Marketers tackle their top seven emerging challenges.

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In late summer, single-family home production was on track to establish another record year of some two million units, according to David Seiders, NAHB chief economist. Yet some marketers were already thinking about the implications of a market they saw beginning to shift, at least for the moment.

“All of a sudden the brakes have come on a bit. We're still almost sold out in our communities, but demand seems to have come to a more manageable level,” says Carlene Wilkie, vice president of sales and marketing for Brookfield Homes in Del Mar, Calif. Of the industry climate, Probert adds that his company has “definitely seen indicators that it's changing.”

And there's evidence of some flattening in areas beyond California. “The biggest challenge right now is the unknown,” says Sia Howe, vice president of marketing for Astoria Homes in Las Vegas. “Just three months ago I was doing ‘anti-marketing' to keep people from coming to my communities. Now I'm trying to come up with ways to get them there,” she says.

In Orlando, Adams is beginning to prepare for a slowdown of the current breakneck pace. “One of the challenges is that everything is so good. Everything works and you can get complacent,” he says. “There's more demand than supply right now, but you have to be careful; that will not always be the case.”

In response, marketers plan to get back to the basics. “I think you diversify your product to make sure you don't get stuck at one price level,” Adams says. Park Square is broadening its customary “third-time move-up” product into a townhome-style product, for example.

And Brookfield is beginning to advertise again and sharpen the focus on value. “We are looking hard at our models and the kind of information we have in them to make sure people know what standard features we have versus the competition,” Wilkie says.

As Probert says, for years sales people have spent most of their time “managing demand,” but now they have to shift toward “demand creation” and create value for customers. One strategic initiative for his company is to “re-energize sales people to engage the customer, build that relationship, and help them move through the decision-making process,” Probert explains.

With national markets fragmenting, media proliferating, and management adding broader objectives, marketing seems likely to become a more prominent part of big builders' organizations. Marketing executives will also need more resources, as is reflected by the increase in industry research, for example.

“Keeping your eye on the market segmentation is becoming a much bigger job in terms of primary and secondary research, long-term and short-term,” says Elder.

“It's a matter of working more intensely to understand your customer,” says Probert, who recently added a consumer research specialist to his marketing staff. He says he intends to focus on individual wants and needs using questionnaires and interaction with sales personnel. Then the salespeople can zero in on “what you and your family need, not what you and everyone else in our market appears to need,” he says.