Whenever You Create Any Content, Write Any Marketing Copy Or Create An Ad For Your Property Business... ALWAYS Think R.A.V.E.
In his podcast, being our first, I wanted to look at a few simple marketing principles that will start you and your property business out on the right path. This information is based on my experience over the last 20 years dealing with many property professionals, but also business entrepreneurs from many different industries and sectors..
So today I want to ask you a simple question..
Do People R.A.V.E. About You And Your Property Business?
R.A.V.E. is an acronym I’ve used in my marketing training for years and it’s a really powerful point of reference to draw upon whenever you do anything in the marketing of your business.
R.A.V.E. stands for Reputation, Authority, Visibility and Engagement and I want you to write this down, because these 4 aspects of how you build your marketing model are essential.
And that’s what we’re going to be doing in this podcast, building a marketing model or system if you like, brick by brick so you can take some action every time you listen to the podcast, so today write down
Reputation
The R stands for reputation.. You see people buy, or buy into people with a good reputation, they do business with reputable people or organisations, so part of your marketing strategy should be reputation building and reputation management. This is an essential part of your brand.
What do your target audience know about you? How are you perceived? What do people say about you and your property business when you're not there?
Reputation is built over time, but it's your responsibility to market yourself and expose your audience to content that shows that you have a good reputation.
This could be in the form or testimonials, interviews, speaking events, guesting on podcasts etc. Any content that shows you as a name and face in the industry can build your reputation. Capture this sort of content on video, it is by far the best way for your target market to see that you have a good reputation. You can then repurpose this content in audio and text to reinforce the message.
Authority
A stands for Authority, and people listen to people in authority or have authority in a specific field or discipline.. The concepts of reputation and authority in marketing are deeply psychological, people are looking for solutions to problems, and when presented with a possible solution the first thing the brain does is say ‘can I trust this?’
So if you have a motivated seller site up on line that is offering to buy property at speed, the site visitor will only stay on that site if they feel comfortable, if they feel they can trust the page, they know nothing of you, your property business or even if you are genuine. The same applies to your Investor attractor website.
If they come to this site with some knowledge of your reputation and authority, they have heard or read about you and how good your property business is, the solutions you have offered others just like them, then you’ve already jumped that hurdle of mistrust and they will be on your site to take action.
If not then the look, feel and layout is incredibly important, you need to understand the anatomy of high converting landing pages so you can portray you business in an authoritative way. The dictionary definition of authoritative is 'able to be trusted as being accurate or true; reliable'
Reputation and authority should be thought about, and laced throughout your marketing, whether that's the posts you put up on social media, the ads you release, the landing pages or the websites you create or the talks you give. You should always be thinking of how to demonstrate your good reputation in the industry and the authority you have.
Visibility
V and this is for visibility. This seems like an obvious one, but you’d be surprised at the amount of people who come to me wanting to market their business and are completely invisible to their target market audience, and I mean they haven't even tried…
#1 - Target Market Audience: You obviously want to be visible to your target market audience, So for instance, motivated sellers may have problems such as:
- Their home may be in the process or under threat of repossession
- Moving Abroad
- Debt
- Inherited Property
- Probate Property
- Divorce
- Redundancy
Whatever it is, they have come to the conclusion they need to sell up and they need to do that fast.. You of course have the perfect solution to this person's problem. You may be in a position of being a cash buyer and looking for property in your area for other investors.
Visibility in this respect could be anything from word of mouth in your area, if you're known in your area for someone who can turnaround a property transaction fast, or it could be leaflets through doors right up to geo-targeted Facebook ads or google search ads..
All these methods of generating motivated seller leads need to go back to somewhere, this is usually a motivated seller website or landing page. This is where you can reinforce your reputation and authority. It’s a great place to have a couple of glowing testimonials.
You can also have social media sites such as a Facebook page, Instagram or even a YouTube channel showing case studies and happy clients. The clients in this case are people whose house you have purchased fast and solved their problems.
#2 - Fellow property investors: This is another target for visibility. Fellow property investors who see you as an authority in your niche, someone who does the business and helps people in difficult situations. These are the people who will provide visibility via word of mouth. If you go to property network meetings, and if you don’t you should.
You will talk with other investors that will speak with people in your area that need to sell.. You have to remember that not all property investors are in a position to buy fast, so encourage them to mention you.. You never know where that will lead, possible joint venture, a client for a sourced property, you get where I’m going with this. So again visibility with your peers is vital.
You can also create more visibility for your property business by using social media well. Creating a business page on Facebook and LinkedIn is simple but can help you reach prospect investors or investor partners without cost and can be very effective. You can also create a Facebook group and encourage prospect investors to join and provide relevant and interesting content for them along with offers.
Some of my clients have vastly increased their visibility online this way and attracting their target audience to their websites. Here's a couple of examples...
And finally...
#3 - Influencers: Influencers in the industry, so I’m looking at property speakers, property networking hosts, property training companies, in fact anyone who can recommend you to others who have a problem you can solve.
Engagement
The last part of the RAVE acronym is the E which stands for engagement.. This really is a key element of this whole process. Engagement will be important throughout any marketing system
Social Media Engagement
Post the deals you are involved in, show excitement at helping people solve their problems, become the go to person in your field, niche, area or strategy.. And when people ask questions or comment, reply.
Site Engagement
As a property investor you’ll probably have a website that gets deals, that’s a motivated seller site and another that is more property business focused and targeted at investors.
At some point you’re going to run out of money and will need to look at growing a list of prospect and active investors looking for deals that you can source, or people looking for projects to invest in.
Whatever the site, whatever the deals, the key to success is the engagement you have with those messaging you through your site. This can be helped with marketing automation, another subject I’ll cover in the podcast, but just making sure you fully engage with people on email, SMS, Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp is going to pay dividends.
And why? Because most of your competition stinks at this, so just make it part of your marketing mindset and look for ways to automate your responses and only personally reply when required.
Proactive Engagement
Once you get in the habit of reactive elements as I’ve just mentioned with social media and the engagement through your site, you should start to think about more proactive engagement such as YouTube videos, Podcasts, marketing videos, speaking events etc.
Taking a front foot on stimulating engagement through your business and giving people the option to get in contact with you takes a little longer than things like advertising, but builds stronger and deeper psychological bonding between you and prospective investor partners for instance.
So today, think about the concepts of RAVE Reputation, Authority, Visibility and Engagement and start to put all those elements in anything you do in your business.
Also think of the sort of things that would build or boost your reputation in your industry and start to put them together. I'm talking about contacting people for a testimonial, or doing a case study on a recent project.
How would it make you look to the outside world? I’m not talking about bragging, that’s never attractive. I’m talking about creating marketing materials such as PDF’s, Social Posts, copy for your websites and presentations that elevates your reputation and authority, increases your visibility and stimulates real engagement.
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