Last year we decided to expand beyond the Bay Area b/c our value propositions (speed, communication, appraisal quality, etc.) had become so established and effective.
DIGITAL MARKETING
Our primary goal was to market to Realtors to establish more referral relationships. The only way to do this on a mass scale is digitally – via social media and web-based ads and email campaigns. Radio, TV and print advertising is too broad and no longer effective.
CLUELESS CONSULTANTS
We knew we needed help b/c of the sophistication and expertise digital marketing requires, so we hired several very high end marketing firms and consultants, spending tens of thousands of dollars.
And shockingly, we quickly learned that the consultants were more clueless than we were. The world had passed them by. Effective digital marketing has become so extraordinarily complex that these firms were completely in the dark. They were so clueless in fact that we demanded and received refunds.
To effectively market on the digital front, you need to know exactly how to produce content (videos, emails, blogs), what software you need for content, how to get customer lists, what software to use for email and digital campaigns, how to navigate Google, and how to track your results, among other things.
It is stunningly difficult and we only learned this after we brought on a Silicon Valley vet (Jonathan McGowan) as our VP of Sales and Marketing. The only way to garner the necessary experience in digital marketing is to fight in the trenches at the highest levels for years without ever letting up b/c everything changes every year.
When Jonathan came on board we were amazed by just how naive we and all of our consultants were. Our efforts prior to Jonathan were mostly a waste of time b/c we were using the wrong software, our scale was too small, we were too inefficient, and we weren’t tracking our results.
The point of this blog is threefold:
1. Digital Marketing Is Hard!
2. If you are going to attempt to market digitally, just dabbling serves no purpose. You need help.
3. We offer assistance to Realtors with whom we have an established relationship.
FINAL POINT: KEEP UP
The marketing consultants we hired illustrate one more point – the need to keep up. All of them were selling snake oil and will likely go out of business b/c they did not keep up in the digital age.
Keep up.
Jay Voorhees
Founder/Broker | JVM Lending
(855) 855-4491 | DRE# 1197176, NMLS# 310167
