Jo Saint - Marketing Professional
The idea of having to ‘do’ marketing will either fill you with joy and excitement or with dread and fear. I’m here to simplify it, make it accessible and help you understand why it’s crucial to your business.
First let’s agree on what marketing is. For me, it’s simply a conversation, giving yourself the opportunity to tell your ideal client what you have to offer, while they are listening! It doesn’t matter whether you have the best service in the world, if nobody knows about it, you might as well not bother. Which is why I believe marketing is the most important function of any business.
If you and I were at a party together in a room full of people, I could say to you “See that guy over there, at the bar?” You would say “Oh yeah, with the dodgy shirt?”
“Yes, that’s him, he’s a multi-million-pound, time poor, business owner, but he’ll never invest with you.”
“What! Why the hell not?”
“Because he doesn’t know you’re looking for an investor, that you’re a safe bet or that investing with you will make him more money than his crappy ISA.”
And he never will if you aren’t marketing. You get the point. Your only objectives are to achieve the magic KNOW, LIKE and TRUST. They have to know you exist and more importantly who you are and what you stand for. Will they like you? This is easily done digitally; you just have to be authentic. Your content needs to reflect you and your personal brand, more on how to do that in the next issue. This helps attract people you are aligned with and to enjoy quality working relationships. Nobody is vanilla and nobody chooses vanilla.
Prove you’re trustworthy. Showcase what you’re capable of, give examples of previous projects. Do you specialise in a certain strategy or property type? To reach your audience you have to know them intimately. You know their age, sex, location, income, mindset, drive and what is keeping them awake at night.
The more specific you can be, the better your marketing and conversion rates will be.
Think about a holiday company, they might offer every type of holiday to every type of holiday buyer, but if they push out a generic message saying “Hey, we sell holidays” it will disappear in the barrage of a million other messages. No-one is stopping to think “Oh they mean me, I should click, call, visit the website.”
So, they get exclusive and run a campaign specifically targeted - “Mum’s, we know lockdown has been tough on you and the kids, check out our range of family adventure breaks.” Their content is a mix of sales messages as well as those that show they understand and empathise with their audience. Memes of mums dealing with home schooling, competitions to win craft kits for kids, blogs about how beneficial it is for kids to spend time in nature learning new skills.
They always offered those holidays but weren’t specific enough with the audience, the problem and the solution. It also doesn’t matter that at the exact same time, they are running a campaign directly to holidays for “over 50’s singles.” People only see the messages that are relevant to them, the rest is white noise. If your aim is to attract investors, vendors or even tenants, start getting personal and consistent. You need to be putting out content every. single. week. I’ll show you how. Generic wallpaper messages just won’t cut it and gives them no reason to choose you above every other Tom, Dick or Penelope trying to do the same. Neither will posting once and then never again until you desperately need an input of cash, you can’t win an audience like that.
There is so much more to cover and we’ll go through the exact tactics in the next few issues, or check out my YouTube channel for more ideas.
Keep reading for more, stay subscribed!
