Exercise to understand what you are currently doing in your office

A simple exercise here that I learnt from Jo Pulizzi, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, is to pull out all your marketing material including print ads, brochures, newsletters, blog posts, thank you gifts, drop cards, market reports, window cards, social media posts (print copies of these out), PR and anything else your office produces and lie them on the meeting room table.

Get the principal and other agents in the room and ask them – is our content more about our customers pain points or more about us and how great our services are?

Ask them will people share and spread this information on social media, will they talk to their friends about it, will they search for it? Will they become so engaged in it that they will follow us and use us?

Whilst there is nothing wrong with traditional marketing tactics, in many cases these still work, but they are becoming less and less effective as Jo says – it’s harder to buy eyeballs and interest. Today our advertising must be so interesting that people don’t consider it advertising. This is where local real estate content marketing fits, this is where the magic happens.