St. Conti Communications - Builders Build Reputation, Brand and Sales with PR

	Builders Build Reputation, Brand and Sales with PR By Donna St. Jean Conti, APR Open any magazine or newspaper or tune into a radio or television news broadcast, and you’ll find something that is the result of public relations (PR) efforts. Read about an industry associate getting a new promotion. Hear radio coverage of an event. Receive an e-mail newsletter about the latest trends in home building; that’s PR. According to the information site, Knowledgerush.com, “Public relations is internal and external communication to inform or influence specific publics.” This encompasses many activities. Building the Brand Because public relations is used to inform various publics or audiences (end users, the media, investors, employees, etc.), it plays a critical role in the development of a builder’s reputation – otherwise known as brand – whether the builder is a national, regional or custom homebuilder. What is the first thing people think of when they hear your company name? Is it best customer service, good quality or maybe great value? What you want it to be is up to you to determine then deliver through your company’s operations. You’ll also want to use public relations to consistently communicate that message. Marketing, Advertising, PR - Sales As you likely know, marketing is an umbrella term encompassing many functions that generate awareness and, therefore, sales. Sales are aided by the awareness, calls to action and collateral materials generated through effective advertising and PR campaigns. PR and advertising support each other by communicating brand messages in different ways. PR informs audiences while advertising provides reminders along with pertinent contact information. In the most basic terms, advertising is paid placement – billboards, radio or television spots, magazine or newspaper advertisements, direct mail pieces, etc. A company with a message buys advertising space and produces an advertisement to run in that space. The company determines what is said and when it is said. Advertising is guaranteed to run. The company controls the message and therefore its effect on brand. PR in its simplest form is un-paid placement. A company with a message instructs its representative to contact various outlets (newspapers, magazines, e-zines, broadcast outlets, speaker coordinators, blog writers, etc.) with news and information about the company to solicit appearances or coverage. The company can craft its message, keeping with its branding strategy, and provide it to the outlet, but it is up to the outlet to determine how or even if it will use the information. Often, even when an outlet intends to run a story, it can take several weeks to months from the time the information was provided for the story to publish. The Highest Quality Building Materials So, if a story is not even guaranteed to run, why go to the expense of PR? Because, there’s a pay off from PR that makes it well worth the relative risks. Numerous studies have shown, and common sense will tell you, that a news report or trend article carries more legitimacy - more impact - than a paid advertisement. Information in an article appears as non-biased, factual information, so audiences are more likely to accept and act on it. “We’ve had clients tell us that PR is more effective than advertising,” says Amy Ogden, public relations manager at Clockwork Marketing Services Inc., of Ponte Vedra, Fla. The company represents SRG Homes and Neighborhoods (www.srghomes.com), Trident Realty Corp (www.tridentrealty.com) and Sisler Johnston Interior Design (www.sislerjohnston.com). Ogden commented that one of the builders her agency represents used to rely almost exclusively on advertising until it hired Clockwork Marketing to represent it. “Before they used PR, they used a lot of advertising – front and back covers, multiple page inserts, etc. We halted their advertising and focused only on PR. Now they report being told by industry associates that their company mentions are often seen in publications. They add that people never said they saw their ads.” Built on Goals Goals, time and budget drive your marketing and therefore PR efforts for brand awareness. Typical PR goals for home builders include getting company mentions i n the media to capitalize on the third party endorsement. This helps build credibility and gets the builder’s brand in front of key audiences to increase inquiries for achieving marketing goals. However, as Ogden is quick to point out, “PR does not increase sales; good sales people increases sales.” Public relations creates the interest. Joan Gladstone is the president of Laguna Beach, Calif. based Gladstone International, Inc. Gladstone has provided PR services for homebuilders and the real estate industry for 17 years and has a client list that includes Lennar (www.lennar.com), Fieldstone Communities (www.fieldstone-homes.com), and SunCal Companies (http://www.suncal.com/). Gladstone says that one of the first things a builder needs to decide for any PR program is the audience based on the market conditions at the time. Does the company want to raise visibility with buyers, or are there other target audiences that are important? “As we have worked with home builders, we have prioritized the audiences to reflect the builders’ business goals. For one builder, operating in a hot market, the priority was not to market to home buyers but to find land, so that affected the public relations effort,” says Gladstone. “The question became, ‘If my main goal is to find land to build, than I need to look at industry publications and use messaging that talks to the land professionals, master planned developers, land brokers and others in a position to sell land.” “Another important audience exists. They are the elected officials in markets where there is a challenging entitlement process,” Gladstone adds. As builders look to cultivate good working relationships with officials in positions to approve projects, they need to look at outlets that reach city and county staff plus elected officials. Timing is a key factor in PR effectiveness, but it is timing tied to frequency rather than seasonality. For PR to be truly effective, the frequency must remain constant through all market conditions. This will maintain the brand awareness. “I would caution people from doing media outreach on a sporadic basis and really think about a more consistent program,” adds Gladstone. “Keep your company’s name in the media by making regular news announcements – new