Episode 10: Bryan Cruikshank, David Weekley Homes

Join host Vera Shafiq for an enlightening conversation with Bryan Cruikshank, Director of Search & Advertising at David Weekley Homes. They're chatting all things marketing personalization - the solutions for scaling personalized marketing for multi-location businesses and franchises.

You'll hear more about:

• The numerous opportunities for marketing your business to connect with customers in a specific area and/or who fit various ideal customer profiles.
• How a successful franchise might leverage Google's machine learning and automation capabilities for location-based marketing: budgeting, account structure, targeting, retargeting.
• Paid Social solutions for hyper-local digital marketing.
• CDPs - Customer Data Platforms - and the process of bringing the various marketing channels together.
• The ideal, most friction-less customer experience, from top to bottom of the marketing funnel.

+ more! 

Transcript

Vera Shafiq: 0:10

All right. Welcome to Digital shop talk the podcast. I'm so happy to be back again with you all. And today I have a special guest, Bryan Cruikshank, who is director of search and advertising at the award winning David Weekley homes. He's based out of Houston, Texas. And today we're going to chat a little bit about personalized ad creative. And it's important, especially when it comes to marketing, a multi location business or franchise. But first before we start that discussion, Brian, could you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us a little bit about your professional backstory and how you got to where you are now at David Weekley homes?

Bryan Cruikshank: 0:54

Yes, definitely. Thanks for having me on the podcast. I appreciate it. So my background, I've been at David Weekley homes for about six years, I joined at a time when we were kind of building digital media team. We're kind of that was part of the marketing adjacent to the general marketing team. And so I started in kind of just directly in the digital marketing world. Prior to that position here in house, I actually worked at an agency as well, for about eight years, a local agency here in the Houston area where I did Search, Display, advertising analytics, pretty much anything involving digital marketing, spent most of my career doing that. And kind of built out some of the search capabilities and got to dabble with many clients for the agency, some of which were multi location businesses, others, which were, you know, just just single location, but I definitely got to learn about a lot over the years there. And so started at David Weekley homes and our role my team's role is to basically get the word out about David Weekley homes to anybody who may be interested in buying a home. So that involves any and all advertising channels, and search and everything involved with that we build a 19 different markets across the city, across the nation. And so the multilocation aspect is definitely something that's a challenge for all of us. And we're always looking for new ways to kind of markets and the personalization at scale.

Vera Shafiq: 2:43

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, you know, in your business of selling homes to people, as you mentioned all over the country, not only is the local aspect of personalization, critical, right, because buying a home by nature is local, right? It's a local activity. But also the personalization of your messaging to be really relevant and specific to personas is just as important because you could be talking to like a married man with kids looking, you know, moving to upsize to new home in the suburbs of Atlanta. Or on the flip side, you could be looking at like a Gen Z or you know, single professional who's young looking for central living in the heart of Austin, for example. So plenty of opportunities there to personalize your messaging and your ad creative. So I mean, tell us a little bit about when it comes to marketing. David Weekley homes, the product, how important is it to have local and or personalized creative and messaging?

Bryan Cruikshank: 3:44

Yeah, for us, it's critical. I mean, right out of the gate, one of the first things like when we will work with vendors or other agencies is to get across the idea that we're not can't think of us as a single company. Especially like in terms of budgeting every every night, almighty markets almost is like a single clients and we're in our team at corporate headquarters, we call HST Home Services is kind of like an internal agency. And so each market just right out of the gate has to have its own marketing plan and their budget is limited to their market. So we are automatically kind of lose that scale of being able to just like say, Okay, let's just scale and move dollars where it's going to be the most effective across all of our, our divisions. We have to think about it just city by city. And then on top of that, within each city there's we have many different communities and so there's the that added layer of even more sort of hyper local location that's every single community, in some cases needs to have its own creative, its own sort of marketing plan that we need to sort of back into or include, in addition to more of a citywide marketing approach. And so just write it out right there that we have multiple layers that we have to think about. And so, and then on top of that, you've got pricing that's very, very different across the different cities. And there's different product types. Yeah, yeah. So that that part is critical to be able to have specific messaging across these different locations.

Vera Shafiq: 5:35

Right. So yeah, so what I'm getting from you is that it's not just talking about the city name, or the location, but it's also talking personalized in terms of pricing in terms of the product itself. I mean, how, how deep Can we go with our personalization? And is there a time when that personalization can be creepy? Or is it something that, you know, you guys have mastered in terms of of getting that personalization? Just right.

