by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
If you’re looking for Greenwood, IN homes for sale, what better place than a real estate “mall”? It’s the PERFECT idea but there’s one problem; I hate malls. I’m not an agoraphobiac but I AM a gun-totin’ American male. On Saturdays, I park the pick-up at the Mall and sneak into the Sports Bar while Mama Bear and Girl Cub go bargain-hunting. A blog that looks like a mall makes me crave Buffalo wings and onion rings; call it a Pavlovian response.
Who cares? Greg Swann always jokes that ” Mama buys homes and Dad sells them” so Shawna may have created something very powerful with her blog design. Think about your last ten buyers. Mama was measuring, dreaming, and creating while Dad was crunching numbers with the local mortgage broker. Let Dad read the pin-striped mortgage blog, Mama’s gonna dig the pastels (and mall-themed layout) of this real estate blog.
I concur with Greg Swann. Shawna has content…lots of GOOD content. I love the “closed listings” and “client testimonies” categories- that is very smart marketing. The numbers appeal to a clients’ desire for performance and the pictures, with the testimonials, provide social proof. We talk about the fact that a potential client is looking for a reason to DIS-qualify you when searching online; I can’t find a reason to do that with Shawna. Her site’s content sells me on every point. Shawna appears to be a VERY busy and competent REALTOR which is exactly what I’d want.
How can Shawna promote this site so that it is a must-see for every potential Indy homebuyer?
The URL is great because it plays upon two themes: the hip “i-” theme, made popular by Apple and the keywords are easy to remember while being Googlicious. I’d take to the offline trenches to promote this site with Greg’s tiny little workhorse; the business card. I think I’d want a stack of those cards in every hair salon, speciality store, and place where women visit.
Would T-shirts be a good idea? I’m thinking ‘What Would Sarah Palin Wear?’ when designing the T-shirt line. When I asked Mama Bear if she’d prance about La Jolla in a pastel-colored iShopGreenwood.com shirt, she responded “You Betchya” with an exagerrated wink. If you can get my wife to wear that shirt, I guarantee that every Indy hockey mom will.
I have no idea about how much money Shawna wants to spend but a picture (or better yet, video) of Peyton Manning in one of her baby-blue T-shirts will be sure to attract throngs of admiring fans. Offer “picture day” at the local Mall, with Peyton in his shirt, and I guarantee Shawna traffic. The question will be, is it worth the steep fee she’ll pay?
READ: Celebrity Testimonials in Your Promotional Efforts
I’m in love with Facebook so I’d consider a campaign there. Set up a “fan” page for iShopGreenwood.com and promote it with Facebook pay-per-click advertising. I’d run three campaigns:
(1) to single women (360 people), linking them to a landing page about buying a home by themselves
(2) to engaged women (120 people), discussing how home ownership is the foundation that a family is built upon
(3) married women (900 people), discussing the concept of their “dream home”.
These Facebook ads costs about 60 cents per click. Shawna will target about 1200 people so she’ll get lots of impressions. I’d be shocked if she spent more than $40 per month.
Read Kelley Koehler’s tutorial about how to properly build landing pages that convert.
Shawna’s landing pages can be part of her WordPress blog and should be designed to get the user clicking all over her site. Kelley advocates “being clicky” so give them a reason to fall in love with iShopGreenwood.com.
We talk about daring marketing ideas on BloodhoundBlog. Consider a promotional venture, with the shops at the Mall, with coupons that can only be downloaded from iShopGreenwood.com. I’m thinking along the lines of “free conditioner” with a salon visit. Shawna can buy a bunch of those bottles, with the iShopGreenwood.com logo, and stock up the local shops. Cross-pollenate the idea with that stack of business cards and she can create a dozen local salespeople, promoting the site.
Shawna asked me about what to put in the “ATM” section. My first thought is to change the name of that section. It suggests that a home is an ATM and we don’t need to promote that idea anymore. Rename it to “BANK”, change the color to green (instead of pink), and get a local mortgage broker to populate it with financing articles. .
iShopGreenwood.com seems purposefully targeted at Indy hockey moms and that’s a great idea. My wife kind of dug the whole theme and she is exactly who Shawna wants to attract.
PS: An afterthought. Name one of those rooms “Sports Bar” and populate with high school sports stories. You might open a back-door for Sarah’s husband, Todd.
Just a selfish thought.
PPS: Please offer your comments about iShopGreenwood.com here
