NAHB National Association of Home Builders : 5 Ways to Generate 50% More Online Sales

How do you increase online sales without spending a ton of money?

Jared Weggeland, vice president of Focus Homes based in Lakeland, Fla., provided five tips during a Jan. 19 educational seminar at the International Builders' Show in Las Vegas.

• Online advertising for sales people: Sales people should be encouraged to post homes and construction services on different online advertising sites, Weggeland said. He suggested posting at postlets.com and to add lots of pictures and videos if you have them. 'It pushes out free listings to 26 online sites that serve the real estate industry,' including Zillow, Trulia, MSN Real Estate and Military.com, he said.

• Social selling: Facebook is the Goliath of social media. Embrace it as a company and teach your sales people to embrace it. Make connecting and communicating with your prospects, buyers, realtor partners, co-workers and lenders on Facebook a part of your normal selling process. Encourage everyone in your organization to share, comment and like each other's posts.

• Laser-focused email campaigns: You can increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns and follow up programs by becoming laser focused. When you cater specific messages to smaller but extremely relevant prospects you can increase your online lead conversions.

• Detailed online lead source analysis: Weggeland suggested trying new and upcoming advertising sources. There are so many new technologies and evolving advertising channels that it would be foolish to ignore all of them, he said. However, online leads must produce appointments that turn into sales. Calculate your ad budget. Calculate your desired lead count and cost per lead. Use this data to help you judge which ad sources are performing at acceptable levels and which need to be cut (immediately). Which of your current ad sources need to be stopped and in which may it be worth investing more going forward?

• Consistent dashboard review: Decide what top level online sales statistics you feel are most helpful for you and your company, then create a dashboard and review the results monthly. Compare month-over-month and year-over-year online sales results and seek out patterns that may help you with your continued improvement efforts. Suggested key performance measures to track include online leads, online calls, appointments made, appointments kept, online gross and net sales, and online closings. When you start using and reviewing your dashboard monthly you will make the needed adjustments that will increase your online sales.