Bryan Cruikshank: 6:09

Yeah, I mean, that's something that we're we're getting deeper and deeper into, we're in the process of building out a customer data platform that's allowing us to tie more of these customer touch points together. So we can, you know, meet meet customers where the they are at in their journey and provide the right recommendations. The right offerings without without being too creepy is there's a fine line there. But at the same time, I think it's something that customers expect to know, if they pick up the phone, they call the if they've interacted with you before that they are getting a personalized experience. So I think it's at the same time, personalization, its scale is a major challenge, because what we have found is, you know, having all these locations, and having all these communities, we've always tried to be specific and have separate campaigns for each initiative. But the more fragmented, you get, the more and theory your niche, you know, your targeting is better, you start to lose scale, and it just becomes, it starts to be more expensive and more effective. And so that's the challenge has been, how can you do personalization at scale, kind of use less campaigns, more consolidation, but then have the actual creative get personalized to each individual touch point. And I think that's something that there's different tools and things that are out there. But we're also sort of trying to find the right solution between being too broad versus too niche targeted.

Vera Shafiq: 7:45

Yeah, yeah. I think that's a challenge that pretty much all multilocation or franchise businesses face is how do we scale this across hundreds or even 1000s of locations? And so you mentioned that you guys have on boarded a CDP Customer Data Data Platform. And so I'm guessing that that probably has some tools or methods built in, that's going to help you potentially do this at scale, but other than CDP? Are there any tools that you guys have identified that potentially could could help you kind of knock this out at scale?

Bryan Cruikshank: 8:27

Yes, definitely, we looked at a lot of different offerings, there's still some that we're kind of digging into more as well. And I'm happy to hear any other things that are out there or recommendations. listeners may have, but sort of just starting with the native, the main platforms, Google and Facebook. So yeah, you're just using Google ads out of the box, they have a couple things that that allow some kind of multilocation scaling that we've that we've been, we've used and we're still still using. So one is a one ad format called Google Local Ads, which my understanding is being sort of adopted by the new the new format called discovery Max. But the way we've used Google Local Ads, it's, it picks up your Google My Business locations. So once you sync your Google My Business locations to Google ads, and you start using this Google local ad format, you do set up, you know, ad group or your campaign and ad group and provide assets, you know, upload your images and your copy and headlines and that sort of thing. But then you also choose the locations that you want to run as part of that campaign. And then Google essentially just takes those location details, and then scales that out and just hyper targets whoever may be physically located to one of those locations. Oh, Um, so in that aspect, it's essentially doing the creative on the fly and customizing it for locations and pulling in the, you know, in our case, the community name. So that is kind of a one way that we've scaled the multi location concept without having to create separate campaigns for every single location.

Vera Shafiq: 10:24

Yeah, that's actually a great example of, you know, leveraging Google's machine learning to really scale that initiative. And to your point, those campaigns are now being rolled into performance Max, which is the new campaign type that Google's launch. And so that's kind of even more supercharged, in terms of using machine learning, using predictive metrics, and really taking the creative that you provide the algorithm will provide the engine and using the best ones based on what it sees, you know, that individual is going to convert best on. So yeah, to your point, Google already has built in tools that allow us to scale these local initiatives. But what about outside of Google? In terms of you know, for example, if you're running programmatic or social media ads, have you identified ways to overcome the challenge there?

Bryan Cruikshank: 11:26

Yes, so Facebook is another one out of the box, Facebook has some of their own tool sets for allowing, scaling for not only like kind of multilocation, but it's, it's also built around just like product, be able to do product ads, we actually are have used it we've set up we followed the specs for they have a real estate specific niche, they have I think, hotel and got some some industry specific ones, but then they also just have product to kind of be scaled however you need it to. But that's one thing we've we've been digging into try to use more as they use their dynamic ad formats, involves setting up a catalog, which is not a super easy feat, they do I think have some off the shelf integrations with certain platforms. But the way we did it, we were able to kind of automate some of our, our products slash home and community details to get it into Google Sheets. And then from Google Sheets, Facebook can ingest that data and kind of keep our catalog, if you will, up to date, with live prices, that we can then turn around and create ads and campaigns that can pull in the live pricing. In theory, their, you know, their AI in recommendation engine can take a look at what is in a world that's kind of where we're like, it's a little bit of a black box, we set this all up and we're hoping that the Facebook is gonna can recommend the right mix of home. Yeah. You know, even in that case, we're still we still want to kind of keep each city separate so that we don't mix and match potential products across different markets. Yeah. But that's something we're kind of testing to see if we just use our tire 19 markets and just run one campaign and then let Facebook figure out and show the right homes to the right people. Do they do a good enough job of that? Or do we need to like have a little bit more hands on like, okay, no, this is a huge thing campaign, this is going to be a Dallas campaign is going to be limited to just use them products or Dallas products. Right? So that's, that's kind of what we're, we're testing various degrees right now.

Vera Shafiq: 13:46

That's actually a really interesting way of using Facebook's dynamic product ads, because traditionally, those were I think designed for you know, ecommerce brands that are selling product, right? And so that yeah,

Bryan Cruikshank: 14:00

Amazon's the king. Exactly.

