Episode 12: A Live Analysis of a Random Website

Download: Audio File

Link: Oakley Builders Website

Link: Free Marketing Analysis from Neon Goldfish

[music]

00:01 Justin Johnson: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Neon Noise Podcast, where we discuss the latest marketing and sales tips, trends, ideas, and all that good stuff to help you with your business. Ken, what's going on today, buddy?

00:19 Ken Franzen: Oh, just looking forward to Episode 12, here.

00:24 Justin Johnson: Episode 12, wow.

00:26 Ken Franzen: Rounding off what is, "the first season" of Neon Noise Podcast. So, it's kind of exciting.

00:31 Justin Johnson: Heck yeah man. It is exciting. That is awesome. Good stuff. Well, hey, one of the things that I wanted to talk about today. We get a lot of questions, comments, concerns from people that call in about their website. And generally, those folks that are calling in, they just have the same questions. It's, "What can I do to improve my website? How can I make things better?" So, what we generally would do is take them through a marketing analysis, which doesn't take long. It's a 20 to 30-minute process, normally. And then we would send them recommendations, suggestions, on different items that we can basically help them out, and they can improve their website. I thought that it would be cool if we did an online, live marketing analysis for just a random website out there. What do you think?

01:33 Ken Franzen: Alright. I say that this could be dangerous, but let's rock it.

[laughter]

01:40 Justin Johnson: We're gonna help somebody out, hopefully.

01:42 Ken Franzen: Sure. Well, we've done plenty of these, so I'm not intimidated by the idea of doing this. It's just who are we gonna do?

01:48 Justin Johnson: There's probably somebody else out there, right?

01:49 Ken Franzen: Sure, sure, exactly.

01:52 Justin Johnson: Alright. So, let's... First things first, let's pick an industry.

01:58 Ken Franzen: Why don't we...

02:00 Justin Johnson: Let me get...

02:00 Ken Franzen: Go to home improvement.

02:00 Justin Johnson: Let me get the Googs up really quick. Hold on, let me get the Googs up.

02:04 Ken Franzen: Let's do home builders.

02:06 Justin Johnson: Home builders. Why'd you choose home builders?

02:09 Ken Franzen: Because new homes are fun to look at.

[chuckle]

02:13 Justin Johnson: Alright.

02:13 Ken Franzen: Who doesn't like to look at new homes? I...

02:17 Justin Johnson: Okay. Even better, let's pick a location that we can't afford a new home in.

02:22 Ken Franzen: Alright. Well, there's lots of those. [laughter] But how about we go with the Windy City. Let's go with Chicago. Chicago.

02:31 Justin Johnson: Right down. Alright. Hold on a minute here. I'm gonna do a search for home builders in Chicago. Cool. Alright...

02:44 Ken Franzen: We're gonna go with someone on the first page, is that what we're gonna do?

02:47 Justin Johnson: Ideally. So, what I would like to do is, I wanna find somebody that has a good website already, that they don't have to redo. Because we wanna... Basically, the goal of this is to just find opportunities and whatnot, that they can enhance, and that we can help 'em out with.

03:11 Ken Franzen: Sure, so something we can tweak, right? But not like, get a website where it's, this thing completely needs to be redone. That's not gonna really help out anyone.

03:19 Justin Johnson: Yeah. There's plenty of those. Alright, so here's Angie's List. We don't want you. We got Home builders associates, we don't want you. Ryan Homes, let me check this out real quick. Hold on a minute.

03:33 Ken Franzen: Alright.

[pause]

03:39 Justin Johnson: We're not going with this. So need this way more...

[overlapping conversation]

03:43 Ken Franzen: Why did you choose not to do that one?

03:47 Justin Johnson: It's a full re-design. [chuckle]

03:49 Ken Franzen: Okay. Fair enough.

03:52 Justin Johnson: Alright. I got one here. Let's... This one's not bad. Hold on a minute. Let me just scroll through here for a minute. Alright, cool. Go ahead and pull up oakleyhomebuilders.com. O-A-K-L-E-Y...