hires, milestones, etc. Also, continue to position your company as an expert source and as a contact to quote in trend stories. You’ll be seen as someone who is respected and influential in the home building community.” According to Gladstone, one mistake builders make is to focus too heavily on outward communications and not to put equal or greater weight on being responsive to the media when they call. “It’s a matter of credibility,” she says. “If a home builder embarks on being an expert source, the company needs to make a commitment by having one or more trained media contacts available who is responsive and calling reporters by their deadlines.” In general, national builders enlist several PR tools (issuing news releases, providing events speakers, contributing articles, publishing newsletters, e-zines, etc.) simultaneously to industry and real estate media audiences on a national scale. National builders often have separate focuses on regional newspapers as well as business and trade magazines. Regional builders will employ a combination of these same activities but with equal focus on local business and news audiences. Finally, custom home builders are more likely to rely on activities that support positive word-of-mouth awareness among very targeted, upscale audiences, for example by publishing customer testimonials in lifestyle magazines that define the amenities of their high-profile homes. Internet: Beyond the Homepage If you don’t already have a website, build one. Just as you might go to a retail site to research a major appliance purchase, most PR audiences will investigate your company online. This makes your website the best place to communicate the company messaging that supports your brand. Advertising and PR materials can direct audiences to your site. Don’t stop at just building a website. There are ways to incorporate the Internet in your PR activities. Create a separate site for your key executive’s blog to provide commentary on industry trends. That could go a long way in establishing the person as an expert industry insider. Develop an opt-in emailed newsletter to deliver your good news. Think of the Internet as a media outlet, another avenue to deliver your brand messaging. Tyler Waite is regional sales manager for Move.com with nine years of experience specializing in making Internet related marketing recommendations. He reminds builders to incorporate their philanthropic efforts on their websites saying, “In terms of branding, builders should have a mind for capitalizing on PR. Then, once they've brought someone to their website, it helps if they have something on the home page about their charity work, green building or both. This draws people into the rest of site while supporting the company brand and reputation.” He added that showing this side of the company’s image helps humanize it. Outside Agency or In-House Staff? Some builders have one in-house person. Others have PR departments. Others use outside support. Whether you use outside PR support - either a consultant or an agency - versus employing internal support is a choice made by your management team based, again, on marketing goals, time frames and budgets. What is most important is finding support that understands what goes into building your brand and whose costs fit within your budget. When the decision is made to add outside PR support, guidelines must be created to define who is responsible for each phase and task of your program. These three questions become the basis of your relationship: What do you want to accomplish? How long do you have to do it? How much can you pay? Measurement You must refer to your marketing goals, time factors and budgets in measuring the results of PR efforts and determine relative successes. There are many intangibles. How do you measure the impact of your company’s single mention in a trend story versus an entire article focused on the company and its products? If the single mention is in a top national publication, that might have significantly more impact than an entire article in a smaller, regionally based publication, if your goal is national exposure. How do you measure the potentially worldwide exposure from online publicity? What was your goal? In many cases, success measurement is based on subjective determination. Does there seem to be a lot of buzz about your company, and is it helping your overall goals? One way to measure PR results is to use advertising costs as your barometer. Determine how much space PR mentions represent, and calculate how much that space would have cost. Compare that cost to what you paid for the time and effort it took to get the mentions. Presumably, if the space cost is more than it cost in time and effort to get the placement, your PR effort is a success. But how do you measure the relative impact? Another way to measure effectiveness is to maintain a record of mentions in a chart that also tracks whether the impressions were positive, negative or neutral. At the end of the tracking period, if more mentions are positive than negative, presumably is it has been a successful campaign. But, what were the relative costs? Yet another way to measure PR effectiveness is to perform media audits. At the beginning of a PR effort, sample your company mentions (if any) among targeted outlets. Determine whether the mentions are positive or negative relative to your marketing goals. Implement your PR. Repeat the audit process. How have the tone and number of mentions changed? What are the relative differences in the messages? “It goes back to your goals,” says Gladstone. “Public relations is not a science; it’s an art. Many times the success will be more anecdotal than statistical. You’ll know by going to events, trade shows and industry events. If people know who you are and know about your company, you know your PR campaign has been a success.” Pitch it, and They Will Come Whether the goal is to inform city officials and their constituents about your good intentions, promote the opening of your new development or announce the movement of your executive staff while underlining your company’s continued success, a well-planned PR campaign with messaging in keeping with your company’s brand identity is a crucial part of your marketing efforts. To be most effective, the efforts will integrate all possible tools within budget and time constraints to carry out set goals. With consistency, you will see that your audiences will come to you. They will approve your plans, buy your properties, seek your employment offerings and support your brand. # # #

