House2Home Social Ecosystem - (C) ASTRALCOM 2013

w e b | s e a r c h | s o c i a l | m o b i l e | p r i n t

I n t e g r a t e d M e d I a S e r v I c e S

Accelerating Growththrough Brand Advocacy

in the HomebuyerSocial Ecosystem

A self-fulfilling platform for creating brand advocates, earned media

and increased sales


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w e b | s e a r c h | s o c i a l | m o b i l e | p r i n tUse and/or disclosure of data and information contained herein is not permitted without written approval from ASTRALCOM, LLC in advance and is protected by copyright laws © ASTRALCOM 2013

Moving From Advertising to Advocacy: Homebuyer Brand Advocacy Ecosystem

Earned media is the Holy Grail of marketing for any company.

Getting your customers to speak positively about your products and your brand speaks louder and more clearly than any advertisement you can think of.

In the social economy, testimonials, news stories, blog posts and other 3rd party statements are marketing gold. They also help to shape consumers’ minds and build overall trust in the marketplace.

This is why enlisting customers – wherever they are in the sales cycle – as brand advocates, is a critical component to gaining market share in any given metro and to growing new home sales even more.

While there are many ways to leverage social platforms to create earned media, building a community of fans and fol-lowers who interact with homebuilders is just the beginning.

The big-picture marketing goal for brands is to build “advocate” networks of influencers who can credibly act as variegat-ed voices for the brand. The building of these networks to reach consumers nationally and locally will be one of the next challenges for social brand marketers.

In fact, certain market studies indicate that over a 12-month period, brands with high advocate engagement grow 13-times faster than brands with an average fan base.

Who are your brand advocates?

Brand advocates, brand evangelists, or what we at ASTRALCOM call “brandgelists” and “brandvocates” interchange-ably, are the specific audience which will help you achieve more earned media, more rapidly.

Brand advocates are regular prospects, customers, buyers, partners, vendors and employees with no special opinion-leading powers, but who like your brand so much they recommend it to others.

The ultimate brand evangelist is the most loyal consumer. Typically, they are so satisfied with their new home and the overall experience that they are motivated to talk about it and promote your brand through word-of-mouth marketing, on and off-line.

These days, that word-of-mouth marketing presents an incredible opportunity as more and more conversations happen online, providing phenomenal reach and viral activity.

The benefit to developing a comprehensive brand advocacy effort is that if advocacy among just 10% of the target audi-ence can be achieved, that 10% will tell the other 90% what to say, think and buy.

You don’t need advertising; you need advocates – the people who tell everyone they know about how awesome your product is.

Therefore, the ultimate social and sales strategies need to address each audience effectively. For example, addressing homebuyers as they move through the sales cycle process – from “just looking” all the way through your homeowner warranty program.

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The ASTRALCOM House2Home Social Ecosystem leverages social media to tap into the pride that encompasses the new homebuying, building and personalization processes, to drive engagement with homebuyers, with a focus on engaging people and getting them to participate throughout the sales continuum; from awareness to consideration to purchase - all the way through to loyalty and advocacy.

In developing the House2Home Social Ecosystem, ASTRALCOM sought to tie disparate systems (marketing, branding, sales, lead management, contracting and building status, design center and warranty services) into a social-first initiative that encompasses and leverages these very systems into the social media landscape to help generate earned and user-generated content.

The House2Home Social Ecosystem is a web accessible tool that effectively weaves lead prospecting, sales and contract cycle status and design personalization features into a socially-leveraged gamified experience, or “club” with your brand.

This social-first strategy delivers an engaging experience that inspires users to talk about, post and otherwise advocate your brand throughout their networks of friends, family and associates.

