To maintain some level of affordability the building industry has begun exploring new ways of constructing homes that are more efficient and ultimately more cost-effective.
Although not an entirely new concept, the off-site prefabrication of homes is one of the more promising developments.
Prefabricating homes in a factory-type environment has the potential to improve construction time and quality control, reduce the impact of environmental factors and control costs.
There is a lot of talk about sustainable housing but what actually can a home builder do to make their home more sustainable or environmentally friendly?
In this guide we share the features of sustainable housing you should consider.
Just searching for a home floor plan online will yield thousands of results.
And there is probably more than just one plan that would work for you and your family.
So how do you set through all the results and find a plan that suits you and your family.
How can you find the right one?
With the rising costs of energy it is important for any home builder or homeowner to think about their energy and water consumption.
We use energy in our home for heating and cooling, hot water, refrigeration, lighting, cooking and appliances.
When building a new home it is important to think about how you will use energy and water so you benefit by having lower energy and water bills but not having to give up your comforts to achieve this.
The excitement of planning a home that suits you nd your family can be overcome with the fear of making a mistake, forgetting something or just making a complete mess.
Like all things if you take your time in thinking and planning you will go a long way to having the home of your dreams.
These 11 steps will guide you through the process of building your new home that is designed to suit the needs and desires of you and your family.
You know exactly what you need and want to have in your home, but have you thought about what you don’t want and what you don’t need?
You have given much thought and consideration to what will work for you, but have you taken the time to think about what won’t work?
These 7 design mistakes should be avoided when designing your new home
Developing your online marketing campaign should clearly answer and solve the problems of your target market.
Any campaign should touch the pain points of your market and provide an easily achieved solution for them.
Your campaigns should be:
To build your campaign there are 3 Key Steps:
What is your unique selling proposition or unique value proposition?
What sets you apart from your competition? What differentiates you from your opposition?
When developing your UVP focus on what you are doing for the customer. The majority of companies focus on themselves and they forget about the customer.
Focus on what value you are providing or problem you are solving.
Here are some examples:
Think about the different stages and questions clients have as they interact with your company.
Your marketing funnel needs to convert visitors into qualified leads who are ready and willing to buy.
Your marketing funnel needs to be educational. It needs to provide answers to the key questions of your clientele.
It needs to allow the prospect to know you, like you and trust you.
Simply sending someone to your website and asking them to fill in a form with their name and email won’t work.
This is typically called a lead magnet. You send the prospect to a landing page where they enter their details.
You can offer a variety a lead magnets such as an ebook, video series.
Depending on your target market your ebook may be titled:
7 Questions to ask when buying an investment property
7 Things You Need to Know When Investing in Australia
5 Alternative Ways to Finance Your First Home
By having a clear focus on your target market will help you develop your educational marketing campaign.
Here we move to qualify the client further with a webinar where you explain and show different concepts and how the client can achieve their goal.
A good idea is to have a client complete a questionnaire because someone looking to invest in apartments has different questions to someone looking to acquire a house.
So you can tailor different offers for different markets.
Then you send them to a 45-minute evergreen webinar that takes then through the process or they are sent 3 x 15-minute webinars that they can easily watch at home.
This is where you propose a one on one meeting to discuss their situation and how you can help them achieve their goals.
Each stage requires different messages and email campaigns to keep the prospect moving.
3. Traffic Generation
Where does your target market hang out? Where are the involved so you can place your message in front of them
Some alternatives are:
Google Adwords: develop a campaign to send prospects to a designated landing page
Facebook Ads: develop a campaign to send prospects to a designated landing page
LinkedIn Ads: if your clientele are in the B2B market then LinkedIn is a good alternative
Twitter Ads: tailor a campaign to target the followers of your opposition.
SEO: Improve your website to drive organic traffic
Instagram Ads; maybe a younger audience is your target.
Implementation
1 Do Nothing - continue as you are. If it is working for you then stay as you are.
2 Do It Yourself - spend the time, money researching and learning about online marketing and then implement.
3 Appoint Internally - recruit a staff member to do it or add the task to the current duties do a staff member. This takes time, money and other resources to get your staff up to speed.
