Brand Building in The Era of The Empowered Client
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>> BUD DIETRICH: Welcome
to today's AIA's Custom Residential Architects Network
presentation, Brand Building in the Era of the Empowered Client:
How online storytelling can help your business.
My name is Bud's Dietrich AIA, and I'm your moderator.
Today's presentation is a preview
of an AIA convention half-day workshop
in Denver on June 19th,2013.
The AIA knowledge communities have several upcoming
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Institute of Architects.
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Attendees must complete the form within 24 hours of the webinar.
During today's presentation,
a panel of architects will share how they efficiently
and effectively manage their web presence to tell their story.
Among other outcomes, attendees will understand how homeowners
are using new mobile, local and social tools like HOUZZ
to collect information about residential architects.
Joining me today are Liza Hausman, Vice President
of Marketing at HOUZZ, an innovative community
and platform for residential building, remodeling and design.
Liza's experience spans advertising, consulting,
marketing, and social strategy for Fortune 500 brands
from Clorox, AT&T and Turner networks,
to a host of innovative startups.
Jane Frederick, FAIA, cofounder of Frederick
and Frederick architects based in Beaufort, South Carolina.
Frederick and Frederick has been celebrated
with numerous awards including the Hilton Head Homebuilders
Lighthouse award for Best Kitchen,
Best Home for Metropolitan magazine,
and Best Renovation 2009, by Southern Living magazine.
Katrina Hermann, will be presenting
for her colleague, Stuart Narofsky, AIA.
Stuart is the principle
of the New York-based Narofsky Architecture,
an award-winning multi-disciplined design firm,
whose focus is custom homes.
His many accolades include Architectural Digest Best Home,
and the 2011 Excellence in Achitecture Archi award.
Katrina became fully immersed in the architecture design field
after joining Narofsky Architecture
and waystodesign in early 2007.
Mark English, AIA, is located in San Francisco.
Mark is the editor of two respected online magazines,
and along with coeditor and writer Rebecca Firestone,
has created a forum for the local architectural community
with The Architects' Take.
A second online publication, Green Compliance Plus,
which is residential energy compliance case studies
and advice, as well as serving as a portal
for residential Title 24 services,
tailored for architects as clients.
If you have any questions at any point during the webinar,
please enter it into the chat box, and it will be sent
to me, your moderator.
All content related questions will be answered at the end
of the webinar, as time permits.
All technical questions will be answered as soon as possible.
Our first presenter is Liza Hausman.
Welcome Liza.
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: Thanks Bud.
And thanks everybody for having me today.
I'm excited to be here to give you the perspective
that we've learned, based on how homeowners and professionals,
like you, are using HOUZZ.
Your clients and prospective clients have new tools
that are really changing their expectations about building,
remodeling, and design.
These tools enable them to be more informed,
and also more confident.
HOUZZ, in particular, is changing
and expanding the process by which homeowners find
and choose professionals.
Today I'm going to present the findings
of HOUZZ's annual House and Home study.
It was a study we did the survey of homeowners using HOUZZ,
that received over 30,000 responses.
I'm also going to share real stories from homeowners
and architects in our community, and what you need to know
to successfully market to communicate
with this new empowered client.
So quickly let me share a brief background on HOUZZ,
so you can have a better idea of how we're collecting this data.
HOUZZ is a platform that connects homeowners
with remodeling and design professionals.
The company was founded by a husband and wife,
who were struggling to remodel their own home.
And rather than set out to create a business,
the couple really built HOUZZ as side project
to solve their own problems of finding and communicating
with the right people for their projects.
Rather than the five referrals they got from their Realtor,
when they bought their home, there are now more
than 800 architects in just the San Francisco Bay area alone
on HOUZZ that folks can choose from.
So they really didn't turn this project
into a full-time business until more than a year later,
when it had become popular nationwide,
and really beyond their expectation.
Just a few examples here, of the folks that are gonna talk today.
And some of Narosky's work.
Frederick and Frederick.
and Mark English.
One of the unique features of HOUZZ is
that every photo featured comes from a professional
in the community like you.
You can see in the example here the link
to the professional profile and the photo note
in the bottom right corner.
A little back, a little background on the,
the size of HOUZZ and how we were able
to collect so much data.
There are now more
than 9 million unique users using the website each month.
Professionals, like you, have uploaded now more
than 750,000 images from their portfolios to HOUZZ, and again,
that's a unique feature.
The photos you see on HOUZZ aren't just gathered randomly
across the web, they've all been uploaded by the owners.
There are 3.2 million people who have downloaded the iPad
and iPhone app, that average 50,000 five star reviews.
To give you a sense of the volume of activity happening
on HOUZZ, professionals are uploading more
than 3000 photos a day to their portfolios.
And homeowners and other consumers are uploading more
than, or, not uploading, but adding more than 500,000 images
on HOUZZ to their ideabooks each day.
So, a little bit from our survey of this empowered client
and what do they look like?
What have we learned?
Just, demographically.
Again, we have more than 30,000 responses, and we learned that,
89 percent of the users on HOUZZ are homeowners.
The average...Yes?
>> BUD DIETRICH: Hi Liza, this is Bud.
The audio is coming in and out.
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: Hmmm.
>> BUD DIETRICH: Maybe, I don't know what to do,
but maybe some [indiscernible] different.
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: OK.
Is this any better?
>> BUD DIETRICH: Yes.
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: OK.
I'm gonna hold the microphone right by my mouth.
So, 89 percent of the users on HOUZZ are homeowners.
