24, 36, 48 hours.AndrewThere seems to be a little bit longer than that. It's a lot of fun and they have a lot of data. So it's not like we've seen some where like at the sampling a smaller is could be goofy, but it just seems to be inconsistent all over the place and it's not much fun. Thank you. Google it's not fun at all.KevinYeah it's well and the inconsistencies fortunately are not. It'd be one thing if it was just Google but it's implementation still up for on some web environments that you know it's yeah and that's where you can't I mean you will because you're human you'll get mad at the web developer but it's it's multiple web developers that are having this issue it's not just one.KevinAnd sometimes it's for a bit of code that really should have nothing to do with causing any interference with GFR. So I feel like I use this a lot. But you know, WordPress is a great format for a blog, but trying to build a website with WordPress, in fact, again, just this morning talked with a large organization, multistate organization that still uses WordPress for their and we were talking about they are having a spam issue.KevinAnd I said, well, a lot of times WordPress is something that doesn't help that and they're like, Oh really? Why go? Because you don't often update WordPress as often as you should when you've got 20 different plug ins that are connected to that. Yeah. So then we'll potentially break when you update it. Like, yeah, we're on a really old version.KevinI go, Yeah, you're going to get spammed.AndrewIt's been hacked.KevinSo it's that same kind of issue though that WordPress has where you're using the same website you always have go for said, Hey, no big deal, just put in this line of code and put it here exactly where we tell you and everything will be fine. But there's interaction with other lines of code that really shouldn't be affecting it, that that are for some people, thankfully, it's only about 5% that are still working through that issue.KevinAnd also, thankfully, I just saw an article posted yesterday like for 90% of people, UK is still alive and kicking and I.AndrewDidn't see it. I'm like, I want to use it. But then I. Principal Mike, I don't think I could be the one that says I.KevinFinally converted all of my little stars on Google Analytics over to Jay for accounts versus UK. But it is terrible.JulieI have to say I've gotten more use to die for than I thought because the other day I was in there and I was like, Oh shoot, I'm using you. Like just because it looked familiar to me. And I was like, Oh, I'm not. I'm just used to this now. So that's good. And Andrew, the most frustrating thing is when a piece of data is showing up in one place, like randomly, but it's showing up in the place it needs to show up.JulieYou're like, I know it's there, it exists, I just can't make it. So that was where it needs to show.AndrewI think that was Tuesday. Julie and I were troubleshooting Google Tag Manager and J4 and like everything was correct, it just wouldn't show up in both places. For certain events. We're setting up to support conversion tracking. Yeah, there's no certainty. Which by the way, I look above my head. The site added. You look right, that perfect.JulieWill.AndrewColor my room. It's stuff that's that's all my story is but I get the 5% of of all of it so like 90% of my world is it's it's broken J for I'm like are you kidding?KevinAndrew is our level five tech support. Yeah.AndrewSo it all rolls sideways and uphill and diagonally to me. It's great.KevinWe don't have a perfect tracker here to fixing everything, but we are, I think, nearly perfect on identifying the cause. Like if it's something that we can't touch, like a website or a server issue or whatever. But we can, we can usually help sometimes.JulieI'm actually happy when Andrew can't fix it out, so I feel like it was a dumb question. It was like, This might be stupid. Andrew And then when you can't and I'm like, Yes, it's a real.AndrewProblem and sometimes that's enough is like, okay, cool. I'm not going crazy anymore. Like we all agree this is just weird and quirky. We're not going to worry about it for a little bit. And then sure enough, I'll just fix itself on its own.KevinNext up, I guess we'll link to my tweet. We still call it that. I don't know. But Zillow is hiring over 100 photographers around the country like to continue to enhance their enhanced listings product. And so what's really cool about this is Zillow. If you've missed somewhere, been under a rock over the last six months or so, showing shown time plus which they purchased, which is like the centralized scheduling platform and then they've kind of built around that enhanced listing features, 3D tours, photos, basically everything you need to get your listing to look better.KevinYou get a better layer on the actual map as well. They're going all in on this and I think it's the right call for any syndication company to do so because, you know, Julie wrote a book and that's great, but content's still hard for builders, harder than it maybe should be. A lot of times it's just because they are still doing something really stupid, like connected TV advertising or billboards or whatever.KevinLike you have the money to solve this problem, but