This approach offers several main benefits:

• Integrates marketing, sales, lead, contracting, design and warranty systems and processes for a seamless sales cycle experience. • Creates value for homebuyers at every step of the sales process. • Establishes a branded network of customers, followers and advocates. • Provides users with social and viral tools and elements for creating and sharing content on their social networks. • Leverages relationships with Realtors, partners and vendors. The fundamental components of the House2Home Club experience are rolled-in to an easy-to-use personalizeddashboard, as follows;

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1. House2Home Club Dashboard (personalized URL-type start page/dashboard)

Within this dashboard, there are the following “hooks” to/from various sources;

• My Communications: Lead management communications during the sales processes. • My Profile: Website log-in and related features. • My Community Events: Calendar display. • My Contract Status: Dynamic Builder back-end for contract and build status and updates. • My Social Sites: Social Media sites feeds and integration. • These above “hooks” will push/pull data between source and destination (e.g., builder database into the dashboard, or from builder database, via dashboard, into Facebook, etc).

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2. Finding Your New Home

All the tools and information for new users to find their new home in one easy place.

• New Home Search tool. • View Floor Plans. • Financial Calculators. • Loan Assistance. • My Communications. • Event Calendar.

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3. Building Your New Home

All the tools and information for contracted buyers;

• My Contract Status: Integrated with builder back-end for contract and build status and updates. • My Social Sites: Social Media sites feeds and integration. • My Community Events: Calendar display. • These above “hooks” will push/pull data between source and destination (e.g., builder database into the dashboard, or from builder database, via dashboard, into Facebook, etc).

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4. Designing Your New Home: House2Home Club Studio Registry “Registry/crowd-funding” component specifically related to the Design Center and personalization aspects.

• Homebuyers register design, decoration and upgrade aspects they want gifted, sponsored, or otherwise funded by family and friends. • Friends and family can “sponsor” design, decorating and upgrade aspects. • Connected to social media sites to help facilitate both funding for the user and viral activity for your brand. • Homebuilder could “match” points/dollars… or a percentage there of…

5. Earn/Redeem Design Center points (Design points) component specifically related to the Studio and personalization aspects.

• Homeowners earn points by Social Media posts, writing testimonials, creating content, etc, (Post XXX and get X% off at the design center). • Reach XXX and get a community street, park, activity center named after your family. • Connected to social media sites to help facilitate both funding/registry fulfillment for the user and viral activity for your brand.

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6. Your New Home Support Team

• Sales info and contact. • Construction process info and contact. • Design info and contact. • Warranty info and contact.

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7. House2Home Club Store

• Buy branded merchandise. • Use points for merchandise. • Connected to social media sites to help facilitate both funding for the user and viral activity for your brand.

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8. House2Home Realtors

• Realtors have access to the same experience as the homebuyer and thus can take advantage of the same content sharing social hooks as their buyer. • Realtors are added to the system at the same time as their buyer. • Realtors can sign up and get program points/dollars too, which they can use for their clients or they can get swag at the House2Home Club store. • These points/dollars can go to special private tours, events, caravans. • Realtors can be incentivized with a “top seller” program, to include an award and a special luncheon, or other recognition. • Integration of Builder properties into participating Realtor sites. • Connected to social media sites to help facilitate both funding for the user and viral activity for your brand.

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9. House2Home Club Affiliates

• Affiliates do not have direct access to the House2Home Club. • Instead, they refer traffic/clients via a special link that allows you to flag anyone who enters the House2Home Club process. • The affiliate gets credit for leads/sign ups. • They could be incentivized to do so via referral fees and/or special swag.

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The ASTRALCOM House2Home Club provides users with all the tools and features they need to find, design and evange-lize their new home – before, during and after the building process.

For homebuilders, The House2Home Club integrates separate systems in sales, contracting, lead management, build-ing processes, design studio, warranty and post-warranty support into a completely new way of growing customers into brand advocates - automatically.

Measuring success in the House2Home ecosystem

Success is measured by increased engagement and increased evangelism across the social networks you participate in. Because House2Home is effectively a funnel for everyone in your sales cycle, built-in goals and analytics enable easy measurement of all aspects of the program and adjustments can made as needed. Custom goals and pathways can also be established to track specific metrics.

In the House2Home Club, there are several “layers” of involvement to be measured as success points, or milestones, so it will be easy to track the effectiveness of this specific effort. From the ability to measure social interactions and reach and user-generated content, to tracking design center points that are earned and spent, leads referred and even sales of homes, gauging success can be easy.