04:09 Ken Franzen: Oakley, like the sunglasses?

04:11 Justin Johnson: Yup. Oakley like the sunglasses. Like the shades.

04:15 Ken Franzen: Alright, cool. Alright.

04:16 Justin Johnson: Sweet. Alright.

04:18 Ken Franzen: I like the photos. I like the pictures they got going on here.

04:21 Justin Johnson: They have awesome photos. They're using video already, which is kinda cool. The website looks like it's been redone. It's current. Cool. Alright. Let's dive into this a little bit. First things first, I'm gonna just start going through this site. And I'm gonna look through the navigation and see if they're doing any type of content marketing, or anything along those lines. Initially, this is a website... This is somebody that would actually contact us, because I see a few items that, right out of the gate, that they may not be doing, unless I'm not finding them. They don't. Yeah, so they're not doing any blogging, which is kinda interesting.

05:27 Justin Johnson: Alright, let's just kinda go over some of the positives, right out of the gate. The website's clean. It's a very, very, very clean professional site. This looks... It looks... It appears that they have photography that they've definitely hired a professional to do. We run into this more often than not, where people will contact us. And what we're working with initially is, very, very, very raw or rough, or stock photos, or anything along those lines. Thumbs up for the professional photography, very clean site. They're doing a fantastic job with the use of testimonials on here. It appears that they've got some really nice videos as well. When I go down here and I'm pulling up a...

06:29 Ken Franzen: I do like the parallax, the parallax effects they have integrated. Those that don't know what parallax is, it's when you scroll down the page, and the background moves at a different rate than the foreground image, or items there. So it kinda...

[overlapping conversation]

06:48 Justin Johnson: Man, some of these images that they have back in this backdrop are incredible. These look great.

06:53 Ken Franzen: Yeah. These are... These are... There's a lot of great imagery, for sure. For sure. Why don't we start talking a little bit though about what, if we were on the phone, or we were meeting with individuals at Oakley. What would be... You made mention of the blog.

07:15 Justin Johnson: There's two items that stick out like sore thumbs, alright, right out of the gate with... We've been on the site for two minutes. I don't see a blog any place, which obviously, that's something that we definitely would wanna talk to them about. And I definitely see a lack of opportunity for individuals like myself, if I'm looking to build a home, to give them my information. I wanna be able to give them info. I wanna be able to give them my name, and my email address, and my phone number. And I don't see a whole lotta opportunity right now, with what they currently have in order to do that.

08:02 Ken Franzen: Nope. I'm seeing a form on the Contact Us page. And we're going under the assumption that they would be interested in generating leads and...

08:12 Justin Johnson: More leads, right.

08:14 Ken Franzen: More traffic, more leads, everything else there, so as this conversation goes, anyone that says, "Well, maybe they just have this website out there to showcase their work, and they're busier than they can handle their capacity."

08:24 Justin Johnson: And that's a possibility. Absolutely.

08:25 Ken Franzen: Point taken. But for the sake of this exercise, we're gonna assume that they want more leads.

08:29 Justin Johnson: That they want more... They wanna sell some more houses, right?

08:33 Ken Franzen: Exactly.

08:35 Justin Johnson: Yeah and they do. They've got two areas right now on here for convergence: The contact form, and it looks like this 'design your home' also goes over, and eventually will get you over to this form. It is kind of a longer... There's a lot of fields. And generally, if this is something that... If I'm looking for a home, a home builder, and I start doing my research and everything, and maybe I'm building my house in a year or two years. I'm just out there doing some research. The chances of me filling out a form like this is relatively low.

09:19 Ken Franzen: Sure.

09:20 Justin Johnson: I would fill out something if there was a reason for me to fill it out. If there was a home resource guide, or building kit, or something along those lines, where I want a little bit more information maybe on cost, or what's included in my kitchen, or bathroom, or anything along those lines, where I can actually see some of that. I would give them a little bit of my information in order too get that in exchange.