Vera Shafiq: 14:03

Yeah. And so when you think of a catalog, you think of you know, something like a Shopify website, you know, and a feed into Shopify, and all those products are gonna get fed in with pricing and product details, but to to use that for, you know, selling real estate or selling properties is really interesting to me, and I think a great use of it because, in essence, your catalog is your kind of repertoire of poems or whatever, you know your your catalogue of homes. And then you know, the algorithm is able to not only as you said serve up the correct ads the correct people based on you know, what it knows about that prospect, but also able to serve up retargeting ads, you know? So if you set that up as weak targeting, you could show someone who you knew had already visited a specific community page or actual property on your website and then show them that exact picture of that property. ad to kind of get back in front of them. So that's really interesting. And have you have you AB tested that? Have you noticed that performance has actually been better doing it that way, rather than just a traditional Facebook ad? Method?

Unknown: 15:14

Yes, we have. And but at the same time, we still do run campaigns where we create each individual ad or kind of customize the copy. Right now, we are kind of running things in tandem, and that way, and then we've also been in the process, you know, we've had a lot of thought, but it's over the years. And then, as far as like doing a bunch of audience segmentation, like we had talked about, and then but now with some of the changes to Facebook and the things they can track, it's insane for Google, I guess, to some degrees that they want you to be less and less hands on in terms of like, trying to overthink your audiences. And things like that is like the, you know, their algorithms, you just tell tell them what you want to accomplish and what you want people to do. And trust, trust the algorithm can find the right people for you. Yeah, that's where work is a tipping point of like, you know, having these nice audiences and campaign segmentation versus going the other direction, just Yeah, letting the algorithm work. Do more of the work.

Vera Shafiq: 16:21

Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. That's great. So and then you mentioned CDP. So I just wanted to touch on that little bit, since you have on boarded the platform. And, you know, with CDP, I think the goal is really just get your first party data in check, make sure that everything's ingested, you know, from all your disparate data source sources, and then be able to enrich that data with additional attributes about your customers or your prospects, and then segmented out at the end of the day to be able to send those personalized marketing campaigns to those people. Have you identified a good efficient way of collecting your first party data, and then enriching it with you know, what's known as the zero party data? Which is the data that customers or prospects actually willing to raise their hand and give you know, how, how rich and how diverse has your first party dataset become since you've on boarded CDP?

Bryan Cruikshank: 17:27

Yeah, it's definitely it's been a process and kind of one tool at a time, you know, we all have our different marketing channels that you email marketing, the first spot where you have that first party data and yeah, messages directly. But then there's just the website itself, that's a big piece of it is like, okay, someone's on the website, do we know who they are? You know, there's, you know, Google Analytics is the kind of a tool that everyone's always used for distracting website behavior. But a lot of that is inherently anonymous. Unless you are set up with their their user ID system, or if you have a site where you have a heavy, you know, heavy login feature, I think your life is a little bit easier in terms of this regard. But for those of us that deal with a lot of anonymous website, visitors, it's definitely a challenge. But there are ways with some of these tools out there, if someone's willing to fill out a form, you know, and provide their information that you can kind of connect that with their, you know, their, their web history, and then connect it with their email, email marketing systems, and then send that out to you do, you know, personalized website a B testing, there's lots of different personalization engines for the website, you can tie that have a personalized web experience for that user and then syndicate that out to Facebook through their you know, their customer upload feature, which a lot of these CDP's they have box integrations to upload those customer lists. And then same with Google, as far as their their customer match feature. So it's kind of just one piece at a time to try to get more of these touch points together so you can have the right message the right person at the right time was marketing one on one.

Vera Shafiq: 19:22

Yeah, the holy grail of marketing right. Yeah, so that's, that's great. I mean, it sounds like you know, as you said, it's a slow process one step at a time it kind of moving towards that target of the perfect experience, you know, if you want to call it that, from your perspective, what is what would be the perfect experience for a person that was you know, shopping for for a new home? You know, specifically if they'd already become familiar with David Weekley homes. What to you would be the most frictionless experience and from the minute a prospect came in, at the top of the funnel, to the time that they actually, you know, visited the model home spoke to a rep. And actually got to the point where they identified, you know, a property that they were ready to purchase.