This is because the main processes that homebuilders use to drive business are seamlessly integrated into the House-2Home Club platform. Therefore, homebuilders can push internal, customer-specific data to the portal and, in turn, can leverage external customer actions internally.

ASTRALCOM provides unique consumer intelligence: Homebuyer ecosystem insights

When it comes to customer insight, regarding homebuyers specifically, no other agency understands homebuyer culture, methodology and psychology better than ASTRALCOM.

ASTRALCOM utilizes many different formulae and heuristics, on top of proven psychologically-tuned sales and messaging philosophies, to deliver consistently above-standard results.

The staff at ASTRALCOM are continually researching, testing and implementing consumer-faced conversion strategies and are always seeking to raise the bar and deliver better results.

Each year, more people are getting more daily information from the Social Media sites they belong to. Facebook knows this and has recently launched their Facebook phone, which is a first in the mobile market.

According to research, as of December 2012, here is what the Social Media landscape looks like;

• 15% of online adults say they use Pinterest. • 13% of online adults say they use Instagram. • 6% of online adults say they use Tumblr. • 67% of online adults say they use Facebook. • 16% of online adults say they use Twitter. • 20% of online adults say they use LinkedIn.

House2Home PatHway

sign Contract

Finalize your

mortgage MediaHouse2Home

RealtorsEarn/Redeem Design Points/

House2Home StoreHouse2Home

Affiliates

partnersinves

tors

investors

investors

suppliers

municipalities

Pre-Closing orientation warranty

Your New HomeSupport Team

welcome Home!

Establish Your Wants and Needs

Determine Your

Affordability

Obtain A Mortgage

Loan

Choose Where To Live

Personalize Your Home

Design Center

Pre-Construction

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Laying the Ground work

ADDiTiONAL FEATuRES

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To view this infographic full size and in detail, visit our homepage.

http://www.astralcom.com/#/selling-to-vulcans-and-empaths




Digging further into your data we may be able to ascertain the most responsive brandvocates to help ensure the propagation of your brand.

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Cultivating trust in the marketplace sells homes

ASTRALCOM realizes that it’s a challenge in the homebuilding sector to differentiate from the competition and to deliver value from source through to sale. This why ASTRALCOM designs solutions at the pre-sales phase that clearly communi-cate your difference and help to build value and trust for your brand in the consumer marketplace.

And by providing so many conversational customer touchpoints along the homebuying pathway to engage socially, homebuyers can create positive impressions of your brand that can reach far and wide – with prolific results.

We’re no strangers to creating positive market place opinion and establishing consumer trust.

In fact, we recently helped one of our homebuilder clients to achieve the status of The Most Trusted Homebuilder in America.

Just five years ago, they ranked 53rd on the Builder 100 list. Today, they are ranked 25th. Together, we’ve been able to increase their market share by more than 50% and cultivate the consumer perception need-ed to reach these heights. We typically grow their traffic more than 25% each year and are a vital part of their team. We also lift their credibility by earning multiple industry-related awards in marketing and advertising, on their behalf, along with increasing their referral rates and making their marketing dollars go further.

Now, let’s work together on your growth goals and objectives.

Because brand advocates can be various customers, homeowners, partners, Realtors and employees, the House2Home Club encourages – and even incentivizes – each one to participate in evangelizing your brand and helping to cultivate trust in potential homebuyers’ minds.

Think about how placing the House2Home Club on top of the solid foundation you’ve already established to run sales, contracting and building will quickly, efficiently and effectively help to cultivate an engaging environment that encourages earned media, brand advocacy and truly remarkable growth.

Leading Homebuyers to Sold!

Learn more about creating an effectivehomebuyer social ecosystem to cultivatebrand advocates and grow your sales –

Contact Richard Bergér, VP of E-Business at 1.800.536.6637 x 4.

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Real Estate

House2Home Social Ecosystem - (C) ASTRALCOM 2013