Monthly Archives: March 2010

Where do you get your news about real estate?

My suggestion would be here: Inman News. This company has the most interesting and the most commanding content. It’s classy and it doesn’t wreak of “gotcha” headlines. There are so many of those out there.

Also, the founder of Inman is also the founder of Vook which is a brilliant idea, also. You can read about that here.

Here’s Brad Inman’s blog. He backs up his business with an authentic voice.

From the outside of the real estate business looking in, this is where I’d put all my chips…

Competitive Advantage

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(In Real Estate) Don’t.

Of course, getting the deal and negotiating a contract is always a win. It’s what pays the bills and puts food on the table. But this idea of “crushing” the competition is part of the old model. The model that is losing their footing right now. All because this of this.

When I first starting building marketing programs for luxury real estate agents, one of my realtor mentors told me this (word for word—and she was NOT kidding):

Competition is good. It’s good for the market. It’s good for the buyer. It’s good for the seller.

This isn’t to say that you should enable your competition. That is ridiculous. But how often do you read marketing programs that have these words. I like to call them War Words. Because they are used when fighting a war.

strategic

Metcalfe Wheel

tactics
instinctive
leadership
target
engage
campaign
blitz
dominate
impact
capture
alliance
battlefields

The market (again) is a conversation. Not a war. These words have to be removed from our collective marketing vocabulary. Not because we all need to get along and sing and dance at Woodstock, but because the market demands it. More important, the luxury real estate market demands that we have it. The seller. The buyer. They demand that we have a conversation. This greases the squeaky wheel. Not launching ‘media blitzes’ or ‘strategic engagement.’ This is something I am personally committed to seeing through. Or at least as long as I am part of luxury real estate marketing.

Doc Searls and David Weinberger famously point this out in the Cluetrain Manifesto.

What’s more, networked markets get smart fast. Metcalfe’s Law*, a famous axiom of the computer industry, states that the value of a network increases as the square of the number of users connected to it — connections multiply value exponentially. This is also true for conversations on networked markets. In fact, as the network gets larger it also gets smarter. The Cluetrain Corollary: the level of knowledge on a network increases as the square of the number of users times the volume of conversation. So, in market conversations, it is far easier to learn the truth about the products being pumped, about the promises being made, and about the people making those promises. Networked markets are not only smart markets, but they’re also equipped to get much smarter, much faster, than business-as-usual.

Artisan Branding

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Artisan Branding.

Artisan Branding

There is a lively discussion about the power of the internet going on here on this blog. The internet has changed the face of marketing forever. What makes the internet so powerful is the amount of reach it has and how quickly you can access a message and / or information. This is where Artisan Branding comes from.

The internet has created new industries, as well—this is happening daily. My best analogy is this:

In 1964 you wouldn’t likely walk into a college classroom and learn anything about The Beatles. Times change. Today, you would certainly find an entire curriculum devoted to the world of the world wide web. But not in the 90′s.

The internet, again, is responsible for all of this. All of this knowledge is all online. The problem I have with all of the marketing and media companies is that most of them are so completely beholden to the “turn-and-burn” mindset that is nature of what was at one time “new marketing.” Not anymore.

People are getting so used to canned ingredients on the web that they are easy to discern for the average browser. The same thing happened to music. Too much packaging and not enough care to the actual ingredient. The ingredients of the 4 Liverpudlians actually made the band what it is. Certainly, they were packaged well. That’s another discussion or another course in college. But for the most part, it was about 4 brilliant musicians who made brilliant music.

Artisan Branding is an internet company that is about reality. No gimmicks. Just a hand crafted and hand delivered presentation. This is what the company will do in various forms.

It’s new and I am confident it is going to be something very special.

Oh – and here is the facebook fan page:

Artisan Branding on facebook

Domain knowledge and marketing luxury homes

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Wikipedia, currently ranked number 6 on Alexa.com defines domain knowledge as this:

If the concept domain knowledge or domain expert is used we emphasize a specific domain which is an object of the discourse/interest/problem.

