Today’s homeowners are a finicky bunch when they sit down their computers. How they find you is distinctly different from how they respond to print, broadcast and trade shows. Ignore the differences at your peril.
If you’re like many home improvement owners and executives, you didn’t grow up with the Internet. Rather, you learned about online marketing only after you established yourself and your business.
Now you need to adapt to a completely new homeowner behavior. Fact is that many homeowners get their first exposure to you through offline advertising (print, broadcast, tradeshows). And THEN head online to learn more about you.
It’s not possible to exactly pinpoint the proportion of consumers who now follow this sort of offline to online path. However, the consensus of the Internet experts I hear from is that it’s about 80%, and growing.
So, how does that affect your offline advertising? TV, radio, home shows, canvassing and direct mail still drive leads, but they also drive homeowners to investigate you and your products on the Web. But exactly what are homeowners doing once they get there?
In posts over the next 5 weeks, I’ll look at the online habits of today’s homeowner. I’ll do this by considering five distinct homeowner buying personas. Some will be familiar to you. And others, well, see for yourself. Let’s dive in this week with Persona #1…
Straight Arrows – Make it Easy for them to Love You!
Everyone loves Straight Arrows, because they make fast decisions and have a very quick trigger. Straight Arrows hear a print ad or a television commercial, and it lights their “I need this now!” bulb. They then go directly to their computer, search for you and convert into a prospect.
This is certainly not (unfortunately!) the majority of your prospects. However, it represents an important subset of homeowners who realize they have a problem, but who don’t have much time to research and compare solutions.
Straight Arrows are typically two-income households, or single homeowners with time-intensive jobs. These factors force quicker decisions by busy homeowners who want a friction-free process, above trying to wring every last dollar out of your estimate.
NEXT WEEK: The Reputation Detective
Homeowner Connections Through Performance Online Advertising