Bryan Cruikshank: 20:20

Yeah. Also, first off, one thing that's great about our company is that the we're already well known for the, the customer service side of the business. So yeah, once the customer is already interacting with the sales team, they've gotten a model home that that they kind of have a one to one personal relationship, and our sales teams do an amazing job of taking care of the customers, but at the same time, with all these tools and things, there's, there's all this so much enhancement we can do to enrich that experience, you know, provide additional email, additional recommendations that may might help them along their shopping journey. So I think yeah, the first thing is to understand what what type of homes are interested in, especially right now. At least in the past six months to a year, the inventory has been so much lower and quick move in homes have been kind of the primary thing that the buyers are looking for, and that are available. And so letting someone know that, hey, this, this, this home is available, or this is the price of a new home that that matches, you know, maybe the price point that you were looking at on the website, here's the one that might have been just reduced. So I think, if you've ever experienced with Zillow, since I like that, that they do a really good job of save your interests, they'll provide you some emails. So we've got some features like that, that kind of, if you opt in, and you say, I'm interested in this, that you can get some emails and get some recommendations. But you can also there's, with a CDP, and based on kind of connecting your general browsing history, some proactive recommendations that can be provided, as well, that kind of match. You know, your previous interests. I know, a lot of retail sites where there's a retail shopping component, they do a good job at that. And based on you added something to your cart, yeah, sort of thing. So I think that's really just providing recommendations based on what the customer has already given you an indication of what they might be interested in. And knowing where they are in the journey, if they've already purchased a home. That's a stop providing certain recommendations or, you know, have a different message. So that's a big piece of it as well.

Vera Shafiq: 22:43

Yeah, maybe start going after some references or, you know, have them kind of refer you to their friends and family potentially, once you know, they've already purchased the home. Yeah, that that switch of messaging is, is crucial. And I know marketers are often guilty of failing there and continuing to market to people that have already purchased. Yeah. But to your point, yeah, I mean, people want personalized experiences. And, you know, we kind of got used to as consumers, those personalized movie recommendations on Netflix or, you know, personalized news or shopping recommendations, as you mentioned. So it's kind of like table stakes for most consumers now when they're on the digital platforms. And so even when it comes to purchasing a home, I think people have come to expect some level of personalization. And, you know, we all know how good it feels like when you walk into your favorite coffee shop or your favorite restaurant, and the barista or the waiter says, Hey, Brian, good to see ya. Can I get you your usual? And you feel so good, right, that, that there's that personal service? And I think people are looking for that and yearning for that in all of their digital experiences. So yeah, really interesting to hear about how you and David Weekley homes are trying to crack the nut there. And I think, you know, some good pointers as to where where people can start the process. And, you know, as you said, eventually, I think we're gonna see a lot more tools available to us. But right now we do have quite a quite a plethora of tools available already built into Facebook, Google, etc. So yeah. Is there anything else that you wanted to add, Brian, in terms of learnings that you've had, or advice that you would give to our listeners on kind of getting to that great, ideal personalization experience?

Bryan Cruikshank: 24:43

Yeah, and I think so some challenges that I still see out there is the budgeting side and I know different franchise and location based businesses operate differently. But I think that's still a bit of a challenge. Like how do you do scale and still be able to manage To make sure that the Houston division only spends X amount of the budget without being too fragmented. So I'm open to hearing how others and multilocation businesses are handling, purchase like that. And then just any other tools, I know there's other different personalized creative tools out there that kind of go beyond just the, you know, the out of the box things that Google and Facebook does. A company called Flash talking that's kind of specializes in creative at scale, and like, like really having custom creative as opposed to just letting like Facebook or Google just use AI to do the colors and fonts for you. Yeah. But that's interested in more heavy lifting than than others.

Vera Shafiq: 25:53

Yeah, yeah. No, that's and you said the tools called Flash talking? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I think there's, there's a lot of choice. Now, when it comes to those types of tools. I haven't actually heard of that one before. But these tools that will allow you to really kind of feed in your data points, and then we'll spit out creative based on you know, all of the different kinds of combinations and permutations of your your, you know, local or your personalized messaging. Yeah, I think it's something that franchise brands multilocation brands are kind of clamoring for and really need a solution to I think, I think many are probably using some of these tools already. And I think with, you know, the new landscape that we have now, and you know, CDP and the cookieless world, I think this is going to be more and more important as we try and hone in on, you know, effective marketing that does not feel creepy. So, yeah, I would be really open to kind of conversations with anyone who has some recommendations out there for tools like that. So how, if anyone wants to get in touch with you, Brian, what's the best way that they can can reach you?

Bryan Cruikshank: 27:10

Yeah, so I've got I do have a Twitter profile. So I'm super active, but it was fun to be on there. It's just be Cruickshank might be cru, Ik, SHA and K, my handle on there. And then you could just reach out directly via email as well. I'm happy to LinkedIn as well. involved in some different groups on there. Finally, just Brian Cruickshank, on LinkedIn, happy to join in discussions there as well. I'm always happy to talk shots on all this stuff. Because there's there's no bottom to the well on any of these things. You can work as long as as long as you want and on. You just get further opportunities to do more things as soon as you finish trying one thing so

Vera Shafiq: 28:00

Exactly. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Brian. It's been really interesting, insightful learning about your experiences David Weekley homes, and I hope to get to chat with you again pretty soon. Thanks so much.

Bryan Cruikshank: 28:17

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.