4 Work with a Business Partner
Work with a business partner who has your success as a driving point.
The challenges faced by property investment and property development companies stems from the industry and market that they operate in.
This includes:
High transaction value - the price per property is a significant price for prospective clients
High-profit dollars - the profit dollars are generally high
High leverage - there is a high leverage on both time and money
Large potential market size - everyone needs housing.
These all combine to make the property development market extremely competitive. Everyone wants to be involved and everyone has an opinion.
Over the last few years, the market in Australia has become more and more competitive with the influx of overseas companies both in the development and marketing of properties.
Capturing the interest of prospective clients has become harder.
Clients are able to access sales history, owners details, market comparison, commission rates, building costs and trends easily through various websites and apps.
The access to information has suddenly made everyone an expert and clients are easily able to evaluate different offerings without having to initially contact anyone involved with the property.
Faced with changing nature of the market and customer knowledge Property Investment and Marketing Companies face some key challenges.
Challenge 1: Clearly Defined Target Market
Most companies when asked who is their target market respond with “Anyone looking to buy a home”.
No wonder they find the market difficult.
Consider the restaurant business. You have McDonalds and your Favourite Restaurant.
Do they target the same type of customer? Do they offer different products and service? Are their price points similar or different?
The same applies to the Property market.
Does a young couple in their 20’s looking for their first home have the same desires and needs as a couple in their 30’s with 2 - 3 children who are looking to upgrade their home to cater for their growing family.
Different desires and problems are driving customers.
When you understand and know your target market then you can direct your marketing message to your potential clients.
Clarity is a powerful driver.
Challenge 2: Qualified Lead Generation
Once companies have identified their target market they need to attract qualified clients.
Every market and industry have tyre kickers. People just out checking what is happening, gathering information.
Everyone has different goals and desires and are at different stages in their personal buying cycle.
Your lead generation activity must allow you to easily identify what stage your client is at so that you can tailor a message for each stage.
Segmentation is as important as ever.
You will have prospects who are keen and able to buy today, but you will have other people who are further back in your sales funnel.
Your system needs to be able to segment your prospects and keep them moving through your funnel.
A person who is just looking today may become a definite prospect in 6 - 8 months. What steps do you have in place to keep them informed and part of your prospective clients?
Then, when someone buys what steps do you have in place to keep that client engaged so that they become a reference for you or maybe even an advocate, or they buy again.
It is surprising how we are keen to secure a client, then when the transaction is over we forget them and move onto another prospect.
How large would your business be if every client that had purchased from you was still a customer?
Remember we all go through different sales cycles in our life.
Having a system of segmenting your leads will allow your staff to solely focus on keen or hot buyers, they are not wasting time on tyre kickers.
Imagine how more efficient and effective your sales team would be.
Challenge 3 - Differentiation
What is your point of difference with your competition?
What separates you from your competition?
Why would a client do business with you instead of your competition?
There are 5 key areas of differentiation:
What sets you apart?
Having a good understanding of your target market will help you determine what area you need to differentiate your business on because your customers will tell you what is important.
In fact clearly defining your target market will give you an advantage over your competition.
Challenge 4: Long Sales Cycle
The property market has a long sales cycle.
The transaction value, taxes and charges, financing requirements, customer inertia all combine to make a long sales cycle.
Your client is exposed to many different influences and pressures in their life. The daily news regularly talks about the state of the property market, a relative always has handy advice on what to do, a friend of a friend is involved in property. These all can combine to slow down or hinder the sales cycle.
A property investment company not only has to contend with other options in the property market they compete against other investment options.
Shares, bonds, term deposits, gold, precious metals all offer a different alternative to a potential investor. Plus the sales cycle is much, much shorter.
Add the accessibility of the internet and an investor can easily invest in overseas markets.
Challenge 5 - Leveraging an Effective Marketing Campaign
With any market, there are different size players in the market.
Everyone is trying to find an effective marketing campaign that can feed them a consistent flow of qualified leads to fuel their business.