09:50 Ken Franzen: Sure. Now I think you'd agree with me, these aren't your average homes. These are pretty... These are premium.

09:54 Justin Johnson: These are really nice homes. Yeah.

09:57 Ken Franzen: Sure. When I look at this, and obviously, we're looking at something visual, everyone else is listening to us, but I do encourage everyone to go to the website. But I think one thing would be really cool to have on a site like this, especially for these premium type homes, because my first thing is, "Wow! How much does this cost? How much... What is it gonna take for me to get into this type of home?"

10:20 Justin Johnson: Right.

10:21 Ken Franzen: What if they had like a calculator of some sort, that allowed me to... Obviously, it's gonna be guesstimates. Just rough, rough, rough, where maybe they had a couple different floor plans that were general, model-type things. This looks like that everything they do is custom, but they could at least use maybe three different options of styles of homes, that have a particular square footage that you can maybe adjust, and then select some different options such as what you wanted for the exterior, or some interior options, like countertops, and flooring...

10:52 Justin Johnson: Sure.

10:53 Ken Franzen: And it kicks back, whether it's price per square-foot, or, it's a general ballpark of how much that would cost.

11:00 Justin Johnson: Yeah.

11:00 Ken Franzen: I think a tool like that would be super helpful on a site like this, that they could use as a point of entry for those that might be at the top or middle of the funnel, like you talked about. Not quite ready to schedule that appointment, "Sit down. Let's start talking details." But someone that's looking for a little bit more information; they're conducting their research, right?

11:26 Justin Johnson: They're doing their research. I would definitely fill that out. There's no questioning that, if this is something that I... I come to the website and I'm looking at these homes, they look extremely nice, they're... This is something that I would eventually wanna build. I wanna know how much it's gonna cost. And I would definitely use a tool like that, even if I'm planning on doing something from 12 months out, or 24 months out, for sure.

11:53 Ken Franzen: Sure. And you made mention about a resource, like a guide. You're talking about like an e-book? Is that what you're...

12:00 Justin Johnson: Yeah. [chuckle] Do you know all the steps when you're building a home? No. I built a house three years ago, and there is so much information that they don't tell you anything about. So, why not incorporate some type of a resource guide, like a home building tool kit, which is a checklist that can go through everything that you can think of, timelines, and permitting, and just all the goofy stuff that people probably are not aware of that it's just... All you're doing is educating these people. The more, and more, and more that you're gonna educate them, the more that obviously they're going to build credibility and trust in your business. And when the time comes to build that house, hopefully you've done your job and they eventually build with you, right?

12:56 Ken Franzen: Absolutely. Well, talk a little bit about your process when you built your home Justin. You chose a builder.

13:01 Justin Johnson: I chose a builder.

13:02 Ken Franzen: Why did you choose that builder?

13:04 Justin Johnson: My real estate agent. And that was the main reason. I didn't have...

13:09 Ken Franzen: They recommended the builder?

13:10 Justin Johnson: Yeah, so they recommended the builder. And we went and we looked at the model home that they had. Obviously, you go down, you sit down, and you look at everything else that they have available. But I can tell you one thing, that there's so much more that you're just not aware of. When you get into that building process, and I think of when we... We went out and we looked at our lot, okay, you pick your home. And then, when we were having the house built, I remember talking to my wife, and I was just like, "Honey, we have no backyard. We literally have 15 feet of backyard." And we just kind of assumed... You just assume, because there's no other houses built at the time, that you're gonna have a nice big backyard, and stuff along those lines. But just learning where your house is gonna sit on your lot and stuff like that... I know it sounds ridiculous like why would somebody wanna know about that stuff. But I can guarantee you one thing, that if there was any information like that available to us before we started our building process, it would have been... We would've made adjustments.