The wiki goes on to explain (or a wikipedian, rather writes) that:

Communicating between end-users and software developers is often difficult. They must find a common language to communicate in. Developing enough shared vocabulary to communicate can often take a while.

Expert’s domain knowledge (frequently informal and ill structured) is transformed in computer programs and active data, for example in a set of rules in knowledge bases, by knowledge engineers.

Personally, my domain knowledge is in content creation. (Alltop says so, too, but it is my other blog.) Also, I have a certain expertise in the marketing of real estate—particularly that of the high end. Fortunately, or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), my expertise is in developing marketing plans and structures online. For many this is not something that matters. For me, and many luxury real estate agents, it is an imperative.

There are many spirited debates about the value of printed magazines in relation to the luxury real estate world. This one offers tremendous insight. However, if you read through it and follow the thread in the comments to here you’ll see what I’m referring to in regards to domain knowledge.

What’s going in here is exactly what I’m referring to. Luxury real estate agents (some of them anyway) have utilized their domain knowledge of the internet to use it as leverage as part of their marketing. Of course, a savvy marketer is going to do a lot of what they can themselves just as a magazine that prints a beautiful magazine is going to charge premium pricing and as often as possible. It makes sense. Especially if that is your livelihood.

apple ipad

The thing is, real estate agents were hit hard by the recession. It’s hard to think of an industry that hasn’t been touched by the current state of the economy. Realtors were a group that felt it first. Maybe not first first but the agents that are still in business felt it immediately. Because we as humans are quite malleable and able to withstand all sorts of extremes, the smart agents adopted New Marketing. Why? Not because they don’t like the magazine. Not because they don’t read magazines. Not because magazines don’t work. They changed directions because they had to—just to survive.

So, should we (marketers of the internet kind) empathize for printed publications that have to adjust? Maybe empathy is good, but it won’t help the endgame. In contrast, understanding the way the internet can help you to market a magazine and the way the consumer uses might be. Maybe repurposing your printed magazine online is a good strategy. But it needs to add value to the static page. I like to click.

The iPad is going to be here on April 3rd. The Kindle, Amazon and the iPod have literally changed the future of publishing. I’m glad to know real estate agents have embraced new marketing—and they have done it out of necessity, not anger and frustration.

I’ve said it before here, the agents that are out in front of this curve are the ones that are going have it all. Feel free to embrace the beauty of print, I do too, but suggesting that there is going to be a resurgence is an unnerving debate.

Real estate agents need a new job description

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Snowflake

If the point of social media is to completely blur the previous solid wall between our corporate presence and our personal selves, then it is not the immediacy of sales that is involved.

The long tail approach is exactly that:

a lengthy displaying of a long term approach, perhaps years in the making, not just months.

The internet has erased time and geography. We are locked into a binary world rhythm (on/off, act/react, yes/no) in the post computer revolution moment.

In the 90s—and seemingly into the “oughts”—of this century, it appeared to be business as usual, with people trying to stuff the old model into the new, and to simply carry on as usual. This is normal, of course. We all want things to continue the way they were. We like what we’re used to.

The hybrid moment is over.

Some things to consider: a website is like a library. One can pop in, take out some information, use it or not, catch up on background—it’s sort of like an individual’s wikipedia, and is focused on what that individual “does.”

Conversation adds value to the platform

A social media platform is about introducing ourself to the global village. Yes, it’s ok to say what it is we do, but it needs to be about so much more. It’s a conversation that takes place regardless of time zones, and has an immediacy about it. We get to share what we do, to describe where we live, to offer information about our neighbourhoods, our community, our concerns—to introduce it to those unfamiliar with it. It’s not a place to trot out all our listings, to comment only on statistical evidence for market trends—that belongs back in the library of the website.

A blog is one social media envelope, “mailed” to the readership. In it, we are allowing our real selves to come forward.

We often hear about the need for differentiation, that unique aspect of ourselves that we need to bring forward. I think if we are simply “ourselves” in our blogging that we will have done that. Just as snowflakes are unique, so are we. There is only one of us. We are already “differentiated.”