The average value of the home, the median, is $400,000,
and that's compared to the national median,
which is I think about 75.
The average age of users on HOUZZ is 48.
And, the average household income is $125,000, again,
as compared to the national average,
which is, I think about 45.
Only 27 percent of the homeowners
on HOUZZ are in their first home.
We have a lot of folks who are either professionals
with young families, or older folks, in second homes.
We asked folks what their plans were in the next two years.
72 percent are planning to decorate or redecorate.
40 percent said they're planning to build an addition
or remodeling in the next two years.
And an amazing 10 percent said they're planning
to build a custom home in the next two years.
We looked at some of the data regionally and some
of the fun things that popped --
Minneapolis, was the city with the most activity
for remodeling and additions.
49 percent of the users
in Minneapolis said they are planning to remodel
or build an addition in the next two years, and 18 percent
of the users in Houston are planning to build a custom home.
We also asked folks what type of professionals they were planning
to hire in the next two years.
And 30 percent said they were planning to seek,
to use an architect, hire an architect in the next two years.
I think the highest was general contractors,
at about 57 percent.
We also asked folks, did you stay on budget
for your last remodeling project?
And an amazingly 43 percent said they actually went over budget.
And 18 percent said they had no budget.
Which are, obviously, the best clients to have.
Folks with the higher household income tended to go over budget,
and also those who worked with a professional.
And probably the most surprising finding that came
out of the study was, really the motivation behind why people are
taking on building, remodeling and design projects.
We really expected that in this economy folks would say
that they were focused on a return on investment,
and instead, 86 percent said what was important was improving
the look and feel and 70 percent said improving the flow layout
and functionality of their home, were important
for their next project.
And only 47 percent said increasing home value.
So, it was nearly a two to one ratio,
showing that folks are really taking on these projects
to please themselves,
and probably they are less likely to, kind of,
flip and move on to the next home soon, and so,
so they are really investing (inaudible).
I think I'm going to hand it over to Jane at this point,
and I'll be back in a few minutes.
>> JANE FREDERICK: Thank you Liza.
I'm Jane Frederick , and I'm a two-person firm.
So, it's really important for us to be able to spread our area
of influence, and we found
that the web is a really great place to do that.
At the beginning of 2009,
we worked with some marketing people
and they helped us sort of get focused.
And the whole point of it is that you want everybody
to get back to your webpage and pick up the phone
and call you or email you.
And so, in this pyramid, the webpage
and your blog is the most important.
Social search, sopeople can find your webpage is very important.
And then social networking is the top of that.
This just shows our Google Analytics page.
So, you can see that half the traffic to our webpage comes
from search engines, such as Google or Yahoo.
About a quarter comes from referral traffic
and then a quarter comes from direct traffic.
So, on the search traffic,
you want to be sure that you know,
on Google that you have your
Google Maps, that you have a little photograph,
you have your webpage, you have all your information there.
You know, when they click on it, that it's enticing
and people wanna come onto your webpage.
So, spend a little time to- to make these referral,
the search sites, referral sites have the information
that you need.
These are several referral sites
that I see get people to my website.
And on most of those, like the AIA Architect Finder,
which as an architect AIA member, you're automatically on.
But you need to go in and add a little bit of information.
Cause they can see on this site that you're there
with your address, but it's a lot better if you go in
and add your phone number, add your email,
and add your website, so that people can find you easier
when they go to search sites, referral sites, like this.
And many of those on the screen that I showed you before,
you can go in and add in additional information,
such as your website and email links.
So, you wanna be sure and do that.
If you look at the top here,
these are the referrals on our website.
And you can see fully half
of these referrals are websites that come from HOUZZ.
So, I mean it's really the big gorilla
that makes a huge difference and
what I did, starting two or three years ago,
especially when we were really slow, I spent the time
to upload the photographs and approaching it
where you just do, you know,
one project a week, or one project a day.
It's not that onerous, but you wanna, when you upload them,
be sure and tag them, because as Liza was saying,
it is a searchable database.
So, want people able, be able to find you know, porches,
contemporary bathrooms.
You know, however they're
looking at it.
And the thing that I think that's most amazing, is,
looking at your photographs and, what we choose as architects
to put on our website as the front page, you know,
the really sexy shots.
And what the homeowners are picking is pretty amazing.
This is the one
that's been loaded to the most websites, or most ideabooks
from our web, our HOUZZ, um, pictures,
and last week it was 14,906.
I looked yesterday, and it was over 15,000.
So, it's a back hall, I mean it's a nice back hall.
But, it's a back hall.
I mean, and that's I think really fascinating
to see what's really important to clients,
as opposed to what we think is important too.
Just a little bit, people ask questions,
some of 'em, you know, I'm a two-person firm, so,
to balance the time it takes to answer the questions, if
the answer's readily available, I do it right away.
If I don't know, quite often say, the files are in storage
and I don't remember what the color of...you get a lot
of "what are paint color" questions, and you know,
most people don't remember that off the top of their head.
And then the other thing
that happens that's very helpful is that there's...
Bud's one of the writers, but there's, oh,
Liza will tell us later probably, but,
20 or 30 regular contributor writers, and so,
then on your photographs they show what the regular writers
for HOUZZ have said about your project too, and I can see
that when I had a project in an ideabook, in a focused ideabook,
the hits to my webpage go up a lot, so that's another
really helpful thing.
And then, also what I do, this shows that same house,
they did a home tour of that house and you have the,
either for a home tour or when you just have one
of your projects featured in an ideabook, I take it and embed it
on my webpage, so I have on my webpage a little section
that shows, the latest in HOUZZ
and it's always includes one of my projects.
