September is Marketing and Branding Month at Inman. That means we’re talking to the chief marketing officers at major brokerages about how the pandemic is changing their jobs and what it means for agents. We’re publishing a suite of tactical Inman Handbooks for marketing on digital portals. And we’re looking at what pages of the traditional marketing playbook still work. Join us all month long.
Pulse is a recurring column where we ask for readers’ takes on varying topics in a weekly survey and report back with our findings.
In case you haven’t noticed, this month is all about marketing and branding, and we’ve been diligently providing you with a steady stream of ideas on ways to stand out, stay top-of-mind and thrive in today’s market.
So, with that goal in mind, last week, we asked you to share some of your favorite marketing campaigns. We wanted to read, see and hear about those professionals who really hit the nail on the head with their efforts — those who went above and beyond, or plain and simple, just did a real fine job.
Surely, our readers rose to the occasion and didn’t disappoint with their feedback. As their examples showed, there’s no shortage of ideas and strategies out there that can help agents put themselves on the map. So, without further ado, here are a few notable submissions.
- I’m a marketing director for four Coldwell Banker franchise offices in Western Massachusetts. Our corporate marketing department in Madison, New Jersey, headed by David Marine, always comes up with great national campaigns that we can also customize and use on a local level. During the pandemic, I really liked the “This is Home” campaign. As we are spending more time at home, this timely campaign gave us an opportunity to feature our great communities. As we cover many cities and towns in Western Massachusetts, I used the phrase “This is Home” on posts. For examples of these posts, please see our Facebook page.
- This is an ad Heineken did where they let travelers play roulette for a unique destination (different from where they were currently planning to go). I love the reactions and creativity to pull off something like this. It took off with hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube when it first was released a few years ago.
- This property was sitting on the market for 119 days with another broker. They switched brokerages, and we launched a “Happy Gilmore” parody video for the property. Within five days, we received a full-price offer. The best part was we never changed the price. The listing price was the same as the last broker had it. The listing video has been seen thousands of times across all social media platforms.
- ONE Sotheby’s International Realty launched its new video series, The Scoop, on Florida’s East Coast, with a virtual red carpet that was first in the business — and perfect for digital times. The Scoop video series was created to showcase great real estate and celebrate their agents in a unique way — lifestyle videos that are fun, engaging and showcase each agent with their unique style and flair. Pioneering the use of Crowdcast, they launched the program with a virtual red carpet interviewing each agent (dress code: black tie!) before premiering their respective videos. There were five in total — glamorous, engaging and social-distancing appropriate! The virtual red carpet took place on July 29 at 7 p.m., and it drove the following views on that first evening alone. Facebook Watch Party: 6,000 views and 300 engagements. YouTube Live broadcast: 1,500 views. Clients who see these videos on our YouTube channel are spending more time on our site and on the agents’ websites when coming from YouTube. These are high-quality visits from people who want real estate information! Here’s the recording of the red carpet event.
- We offer a weekly newsletter full of lifestyle content, as we feel that we can connect with our clients much more through that than just real estate. We are lifestyle experts and can truly provide an elevated experience. So, it’s important that our email campaigns express just that. Here is an example of an email campaign that we were able to create using ActivePipe. Our quality content and the expert deliverability from ActivePipe has increased traffic to our website. In just the two weeks since launch, our five top forms of acquisition traffic is from our email marketing through this.
- My own path to success — being a trained journalist before entering real estate — has been to write a real estate column, which I pay to appear as a full-page “advertorial” in the Denver Post and three local weeklies. I’ve done this for over 15 years, and the columns are archived at JimSmithColumns.com and posted GoldenREblog.com. Since March, I’ve done the “unthinkable.” I’ve been writing a weekly half-page anti-Trump column, alienating a segment of potential clients but branding myself effectively with many more people. This new branding has been very successful, too, in bringing me clients. Those columns are archived at Talking Turkey and posted on JimSmithBlog.com. In addition to hiring me and my broker associates at Golden Real Estate, readers have also donated over $12,000 to my GoFundMe campaign and by mail to help me pay for the political advertorials.
- “All in, for you.” The Windermere campaign was so thoughtfully done and took an interesting yet innate approach to real estate — the people! I love it!
What did we miss? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Editor’s note: These responses were given anonymously and, therefore, are not attributed to anyone specifically. Responses were also edited for grammar and clarity. Inman doesn’t endorse any specific method and regulations may vary from state to state.