14:26 Ken Franzen: Okay. So the knowledge would've came in handy, right?

14:29 Justin Johnson: The knowledge would have came in handy. And you could compile all of that, all of those questions that people come and ask, and everything into this resource building toolkit, checklist type of guide, that people would definitely find value in.

14:48 Ken Franzen: And I'd have to think that there's not... Not every builder has that type of checklist. So, creation of such a resource would obviously be a feather in your cap, as far as being the brand that put that forth. You build that credibility, and then the things we speak about all the time are, "How do you build that rapport earlier in the buyer's journey?" And these top of funnel resources, that aren't sales either, they're educational and helpful.

15:21 Justin Johnson: Right. Well...

15:22 Ken Franzen: But you're branding... You're the person who's bringing that forth to the... Information, and so that... I don't know. You're capturing their information, 'cause it's probably gonna be a gated offer. But additionally, you're allowed to, or you're going to then continue to market to them. But you're building that credibility that's so important at the beginning, and establishing that buying criteria. 'Cause if you look at this builder here... Hey, you might be looking at this particular builder, and you might be looking at another builder, who maybe still considers themselves a premium home builder, but they're not quite cranking out the same level of... Their premium definition is different than the next premium definition, right?

15:57 Justin Johnson: Yeah, right. Everybody's just different.

16:00 Ken Franzen: And so, the hardest part about being a consumer is identifying the differences in apples and oranges. And you wanna make sure that when you're making a comparison, it's apples and apples, or oranges and oranges. And so, that type of information, super valuable.

16:13 Justin Johnson: Extremely valuable. So those are two items that we've talked about, doing some type of a cost-estimator, or a calculator, and then having some type of a resource guide, whether it's a home-building toolkit, or... There's so many different things that you could do if you're a home builder. The phases of planning and building your new home. You could actually create three separate pieces... Three separate documents, and have that be a resource. Trends and predictions for residential construction. There's just so many different things that you could do in order to put yourself out there, build more credibility and trust in your business.

17:05 Ken Franzen: Sure. Now since we're on the topic of conversion opportunities, what is your thoughts? Because they do have some bottom of funnel. They have a Contact Us page form there.

17:13 Justin Johnson: They do.

17:15 Ken Franzen: I think I'd like to see at least some more CTAs, or at least a CTA to that. 'Cause the only way I'm seeing to get to that bottom of funnel form is...

17:27 Justin Johnson: Is through the contact page, right.

17:29 Ken Franzen: Correct, correct.

17:30 Justin Johnson: Yeah. There's a couple other glaring items right off the top of the website. They've got a really nice header. They've got a really nice logo in place. They've got their navigation up there. There's no phone number, which is mind-boggling to me. But up top, put your bottom of funnel offer up there, because people are going to wanna call you. People are going to want to fill out a form. So I would definitely recommend having a, "Schedule a free consultation. Come in for a visit," whatever, up there in your header, along with a nice big phone number, so that your website visitors can easily get to you if they want to.

18:15 Ken Franzen: I agree. Another thing that I'm noticing while we're focusing on the top of the site. I'm looking at this on my 13-inch laptop.

18:25 Justin Johnson: Oh. I didn't even think about that. Hold on a minute.

18:28 Ken Franzen: Yeah. So, you're probably looking at it on a giant, wall-faced monitor.

18:30 Justin Johnson: I'm looking at it on a giant screen. But I'm gonna pull it up on mobile too. Let's take a peek.

18:35 Ken Franzen: Sure. Well, we'll jump on the mobile here in a second. But the one thing that I'm noticing while you pull that up is, on my display, when I first pull-up the home page, what I see above the fold, and above the fold is what you see when you visit a website before you begin scrolling, that real estate there pre-scroll. And what I see is their CTA or their headline, over their hill image, this beautiful home. All I see is the very top of your dream home, without scrolling, and you can't see the bottom of the Y. I know it says, "Your Dream Home."