So that's really helpful too, to move that back and forth.
This
slide I think shows the most exciting part that's happened.
We specialize in hot, humid climates.
And so, the oranges are in the United States,
in the North America, the hot, humid climates.
And, we have gotten three projects in Texas and two
of those we had signed contracts before we ever met them.
I mean they found us on HOUZZ, called us, and we went to Texas.
And we got one in South Alabama and one
in the coastal plains of North Carolina.
So, you know, we're two people
on a barrier island off the coast of South Carolina
and this is the impact that we've had,
moving throughout the country.
Another thing is that writers troll HOUZZ I think,
probably more than homeowners, it seems like.
But this is a garden project we did.
An editor at This Old House called in a panic,
that she needed a photograph, a project for their cover,
you know, photograph next week.
And so, we were able to make that happen, and then,
we're on the cover of their magazine, you know, they do a,
put it on their
webpage.
They tweet about it, then other people are starting to pick it
up in other blogs, and so every, this has happened three
or four times with different magazines, that they find us
on HOUZZ, and then they, this whole cycle just keeps moving.
So, it's been very helpful to be able to, to spread our story
to a wider audience.
Liza?
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: Thanks Jane.
Thank you very much Jane.
Okay.
So, I want to go into now a little bit
about what we've learned
about where these empowered clients are obtaining
their information.
Obviously, we, we surveyed HOUZZ users, so, it's not surprising
that their online, but it's interesting that 68 percent said
that the primary source of information that they would use
for their next project was HOUZZ and other online sources.
Only 11 percent said that they were using magazines
for information, and only nine percent said
that they were turning to friends and family, vendors,
service providers, or other folks,
through more traditional word-of-mouth.
One of the things that we do often, is take a look
at what people are writing in the iTunes Store for reviews,
because it gives us great insight
about what folks are really thinking.
I'll read you a couple, JP writes,
we're starting the process of building a home,
and the ideabooks have been invaluable,
from communicating what we want to our architect,
to picking colors and finishes with the designer.
I'm sure we will use this tool
through the completion of our project.
And Cheri writes, browsing the web is so frustrating.
This app solves that problem and more with the search feature,
links to professionals and products.
The ability to save photos to my ideabooks has been helpful
in helping me recognize my own style and make decisions.
And so, we analyze what's going on in here.
What we hear is that visuals are empowering.
People are happy to have more information.
It makes them feel more confident.
And we've actually heard from a lot of architects and builders
that they been able to send folks who are afraid
of getting started because they're afraid they won't be
able to accurately describe what they want or they think
that they don't actually have a point of view.
To actually help them to be able to articulate that, visually.
Actually, Mark and I have talked about this before, you know,
some of these ideas of modern is not somebody else's idea
of modern.
Two examples rooms here, which can kinda clearly show
that you know, you can have something that has a,
what can be called modern, and both be similar,
and yet be completely different, directionally,
in terms of what somebody's looking for.
And so, what we find that,
that the visuals have been very empowering, for homeowners.
To explain what ideabooks are,
so you just have a little bit of background.
so on every photo there's a link to professional, there's also a,
a button that says add to ideabook, there on the bottom.
And that enables homeowners to add photos to a collection,
an unlimited collection of online folders.
So where folks used to rip pages out of magazines, and put them
in manila folders, they can now do that on HOUZZ, more easily,
make notes about them, name the ideabooks whatever they like,
and save them.
They're also able to make them public or private,
and choose specific people to collaborate with.
So, if you're working with multiple clients and you want
to create and work with them collaboratively in idea books,
you can have actually set those idea books to private,
so that no one can see what work you're doing for others.
And then you can invite those specific people
to either just be able to view what you've collected for them,
or to actually work on it with you, jointly
and add their own photos, or their own notes.
Folks often create, before they even have a first meeting,
the ask homeowners to create a couple ideabooks
of the things they love, things they don't like with notes
about why, so they can start off on a much closer to,
more informed place, before they even start talking
about what they want.
So, we've seen the folks are collecting a lot of photos
in their ideabooks, but, what's really interesting is
that the actually collecting professionals along the way.
Meet Cynthia, Cynthia has more than 700 images in her ideabook,
and, again she was collecting ideas for what she wanted to do
with her home, and how she wanted to change her home.
But, when she was looking for those images,
she quickly realized that she collected a lot of images
from some of the same professionals
and she realized one she particularly liked,
found out he was local, gave him a call, and hired him.
And we're hearing these stories more and more that you know,
it really used to be that folks would collect all
of their ideas, save up for their project, and,
and not really research professionals
until they were ready to move forward.
And what we're seeing more and more is
that research process is starting much earlier
because homeowners are able to get exposure
to very specific architects and other professionals very early
in the process, instead of just their, kind of inspiration, and,
and design research phase.
So, in addition to being able to find professionals
by getting exposure to their work, I think, Jane started
to speak about this, another way
that homeowners are discovering professionals is
through very specific keyword searches for expertise.
So, you know, Jane's particular expertise is the hot
and humid climate.
She's able to put that information on, on her work,
in this case, the homeowner was looking for photos.
Again, she was just
in the research phase for her row house.
So, she did a search for photos for row house.
And a lot of the photos they came up and that were tagged
with keywords, which you can do on HOUZZ, for every photo,
you can enter about 100 different keywords,
were tagged with row house, and she discovered Ben Herzog,
and was able to contact him, go to his website,
do a lot of due diligence and then really connect
with somebody locally, who specialized
in something she was looking for, and she hired him.