Builders Build Reputation, Brand and Sales with PR

By Donna St. Jean Conti, APR

Open any magazine or newspaper or tune into a radio or television news broadcast, and you’ll find something that is the result of public relations (PR) efforts. Read about an industry associate getting a new promotion. Hear radio coverage of an event. Receive an e-mail newsletter about the latest trends in home building; that’s PR.

According to the information site, Knowledgerush.com, “Public relations is internal and external communication to inform or influence specific publics.” This encompasses many activities.

Building the Brand

Because public relations is used to inform various publics or audiences (end users, the media, investors, employees, etc.), it plays a critical role in the development of a builder’s reputation – otherwise known as brand – whether the builder is a national, regional or custom homebuilder.

What is the first thing people think of when they hear your company name? Is it best customer service, good quality or maybe great value? What you want it to be is up to you to determine then deliver through your company’s operations. You’ll also want to use public relations to consistently communicate that message.

Marketing, Advertising, PR - Sales

As you likely know, marketing is an umbrella term encompassing many functions that generate awareness and, therefore, sales. Sales are aided by the awareness, calls to action and collateral materials generated through effective advertising and PR campaigns.

PR and advertising support each other by communicating brand messages in different ways. PR informs audiences while advertising provides reminders along with pertinent contact information.

In the most basic terms, advertising is paid placement – billboards, radio or television spots, magazine or newspaper advertisements, direct mail pieces, etc. A company with a message buys advertising space and produces an advertisement to run in that space. The company determines what is said and when it is said. Advertising is guaranteed to run. The company controls the message and therefore its effect on brand.

PR in its simplest form is un-paid placement. A company with a message instructs its representative to contact various outlets (newspapers, magazines, e-zines, broadcast outlets, speaker coordinators, blog writers, etc.) with news and information about the company to solicit appearances or coverage. The company can craft its message, keeping with its branding strategy, and provide it to the outlet, but it is up to the outlet to determine how or even if it will use the information. Often, even when an outlet intends to run a story, it can take several weeks to months from the time the information was provided for the story to publish.