Important: be authentic in our blogging, and to let our real selves “show.”

Time has also been erased by the internet’s immediacy. The point of Twitter is that it’s a microblog—a place to quickly note something, like one of those post-it notes we used to attach to our paper world. If we’re in time famine, then a Twitter post is a great way to get a message out there.

Facebook is creating two parts: a personal connecting with our specific world and a “fan page” aspect for our business lives. They overlap, though. Not a wall between them, as used to be the case.

Video is the thing we all need to get creative with. People like to see each other. The voice, the body language, the laugh, the shyness or not. It’s all what makes us “tick”, and is who we are. We respond to the visual world, so why not those we encounter?

Time erased…I back up a little. This is true, and yet there’s that long tail approach, again, which implies some space of time going by, before any impact will be felt. The business model now in play means that we have to spread out our real self, our “soft” message, and let it take root. Find a willing listener, who might actually ask a question, and then the dialogue of a sales process can begin. The consumer is in charge of the timing of that initial encounter, and it can be years, not months.

When will it change?

It happens when the consumer is ready for it to happen.

Wow! That means patience is required.

Now there’s the biggest difference of all from the “oughts.” We are used to our real estate lives being more in our control and with a more immediate outcome. Not so, anymore.

I can see that there will be a lot of unhappiness in a sales career if one is still looking for an immediate response to a message about a listing. It’s not about the listing. This is a people business, right?

Important to put ourselves in the shoes of a consumer, and go looking ourselves, somewhere outside of our own well understood area. What is it we notice? Who is it that is talking from their heart as well as from their head? Who is it that makes us smile with their enthusiasm for their area? What is it they do, that we could be paying attention to?

Whether it’s entry level or extraordinary luxury oriented property opportunities, the consumer is seeking the same thing. A compatriot who knows their stuff, and who will listen to their desires. How to choose that person, in this global village environment, where we don’t choose off an initial personal contact?

Authentic presentation, maintained consistently, on a social media platform—it’s the language of now, never mind the future.

Community matters and advertising luxury

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Online communities are where new marketing displaced traditional advertising models.

It’s safe to say that “advertising luxury” is not the same as “luxury advertising.” Especially today.

“Luxury advertising” in the Spring of 2010 (as opposed to the Spring of 2008) demands risk. It has to be true. If every local luxury printed publication is literally subsidized by 1 or sometimes 2 of the top luxury agents, then why not go to Lulu.com and have a book printed there? I’m only asking. Maybe it’s more expensive. More time consuming?

Whomever closes the digital gap—not just blogs and social media, but using these tools—in their respective market assume complete market share in their respective market.

You can try to outdo your competition with spending, but you can also do it by harnessing the internet’s crowdsourcing for ‘traditional’ advertising budget spending.

It isn’t about “print vs web.” The tired notion that these two at odds is contrived and conceived by publishers who are (and they should be) concerned by the internet’s power. The iPad holds a few of the keys, IMO. Really, can you blame them. But it still doesn’t mean they should ignore these new mediums and dismiss them as last year’s big thing.

If, in fact, the housing market is (at the very least) in its early recovery stages, then surely it’s not going to be business as usual again for advertising and media companies when it has ‘recovered.’

My best guess is it’s going to have something to do with online communities. Companies like Etsy.com, Squidoo.com and Ning groups. Consumers—affluent consumers—also use these groups, by the way.

It’s understandable why one might think elsewise. They seem trivial at first blush.

Communities—that’s where social media has taken us. Now, what do we do as marketers of luxury to best serve our community? Or, better yet? Do you even have one?

If not, I’ll bet your competition either a) has one or b) has a solid foundation to build one upon

The cheapening of an exquisite medium

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There are plenty of luxury real estate blogs worth reading. Most of them, however, are written. It sounds silly, but it’s true. People actually write them.