Another thing that we're seeing professionals do is take very
deliberate control of their showing in their portfolio
to attract the right type of client.
This architect, Wiley Gilliam, from Texas, because he was
in Dallas, most of the referral work
that he was getting was very traditional, and he wanted
to do much more modern work, and so he was very deliberate
about putting only his modern work up on HOUZZ,
and he was able to successfully not only grow the amount
of business he was getting, but, switch the type
of business he was doing to far more modern work.
Before, he was doing about 20 percent modern homes,
he's now building about 80 percent modern homes.
Another way that folks are discovering professionals
on HOUZZ is in the professional directory.
Folks can go in, and it defaults to their particular metro area,
in a 50 mile radius, but they can go in and search
for architect specifically in their area.
HOUZZ is a technology company, not a media company, and so,
the order in which we present professionals is really based
on the activity that benefits the greater community.
So, how many photos you've uploaded,
the quality of the photos, whether you have reviews,
whether you've added keywords to your photos,
whether you're answering questions, and all the things
that really help homeowners get more educated.
Jane referred to being featured in articles.
So, here's an article, for example,
on eight great kitchen cabinet palettes.
You'll see that in this next slide,
Sorry folks, just waiting to advance, but for every photo
that shows up in a featured idea book, here we go,
you'll see that to the right
of it is a link to, it's jumping ahead,
to the right of it is a link to the professional,
whose work gets featured.
So, when Jane says she gets a lot of hits to her website,
she says she says these articles are published featuring a photo
from your portfolio, with links to your portfolio
so folks can actually click through there
and do more research, and it does show that,
folks aren't just looking at the photos,
it's helping them discover professionals
and driving traffic all the way through to the website.
The fifth, and kind of, the most exciting way that,
that folks are getting exposure
to professionals is in the community.
In this case, the homeowner saw this lovely home and porch and,
you know, posted a question saying, gosh,
I'm trying to do something similar
to this, what should I do?
And we actually follow back up with her and said, you know,
what did you end up doing?
And she said, well, we actually communicated directly
with the architect.
He was a good match, both in his interest and knowledge,
knowledge and was able to help with design and construction,
and that resulted in our engaging him
to create a new house for us
that will include a similarly styled porch and stone facade.
But, then folks are really, they have a lot of questions,
you know, I've I'm a homeowner myself,
I've been through two remodels, there's not a lot
of good information out there,
to know what's involved, and what things cost.
And so, people have a ton of questions,
and it can be time-consuming to respond to them
in the community, but what you end up doing is putting a lot
of educational material out there
that people, really appreciate.
It makes them more comfortable in advance about working
with you, and makes them comfortable reaching
out with their questions, that can turn into work.
I think Jane pretty much covered that a lot of writers
and editors are looking for new work and new talent on HOUZZ.
And a lot of, a lot of magazines do that.
I get a little bit of delay in the system, so,
I'm just waiting for it to advance.
And then, finally, I think one
of the most interesting things we're seeing is just
that the borders are coming down and even internationally.
We've had people be hired in Dubai, we just had a couple
of projects in New Zealand, we had an architect in Seattle,
who was contacted by homeowner in Sydney who toured him
around for a house on Skype and then introduced him
to the builder, and then flew him out there
to work on the project.
Folks that are working even remotely in Greece, it's amazing
to see that, that, what homeowners are really looking
for is exactly what they want.
They, they, when they find what they want, they're willing
to work with, whoever is out there to get it,
even if they are not necessarily super local.
Katrina, hand it off to you.
>> KATRINA HERMANN: Thank you so much Liza.
So, we are Narofsky Architecture and Ways2Design.
We are linked companies, we've worked
as collaborative firms since 2000.
And we also commission independently.
We're approximately 10 employees,
so we a are studio style boutique firm
and our services align with such.
The projects we work on are out-of-the-box items,
definitely, the focus is modern residential.
And, for years we have received our commissions via
word-of-mouth only.
[laugh]
And only recently we realized the benefits of branching out,
in the social media communities to extend our range of projects.
This next project here, once the slide catches up, is in Arizona.
It happened to be commissioned the old-fashioned way.
It's one of the few, which we've had the good fortune to be able
to build outside of New York, it's projects like these, which,
allow for greater flexibility in design, relative to function,
which is thrilling for us, as thinkers and creators.
So, the drive to get out there
and market our product has really started to grow
into something more than just business propelled.
We began our journey into the Internet, social media world
with a blog, which failed.
We did not have the time on hand to really dedicate to keeping
that thing up and running and, you know,
people have such a short attention span for the Internet,
that you must be newly present constantly, in order to have,
like, a real presence.
So, our firm is a little bit in contrast to,
such a developed firm like Jane's, we're,
we're a little bit back in time, I guess.
We had a Facebook, but, Facebook is not as successful
as something like a HOUZZ,
where people go knowing they're looking
for something field related.
So, getting into HOUZZ is great.
It allowed us to get in touch
with an expanded market from all over.
And, it really allowed us to present our portfolio in an
up to date fashion to a market
of people we may never have connected with before.
Okay, so we're uploading to HOUZZ now,
we're getting hundreds of hits.
We are thinking this is great.
Let's get more images up.
Let's get feedback.
And feedback, besides commissions,
is what it's really all about at this point.
Here, in the slide you can see we're posting green roof decks,
like cool, amazing modern structures,
and they're getting added to a few ideabooks.
But, the biggest hits are coming
to the bathrooms, to the landscapes.
We've got one house, which we considered, sort of,
our transitional, modern, deco fusion house.