The Highest Quality Building Materials

So, if a story is not even guaranteed to run, why go to the expense of PR? Because, there’s a pay off from PR that makes it well worth the relative risks. Numerous studies have shown, and common sense will tell you, that a news report or trend article carries more legitimacy - more impact - than a paid advertisement. Information in an article appears as non-biased, factual information, so audiences are more likely to accept and act on it.

“We’ve had clients tell us that PR is more effective than advertising,” says Amy Ogden, public relations manager at Clockwork Marketing Services Inc., of Ponte Vedra, Fla. The company represents SRG Homes and Neighborhoods (www.srghomes.com), Trident Realty Corp (www.tridentrealty.com) and Sisler Johnston Interior Design (www.sislerjohnston.com).

Ogden commented that one of the builders her agency represents used to rely almost exclusively on advertising until it hired Clockwork Marketing to represent it. “Before they used PR, they used a lot of advertising – front and back covers, multiple page inserts, etc. We halted their advertising and focused only on PR. Now they report being told by industry associates that their company mentions are often seen in publications. They add that people never said they saw their ads.”

Built on Goals

Goals, time and budget drive your marketing and therefore PR efforts for brand awareness. Typical PR goals for home builders include getting company mentions i n the media to capitalize on the third party endorsement. This helps build credibility and gets the builder’s brand in front of key audiences to increase inquiries for achieving marketing goals.

However, as Ogden is quick to point out, “PR does not increase sales; good sales people increases sales.” Public relations creates the interest.

Joan Gladstone is the president of Laguna Beach, Calif. based Gladstone International, Inc. Gladstone has provided PR services for homebuilders and the real estate industry for 17 years and has a client list that includes Lennar (www.lennar.com), Fieldstone Communities (www.fieldstone-homes.com), and SunCal Companies (http://www.suncal.com/).

Gladstone says that one of the first things a builder needs to decide for any PR program is the audience based on the market conditions at the time. Does the company want to raise visibility with buyers, or are there other target audiences that are important?

“As we have worked with home builders, we have prioritized the audiences to reflect the builders’ business goals. For one builder, operating in a hot market, the priority was not to market to home buyers but to find land, so that affected the public relations effort,” says Gladstone. “The question became, ‘If my main goal is to find land to build, than I need to look at industry publications and use messaging that talks to the land professionals, master planned developers, land brokers and others in a position to sell land.”

“Another important audience exists. They are the elected officials in markets where there is a challenging entitlement process,” Gladstone adds. As builders look to cultivate good working relationships with officials in positions to approve projects, they need to look at outlets that reach city and county staff plus elected officials.

Timing is a key factor in PR effectiveness, but it is timing tied to frequency rather than seasonality. For PR to be truly effective, the frequency must remain constant through all market conditions. This will maintain the brand awareness.

“I would caution people from doing media outreach on a sporadic basis and really think about a more consistent program,” adds Gladstone. “Keep your company’s name in the media by making regular news announcements – new hires, milestones, etc. Also, continue to position your company as an expert source and as a contact to quote in trend stories. You’ll be seen as someone who is respected and influential in the home building community.”

According to Gladstone, one mistake builders make is to focus too heavily on outward communications and not to put equal or greater weight on being responsive to the media when they call. “It’s a matter of credibility,” she says. “If a home builder embarks on being an expert source, the company needs to make a commitment by having one or more trained media contacts available who is responsive and calling reporters by their deadlines.”

In general, national builders enlist several PR tools (issuing news releases, providing events speakers, contributing articles, publishing newsletters, e-zines, etc.) simultaneously to industry and real estate media audiences on a national scale. National builders often have separate focuses on regional newspapers as well as business and trade magazines. Regional builders will employ a combination of these same activities but with equal focus on local business and news audiences.

