Budgeting (and marketing) is a year-round endeavour
Boards are bound by their fiduciary responsibility to avoid assessment increases without overwhelming justification. Due to pressure to increase reserves, the first place you should look is for economies in the operating budget, before considering an increase. Managing Replacement Reserves is discussed in a separate article. Ideally, before operating budgets are finalized, competitive bids should be solicited. However, due to the complexity of such an exercise, it has not been practical until we developed this platform.
HOAhomepage approaches this challenge by publishing a profile of each community, with its basic characteristics and needs, then providing an environment for service providers to identify communities that fit their expertise, experience, current clients, and service areas, regardless of whether the community is currently in the market for the service. The point is no solicitations, just branding. Each of these companes have a full profile, including client lists, recommendations, and reviews, available for viewing. No direct contact is needed.
If you are a board member or Budget Committee member and you want a competitive bid for some line item or projected need, on HOAhomepage, it’s as simple as selecting the vendors you like and clicking. Relevant information is sent directly to the appropriate company contact. Responses are privately saved for the budget committee or board to view, and board or committee member contact information is not shared. If you see what you want from the response, you can request a formal proposal. All communications are conducted via a thread attached to the initial request. Unsolicited contact is not allowed.
The board, manager, or committee members can maintain an internal scope-of-work list for each component or need. It is designed to be updated as needed, so you are always prepared to share with contractors. A scope of work list needs to represent exactly what you want from the service, so you can instruct contractors to follow it exactly for comparison.
As a maintenance contractor or governance professional, once you target the communities that best match your expertise and experience, you are in the best place to at least be considered by the board. Then your job is to enhance your brand. Build your profile, with articles, forum participation, following case studies, and conducting surveys.
Once registered, each CIDpro has several options to extend and focus their marketing efforts on HOAHomepage. The table below highlights these options.
Most of the time, your primary effort is branding yourself with another business or professional who currently serves multiple communities, hoping for a referral if the board is seeking a change in contractors. For Portfolio Managers, branding with attorneys, Insurance agents, etc., or vice versa, can get you on the short list for receiving an RFP. However, one CID professional recommending another risks burning a bridge with your other professional contacts. Getting the attention of the Board of Directors directly is nearly impossible. General internet searches, including your company listed in directories, Yelp, and Angie’s List, can have some success, but these searches are not predictable. We have seen other approaches, from door hangers to sneaking into open board meetings. Sponsoring “Board Education” Seminars with other professionals, and I am sure you can think of a few others. What we have found is that the most successful “arms-length” marketing tool is prolific article publishing on your favorite social media. For reaching homeowners, for example, Facebook was cited most frequently in our surveys. LinkedIn articles were cited most often for branding with b2b contacts.
All authored content is cataloged (indexed) for internal and external searches. On initial publishing, an article will appear on the feed of your specific target, including specific communities, states, regions, counties, or zip codes. In fact, your embedded target preferences (can be attached to articles, surveys, forums, etc.)can select one or more of 19 different CID user roles (including board or committee members) or just portfolio managers in a specific county, and many other combinations. These preferences are part of your profile metadata, which can be modified at any time you like. These preferences also determine what comes to your personal feed, so you can monitor reader reaction and comments. We also track search terms used by each user role for more precise article targeting.
Typically, boards don’t conduct searches for service providers unless they are prepared to issue “Requests for Proposals.” At that point, we ask for referrals/recommendations from other professionals and occasionally from other communities where one or more board members have a personal connection. Most board members, rightfully, don’t want solicitation coming to them directly. They are unpaid volunteers who are willing to commit a “portion” of their lives to community decision-making. Professionally managed communities can delegate this function, but even the portfolio manager doesn’t have the time to find and vet a large number of new vendors on an ongoing basis, unless a service change needs to be made.
Basic CIDPro Registration
- Create Target Markets-
- Follow current HOA clients, Home Builders, or CID Business Entities
- Create an extended profile
- Publish articles or business updates, all tagged or followed entities are appended to the post.
- Share posts to your social media accounts
- Create Newsletters and accumulate subscribers (integrate with Mailchimp or Constant Comment
- A personal published page is automatically created from your initial profile. This is a significant step up from your directory listing; it not only makes you more visible on HOAhomepage, but is indexed for browser searches broadly. Your published post allows you to add articles, professional updates, and photo galleries. If you participate in case studies, create a forum, conduct a survey, and use other branding tools, they are highlighted on your post page
- Integrate with CRM services you may use, like Salesforce or others. Create newsletters and add subscribers. Publish articles that can be automatically shared with your social media accounts, like LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Features for Company Registration
- Complete company profile including divisions, subsidiaries, and associates
- CIDs and professionals attach to geographic map posts from national, State, County (and County Insurance), Zip Code, and Communities –
- Expand social media presence targeting potential clients
- Automatically repost articles to any other social media accounts
- Integration with CRM services like Salesforce
- Develop and publish Newsletters and collect subscribers
- Brand to all verticals in the CID Industry, from land development, Pre-development, construction, Post-development and community association governance.
- Connect with 19+ different industry professional roles- providing specialized industry services
- Interact and brand with parallel industry entities, including Home Building Industry, Homeowner Service Companies, Insurance Carriers and Wholesalers, and CID Real Estate specialist.
- Free unlimited Job Board and listings
- Unlimited Articles, Posts, Forums, and Case Study publishing
- Promote company credentialing, education, and culture
- Feature client communities and successes.