The Marketing Monsoon Part I

Monsoon season is here. When spring has sprung, the real estate ad budgets kick into high gear. Whether it's during the Today Show or the evening news, It seems just about every big label broker has a slick new commercial, all with the exact same messages. I haven't seen anything in the ads that, as a consumer, would compel me to pick one over the other. Don't get me wrong, I think they are all well done spots, the calls to action seems to leave something to be desired.

We've all seen the mind numbing stats regarding the sheer volume of advertising or marketing messages a consumer is faced with each day. Marketing firm Blackfriars reports in their white paper, "The Tyranny of Too Much":

"In one experiment, when researchers asked subjects to compare chocolate chip cookies from a jar of 10 cookies and a jar of two cookies, the subjects rated the cookie from the smaller jar better than the one from the larger jar. And the cookie wasn't just better. It was rated more valuable, more desirable to eat in the future, and more attractive as a consumer item, despite the fact the cookies were identical. More choice made the subjects feel that their sample was less desirable."

The job of the broker or agent might seem like it's getting harder every day. After all, how do you keep up with all the changes of technology based marketing and the overwhelming number of choices a consumer has at their disposal? Not only do you have to find a way to set yourself apart, you need to find new and better ways of marketing property.

Being Extraordinary
Extraordinary: 1.beyond what is usual, ordinary, regular, or established.
Every time a consumer selects you as to represent them in a real estate transaction, something extraordinary happened. You were picked on a strength. Those strengths should be the things that you use to market yourself. I find most marketing messages in real estate concentrate more on the goal than the processes used to achieve it. The goal is ordinary, it's the same for every transaction. In my opinion it make more sense to speak to the means than it does the end. To rise above the clutter of sameness take the time to identify your strengths and craft your marketing message around them. How do you make something ordinary, extraordinary? Take a look at the yard signs that Bloodhound Realty creates for their listings. If you can take something as nebulous as a yard sign and make it unique, what else do you think it's possible to improve upon?

Thinking Different
One of Apple's biggest strengths as a company is it's marketing prowess. One of the best campaigns they ever had was the "Think Different" campaign. The ads never even featured a shot of their product. They featured iconic figures in history. They were cults of personality that made their marks by thinking differently than the rest of the world, (Albert Einstein, John Lennon etc.) with the simple tag line, "Think Different". When your market share is the single digits, you need to come up with a compelling reason to get consumers to even consider your product. The same is true of your marketing and sales effort. If you're listing presentation is covering the same ground as your competition, you'll be counting on luck as much as anything else to help you succeed. Your prospect wants to hear compelling features of your service, each packaged in a way that directly benefits them wrapped up in testimonials of success.

How does all of this tie into Web 2.0? Simple. There are myriad ways to do things differently with regards to marketing yourself and your listings these days. Blogging, podcasting, social networking, contextual advertising etc. They are all means to an end, each of them with a unique features that will help you weather the marketing monsoon. My next post will address how thinking global and acting local can kick your web results into high gear. Stay tuned.