you're using it for for less efficient purposes. But I, I have a feeling this is going to be huge when they start to roll it out. And I have no idea when they'll be doing this. But the moment the builders can just say are already advertising on Zillow and it's like, yeah, for X amount more or I don't know if they're going to include it, but you want to just come take pictures of this house, like really good pictures and it's also a good box out move for home XCOM, which is trying to come in and disrupt.KevinAlthough I read an article that basically they even know they're not going to be Zillow, it's like where our goal is to be a really good number two and keep Zillow honest. But we're not going to we're not going to take over.AndrewI mean, there's there's being ads to Google ads. So there's always the number two. I wonder if they'll even have the photographers edit, Which would be.KevinI think so. I mean, basic basic edits. Yeah, basic cleanup.AndrewAnd that's like, imagine that.KevinBe really smart about this from a strategic perspective. And homes while Costar Homes parent company started this on the commercial side they can take these pictures and again I haven't seen any paperwork so I have no clue how this will work. But my hunch is it will work similar to Costar. And that Costar lets the commercial agents use the imagery that they shoot for anything except to send to other commercial real estate syndication portals.KevinSo this whole concept Inman Connect in Vegas has gone on this week, and one of the panels with Robert Rifkin, the CEO of Compass and someone from Redfin and the CEO of Next Next Home, I think is the name of the company. They're all talking about how like pocket listings or like listings that are unique to to a company are just so incredibly important right now because there's not enough of them.KevinAnd that's why we talked about Howard Hanna's move in the Cleveland area to be like, Nope, we're not sharing our listings with other offices in the same way we have been. This is just like, again, it's in the technology world. They call it like getting closer to the bare metal. You're talking about taking pictures of listings, You're getting closer to boxing out competitors in like the most bare metal approach, like here, like it's where the rubber meets the road.KevinLike you don't have pictures. Great. So you're listing on homes that com says that the house is 2000 square feet but it has no pictures.AndrewYeah, it's pretty simple.KevinNo one's going to care, Alison.AndrewEspecially the beat, I'm sure. Great pictures to like. They'll be standardized and like, that would be the look for real estate photography. Whatever Zillow decides, if they end up being like they set the mood, they set the tempo of it. So that's, that's pretty cool. Good for them.KevinYeah. I just think what good for everyone if it's done right and we don't know if it will be done right, but anything that helps a builder solve a problem at a reasonable price and help Zillow like that's doesn't happen often again. But win win wins are really good.AndrewYeah, I like it again.KevinAll right. Back to bad news that we're we're going. I think so.AndrewIt's like bad news I think it's bad.KevinFrom from Redfin dot com housing market Update The typical U.S. homebuyers monthly payment is up nearly 20% from a year ago as prices rise.AndrewThat's a big 20%.KevinThe average price of a home is only up 3.2%, but the average payment is up 20. Thank you. Interest rates?AndrewYeah. Interest rates, do you think? Obviously lower down payments, I would assume so. That's affecting it. Yes. Is it my mind on this goes to everything outside of housing like this does affect housing, but I'm like, so I'm in Florida right here by the water 5 minutes away. I'm thinking like, oh, like a lot of people on a boat.AndrewYou got a boat show. You do not see a price. You see a monthly payment on every boat. And you're like, yeah, boats 229 a month bring a boat warranty and include seats. So all this stuff here, like I'll be looking at Lindsay 229 month, like we just don't have to go to Chick-Fil-A six times. Like that's not bad.AndrewLet's sacrifice that. We could get a boat, bring boat. But as things like this go up, I'm like, Oh, that's not an option anymore. Let's not do that. And now the person that's selling the boat, they have less commission now they're making less money. That's kind of like a cascading effect of like if you're what's the phrase like house house for like eventually I feel like that long term, I don't have the data on this and not on The Economist info on this like you eventually that affects other industries and it's this full circle of like, that's not good.AndrewI'm sure there's like a perfect number to be at, right? That I don't know. Maybe there isn't where if it's too high, then it affects you spend less in other places. If it's too low, then there should be more spend and housing. You could afford more as that keeps prices lower, keeps demand lower, if that makes any sense in my head.AndrewThis makes perfect sense.KevinI think it makes it just like, I don't know, 2000 people who work for the Fed, who are trying to figure out like answer that question extremely complicated. That's why rates are moving around and