BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Tag: mayoral marketing (page 1 of 1)

March 31, 2008

Bad Marketing Candy from RSS Pieces

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Mary McKnight wrote an article last Friday called Real Estate Blogs are Stores, Not Websites – So Blog Like You are Selling Houses, Not Writing For Your Local Paper and it made the short list for the Odysseus Medal Sunday.  It is well written and provocative.  Mary McKnight is recognized as one of the premier web site designers and SEO experts in Real Estate.  I have a great deal of respect for her knowledge as it pertains to web sites and SEO.   If you have not read it, please do;  and then answer this question for me: How is it possible that someone so good at creating real estate web sites, can be so wrong when it comes to real estate marketing?

The Sugar Coating
Let me preface this by saying that I have a great deal of respect for Mary McKnight.  Add to which a lot of people for whom I also hold a great deal of respect use her services and listen to her advice.  But when she says Your real estate blog is a store, not a newspaper, I find myself asking the obvious question: If it is a store, what do you sell?  If you answer “homes” I am going to assume you work at a mobile home dealership.  Otherwise you clearly do not understand your product.  Here’s a hint: you see your product every day in the mirror.  You no more sell homes than you stock them… which is why you are not a store.  You are a service and your product is your expertise.

The Creamy Middle 
The point of her article is …to get you to understand that if your business is about real estate and you want to attract customers that have a real estate need you MUST write about real estate, not skateboards and restaurants.  This is true on a very grand scale:  most of your articles and certainly your “look and feel” must tell the reader that you can and will be the best agent they have ever had.  But does that mean you should only write about real estate?  When Mary says it

is inconceivable to (her) that Read more

March 27, 2008

Eyeball Marketing – Are You a Pioneer?

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

What do running shoes, firefighters’ air tanks and cordless drills have in common? They are all direct spin-offs from the Apollo Space Missions (and before anyone comments, neither Teflon nor Tang was a spin-off from the Apollo missions or NASA in general).  Why is this important to practitioners of the 2.0 arts? Because Social Media Marketing is, at this time, a lot like the Apollo Space Mission.  It is young and unexplored.  It is obviously a new way of doing something and most would agree that it is quite powerful, but many more question its real use.   Apollo was questioned.  Many accused the entire program of being a boondoggle: powerful, but of little practical use.  “What is the point, even if you do succeed?”  Sound familiar?

The Eyeball Marketing theory is simple: if you can put enough eyeballs on you, someone will pay to access the brains (and wallets) behind those eyeballs – might even be you.  There is no shortage of people with products or services to sell that will gladly pay you to get in front of your group.  This is the basis of most large, multi-day seminars.  (You didn’t think they were paying those big names full boat to come and hock their books did you?)  Lots of people have something to sell, but few have the ability, the reach and the vision to put butts in seats and eyeballs facing forward.  Quick self quiz: how many of you have paid for leads in the past?  If you have then you are someone with a service to sell willing to pay someone else for the eyeballs they generate.

I suggest that there are two basic forms of marketing.  When we talk about past clients, sphere of influence and a community of raving fans we are talking about marketing to a target.  When we talk about hyper-locals, mass mailings and Google juice we are talking about marketing for eyeballs.  They are not mutually exclusive; in fact, the goal of eyeball marketing is to gather enough people into a specific group that you can market to a target.  Blanket an area with Read more

Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

Media Contacts