19:17 Justin Johnson: True.

19:17 Ken Franzen: But I can't see, "Dot, dot, dot, our vision."

19:20 Justin Johnson: Bumping up that above the fold, and then, having some type of a backdrop behind that so it actually stands out. But, just obviously positioning it above the fold for what you're looking at would be extremely important.

19:37 Ken Franzen: I agree and I think that, that headline could act a little bit more with the targeted buyer, or so on. And so, if we're looking at...

19:45 Justin Johnson: Connected to the CTA, preferably.

19:48 Ken Franzen: Yeah, and include a CTA for sure. But a little bit more focused on, "Your Dream. Our Vision." It's nice, it feels good. But I think that we could have something that's a little bit more impactful, coming up with a headline off the top of my head, it's escaping me. It's something that we put a little bit more thought into when we're doing these. But really kinda speaking to something about the fact that they're a premier home builder, cater to XYZ, and basically who they are, what their value proposition is, and specifically, what the benefit to me, and why should I even consider scrolling? And I'm gonna scroll 'cause I wanna see what the rest of that headline says. [chuckle] Maybe that's purposeful. Maybe they're smarter than I think.

20:35 Justin Johnson: Maybe that's the reason they put it there.

[laughter]

20:38 Ken Franzen: But I think that it's just a, "Oh, hey. This is that top of... Or, the above the fold real estate that's truly... "

20:47 Justin Johnson: Super important, you need a CTA in there. Put that home building kit, toolkit in there, that would be powerful.

20:56 Ken Franzen: True, true. Absolutely.

21:00 Justin Johnson: The mobile site looks good.

21:01 Ken Franzen: Is it basically just displaying the same? I don't have my phone with me...

21:04 Justin Johnson: Yeah so it's displaying. We've got the logo at the top and your navigation, again, I don't know how to get a hold of them. It would be really, really helpful if there was a phone number on here that I could click that... I'm on mobile if I wanna talk to these individuals I could just click on that and call them right away. But it goes from, it's got the nice hero image which you can see their tagline in there, and then directly below that it goes into portfolio, and their videos, feature properties that they've got listed. The mobile site, the mobile version is really clean and it looks nice. But again, it's just the lack of ways for me to actually give them my information is what stands out again.

22:00 Ken Franzen: Alright, let's move down this homepage a little bit. Let's check out... So they have the portfolio, and kudos them they have a portfolio it's just chalk filled with...

22:08 Justin Johnson: Amazing stuff.

22:09 Ken Franzen: Amazing photography. If you wanna showcase what you're doing here this is done well. What about the Design Your Home. Let's check that out.

22:19 Justin Johnson: So this would be an amazing spot to do your cost estimator with your different plans and whatnot that you were referring to a little bit ago. If I had the ability to plug in, look at three different models or five different models, and plug in some criteria for my budget, and whatnot and get something fed back to me here that would be a very, very valuable tool for me to be able to use.

22:51 Ken Franzen: Alright, so I've clicked through from that page, the Oakley Difference, and I'm now into... I clicked on the Design Tips. So this is kinda cool because design tips is kind of a top of funnel type item right?

23:05 Justin Johnson: Yeah. Where did you see Design Tips? I'm missing that.

23:09 Ken Franzen: Well if you're on the Oakley Difference, Design Your Own is down on the bottom left.

23:13 Justin Johnson: Okay, yeah yeah yeah. Perfect.

23:15 Ken Franzen: Alright so here we have some top of funnel, some educational recommendations that can be reviewed by a site visitor and maximize your space, dead space costs money, add architectural detail to ceilings and openings. Awesome stuff here, really, really, really good stuff.

23:34 Justin Johnson: Turn it into a guide.

[chuckle]

23:38 Ken Franzen: Yeah, and so...

23:40 Justin Johnson: Lead through things that you wanna turn into a resource guide that people will definitely find value to.