Of course, the craft of blogging has been bludgeoned to death by the ‘old guard’ to the point that the answer actually lies in the question. If you have to ask the question, you probably know the answer to it, right?

I just got an email or a text message from a group (which I didn’t ask for btw, therefore it’s spammy) informing me that they were ‘signing up Guest Bloggers.’ There are so many things wrong with this. I can’t even begin to go into it, but if you’re reading this, you probably get it, as do all of the Guest Bloggers on this site.

The point: Blogging is not something you sign up for. You sign up for a membership at the gym.

Just like you don’t just sign up for a 5000 dollar display ad. You make a calculated decision based upon all of the relevant facts and market conditions—not to mention your personal agenda for advertising.

If you are using a blog to help you sell real estate, I would highly recommend you shy away from anyone that isn’t personally asking you to blog on their platform. Luxury blogging is a craft. Far be it from me to ask anyone to ‘sign up’ to be a guest blogger. At the very least, it’s presumptuous. Don’t diminish the craft or its power to affect your brand.

A blog (or a luxury real estate blog) is an extremely powerful tool. If you need to ‘sign up’ through an unanticipated, non-relevant message chances are, you don’t need it.

All of the guest bloggers on this luxury blog are my friends, business associates and/or colleagues.

The space between

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White space and luxury marketing

Luxury marketing and minimalism. I guess minimalism, in the sense of the least amount. Not the artistic version.

There’s something to be said for less. Less is always more. Miles Davis said:

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”

Same is true in advertising for luxury real estate. You don’t have to live in luxury homes or sell luxury homes to understand this. “Spaces,” or the way “spaces’ are arranged are quite literally what is being bought and sold. (aside from the actual ‘space the area is located’ … but that’s still a space right?)

I don’t know how many emails, blog posts, or conversations will be had before people realize that just because the internet offers you endless amounts of ‘space,’ it doesn’t mean you have to use it.

You know what I mean, right? That person’s facebook page that is always changing. The person who obsesses over the getting the right font, color or heading on their site. Or, worse still… the analysis paralysis of the ‘first impression’ of a webpage.

The cover of your magazine matters—A LOT. Yes. Simplicity of your website matters even more. I didn’t invent this. The consumer did.

Just think you ‘browsed‘ to this site. I didn’t ask you to come here (though I’m glad you did, and I hope you come back), but you don’t have to stay. In fact, you need a compelling reason to stay… let alone come back. Just think if I were trying to sell you something. Would you click further at this point? Continue reading “The space between” »

The marketing message comes from "us"

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alice in wonderland

Yes, it’s important to exercise, to eat right, to get enough sleep, to keep in touch with our client base, to do the things that bring business our way while fulfilling our days…it’s also essential to add an hour a day to our “must do” list.

There’s no point in having a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, or a Linkedin profile, or a Plaxo address, or…you get the drift!…if you’re not going to use them.

These are just methods of communication. Nothing fancy, nothing scary, just the medium of the moment. There will be others. Just wait and see.

Those questions are not going to be answered by a template or by hiring someone else to do this daily routine.

What did people think when the telephone first appeared?

Everyone didn’t have one. When they did get one, there was a party line to contend with. It wasn’t until the 50s, in some areas, when private lines became possible. Now, we can do our entire lives off a “smart phone.” I’m waiting for the wrist watch version.

Marshall McLuhan foretold today, back in the late 60s/70s. He reminded us that the medium was now the message. He also pointed out that we had become a global village. He was a foreteller, and it is only in the past year that the world has caught up with his vision.

So, CNN, which is a mainstream option, invites Ireporters, weights what they send in with items that the seasoned reporters input, the presenters turn to their laptops and read tweets and facebook responses, and it’s all mixed with the scrolling updates at the bottom of the screen. We are changed, as a people, by our technology. The medium really “is” the message.

Like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, we have to run very fast just to stand still. We have to multi-task and have to be “present” in the “now,” in our binary on/off world.

I think the next killer app will be an editing function, to make sense of all this evenly presented raw data…it isn’t information until we make sense of it.