And, it's the most popular entry we have on Houzz to this day.
Added to thousands of idea books.
So, this social media site is telling us how to advertise.
And how to appeal to the public.
Then, there are the complications of committing
to a social media lifeline.
Outside of the Internet fantasy of getting known, and,
there is still tangible work on your desk.
Houses that are not going to build themselves.
So, you have to ration out your time and if possible,
it's best have committed member of the staff
who will spend some hours each day in making sure you are
on top of being the top hit, excuse me,
on searches for architects and designers in your area.
Recently, we were featured on a house tour, which was great.
We had tremendous feedback.
And this process of exposure to firms is the most accurate
and the most beneficial.
Because it introduces the consumer to our process.
It's not just the pretty picture, you get text,
and lots of images to go along with it, which provide a full,
actual, cohesive project view, and it, you know,
it just helps paint a more real picture
of possible services and possibilities.
And that's exciting for people to be able to see
and touch and click around in.
The house tour helped as well, because it looks very good
for prospective client to Google us,
and find that we are published on sites like HOUZZ,
Architectural Leaders Today, things like Dwell,
names that they know, sites that they surf.
It's good to see that the company you're interested
in working with is reputable and accessible.
Accessibility shows well, through HOUZZ,
when you answer the questions that, that pour into the inbox.
Some those questions are very good for business.
They're asking, whose table is that.
And we're saying, well thanks for asking, that's our table.
Its custom-designed.
Custom-built, and we can make one for you.
But then again, there's the questions that come in
and it's like, what shade
of white paint is that on the walls?
It, that can sort of find itself a bit tedious.
With regard to design goals, really the feedback
from the consumer and their questions are
completely invaluable.
They give us free market research with a fraction
of the time investment that this information would've taken
to collect five years ago.
I mean, we can immediately start refining uploads,
tagging the paint colors preemptively,
hosting more bathroom projects, more landscape projects,
tagging these images more heavily
to give them every advantage, to be easily searchable,
and to increase their presence in the consumer's ideabook
and in their search bars.
So, moving forward, there is this curse,
that is reality television.
And we have all suffered through it.
The clients see how quickly and painlessly the renovation went,
and they have what they think is a healthy understanding
of the process.
This creates very unrealistic expectations for us.
And then you have the social media and entertainment markets,
which are so saturated with content, that the client comes
out overwhelmed and confused.
And that is actually, a very big concern of these outlets.
So, I think in using all of these great tools that are
at our disposal, and not just HOUZZ, there's tons of websites
that do it but, as you can see, we're just sort
of getting our feet wet in this area.
It's just, really important is to stay focused,
and try to sort of, keep it real with your clients and,
just making sure that you're doing this
in the most organized way that you can in trying
to help your clients to see that as well.
But, there definitely is not much denying
that this is the way that it's going, I mean,
dedication to online social media networking is going
to pull you through, you know, all these next new commissions.
So, that's it.
Thank you.
Liza?
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: Thanks Katrina.
So, I'm going to wrap up a little bit what, sort of,
our synthesis of, of how the world has changed,
based on what we're, what we're seeing in our community.
The first one is that the world is flat.
You may have read Thomas Friedman's book
about globalization, but it really talks
about how technology has brought down borders for doing business,
that used to be very high.
And, as we're seeing, people are getting business,
not just in their local market, out of, out of their network,
but, out of states, or even out of the country.
And that tools are enabling folks
to work remotely and asynchronously.
And, in ways that are much, much more efficient.
Waiting for the slide to advance, hang on.
The second is that clients are starting earlier than ever.
Again, they're not just waiting until they're ready
to move forward to research folks
that they want to work with.
They're really starting that due diligence early,
even if they're not doing it consciously.
A lot of the time this is what's happening.
They're getting exposed to, not only your work, but who did it.
The way that you answer questions,
your blog, your websites.
There's just a lot more because of the accessibilities,
it allows them to start doing that exploration
about who they want to work with,
and not just what they want to do much earlier in the process.
The third is the client really wants a 360 degree view of you.
It's not enough to just get a word-of-mouth referral or,
is not enough for them just to see your work.
They really want to know much, much more about you.
So, when you answer questions in a community, there are a lot
of folks who may not be asking questions, but are reading that
and are saying, "Is this someone I would like to work with?
Is this someone who appears have expertise
in a particular area that I want?
I'm not just, I like their work, do they have reviews?
Am I able to see what other people say about them?"
And as Katrina said, this can result in a lot more work,
for you, to be sure that all this information is
out there proactively because you don't know who's doing their
due diligence.
You may not know that for months and months.
At the same time, the benefit of this for professionals is that,
often it shortening the sales cycle,
and making the process easier.
So, when folks do finally contact you,
they're much more knowledgeable about what you do,
they know it's a fit for their vision.
They know they're going to be comfortable working with you.
We're seeing it cut the sales cycle in as much as half
for many professionals and, you know, architects telling us,
again, like Jane said, folks that are hiring them,
signing contracts without ever having an in person meeting
because they've been able to gather enough information
to increase their comfort level.
And your brand really matters.
So, kind of along the case of the study of the architects,
wanted to do more modern work, you know, think about it,
not just for Coca-Cola to say, you know,
what is my public space?
What do I want people out there to know about me?
So, we do really need to start thinking
about those touch points and not just a must-have, but,
really think about it as an opportunity to put
out there what you want people to know about you
and to be very deliberate and specific about it,
in a way that can help your business.
And then, test and repeat.
