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This week in home building news! Catch up with Az and a colourful array of guests, to hear about who's killing it, who's innovating, and who's getting into strife in the world of new home construction.
Aaron Ng (00:00)
Now, before I get into it, a big shout out to the legends at my construct.
Aaron Ng (00:04)
If you're still managing your jobs, contracts, client comms across text messaging and spreadsheets, there is a better way. My construct is built by Australian builders for Australian builders. And it is the best platform out there as a construction software. ⁓ Jake and the team are working on some really exciting stuff that we've got to have a sneak peek at.
Aaron Ng (00:25)
But go and check them out. is myconstruct.com. You can get a 30 day trial and the guys there are absolute legends and they're taking the Australian building industry by storm. So go and check out their platform. They are very, very cool. And thank you once again, MyConstruct for being the proud sponsors of this podcast.
Az (00:59)
Rotto, whatever's dominating the headlines this week, that's not the only thing worth paying attention to. You know, here at The Good Builder, we're a bit about what you can control and a lot that's in the headlines you can't control. Because a lot of you guys out there are sitting on things that could really grow your business right now, and you're not even touching them. Not a bigger ad spend, not another marketing agency, not another website, not another rebrand, not a new flashy CRM.
Az (01:27)
Just a handful of things, that you can implement this week and you will definitely feel it the next month. So today we're gonna go through three pretty cool things with a few bonus ones and some more news to help you grow your business as we try to do every Monday. So let's get into it.
Az (01:44)
welcome back to the Good Builder Podcast and good morning everybody for this beautiful Monday. I hope you're having a great Monday morning and you're gonna have an awesome end to the week. Not end, we've just started, but you know what mean. Anyway, we have some really cool stuff that
Az (02:00)
We're going to talk about that. You guys and girls out there can implement in your business and grow it. You can feel the results. I reckon in a week's time, I've seen it in my experience, and these are my experiences in terms of things that you can just switch on and they will start working harder for you. So the first one I'm going to talk about is 3D tours. Good rendered tours of your actual designs, not a video pan, not six photos in a gallery.
Az (02:27)
Something someone can click into and walk through room by room. A lot of you guys out there know what it is. It's like those Matterport tours, but also if you can do them to your designs before they're actually built and render them out in 3D, I've seen these ones work such a treat. And as a matter of fact, one of the things I used to always try and do was drive as much website traffic to these designs and I'd put them front and center on the design because I knew.
Az (02:56)
that they were four times likely more to convert a visitor into a lead than if we didn't have them on site and they didn't walk through the home. The other thing that was really important, especially in those homes that weren't built yet, the designs that we did in 3D renders that weren't built yet, was, you know, one of the biggest pains of selling a home and one of the biggest stalls of it are variations and people wanting to change things.
Az (03:22)
When they can see how the house flowed and all that sort of stuff, there were much less changes and variations, and people were building those plans. So that is my number one. Go and find a good operator. And if there is a good operator out there, come chat to us. We'd love to give you exposure to our awesome audience.
Az (03:40)
And the second one that I'm going to talk about is live chat monitoring. I have spoken about this one a few times, but I have seen it in my experience. Again, increase leads by about 30 to 40%, and they were always better leads. It is such an easy implementation for your business. All you've got to do is get in touch with a great provider, like the live chat monitoring guys, live chatmonitoring.com, Gavin and the team there. We know them well. We have no sponsorship or affiliation. We just really trust those guys. They're down in Melbourne.
Az (04:10)
And they probably operate a vast majority of the builders out there who use live chat monitoring and continue to use it because it helps qualify your customer, get more information out of them, it makes them feel like their service better on site, and they can ask a few questions because, of course, they're always doing their research. So it helps that relationship with the customer before you even talk to them. I would put that on your site. And I think from about 49 bucks, 50 bucks, something like that per month.
Az (04:38)
Your leads will increase, they will get better, and you'll capture a lot more of that traffic on site. So that is my number two. My number three are lead magnets on your site.
Az (04:48)
They're those little things that sit on your site, which may be a document, a video, whatever it may be. It could be about building your first home, it could be building an investment home, it could be a checklist of moving your stuff when you buy a new home. All those sorts of cool stuff. And you capture the email addresses and contact details in exchange of something of value. That's why they're called a lead magnet because they magnetize leads, I guess. And they work really well to make sure that your content is on point with the
Az (05:16)
customer that you want. But again, it is adding value to the customer, adding value to the relationship. Obviously, when they see that value, they'll do that. They'll exchange their contact details and you can commence that sales process. So that's pretty cool. And as I said, you can make them for various stages of the build, target them toward particular customers so you're getting the right customer. All those sorts of things. So that is my number three and probably the
Az (05:44)
quickest and easiest way, one of them anyway, as I've talked about the other two, to start to build your business and get more leads. I thought this episode was really important because you know we're heading into the Christmas period and you want to make sure that you've got a good pipeline of work. We talk about that a lot here at The Good Builder.
