Unite17

I don’t normally plug my employer on here, but if you like conferences with real content you can actually use; then you’ll be hard pressed to beat Unite.

Coming straight out of BoomTown Unite 2017; I had the awesome opportunity to meet some of the best in the industry over a bottomless supply of bourbon. This year I discussed a few of the topics I’ve written about extensively here; namely the idea that funnels suck and subscribers rule.

Expanding on this a bit I’ve realized I’ve missed some really important info in my blog. “How to market stuff”.  Real estate is a sales industry. We think and approach things with a sales mindset; qualify, buy , or die.  In previous posts I’ve covered the concepts of building orbits subscribers can live in, but now it’s time to dig into this whole marketing thing a bit further.

Congratulations you’re a CMO!

CMO’s get hired and fired more than any other C-level executive. Why? It’s a tough job, and proving your worth through measurement isn’t always easy to do. (the finance guy has it so easy) Luckily you’re also your own CEO so just try not to screw this up. Now that we’ve accepted the promotion we need to do what every good CMO does; create a goal, and define how we’re going to measure our success.

It’s very important to understand that by creating goals we prove to ourselves what tactics are ultimately going to make sense; not the other way around. If you dive into just doing stuff in the marketing world you’ll find yourself stranded with 2 possible outcomes…

  1. It doesn’t get “results” and you quit.
    Our sales brain dominates our goals. There’s nothing wrong with a little direct-response marketing, but we have to remember that everything we do isn’t just varied forms of lead generation. User engagement with our brand is the piece we’re picking up here that our sales agents can’t do for us or on their own.
  2. Even worse! It doesn’t work and you don’t even realize it.
    I see a lot of great blogs with no readers (like this one). I see plenty of slick videos with no views. What makes marketing so difficult is that it really does require all that “creativity” agencies claim they have. (booze helps too) Coming up with fresh, unique, and inspiring content on a regular basis is no easy task. That’s why even the best teams get sucked into complacency. We do this weekly newsletter that we crushed the first few times, and here we are 2 years later nobody wants to write it, and we just go through the motions to churn this crap out. Not setting acceptable levels of engagement lets us live in a state of ignorant bliss that is “well it’s branding; better than nothing”

In order to create an effective marketing plan we have to clearly state what metrics we consider effective, and what we can actually measure. Positive sentiment is a great thing to strive for, but good luck measuring this without pulling your hair out. My advice is customizing our metrics by channel, and tying them into our ultimate goal. Here’s an example…

I can’t easily measure how many deals my online video commercial generated. I can however measure the exposure of my commercial. My goal is to have at least 3 soft interactions with my past clients per month. I uploaded a video to facebook, and targeted a list of my 1000 past clients. My video achieved 75% exposure to my list, with a frequency of 5 views per person. My average watch time was 18 seconds of 25.

Frequency, exposure, list size, video % watched. These are all ways we can measure the performance of a video. Most importantly above we set a goal of achieving 3 soft interactions with our past clients. We didn’t expect new leads as this is a small and targeted list. Doing this on FB is ridiculously cheap. Emphasis on the word cheap. As CMO budget management is one of our primary duties. The balance of new leads vs engaging old ones is the executive decision we must make for ourselves.

Now mix it all together

Don’t let your channels of engagement become islands. I can fill 20 pages on this topic alone; so let’s focus on one simple idea for today…

If I spend time making a XYZ; I want exposure for that XYZ. My XYZ can’t promote itself. I must leverage my other channels and database to promote my XYZ.

Change XYZ to anything like a blog post, video, photo, social post, etc. If we’re going to create marketing of any kind it needs to be worthy of promoting so that it will ultimately be worth doing. If we do this a surprising thing might happen. Our “branding” soft plays might actually generate leads! Things that make your customers happy might make other people want to be your customer too.

TL;DR Tips

  • Set engagement goals in the same manner you create lead generation goals.
  • Branding is not fluff. Branding should drive engagement and interaction.
  • Consistency vs Habit: Sticky marketing requires consistent commitment. However don’t fall into the trap of creating marketing out of habit. Measure, execute, and measure again.
  • Leverage your database and channels to cross promote. The greatest benefit of a well engaged database is you get to market to them for a far reduced cost! Getting likes on social for example is dirt cheap vs form conversions. Get the likes, build the audience, get the power. All those random pages you love on Instagram will eventually try to sell you a T-shirt, because they understand how to leverage an audience.