Meantime, back to social media-the artificial line that used to divide our personal from our corporate lives is gone. It’s a holistic model of business/life, now. “All” of us is required to be at the table. With both time and geography having been erased by the Internet, we are now communicating in real time with people from all over. Just as in “real life,” our virtual worlds attract those we are comfortable with, and who are comfortable with us. It’s the social aspect of communication.

Nothing really different, then, except for the methods of this communication.

Just as the Buddhists remind us: everywhere you go, there you are. It’s still us, it’s still good business practices, it’s still the willingness to be fully present in our service oriented real estate world.

We are still the link between a seller and a buyer.

The difference in the consumer-centric world of social media marketing, though, is that we must not push forward towards the consumer. We must take the long tail approach, give a lot of information away for free, without a sense that we expect anything at all in return, and in our consistency at this, we will attract a response towards us.

So important then, to have spent that hour in daily presentation on Twitter, on Facebook, on Linkedin, on Plaxo…and on any other social media venue that has struck a spark with you.

A canned presentation is no longer the way to reach a client. They want to know who we are…whether they can trust us…whether we are their kind of person, someone they want to choose to deal with.

It’s very exciting, really. Since it’s about “us,” we already know who we are…we don’t have to learn a new language. We just have to readdress our response time, remember to be consistent, and to have a little fun with it.

It is called social.

It is called marketing, which means our presence is business oriented, appropriately.

It is a medium (that just means the “way” we do it).

Like anything, if we do it for two weeks, we’ve got a new habit. So, walk a mile, eat a good breakfast, hygiene moments, social media marketing updates, daily work processes per usual, family/friend times, dog walking….you get it!

An expanded life!

Really Simply Syndication for realtors

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If you are a real estate agent without knowing what an RSS feed is, or if you’re in marketing and you don’t know what an RSS feed is, you’ve got to figure this out—no later than today.

Click ME!!! (if you have one... anyway)

RSS is the future of publishing. Yes, blogs are also. But blogs are nothing without having RSS feeds burned into them. I’m sorry for the brevity.

This is the only reason you are getting this in your email box. I (personally) don’t send it. The RSS does. I went looking for a bunch of feeds today for a project… and low and behold… I could only find 3… (and that’s 3 out of many.)

Advertising and marketing are part and parcel of all businesses. You might be hard pressed to find an industry that is as reliant on word-of-mouth marketing more than a realtor. Correct me if I’m wrong? Why wouldn’t you have a feed?

Here is wikipedia on RSS.
Here is Squidoo on RSS.

That’s all you need to know—for now.

Am I wrong? Guess it wouldn’t be the first time, if so.

How do you search for real estate?

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Suppose you never saw a printed magazine again. What, then would happen?

Would your life be disrupted that much? Would you have any difficulty finding information?

I wonder these things aloud and online because I really want to know. Would it be so bad for the consumer?

All the statistics about where people start to ‘search.’ Does it make any difference what the numbers or percentages are? Don’t we all ‘search‘ digitally anyway? Isn’t it a moot point?

If google is a verb, it’s safe to say we are all different. After all, we don’t go to the computer to ‘dogpile‘ something, right? And, just 4 months ago someboday pointed out to me that ‘dogpile’ used to be a major search engine, so I shouldn’t be so quick to sing Google’s praises.

It’s these people that are frightening to me. The users that think that the only way to retrieve an email is with that guy saying: “You’ve got mail” That guy is scary… (unless he’s saying: “Goodbye.”) He represents something: the end of an era.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with the yellow walking man, but is that how you start your luxury real estate search? Is that how you search for anything? And do you really think that Bing is on Google’s heels?

I’m glad I’m in the minority. It won’t be the first and it won’t be the last. But the yellow walking dude is like the yellow pages… when it comes to ‘search’ anyway.

Artisan Branding

Multi-media boutique marketing, specializing in web design

Monthly Archives: March 2010

Blogging, marketing and real estate

Too much syndication?

What's the best real estate news source?