I'm just I got a little bit distracted because I'm looking at this chart, which is on the video version on on YouTube. For those of you watching or on do, you can become yeah, home listings are down 21% year over year look at so 2022 the red line this is when everyone's like see I told you so the world is going to end because listing listings started reappearing and then June, July they fell off and they I mean, the yellowKevinline for 2023 is just I mean, it's it's in the range, let's just say, of 2020 COVID lows, like April, May, number of new homes that hit the market was at an all time low for April May. But we've kind of been hanging around there all of 20, 23. It's just incredible, like the amount of pain on the used home side of the world for these folks who don't have the number of transactions is crazy.KevinAnd I am hearing again, we got to get an agent or a broker on the program to talk about this because I'm getting more emails and texts as well from builders who are like, what is going on with real estate agents? They are losing their their mind. Every deal is like a huge there. I mean, some of the words they use to describe the behavior, I don't know if I can say on air, but.AndrewYou need a little sensor.KevinBut they're like, please tell us that you have something happen at the summit in September talking about how to handle agents and what to do because it's just it's but I mean, you have to understand the pain that a lot of them are going through here. It's not it might be irrational behavior, but it's irrational behavior caused by irrational source, if that makes.JulieSense. That's why I just had a conversation with a builder that I'm like, Why? What did you do? Why are your walk ins so much higher? And it's somebody who they have never wanted to bother with realtors. They never needed realtors. They were just a pain in their side. And she was like, What? Honestly, we've been Dylan more with realtors and open to working with them now just because they need they need listings and we've got the listings.JulieSo we're like, okay, so what's kind of even changing how some people are open to working with realtor.AndrewRealtors.JulieI'm sure.AndrewPursuing.JulieIt's going to make things more crazy for them for sure.KevinYeah. Interesting. All right. I don't think there's anything else really that I want to talk about from the news. It's more like we know that stuff. Elon Musk is trying to win back advertisers with brand safety technology. I mean, I'm I don't even want to think.AndrewAbout it for. That's my thought. I'm then I have this for this this new or old news I don't know.KevinFirst of all the whole the whole thing, I mean, maybe it settles down and in some ways it has because thread thread who like, what's that thing? All the users that I and the community is alive and well they're most of the people I interact with are not have not gone away or stopped actually on. Okay but like advertisers are so fact I do want to read this I pulled up another thing that we can't share the link to because it's a subscription to Digiday plus they called me in to like a $200 subscription for the year because I really wanted to read get you again a point for like great content wins.KevinBut advertisers are so fickle and right now they're such pressure to perform that experimentation on a platform that's been there, done that, and not much has changed. It's like now we all tried. Remember, everyone was going to boycott Instagram and Facebook and never used them again and they were going to go on LinkedIn and Twitter and Pinterest and all these other places.KevinWell, guess what? They're back because they need things that actually deliver qualified people in revenue. So this article is here's what ad and media execs really mean when they commented on their queue to earnings. This is hilarious to me. So and so far so good. I'll try to use different voices just for entertainment value. So these are all things that that high level executives said on their earnings call.KevinThe is Doug Horn, the CFO at Gannett. For those of you who are born in the last 35 years, that's a newspaper company who tries to do digital media as well. But here's what he said. Despite secular headwinds, the decrease in print advertising revenue was limited to 8.9% year over marking the smallest decline observed in the past year.KevinAnd then here's what he actually meant. That quarter could have been a lot worse, except for the fact that our print advertising sucked less than expected. I think people are still dumb enough to buy print ads. Spence Newman, the CFO at Netflix, said. Our overall ad arm subscription plus ads continue to be higher than basic ad free globally, same as the statement on standard Bore.KevinHere's what he meant. Advertising is not a major moneymaker for Netflix, yet we made all of our money by just not letting people share subscriptions. I'm not even going to say what they actually said, just what they meant, because it's it's to me, it's just a really good insight into the chaos that is the traditional advertising world. Zaslav Warner Brothers CEO said.KevinWho needs a massive subscriber base When you can focus on a handful of loyal customers and make millions, am I right? So basically it's like