I think Jane showed how, for every image you upload to HOUZZ,
and you can obviously do this anywhere that you can,
but we give you a count of the number of homeowner ideabooks
that it's been added to.
And this enables you to get an objective view of what works
at actually resonating with the clients that you want
to have and, and like anyone, you get emotionally attached
to particular projects, you might have loved the work,
or you really like the client, but it's not always the work
in that best represent you, or is going to bring
in the right type of clients.
Or it might even be a different angled shot, it might be,
you know, a particular wide-angle view of the room,
versus a close-up, or a more artsy angle that,
that resonates better with homeowners.
And, you know, think of it as a living, breathing thing,
that you can continue to do, of time, and to learn from.
Before I hand this over to Mark, a couple quick tips.
Again, I think as everyone has said it,
it's about being discoverable,
whether it's HOUZZ, or anywhere else.
You really want to start now and just enrich the content
that you have out over yourself, about yourself, over time.
Add photos, make sure you have keywords on there
so people are doing all their searches for porches
and particular areas of expertise,
they can find you and your work.
Interact with the homeowner community.
I think it can be a big investment,
and we're always trying to figure out ways
to make it simpler, but, keep in mind
that for every question you answer, you know,
there may be 10 or hundred other people
who read your answer that,
that are getting to know you that way.
Do leverage that free market research,
find out how your work resonates.
And, you know, ask HOUZZ clients and colleagues for reviews.
We're hearing, over again, even in just our community,
that homeowners are hiring people
because they can get all this information and it's important
to them that they can see that other people who have hired you,
are happy with your work.
So, with that I'm going to turn it over to Mark.
>> MARK ENGLISH: Hi, this is Mark English.
I've got a small five person, residential,
modern design firm in San Francisco.
Whoops.
Let me try to go back here.
Here we go.
About five years ago I started realizing,
I built out this beautiful office in San Francisco,
I started realizing that the world was changing a bit.
And mostly because no one came to this office anymore.
I was very happy with it, but,
I found that my clients weren't coming here.
And, in fact, the world had changed,
and has obviously changed a lot more,
besides the recession happening.
There's a lot more competition, less quality work for us.
Our prospective clients are getting younger than us.
And they are very tech savvy and they have different points
of view, and they're extremely able to do research.
Our online presence is judged by prospective clients,
regardless of what we think.
You know, our opinions are one thing, but,
our prospective clients have a different point
of view, quite often.
Look, feel, and appearance
of her website matters tremendously.
And, you'll see as I, as I go
through my concept of how this works.
Everything really goes back to the website
and what that is about.
And frankly, no one comes to office anymore.
I had to ask myself, what do I want?
Better projects.
Better clients.
Increased professional standing and respect.
Like a lot of small architects, small firms, I was looking
for ways to find repeatable project types.
Usually, with custom homes.
We do a custom home for a client, if they love us,
they come back in 10 years for a country home.
Other than that, it's all referral work.
Not so dependable.
So, obviously, increasing cash flow's a good thing.
How to get there?
Awards and publications I've had to teach myself
to communicate better and and be in
and amongst the public, and amongst my peers.
Increasing and position of our exposure in the world.
Basically, the mantra is, sharing equals power.
In the past it was, hoarding, information is power.
It really is, sharing information equals power.
This is the way I see the media world now.
There's the old media, which is, you know, limited circulation.
We all believe in awards, magazines,
newspapers, books and brochures.
But, there's everything else now below, your own website and,
in our case, a couple of blogs, which we'll talk about.
And new media, which is scalable, which includes:
Twitter, Facebook, etc. But, especially HOUZZ,
and I have to mention I've been involved with HOUZZ
for almost 4 years now.
And I've watched it grow and has become the primary tool in my,
you know, my client procurement process.
The old media, we're all familiar with.
We've been published almost 100 times in books and magazines.
I can't say that I've ever gotten a project directly
from that media.
They're gatekeepers, of course,
and architectural books are maybe 5000 additions per.
So, I've become much more interested in the new media.
Now, I want to put a couple of things The Contemporist, is a,
is a modernist blog from the Netherlands,
a couple has put together.
When our project, the Fontana Apartment,
showed up in this website, we got more hits
on our website then we typically got in a month.
That's great, but it's not dependable.
What has happened with the Houzz website, is that we have
between 20 and 40 percent of our traffic flow is coming
from HOUZZ, dependably every month.
And I'll speak more about that in a little bit.
If you're gonna have anything to say, you need to have content.
And obviously, some of the content can be borrowed,
some of it you produce yourself.
We've written our own blogs, Rebecca and myself,
and then we have guests like Michael,
a respected architect in town.
In the quest to develop repeatable business,
we do Title 24 energy calculations,
which are done forever, and I decided to make
that part of the business.
We started, with, a newsletter, which we try to email out
and that turned out to be let's put it this way, it was the road
to blogging, because we realize that it's much easier
to put a blog together that's adjustable and findable and,
and is not subject to all of the spam finding rules, and so forth
that inhibited our communication with the newsletter.
So, we put together a green compliance blog.
And as well, I put together another blog, which is called,
The Architect's Take, which is really all about my new sense
of sharing, and communication with other architects,
this was a. We interviewed other architects, we do yeah,
we travel around the country, and report on things
that interest us, Whatever that might be.
One of the goals in this new world is
to be found through others.
Write about who and what interests you,
other people will use that information and spread for you.
Promote links back to your website.
Help others be discoverable.
If you share power with them, they're going to share with you.
These goals require the creation of content
and distribution, through the media.
This is sort of how our world looks, we have our website,
which is an HTML 5 site.
