We are proud to announce that Stanley Martin Homes, an NDG client, will open their newest community, Huntleigh at Creighton Farms, this spring!

Located in Loudoun County, Virginia, Huntleigh at Creighton Farms offers unparalleled luxury with lavish single-family homes on 1- to 3-acre homesites in a highly sought after golf club community.

Click here to learn more about Stanley Martin Homes.

With mortgage rates already at historic lows, things just got even better for those in the market for a new home, or looking to refinance. Last week, Freddie Mac reported that fixed mortgage rates dropped to a new record low, with the average 30-year mortgage rate at 3.89% and 15-year rate at 3.16%.

In December, new homebuilder confidence increased to its highest level in over a year with the hope that these low interest rates could boost sales, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Click here for the full story.

Research, testing, best practices, solid strategy, and superior creative helped us generate these exceptional results, but still we are not satisfied. NDG’s commitment to our clients inspires us to further refine and constantly improve our results, even record-setting ones like these.

Practice makes perfect. But practice can also lull us to sleep on our feet.

We can become so focused on the process, on completing the task, on how we’re getting it done, that we often forget why we’re doing it in the first place—and as a result, we may sacrifice innovation, threaten quality, and risk failure.

In every business, in every industry, this trap awaits those who believe that processes can be perfected once and forever, as well as those who fail to ask at every turn, “why?”

—Why are we doing it this way?

—Why is this a better choice?

—Why will the end-user, customer, client, or consumer act?

—Why will people do this, want this, discuss this, buy this?

In short, why will it work?

Before you know how, you must know why. Otherwise, “how” may just be a roadmap to nowhere. Relying on “how” creates assumptions, leads teams astray from targets, and can make even the most sensible people throw logic and common sense out the window.

Why aren’t more companies focused on the “why?” Because it’s hard work. Because the “why” constantly changes. Because the “why” is not technology, but human nature. And because, sometimes, we must admit that there is no “why” and start all over.

At NDG Communications, the “how” is the method by which we carry out and create our work, but the “why” is the reason the work actually works. Because we always ask “why,” we know our work has a much better opportunity to create success for our clients.

As the New Year gets under way, I wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude to our clients, colleagues, and vendors. Our team at NDG is sincerely grateful to work with professionals who share our passion and core values of service, honesty, integrity, and character. It’s truly the relationships that make our work meaningful and inspirational, and we are excited about our future collaborations and opportunities in 2012.

Over the past few months, we’ve added quite a few new articles and e-books to the NDG “Knowledge Base,” our internal library of online content.

Looking to drive more traffic to your website via Facebook? Check out “Beyond the Facebook Business Page: How to Generate Traffic and Leads with Facebook,” an interesting new e-book publication from HubSpot. Learn how to make Facebook a major part of your marketing strategy with tips on keeping your content fresh, instructions on how to advertise successfully, and more. Click here to download this free e-book today.

Content Marketing vs. Traditional Advertising, an infographic from Marketo, shows how content marketing—the creation and sharing of content to promote a product or service—is competing with traditional advertising, and benefiting marketers. Some of the most popular content marketing tactics include social media—with 55% of marketers using Twitter, 54% using Facebook, and 38% using YouTube to distribute their content—e-newsletters, and blogs. Click here to see the infographic.

In November, Steve Alloy, President of Stanley Martin Homes, an NDG client, created a list of seven positive things consumers should know about our nation’s current economic state.

For example, did you know that the recession actually ended in June 2009, and that the U.S. economy actually grew by 2.5% in the fourth quarter of this year? Click here to read about this and other encouraging news, such as the profitability of American companies, the truth about unemployment in our region, and more.

For days, we were at work converting what once was a simple dollhouse into a mouth-watering masterpiece complete with graham cracker floors, chocolate solar panels, and a fruitcake foundation, among other scrumptious efficiency features. Click here to see the fruits—or should we say, “candy”—of our labor!