we're not even going to try to grow the number of subscribers we have there. Just charge them a heck of a lot of money for not a lot of content, and it's working just fine.KevinMichael CAVANAUGH Comcast president. There are too many moving parts that would need to align for a deal of the magnitude to come together of being sold or swapping business units. See, I think there's one other one in here that was really interesting. Bob Bakish, CEO of Paramount Global, talking about the whole writers strike and labor dispute. Basically, whoever has the goal tends to make the rules and we've got the gold.KevinAnd they also by the way, it's been interesting just hearing all of the AI generative AI discussions around like, could you pick a worse time to have a strike over something that.AndrewSo yeah.KevinIt just is really interesting. So I mean, Mark Zuckerberg, this is pretty good. Rails plays exceeded 200 billion per day across Facebook and Instagram. We're seeing good progress on real monetization as well with the annual revenue run rate across our apps now exceeding $10 billion up from 3 billion last fall. What he actually meant is we're about to make a whole crap ton of money from short form videos.KevinVery soon.AndrewYeah.KevinBut like people in the print industry, I mean, even TV again, I've hinted at a couple of times, but connected TV advertising sounds awesome. And like Disney Plus right now is pivoting their last call. Iger just said, You know what? We don't want people like we're going to up the price of Disney Plus because we will make way more money.KevinIf we can sell ads, then if we make people pay what they're willing to pay for the platform. So their goal is actually to grow the ad supported subscriptions more than anything else. And if if they and others convince more people to do that and you can start affordably, that's the key. Affordably targeting households with TV advertising on streaming services, that would be great for right now.KevinIt's the only way that people like Disney can make money. They can sell the that because the concept of it is so good in an actual performance it it's not worth the expense being paid except for those people who are making money from the ads being being bought.AndrewYeah, I mean, essentially it is Go ahead.JulieDoes it it feel weird that we're like subscriptions? No more ads. And then the pendulum is swinging other way, right? It's like our kids aren't going to understand. No, no, we're just going back to cable. Like, we already had this, and then we didn't have this, and now we have this again. It's just the way things cycle through is interesting to me.KevinWell, I think it's a cat and mouse game of we as advertisers. We want this ability to target at the household level. What screen streaming accounts allow that cable accounts didn't I used to do cable TV advertising at Heartland and you could pick a zip code. That was it like you could you can say target all of the Time Warner or Comcast subscribers in the zip code.KevinThat was the most you could target. Now that you can target accounts and you know who those accounts are, and that data gets blended with other data sources, it's the right thing that advertisers want. Whether consumers will put up with it is another thing, because it's it's hard to go back to like we use YouTube TV. Big brother is out.KevinMy wife loves Big brother. That's usually I get her the subscription to like the all access thing for Big Brother for her birthday. We missed the first two episodes, so we have to go back and watch YouTube, TV records, everything. But you have to. If you don't put it in your own DVR tool, you have to watch it with ads.KevinAnd I kid you not like every ad break is 8/32 commercials and they ad and like double it's like punitive. It's like you missed it haha we got you.AndrewYou want it.KevinAnd it's just painful to watch that stuff.AndrewPainful. I mean, at the end of the day, it's revenue per user, right? Just like you look at Facebook when they deliver their quarterlies, you read the PDFs and you're like, okay, okay. Like, all right, a average U.S. user is worth $23.54 per quarter. So you're like, Oh, well, I'll just pay $15 a month. I have no ads on my Facebook for them.AndrewYou know, they're not making that choice to do that. But that's what it is. That's at least that's why I interpret it like, right, we could go this way or this way. Revenue per user and then revenue at the end. But then they get into like, well, we need longevity, we need retention of these users. We can have attrition and dying off.AndrewSo they have to factor in all those things. But a fun, fun analysis for billions of dollars and and revenue to do. And like, here's what I'm presenting shaking your hands like I'm nervous to tell this to someone.KevinBut okay favorites.AndrewOh man. Oh man.KevinYeah. Andrews. Andrews again filling in for Beth last second. Let's see I think.AndrewFavorite.KevinAnd you can skip if you need to.AndrewActually you.KevinGot everything.JulieI got one. So my son just turned 15. He's starting high school, so for his birthday, he wanted us to take him shopping at the backpacker, which is like a it's more expensive than we're like usually for school clothes we would do like Target and all