There are large companies that dominate any market. They are able to saturate the market with advertising because of their size, they have been operating for a number of years, they advertise heavily, and they attract clients because of their name not necessarily because of the quality of their service or product.
On the other end, there are the smaller companies that do little or no advertising. They rely upon contacts, referrals, or simply hard work in getting out there and being known.
There are a number of tactics that can be implemented to attract leads:
1. Referrals
You can receive referrals from partners or clients.
Referrals are great and should be a major driver for any company. No advertising is better than someone else recommending you.
Referrals can be inconsistent, though.
We always believe that referrals should be a part your marketing campaign but not the only part.
2. Networking
Networking is something that you love or hate.
There are many ways to conduct your networking through industry conferences, seminars and trade shows.
Today many people use the power of the internet and social media to network.
Don’t just network within your own industry. Touch base with people outside your industry so you can learn from other people. See what they are doing, what problems they are facing and how they attract new clients.
3. Speaking at Events
You can offer yourself as a speaker for industry events, trade shows.
You can run your own event or team up with business partners to provide your audience information on a variety of different topics.
TV, Radio and Printed media.
With local newspapers and Pay TV you can tailor your message to a select part of the market. The problem is though you are communicating to a mass audience.
5 Telemarketing
Telemarketing can be very effective because you can cover a large number of people very quickly.
The problem is the growing dislike of telemarketing by the general public. With the DNC register, more and more people are opting out from being contacted.
6 Online Marketing
Online marketing is an attractive option.
The internet and social media offer a number of attractive options for lead generation.
A huge benefit of online marketing is its immediacy.
These advantages mean that online advertising has become more and more competitive.
Importantly if you really know your target market, understand them, know where they hang out then you can have a lasered approach to your online campaign.
Addressing these challenges will allow you to clearly define the key points of your business.
By developing a systematic lead generation system will give you the time to focus on serving your clients and building your business.
What We Do
We develop and implement lead generation systems for a select number of companies involved in the building, property investment and property development markets.
By having such a system then they are able to focus on building their relationships with clients and business partners.
When you think about lofts you think about spacious, stylish living spaces close to the centre of large cities.
A great way to live in a busy city but a great way to escape from the dramas of the city into your gorgeous living area.
Lofts give you the ability to have an escape but also the ability to have plenty of friends and family over for entertaining.
The more and more we see lofts the more we are excited about them and how they can be a great way and place to live.
Here are some examples of beautiful lofts from around the world. They will give you plenty of inspiration and excitement for loft living.
An industrial style loft complete with a stunning green wall in the dining room has been designed by architects Igor Martin and Olga Novikova of MARTIN Architects, located in Kiev, Ukraine. The apartment is ideally located in the heart of the city centre in a brand new building. This home was designed for a young and energetic lawyer who is a bachelor that enjoys weekend entertainment with friends. The loft contains rooms that seem to flow from one into another, encompassing 1,237 square feet (115 square meters) in living space. Learn more...
Love the spacious feel of this loft and the amazing colours. The lighting and green wall adds a certain character to the loft.
Imagine this: you live in a spacious loft atop a metropolis. You're living space is as eclectic as the people who walk your city's streets, and the ceilings are as tall as the hopes and aspirations of all who flock there. Your loft is warm and inviting, yet cool and refined. It's chic, and it's intelligent, but it's also warm and familiar. These very spaces, in both New York City and Germany, reflect that sentiment -- although they're worlds apart.
The sense of space is wonderful with these lofts. You certainly don't feel enclosed with your surroundings.
Lofts are known for their tall ceilings, wide open spaces, and industrial details. But loft designs vary from the ultra modern to the eclectic, and the people who live in them transform these similar architectural spaces into designs that reflect their lives. So take a tour through these 4 lofts and get a peek inside the chic and sophisticated loft-lives of everyone from world travellers to ballerinas. It'll inspire you and leave you dreaming. Learn more...
A wide diversity of styles, design and taste in these lofts. From the heavy set leather couch in one loft to the spacious loft for a ballerina to be able to practice.