23:49 Ken Franzen: I bet you, yeah. Because if you think about this they have some great bullet points here, I know that there's more to it than this, they probably have a lot more to offer up. And if I read this...

23:57 Justin Johnson: Like the landing page...

23:58 Ken Franzen: Yeah a landing page is a big component of the inbound methodology, component of that, that overall methodology, this would be an awesome landing page. The headline, the design tips could be a little bit stronger, but the information that we talk about here and they feed us with a desire for more, and unless I'm ready to start designing my dream home now, which is the button that they have there on the page, I'm not gonna do anything more with this. So, you're right. I think that if you were to take this and create a guide, an e-book, some type of downloadable PDF that's gated with the exchange of, what would you say, keep it simple, right? Not a lot of forums, we don't wanna pull a lot of info, right?

24:38 Justin Johnson: Just do real simple. Do first name and email address. Let's keep it extremely simple.

24:45 Ken Franzen: Right, 'cause that's all we need at this point. To get them...

24:47 Justin Johnson: That's all we want at this point.

24:49 Justin Johnson: We wanna put them... We wanna be able to get that information from them, when they come to our website, and then we eventually would obviously start doing some type of a lead nurturing email campaign to these individuals, and send them out more stuff about Oakley Home Builders.

25:09 Ken Franzen: Well, exactly. And that's also gonna help weed out for them who are actually potential buyers and who are... Someone like Ken or Justin here looking at these nice homes, and we're not really ever gonna be in the market for them. You don't wanna have a sales person following up on leads to someone that isn't going to be your target buyer persona. So, in nurturing campaign, there's no need for the phone number, there's no need for any more information. Get that email address and try to weed out who is a good prospector lead and who's not.

25:44 Justin Johnson: All right, so design tips, off of design tips we've got the Oakley Difference, FAQs, useful links. We've got the Start designing your dream home now, where does that link in to?

26:02 Ken Franzen: It just goes to the Contact us.

26:04 Justin Johnson: That's another, keep it simple, right?

[chuckle]

26:07 Ken Franzen: Yeah, they are asking for a lot, but I guess I don't mind if it's a bottom of funnel to ask for a little bit more information.

26:13 Justin Johnson: Yeah, but okay, okay. All right, so this is cool, all right? Actually look at the information they have on this contact form. These are the items that we wanna take and plug into our cool little calculator. You could tie all this in very, very, very easily into this nice little quiz about the individuals that are coming to... That wanna have a home built by Oakley Home Builders. I love it. You got bedrooms, you got number of bathrooms.

26:42 Ken Franzen: I like the budget, 'cause if you add that to the calculator, then you could actually spit out, "Hey, here's some options within your target budget. I have an option here for $0 to $600,000."

26:52 Justin Johnson: Right, you can give them options and then we could put those individuals into different buckets and send them information based off of what their budget is.

27:00 Ken Franzen: Yeah, I like it.

27:01 Justin Johnson: We could do a lot with that.

27:02 Ken Franzen: No, it's a great idea, I do think. But you're right, a lot of that information there... But I don't mind it being on the Contact Us.

27:09 Justin Johnson: No, I don't either.

27:10 Ken Franzen: Because if it's someone that has it entered in, if they were coming in as a bottom of funnel first time visitor, you wanna gather that information as well, right?

27:19 Justin Johnson: You do. You absolutely do.

27:22 Ken Franzen: Now, we made mention of the blog earlier, but obviously, the blog would be helpful in generating more traffic. So far, we've talked a lot about conversion opportunities, the traffic that's already on the site and how do we get them into a funnel and such...

27:33 Ken Franzen: How do we get them into the funnel. But yeah, you're right. So, number two would be the blog. If they come to us and, "Hey, we've established that. It's not a... " They're getting enough conversions already or something along those lines, but maybe they're looking for more traffic. Then that would be an area where your blog is going to allow you... It's just the most natural way that you're going to get additional people to your website. So, I'm not seeing anything, any place. Maybe this "In the news" is their blog.