Az (06:01)
So we want to make sure that you guys and girls out there have a great pipeline of work coming into 2027, even though there's a lot of work out there, but the right work too. So if you start to implement these now, start to have these conversations, these might be your 2027 build because of that, you know, sales process and that length of time to qualify and get contracts and all those sorts of other things. So this is why we're doing this episode. And that was our three, but we do have a bonus view for you actually.
Az (06:30)
I couldn't stop there. I've got another few. Number four, and I've talked about this a lot, but I've talked about the customer experience program, like the pulse that we have created in a way that you know, making sure that the things go wrong during a build are captured and you get onto them really quickly and make sure the customer is satisfied. On the flip side, the way we use it as well is if someone is actually
Az (06:54)
Having a really good experience, and because it's all monitored and we know they are, we ask them for a review and we also ask them for a referral. And the best customers are always referrals, and they're always one of the hardest things to get. They're always offline where someone's talking to someone at the at the barbecue or around you guys and how you've done so well for them, and you know, obviously name you there, but if you can proactively get them.
Az (07:22)
Talk about you, that is going to be one of your most powerful marketing mechanisms, and it is virtually free. So a customer experience program where you know what they're thinking, and then can elicit that review and referral are going to be some again of your biggest and best reviews. So that is why we created that thing. And I've got another one for you actually. The other one is that 12 to 24 month check-in after handover or after maintenance.
Az (07:49)
You gotta make sure that everything is all set for the customer. But once they've lived in their home for a little while, maybe a nice little text message, phone call, a visit, you know, with a gift or a a voucher for lawn mowing so they can have the weekend off of their beautiful new home. And the thing is, it's actually not just a marketing play, it's a bit of a psychological play. You know, most builders finish when the job's over, handover's done and maintenance is done
Az (08:16)
And you don't talk to them again. But when you do, you're putting your brand and what you've done for them and how much they love their home again front of mind. Some of them might be a little less excited when they first moved in, but you remind them of that feeling of moving in that home and
Az (08:31)
when they're at that barbecue, they're gonna be talking about you because they're being reminded of you. And that is one of the most powerful, as we said, marketing mechanisms or whatever you call it that you can actually do word of mouth as you know. So they are well they were our top three, which turned into five.
Az (08:51)
We'll write a few articles around them. So check the website which will fall in line with this podcast so you can go through. We'll put a few links in them as well so you can go and find some good operators that we know and you can go and check them out, get them engaged, have them doing this sort of stuff on your site and feeling the results the next week. There's a couple of other things, however, that I just want to talk about. Number one, we actually ran a little survey about third party listing platforms a couple of weeks ago.
Az (09:19)
for you builders and things out there. And it was really interesting. We thought that the shift may have changed, but even back in my day when I was corporate marketing for builders and all that sort of thing and and consulting, the biggest and baddest platform that everyone is still using and says yields the best results, despite the cost, is REA. And that was not even close. It was in a big way
Az (09:43)
Domain was second. It was a pretty strong second, but right on the heels of it was OpenLot and iBuild News. So that was really interesting. There's some of those smaller to medium players that are coming up, and they are certainly making a bit of an impact. So this is the end of the episode. thank you so much for listening. Once again, we hope this Monday episode gave you something to think about for the week. That's why we do these Mondays.
Az (10:10)
Paul will return next Monday, so we're gonna have a good chat about marketing with Paul from Viva Digital. I'll put the link below and you can check him out once again. And just remember that not all of this stuff that we're talking about costs you marketing budget, but it all again builds trust and then increases your leads. And if you think about it, it is a really transparent way to do marketing. The other thing is.
Az (10:32)
I think I've talked about this before. Time, transparency, trust. If you can actually impact those three things for a customer in your marketing, in your business, you're always gonna win. All right, couple of things before I go. I know I've added a lot of things to this episode. I'm a little bit excited for it. But Wednesday we have Mark Sutton joining us. He's the new GM at Goop Guys, absolute legends and partners of ours, and that is a really good one. It is really cool to hear his history and experience and what he thinks.
Az (11:01)
about supporting builders because he is one switched on guy. And on Friday, we've got a proper special one. We've got Gary from How Cole Energy. He's one of the top five installers of solar in Australia. And we want to bring that to the forefront of your mind because if you have a look at it, so many homes after the fact of getting built are putting on solar, so many are actually putting them on when they're getting built. And we just wanted to talk a bit about that and how you guys can make money out of it really.
Az (11:28)
So we've not done a solar episode before. It's gonna be cool. Please like and subscribe to the pod. Share it around. We hope this helps a lot of people out there. We love what we do and we love what you guys and girls do out there. So here's to bigger and better things at the Good Builder. Thank you.