Yesterday in a marketing Mastermind Group with a half dozen agents, a bit of confusion arose over two of the primary principles I use when developing their marketing campaigns. The question was new to me and that means it might be new to some of the readers here at BHB.
Earlier, we had discussed the parameters of an effective drip campaign on those we already know: friends, family, past clients, past prospects, and so on. I call this group your S.O.I.L (Source of Income List) because we want to grow a very robust referral business from it. Gary Keller, in his outstanding book Millionaire Real Estate Agent, refers to this group as METs and suggests you touch them or drip on them 33x per year. I have “adopted” this philosophy wholesale and – as with most of the concepts in that book – find it applicable to agents no matter where they work.
A little later, I mentioned that statistically speaking, 80% of all business happens after the fifth contact. This is not real estate specific. It’s more of a universal rule borrowed from the direct marketing world. (You may notice I do a lot of “borrowing” and “adopting”… most great marketing is based on ideas stolen from another industry or product. Take a look around outside the world of real estate. You’ll be amazed how many great ideas you find.) While discussing this idea, one of the agents asked why we need to touch our sphere 33x when most of the business is going to happen after the fifth contact. Great question because it illuminates one of the basic misunderstandings in marketing.
When you drip on your sphere – touch them regularly – you are practicing Epiphany Marketing. This is very similar to branding but, in my opinion, more effective. It’s designed to generate referrals and is on the very edge of what we can accurately call “marketing”. On the other hand a true, honest-to-God marketing campaign revolves around a specific concept (hopefully a USP) and is designed to carry people along a well-lit path until they inevitably reach the decision to BUY. It should go without saying if they reach this decision to buy the product or service but don’t use you, there’s some tweaking needed in your campaign… but that’s another post entirely.
The differences in the objective as well as the process between these two campaigns should now be obvious. Epiphany Marketing is designed to buy mind share by offering information that’s useful and interesting. An out and out marketing campaign, on the other hand, attempts to buy mind focus and decision by offering specific benefits amid repeated calls to action. The former is dominated by a 33 touch system of useful drips. To enjoy an 80% conversion on the latter, however, we need to contact the same target audience at least 5 times. The confusion brought up by the agent yesterday is cleared simply by remembering the difference between touches and contacts.
Ryan Hartman says:
How many touches to replace a contact? 🙂
[didn’t see this post before loading up my own touchy post right after it…but in a way this thinking inspired it, so thanks…]
December 8, 2009 — 1:14 pm