28:05 Justin Johnson: Okay, where are you finding that? 'Cause it's not...

28:08 Ken Franzen: Under "more."

28:09 Justin Johnson: Oh, they've got some more navigation options there. All right, cool, so we do have a blog here. All right, we have "Houzz Announces 2017 Best Of Award Winners." All right, so everyone at the, basically, on Houzz gets that. We have lots of clients that get that award and they position that. "Hinsdale Living Readers vote", all right. So, these are a lot of things that they were in the news about. But this is all great recognition, but to get... The reason why we would bring up the blog...

[overlapping conversation]

28:42 Justin Johnson: Generate more traffic to your site.

28:46 Ken Franzen: Exactly, that's gonna be done through creating remarkable content, things that are just going to be valuable pieces of information for those that are looking to have a new home built in the Chicago area. And it's where... You do that in hopes of two things, one, it gets indexed by the search engine, such as Google, for those particular keywords. And then secondly, just the share factor. If you read some really kickass copy and you just start talking about it, even if you start showcasing some of your more recent builds here. You got a great portfolio, but what if you were to take the most recent build. I look under these beach homes, I was clicking on this, and go to 'Beach Homes Lake Michigan.' I don't know if you've been to Lake Michigan before, but it is beautiful.

29:39 Justin Johnson: I have, and I have not seen any homes like this. [chuckle]

29:44 Ken Franzen: This is definitely cool.

29:46 Justin Johnson: These are awesome.

29:47 Ken Franzen: But it would be cool to get a back story on this if they did... Well, look at this. They do have a little bit more information, $2.75 million.

29:55 Justin Johnson: Okay, so here's a perfect example, why not take this and make a blog post out of this and include all the... They've already done the hard part. [chuckle] They've got amazing photography. You could craft a nice post around this and then have your call to action offers and stuff like that that we talked about earlier published on your blog post as well to obviously help get additional people into your marketing funnel.

30:26 Ken Franzen: Yeah. 'Cause yeah, you could share this page, it's not... We definitely could share this page, they have awesome videos and obviously the photography we keep talking about and a decent write up. And so yeah, you could take this and split it out into an individual blog post and do these a lot more of their properties. Those would make a great blog post and I would share the crap out of this thing, right, because I'm in awe, I wanna basically call up my wife and be like, "Hey, check this out and you gotta work late tonight."

[chuckle]

30:56 Justin Johnson: Work late tonight. [chuckle] Share this with your friends.

30:57 Ken Franzen: Put the blogs out. [chuckle] Share this with your friends, right, exactly. [chuckle] But the blog topics that we would be talking about really we'd require some keyword research.

31:07 Justin Johnson: Sure, let me just...

31:07 Ken Franzen: Some keywords, targeted towards that buyer persona, right?

31:10 Justin Johnson: Yeah. Think of all the stuff that you could do, just new homes versus renovations, buildings trends in Chicago for 2017, or building trends in Lake Michigan, kitchen designing trends, Chicago home builders. There's so many different things that you could be publishing that are going to get people to those different posts.

31:32 Ken Franzen: Sure. Yeah, I could think of if you wanted to specifically target the niche of builders for Lake Michigan, you could completely go bonkers on that.

31:45 Justin Johnson: Lake Michigan, Lake Michigan.

31:46 Ken Franzen: And if you're thinking about, "Hey, how do I... I have $2.75 million and I need to build a new house in Lake Michigan. Where do I start?" You just can't call... You could call any builder but if I'm gonna spend that kind of cheddar on a new home build...

32:02 Justin Johnson: Cheddar, cheddar, cheddar.

32:02 Ken Franzen: On Lake Michigan, obviously this is gonna be some type of big event in my life, I wanna make sure I make the right choice, and this is gonna be a process I'm pretty thorough in deciding who is going to be... I start doing searches and I find someone that's done something along these lines, they're getting a phone call from me no doubt, no ifs, ands, or buts. But I have to be able to find them. Now, we just went with... What was the keyword search you did? 'Home builders in Chicago'?