Navy because it's very everybody knows that I'm thrifty like that, so it's more expensive.JulieBut they had the they got the coolest school backpacks there to him out of the loop but they're there have an insulated pocket in the front for their lunches. So you know, you're 15 at high school. You don't want to carry a lunch bell. You must have like, built into the cool little backpack. So watch me cringe. Like it.JulieYes. Made me cringe a little bit when we.AndrewYeah, these are up there. I'm looking at them.JulieWhat we paid for all his clothes there. But, you know, he's getting older. He wanted the the cooler clothes.AndrewYeah. Yeah.KevinI'll just I'm wondering, I think your favorite should be the kids are back in school.AndrewThat is. That is my favorite. Yeah, that's great. It's my favorite. That's that. You want to do it this year. But yeah, I started This will be our next so like two weeks ago they started I time this is out I think or a week ago, whatever it may be. But yeah, I'm excited for that. But the fun challenge though is record 330 Eastern day at home.AndrewLike right now I want at 4:00 but I want to start is when they get home. So I'm like mute, unmute, mute because I have to walk through the door, which is, you know, 15 feet that way with my door shut and all that stuff is fine. But yeah, that was fun shopping for them. We have three so that you have to but you went to the backpacker, which Looks like a super sweet spot to go to.JulieFor a few things not have.AndrewYou think about.JulieEverything.AndrewBut it's yeah, our kids are in uniforms which is great, but you still like they got to get the dry fit ones otherwise, like the collared shirts shrink and then so they don't last long time. But yeah, so it's expensive starting back up school but I'm glad they're gone. It's quite the power bill will definitely go down because Fortnite and the Ps5, the Xbox and desktop are not running upstairs all day.AndrewRight. I'll take that. Forgot about that.KevinBut I am. I'm late to the game here. I feel like food shown up in boxes has come and gone for most people. They're like, Yeah, I tried Blue Apron, all that stuff. This is factor 75. I don't know if you've heard of this, but their refrigerated meals, they're all fully, fully prepared.AndrewOkay.KevinAnd the quality of the meat in particular is incredible. Like it is. It's like going to Cardinals, which is the premier butcher here in town. If you're going to make ribs or steak for special occasion, you're going to craft onions. All the meat is really, really good. It's not I guess some people use it for like dieting or whatever, but there's four or five categories like keto or like low calorie vegetarian, vegan or whatever.KevinIt's all really good. There is a pork chop thing that my wife had because she did it first and I was like, What are we doing? This is dumb. And I tried it. I thought it was filet mignon covered with like a cheese sauce. It was some pork chop thing. And I was like, okay, I'm sold. They can make pork chop tastes like filet mignon.KevinI'm in. I don't I'm sure it's expensive. But here's the thing. Everyone's going to school for the first time. No more home schooling for the Oakley's. And that means there's not lunches that are going to be downstairs and I won't eat anything. Like, I'll just eat a a a protein bar for lunch.AndrewKevin.KevinAnd it's way better for my body if I just eat actual meal.AndrewIt does a good and it's, yeah, we do some meal meal prep like this as well. It's definitely worth it. It's still cheaper than going to cheaper as in, if I do leave the office, I go pick up Chick-Fil-A, then I wait in line and then I drive back and then I sit at it like there's 45 minutes right there.AndrewEven though chick flies 10 minutes and this is maybe a dollar two because.KevinIt's all refrigerated, there's really no prep time for every single one of these entrees is 2 minutes.AndrewYes. And it's real food. Like, it's not like the ingredients are like chicken.KevinIn the bath. It does take up a little bit of fridge space. But yeah, that's some surprisingly because this is not really my thing.AndrewSecond fridge, I'm thinking that's well. Oh, have you had their blueberry buttermilk pancakes or.KevinIt's not done any breakfast. It's just purely a lunch thing. So Melanie doesn't have to mess with extra groceries for lunch for either of us. We just. And the portion sizes. I'm not. I'm not hungry.AndrewWith a smoky bacon and cheddar egg bites. Four of them looks pretty good.KevinFor those of you who may not be familiar, Andrews to all of the sessions are food and clothes.AndrewShorts, shopping for short.KevinOr shopping for shirts.JulieSpecifically shorts.AndrewIt's hot. It's hot and miserable. Yeah. I'll just move to like, not unlike the cold either. I'm stuck here.KevinAll right, That'll do it for this week. Thanks again for tuning in and joining us every week. We've got some fantastic guest episodes coming out shortly, one including Julie, talking a little bit more in-depth about her book. For those of you who haven't order in yet, you get a little bit of a preview. So check that out. We'll see you next time. The post Ep 297: Less Is More appeared first on Online Sales and Marketing for Home Builders - DYC.