When it comes to a customer’s perception of a business or brand, and their choice of who to engage with when buying a product or service, there are obvious considerations in their decision-making process.
Price and perception of value aside, these often include the business’s online presence, customer reviews, prospective customers’ experiences, and recommendations from people they know and trust.
In successful businesses, this might appear to be easy, but to show leadership through marketing needs an underpinning strategy and consistency in delivery.
Here are my top tips on how to start and where to focus your energy for quick wins and big impacts.
Branding
Upholding the integrity of the brand through marketing is critical.
This doesn’t just account for the visual representation of the business and website, but includes consistency in tone, structures and the use of language.
This needs to be considered at brand level in mass communications such as newsletters, EDMs, text messages, signboards and print advertising.
It also needs to be listing-specific, such as property ad structures, photography and video styles and transactional communications.
Having a clear marketing strategy will help you nail these touchpoints, meaning anyone who comes
across your business – regardless of which team member they interact with – has a consistent
experience.
This first step goes a long way in positioning your business as market leader.
Google reviews/google my business
Social proof is incredibly powerful.
Harnessing the power of Google and (trying) to master the algorithms can do wonders for your business.
Driving customers to leave reviews at certain touchpoints and replying with timely, customised responses will set you apart from your competitors.
Add in proactive management and updating of your Google My Business page (the secret is photos!), and Google will reward you with improved search visibility and search engine optimisation.
Social media
Almost all of your current and future customers are on social media.
How is your business (and/or team) represented across the various platforms, and is this delivered in a consistent, value-adding way?
Having guidelines in place for team members managing their own pages ensures they don’t end up on Lords of Property and maintains the integrity of your brand.
Leveraging each other’s audiences and sharing key messages for events, news or promotions is also a powerful way to build brand momentum and awareness.
Ensure you have a social strategy, policies in place and the right resources to consistently drive
this.
A page showing only what you have just rented or sold is probably not the best use of your time and not particularly engaging for your audience.
Whenever we talk about marketing, I consider three key questions:
- How does it look?
- How does it sound?
- How does it feel?
Avoid cliches and naff content.
Put yourself in your audiences’ shoes to understand what they want, where they want it and when they want it.
Is your content easy to digest (in any medium), does it make sense to the intended audience, and what is the emotional response you are trying to achieve?
Above all, ensure your marketing is varied.
A mix of entertainment, education and aspiration is a safe combination, but too much or too little of any bucket can be boring or come across as self-indulgent and ego-driven (not that we’d ever be accused of that, right?).
If you’re still unsure what your customers want or like, ask them!
Measure your engagement and return on investment on campaigns, track your lead sources and ask for feedback.
Not every campaign will be a roaring success, but consistently delivering, refining and learning will position you as the market leader.
