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When Maracay Homes executives decided to use themes such as Disney and Valentine’s Day to increase their company’s visibility, they didn’t settle for someone in a Mickey Mouse costume waving at drivers whizzing past their housing communities or pass out roses to visitors.
Instead, this 20-year-old Scottsdale-based homebuilder used social-media tools to create a hunt for Mickey Mouse in its model homes that culminated in a drawing for a family trip to Disneyland.
In February, Maracay’s Love Thy Neighbor photo contest gave its Facebook fans the opportunity to share fun moments captured digitally.
In a time when the housing market is lethargic, Maracay is using the combination of social media and real-life interaction as a way to generate some spark.
“We’ve all noticed a huge impact from the economy. Everybody does business different now,” said Laurie Tarver, vice president of sales and marketing for Maracay. “We have to in order to survive.”
Maracay initiated its social-media promotion program this year. Three promotions have tripled its number of Facebook fans. Although it’s unlikely that many fans will purchase a Maracay home, it is likely it will amount to sales that otherwise would not take place, Tarver said.
“If people remember you, they’ll think of you when they need you,” she said.
Chandler homeowner Wrae Duncan-McCabe entered but did not win the trip to Disneyland, but her efforts did garner four free movie tickets. Because that contest utilized Facebook, contest posts that linked her page and Maracay’s p
rovided exposure for the company to Duncan-McCabe’s Facebook friends.
“Depending on how many people looked on my page, I could have advertised Maracay 30 times or 150 times,” said Duncan-McCabe, who owns a home in the Chandler community of Whispering Heights. “Social media is getting so big. . . . I think it’s a good way to get their name out there.”
Since 1991, Maracay has built more than 7,000 homes in 13 Arizona communities. But the increasing popularity of tools such as LinkedIn and Twitter was a signal that adjustments in marketing strategies were needed.
It started with a Facebook page and escalated from there to include iPhone applications. Some, like Tarver, were already very tech-savvy while others learned how to poke, tweet and like through their children.
Tarver said some homebuyers have purchased homes strictly based on the information they received online through the company’s website and via e-mail or social-media interactions.
After studying the options on Maracay’s website, Shane Roe was pretty sure he wanted to purchase a home in the Morada at Palm Valley community in Goodyear. Being prepared before taking a look at the model made the final decision easy for Roe and his wife, Mireya.
“We went online and saw this house and knew if it looked anything like (that) in person, it was going to be a slam dunk,” said Roe, who recently retired from the military and purchased his home about a month ago. “We walked through and knew in the first 10 minutes.”
Technology gives potential buyers flexibility and freedom that traditional home selling experiences lack. Instead of feeling the pressure of dealing with a real estate agent who’s on the phone, or getting interrupted during an inopportune time, social media puts the customer in control, Tarver explained.
“Traditionally, you call the person and it’s at the sales person’s convenience. If I call, I’m interfering with their day. But if I e-mail or post on Twitter, they’re choosing when to have me in their life,” Tarver said. “When the customer is interested, they’re reading more and with social media, it’s at the customer’s convenience. You can accept it and at anytime you can reject it.”
The key to utilizing the benefits of social media and achieving results is balancing virtual interaction with real-life contact, Tarver said. This is why the company will continue to develop promotions that incorporate both and emphasize Maracay’s local feel.
“There are a lot of builders who tweet or Facebook. But we’re a small builder, and we’re homegrown,” she said. “We want Phoenix to flourish. We’re local, and everything we do focuses on the local economy.”
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So he rounded up 10 of his buddies from grad school and invited them to T.G.I. Fridays in Fairfax, where Red Peg Marketing had arranged to pick up a $200 tab for the evening.
Davis ordered the steak and seafood platter. He and his friends also had appetizers, desserts and “cocktails all night.”
It was, the 26-year-old said, “the best car purchase of my life. It made my summer.”
The Cruze Warming Parties, as they’re called, are one part of the three-pronged approach Red Peg is using to drum up advertising for a group of 28 Washington-area Chevrolet dealers.
The guerilla marketing tactics the firm is employing are a far cry from traditional print and television ads. They include “street teams” that park Chevrolet cars near establishments like Starbucks, Domino’s Pizza and Potbelly Sandwich Works. Customers who swing by to look at the cars are rewarded with a gift certificate for a free coffee or meal.
“For somebody to experience a car in exchange for a $4 coffee — that’s a good investment,” said Brad Nierenberg, the president and chief executive of Red Peg. “You have to do the little things right.”
The Chevrolet Cruze, a compact sedan introduced in 2010, was the best-selling car in the United States in June, according to Autodata. It was the first time an American-made car had topped the charts in years, and a particularly sweet victory for the brand after the $50 billion government bailout of General Motors in 2009.
Last week, three Red Peg staffers dressed in polo shirts and khaki shorts were camped out at the Arlington County Fair. The Chevy tent, which sat between signs advertising racing piglets and “steak in a sac,” featured two cars — the Cruze and the electric-powered Volt — as well as a pair of 60-inch touch screens that gave fair-goers a taste of “augmented reality.”
On one screen, fair-goers could pretend to test-drive cars by waving pieces of cardstock in front of the television camera. On the other, they could play Chevrolet trivia games (“How many MPG does the 2011 Malibu get on the highway?”) and design their own cars — which could be immediately uploaded to a user’s Facebook profile.
Those efforts on Facebook and other social media sites are crucial, Nierenberg said, adding that “they help us create thousands of unique interactions at once.”
“Social media is all about ‘look at me, I’m traveling,’ ‘look at me, I got engaged,’” he added. “Now it can be ‘look at me, I got this new car.’”
The local marketing campaigns for the Cruze began last fall. Although Harry Criswell, who owns a Chevrolet dealership in Gaithersburg, says it’s too soon to tell whether the efforts have led to a rise in sales, he says “we’re getting thousands of leads from these events.”
Criswell would not comment on how much the local dealers are paying Red Peg, but said it was “about the same” as the $3 million in newspaper advertising he once took out.
“So many times, people might think ‘oh I’ll send a thank you e-mail,’ ” Nierenberg said. “But that’s not enough. You have to create an experience.”
For Davis, that experience included dozens of balloons and “a whole table that was decked out like a kid’s birthday party.” Red Peg also organized a car-naming game in which Davis’s friends took turns suggesting monikers for his new purchase.
They tossed out ideas like like Lady Mobile and The Ivory Badger.
In the end, he named his new car Penelope. Penelope Cruze.
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