Finally, custom home builders are more likely to rely on activities that support positive word-of-mouth awareness among very targeted, upscale audiences, for example by publishing customer testimonials in lifestyle magazines that define the amenities of their high-profile homes.

Internet: Beyond the Homepage

If you don’t already have a website, build one. Just as you might go to a retail site to research a major appliance purchase, most PR audiences will investigate your company online. This makes your website the best place to communicate the company messaging that supports your brand. Advertising and PR materials can direct audiences to your site.

Don’t stop at just building a website. There are ways to incorporate the Internet in your PR activities. Create a separate site for your key executive’s blog to provide commentary on industry trends. That could go a long way in establishing the person as an expert industry insider. Develop an opt-in emailed newsletter to deliver your good news. Think of the Internet as a media outlet, another avenue to deliver your brand messaging.

Tyler Waite is regional sales manager for Move.com with nine years of experience specializing in making Internet related marketing recommendations. He reminds builders to incorporate their philanthropic efforts on their websites saying, “In terms of branding, builders should have a mind for capitalizing on PR. Then, once they've brought someone to their website, it helps if they have something on the home page about their charity work, green building or both. This draws people into the rest of site while supporting the company brand and reputation.” He added that showing this side of the company’s image helps humanize it.

Outside Agency or In-House Staff?

Some builders have one in-house person. Others have PR departments. Others use outside support. Whether you use outside PR support - either a consultant or an agency - versus employing internal support is a choice made by your management team based, again, on marketing goals, time frames and budgets. What is most important is finding support that understands what goes into building your brand and whose costs fit within your budget.

When the decision is made to add outside PR support, guidelines must be created to define who is responsible for each phase and task of your program. These three questions become the basis of your relationship:

What do you want to accomplish?

How long do you have to do it?

How much can you pay?

Measurement

You must refer to your marketing goals, time factors and budgets in measuring the results of PR efforts and determine relative successes.

There are many intangibles. How do you measure the impact of your company’s single mention in a trend story versus an entire article focused on the company and its products? If the single mention is in a top national publication, that might have significantly more impact than an entire article in a smaller, regionally based publication, if your goal is national exposure.

How do you measure the potentially worldwide exposure from online publicity? What was your goal?

In many cases, success measurement is based on subjective determination. Does there seem to be a lot of buzz about your company, and is it helping your overall goals?

One way to measure PR results is to use advertising costs as your barometer. Determine how much space PR mentions represent, and calculate how much that space would have cost. Compare that cost to what you paid for the time and effort it took to get the mentions. Presumably, if the space cost is more than it cost in time and effort to get the placement, your PR effort is a success. But how do you measure the relative impact?

Another way to measure effectiveness is to maintain a record of mentions in a chart that also tracks whether the impressions were positive, negative or neutral. At the end of the tracking period, if more mentions are positive than negative, presumably is it has been a successful campaign. But, what were the relative costs?

Yet another way to measure PR effectiveness is to perform media audits. At the beginning of a PR effort, sample your company mentions (if any) among targeted outlets. Determine whether the mentions are positive or negative relative to your marketing goals. Implement your PR. Repeat the audit process. How have the tone and number of mentions changed? What are the relative differences in the messages?

“It goes back to your goals,” says Gladstone. “Public relations is not a science; it’s an art. Many times the success will be more anecdotal than statistical. You’ll know by going to events, trade shows and industry events. If people know who you are and know about your company, you know your PR campaign has been a success.”

Pitch it, and They Will Come

Whether the goal is to inform city officials and their constituents about your good intentions, promote the opening of your new development or announce the movement of your executive staff while underlining your company’s continued success, a well-planned PR campaign with messaging in keeping with your company’s brand identity is a crucial part of your marketing efforts.

To be most effective, the efforts will integrate all possible tools within budget and time constraints to carry out set goals.

With consistency, you will see that your audiences will come to you. They will approve your plans, buy your properties, seek your employment offerings and support your brand.

# # #