32:29 Justin Johnson: I did 'home builders Chicago', yes.

32:34 Ken Franzen: Okay, perfect. So maybe they're showing up already great on the search engines for Lake Michigan home builders, I don't know, but I'm just using that as an example of why a blog post would be beneficial specifically to helping them gain that type of exposure for that type of searcher, right?

32:53 Justin Johnson: Yeah.

32:54 Ken Franzen: The suggestions you made were great.

[overlapping conversation]

32:55 Justin Johnson: They build in Naples too, right? Just in case you wanna get out of the cold. [laughter] Apparently they build in Florida as well.

33:04 Ken Franzen: Oh, boy. Very nice, very nice. That's kind of a long commute from Chicago but... [laughter] I'm sure that the travel to Naples to build...

33:13 Justin Johnson: Clearly, they're staying someplace else in the winter time. [chuckle]

33:17 Ken Franzen: Absolutely, absolutely. Alright, cool. So what else? We've gone through quite a bit here so far, what else?

33:23 Justin Johnson: Okay, so let's see. We've gone through possibly doing a calculator, some resources, we've talked about shortening up some of their contact forms, we've talked about their blog. Just setting up a resources area on the site would be extremely beneficial. I think that we've talked about a handful of different ideas that they could come up with, and gate those offers. As long as I see value in all this information and... I'm absolutely going to plug in some information in exchange to get those documents. So I think that we... Do like a planning guide for your home, trends for residential constructions, stuff along those lines. Doing cost comparison guides or anything along those lines that will be helpful for the potential person that wants to build your home.

34:29 Ken Franzen: No, this is cool. Yeah, I'm glad we did this. Obviously, like I may have mentioned before you're listening to this podcast, you might be driving your vehicle somewhere or running on the treadmill at the gym. Something along those lines, where you can't really look at the website but maybe relisten to the podcast when you get in front of a computer. Pull up the site and maybe go through the different things we recommend because I think that you could get a lot value from just how we went through and what we looked at, what we saw, what we found great, what we found... And you could measure that against your own site and say, "Hey, cool. This is how... " Even if you're not a home builder, you could be any type, you could... The general ideas here apply across the boards and see how you could make those adjustments and leverage that traffic, build more traffic. But then again with the blog and obviously social media outreach, we haven't touched on that but you can't really see that from the site alone. But the conversion opportunities and how you could take something like this which is already a very nice website and make it even better with just a couple clicks, a couple notches, right?

35:30 Justin Johnson: Absolutely, absolutely. Alright, well I think that that's probably about it on this site here today, unless you have anything additional Ken?

35:45 Ken Franzen: No, I think we've covered it. I think we did a thorough job and we'll have to reach out to the Oakley Home Builders.

35:50 Justin Johnson: I'm definitely going to suggest that we reach out to Oakley Home Builders and see if nothing else that we can pass along, some tips and suggestions, and maybe help 'em out a little bit.

36:03 Ken Franzen: Hopefully they don't get mad.

[laughter]

36:05 Justin Johnson: Hopefully they don't get upset.

[laughter]

36:07 Ken Franzen: I hope.

36:08 Justin Johnson: Guys we don't wanna get leads and we don't need anything.

[laughter]

36:10 Ken Franzen: Right. Exactly. So...

[laughter]

36:12 Justin Johnson: I love it. All right. Awesome man. Great suggestions, great tips. This was a cool exercise and, again, just remember that you can apply a lot of these same tips to any different market that you're in and you don't have to be a homebuilder, so... Okay guys, so that's a wrap for today. Please reach out and let us know if you need any help with creating a marketing analysis for your website. We will be publishing a link to the free marketing analysis in the show notes at neongoldfish.com/podcast. Until next time, this is Justin and Ken with Neon Noise. We're outta here.