Takeaways:
- Content marketing is “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.”
- The main reason for poor content is a lack of willingness to put the time into writing a great piece.
- As a rule of thumb, you should spend as much time marketing your piece as you did writing it.
The real estate consumer is tired of hearing how “you always get the most for your clients” or how “you are the local expert.”
Your guarantee to give the most to your clients and know about the area doesn’t need to be stated — it’s expected.
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It might be shocking, but consumers don’t contact a business until 57 percent of the sales process has been complete. This means real estate consumers are weighing their options before even contacting a real estate professional.
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So how do you differentiate from others in your area? The answer: content marketing. The only problem: Content marketing is rarely done correctly.
So before we break down the pitfalls brokerages and agents experience, what exactly is content marketing?
The content marketing institute defines it as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
The key part of this definition, “creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content,” is often where real estate professionals fail with content marketing.
Although there are plenty of issues people have with content marketing, for the sake of this article, I’ll examine the three I find most relevant.
1. There’s no long-term commitment, or they’re expecting overnight results
There’s a common thought that marketing should work, and it should work fast. This is where most content marketing efforts fall on their face. Content — truly great content — will actually get you more business as time goes by.
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2. It’s poor-quality or provides no value to the customer
It doesn’t matter how long you commit to content marketing. If your content is bad, it won’t work.
The main reason for poor content is not a lack of writing skill or knowledge, but rather a lack of willingness to put the time into writing a great piece.
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Rushing a piece will show to the reader in the end, and there will be mistakes. Anyone producing content needs to think in terms of disproportionate results.
Meaning, if you put in double the effort into something, more times than not, you yield five to 10 times the results. The problem is that most people aren’t willing to work twice as hard at producing content.
Content that doesn’t add any new value to the customer is also a big no-no. Writing a blog titled something like “5 packing tips when moving” doesn’t add any value to the customer.
They can find that information on the Web, on a site that’s probably more reputable than yours. Instead, write something that you know more about than others. For me, I know about content marketing and real estate marketing, hence this piece.
3. There’s content, but there’s no marketing
Content is half the battle.
Repeat. Content is half the battle.
A lot of times when meeting with potential clients at Cave Social, they’ll show us content they’ve created, which is pretty good. However, the content will have little to no views.
This is because the other half of the battle is syndication. As a rule of thumb, you should spend as much time marketing your piece as you did writing it.
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A basic syndication checklist should look as follows:
- Post to social media accounts.
- Write to any influencers (in your network) who you think could help you spread the content.
- Post to StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit.
- Email five influencers (authors) in your area who might be interested in your post — if you think this won’t work, send five emails and look at the results.
So how does content marketing work for real estate professionals?
If you’re looking to take on content marketing as an initiative for your business, remember to focus on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content. That is how you build your real estate marketing empire!
Jordan Scheltgen is the founder of Cave Social. You can follow him on twitter @cavejordans or connect on LinkedIn.