So, it works on iPad and so forth.
We have The Architects' Take,
which is our editorial WordPress blog,
and we have Green Compliance Plus, which is really feeds,
It has lots of information, but it also feeds people back
to our teller 24 business.
The idea about casting a net
and bringing people back to your website.
From points where they don't even know
about you, is illustrated here.
So, in The Architects' Take, if you saw Anne Fougeron's,
Princeton Architecture Press book, that just came out,
and looked her up on Google, you're going
to find our little article, ahead of almost everything else.
If you read the article, decide to figure
out who put this together, you are led back to our website.
And, again if, let's say you look
up clear edge power fuel cells, because you're interested
in fuel cells for residences, you'll see an interview
that we did with the VP at the time, and again,
led back to our website.
The other tools that are out there, like Twitter, Facebook,
LinkedIn, to me, this is all about focused broadcasting,
it's not about 140 characters, that's irrelevant.
This is about sending information through HOUZZ,
you know, found at HOUZZ, in your own blogs online, anywhere,
to people who are interested in hearing what you have
to say already, because they've decided to be LinkedIn
with you or friends, etc.
These are our broadcasting tools, we probably,
altogether have some kind of contact with up
to 20,000 people a month.
And this has led to all kinds of publishing
and traditional media as well.
This is a snapshot through Google Analytics of the moment
that The Contemporist article came out.
You'll see HOUZZ was number four then for us,
right now it's number one, and has been for the last year.
I have this question asked all the time,
isn't this all just a big waste of time?
I could be doing, I could be working.
This has always been a problem for architects.
We're afraid of promotion.
We're afraid of interacting and selling, but, this,
this is the world we live in now.
And I want to point out that
in the last six months we have three projects
that have come directly from HOUZZ.
We have I have a project that we're in the midst
of down the Peninsula, where I was interviewed, hired,
on the phone, one day had a signed proposal back
that same day, having never met my client.
But, of course she had done extensive research
through HOUZZ.
She collected the ideabook images, she decided she liked us
and had done her background information checks
through Google, etc. and came prepared to hire.
We also won another project,
where the client picked the top four architects in the order
of area architects, interviewed them and picked us.
So, unlike really any of the other media I've worked with,
this the HOUZZ website has provided direct employment.
Traffic to our website has increased at least threefold,
in the last nine months, through all the methods
that I was describing.
And I've made lots of contacts with people at Metropolis Mag.
Residential Architect, we were featured last year
in the hard copy, that all came through contacts that came
from this sharing regiment.
And we're still in business and doing our best work.
Thank you.
>> BUD DIETRICH: Thank you Mark.
As a reminder to everybody in the audience, please,
if you have a question, go ahead and enter it into the chat box
and it will be sent to me and we'll start
with a few of the questions.
Liza, can you hear me okay?
This is Bud.
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: I can, I can.
Yeah.
>> BUD DIETRICH: Great.
We have a question about, do all of the photographs need
to be done by a professional,
or they just be a good composition you know,
using a digital camera?
You know, architects are concerned
about spending the money, of course.
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: Yes, it's a good question.
So, if you can get professional photography, that's great.
But, we do know that it's not necessarily affordable
for everybody.
We actually have articles published on HOUZZ about how
to stage and light and take photographs yourself.
So, if you do you have a good eye, and a good camera,
you absolutely can do that.
Every photo that you upload as part
of your portfolio will appear there.
What we do is actually go through
and just check photo-quality, and note the best ones.
So, if you want to be featured on the iPad,
or featured in the photo stream on HOUZZ, we're going through
and just making sure that the photos are good quality visually
and a minimum quality file size.
And when you go to upload photos on HOUZZ,
you can see right there, kind of,
what the recommended file size is, to be featured.
The other thing that we've heard from folks is that they will go
to design schools or photography schools, and find students
that are trying to build their portfolios,
and you can get some great photography there.
Or, often there are some folks that do real estate photography,
that are, that are pretty good.
And can help as well.
>> BUD DIETRICH: You know, that's a great tip.
Photography school and you can help them build a portfolio,
and you can hopefully get some decent,
some really nice photographs, and um,
at a decent, reasonable price.
I do, do have to say, I mean, one of the,
the more interesting things about my experience on HOUZZ's,
probably the worst photograph that I have on HOUZZ is far
and away the most popular.
It's, it's in over 9000 ideabooks,
and its photographs I took myself,
and it taught me the lesson that,
if the photograph tells the story
and the story is a good story,
good quality photographs are not the most important thing.
It's really important, but not the most important thing.
It's telling that the story is important.
Again, that was my experience.
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: And I do see that
>> BUD DIETRICH: [indiscernible] Go ahead.
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: Sorry, I was going to say,
I see someone was sort of asking about,
if you can add rendering to HOUZZ.
I was just going to add onto that, that when you go
to upload photos, you'll see options
to choose, is this a room space?
Is this a product?
Is this a rendering?
Is this a before photo?
So, all of those are, are things that you can upload.
Just want to designate them correctly.
>> BUD DIETRICH: You know, we have a another group
of questions that have to do with sort
of how you select the style, or a location
for the photographs you're uploading
and whether there's any intention that HOUZZ to sort of,
expand the style categories, and, you know,
expand the universe of locations,
to include some cities or areas that are not there currently.
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: Yep, so, the the good thing to know
about that is two things.
One, in terms of styles, it's much more important
that add those style words to the keywords for each photo.
Folks are more often just doing specific searches,
and less often just, kind of, browsing through modern.
