This week, we present our fifth (and final) homeowner buying persona, the Wired Homeowner. If you missed any of the personas I’ve already written about, you can read them here.
Of the five online buying personas, this is the smallest. But it’s also the one that’s growing fastest. While more and more homeowners are simply going to the Internet, Wired Homeowners are heading instead right to their online social networks. While there, they are asking for personal referrals from anyone in their online social circles.
You can see constant posts on Facebook and Twitter such as: “Has anyone ever hired Sun-Be-Gone Awnings?” Wired Homeowners have moved well beyond simple reputation searches on Yelp and Angie’s List, to broad requests information via their Facebook and Twitter connections.
And while these requests are common, useful responses from their friends are less common. Fact is, it would be almost coincidental for a homeowner’s friends to have used precisely the same home improvement company that they’re inquiring about. The more common responses to these posts are “No, but I did hire Sun Bloc Awnings and had a great experience.” The Wired Homeowners’ friends are making referrals from their own experiences.
Wired Homeowners will also check social media you’ve made on behalf of your company. Because they are active Facebook and Twitter users, they will check if you’re posting regularly, and if you regularly update your pages with new material. For this bunch, it’s not what you post, so much as that you are active on social media.
And while this group of prospects is still small – and relatively young – ten years from now, a much bigger percentage of your target prospects will be using social media for these referrals. So keep those social media accounts fresh and active!
That concludes our series on how homeowners make the transition from offline marketing to the online world. Let me know your thoughts about this topic, and other topics you think I should cover!
