I was speaking to a group of local business owners this past weekend at SCORE. I run the Online Marketing part of the seminar each month. It was my job to get the group to wake up after their hour long lunch break. Well, I decided to come prepared with all sorts of cool facts to get them interested in the topic again while the greasy burgers settled in their stomachs. How did I do it? With these:
- 1 in 8 couples who married in 2008 met online
- More than 31 billion searches are performed on Google every single month (Does not include Yahoo, MSN, etc.)
- It took televesion 13 years to reach 50 million users, and radio 38. The web? Just 4 years
- MySpace now has more than 200 million registered users – If these users were made into a country, they’d make up the 5th largest country in the world
- In 2008 more people used the web to find local businesses than the Yellow pages
- Shoppers who “pre-shop” onlineare more likely to refer friends and family than those who do not
Interesting stats huh? Thought you might enjoy them as a reminder of how important the web has become on both a business and a personal level. The crowd quickly sat up and started scribbling down these facts at the seminar and it was easy to get audience interaction going after this point. So what am I saying here? That in your daily marketing efforts, sometimes it’s not really what you say so much as how you make the information relevant to your audience.
I did this at the seminar by asking how many were on Myspace, how many shopped online, how many forward emails and refer friends to interesting websites. All hands went up each time. After 45 seconds of having the audience prove the truth of what I was saying, I moved on to my Power Statement: “The essence of marketing is to get your message in front of as many people who are already interested in your product or service as possible.”
The crowd was silent as I then compared costs of online marketing to direct mail, yellow page ads, newspaper ads, magazines and more. I then pulled out a chart to show the small exposure each of those mediums offered when compared to a properly marketed website. The crowd didn’t even wait for me to get to the Q and A portion of the presentation as hands shot up and questions were rapid fired my way. This is the very same group who moments earlier were slowly shuffling into the room looking as if they were dreading sitting in a seat that was filled with pointy thumbtacks…
The transformation took place with a simple twist of the message. I let them prove the truth of my words to themselves by making the facts relevant, and then comparing to the traditional marketing approach. This is a powerful marketing tool, and one that I hope you adopt for your own message.
I dropped my yellow pages years ago, I use one name f or it all, but I screwed this one up. In the past 3 months, I have had more clients from Facebook, Twitter and alike than I ever got from that yellow thing and I never go into a RE shop anymore. They follow me on Facebook or my blogs.
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That's great Dave! It's a nice added benefit that there's no cost attached to web 2.0 sites. So you saved yourself cash, generated more business, and developed an excellent pipeline to communicate with your potential clients. Great job!
CW -
I still use some mailings, handouts and personal notes but even it is directed at getting the consumer to my website where the real informatin is.
Have you noticed your mailbox is increasingly less filled with junk mail?
Not, of course, that any real estate or mortgage mailing would fall in that category, but the direct mailing category of marketing has certainly thinned out. Therefore, I think it is a great time to use this methodology to drive customer inquiry. I think a little bit of creativity and personality and your direct mail campaign can really produce in this market.
Putting your website as a long-term destination for that mail client is even smarter. Use direct mail to drive up awareness and email opt-in list on the website to hold them with you for lead nurturing and client retention–make all your marketing work together.