So, you're actually if you're putting, you know,
cottage style, or some style
that isn't designated necessarily in the drop-down
on HOUZZ, your work is actually being found,
as long as you're adding those keywords to your photos.
And then the second piece, in terms of metro area.
So, it actually doesn't even matter, the metro areas are kind
of a popular a list of sort of popular areas, but,
there are folks, plenty of folks on HOUZZ outside
of those specific areas and what we actually do is default
for every user on HOUZZ,
to their own Metro area, based on IP address.
So, even most folks aren't actually, kind of,
going through specific metro area by default.
When you go, for example, to the professional directory,
you automatically see folks
within a 50 mile radius, wherever you are.
Regardless of where that is.
>> BUD DIETRICH: Thanks Liza.
You know, this is a question for the architects and, a question,
I'll, I'll ask Katrina.
You can help answer this.
The question is who manages the HOUZZ content
for the firms you know, the marketing or project manager?
Or, who's best to do that?
I mean, how do you guys handle it over at Narofsky?
>> KATRINA HERMANN: Interns.
No, truth told, Stuart actually, usually will come up to one
of us and he'll be like, I took these great shots
of this project today, somebody's got to get it
up online, and whoever is not on the phone, will just take
that and, and put it up, and actually I saw a question, like,
how do you really, how do you streamline it?
How do you streamline it?
I mean so many different outlets,
and so many different places to put this information up.
You know, for us, I don't know how to really organized that
and how to get it all communicative,
to all the different places.
But, definitely, all of us in the office will jump on it
at any point in time, you know, to upload and,
and so that is actually probably part of the problem,
as far as how not to streamline,
and getting that info up on the Internet.
>> BUD DIETRICH: You know, this is, this webinar is actually,
a small piece of a workshop that the we're planning
for next year's AIA convention, in Denver.
And, and part of that workshop will be a lengthy discussion
about how to streamline.
We'll talk about tools that you can use to streamline sort of,
to integrate after this social media platform.
You know, hopefully, before the workshop,
that the next year's convention will put on a webinar
to sort of, start addressing those things.
Cause I know architects, in general, and me in particular,
I know that those are sort of,
getting those efficiencies going is important.
Hey, Mark, how do you guys handle, you know,
getting your content up online?
>> MARK ENGLISH: I handle all of that.
I think, I find that you know,
we probably photograph a new project every five
or six months.
You know, sometimes they come in batches, and then,
I'll typically spend one,
one lunch period a week doing this stuff, either you know,
answering questions, and/or uploading photos,
while in doing something else.
The upload process is no big deal.
The great thing about HOUZZ is that it's, relaxed, in a way,
as opposed to my HTML site, which I'm very fussy about.
So, I can put things up and look at them, and if I don't
like them, I take them down and put other, you know,
photos in their place.
I find it easy to work in parallel,
while either answering questions
or uploading photos to the HOUZZ site.
So, I have not found that to be much
of a energy or time draw at all.
The blogging takes a little more time.
>> BUD DIETRICH: And, and Jane, how about Frederick
and Frederick, how do you guys handle the you know,
answering the questions and you know,
keeping the content up to date?
Hey, Jane?
Well, taking a guess we'll just, we'll go on to
>> JANE FREDERICK: Can you hear me now?
>> BUD DIETRICH: yes.
>> JANE FREDERICK: OK.
I do it all.
We're just two people.
So, but like Mark, you know, we photograph
when a project's done.
So, it's, you know, several times a year,
and, likewise, in batches.
I tend to do just a little bit every morning, when I come in.
I just take a look at, you know, questions that have come in
and answer them then, so they don't pile up too much.
Is, pretty much, how I'd answer that part.
>> BUD DIETRICH: Hey, hi, Liza?
A couple questions are about whether or not there is a fee
to appear to be on HOUZZ?
>> LIZA HAUSMAN: Yep.
No fee, HOUZZ is free.
And I see another question about are architects living
and working outside the US welcome at HOUZZ?
Absolutely.
We definitely help folks all over the world, with a presence,
doesn't matter where you are.
Maybe you can throw out the, I think the IP question is sort
of interesting, maybe you can throw
that out to the group, Bud.
>> BUD DIETRICH: Which question is that, now Liza?
(inaudible)
>> BUD DIETRICH: Sorry?
>> JANE FREDERICK: About if you have your photos up there,
if people can steal your ideas.
I guess, and I would agree with what Mark said,
that sharing is really important.
But, another thing too, is we cannot put our plans online,
so that, people get a sense of the spaces that they don't have,
you know, all the information.
>> Mark: Yeah.
I would, this is Mark.
The question about hoarding information...there are no
secret ideas out there in the design world,
and I think that this is, sort of,
a left over idea of times past.
In this world, we're filled with imagery from everything.
And it can show up in people's Facebook accounts.
You know, the inside of the house that you're trying
to conceal can show
up in someone's Facebook account and be seen in there.
So, I think that, as professionals,
it's a healthier attitude these days to assume within the bounds
of privacy, for your clients, obviously,
sharing the information is a good thing.
>> BUD DIETRICH: Well, thank you for joining us.
This concludes the AIA CES course, CRAN 12010.
And, the webinar survey report form URL is listed
in the chat box and will be included
in the follow-up email sent to you in the next few hours.
We will be reporting credits for attendees,
make sure to take the webinar survey report form
in the next 24 hours, and you'll be able to fill out
and download a certificate, and we appreciate your feedback.
So, even if you don't need the continuing education credit,
please take a moment to complete the survey.
Thanks for joining us.
