No, this is not going to be a real estate agent walkes into a bar joke, but it could be the first words of a tired story.
Today you are a real estate professional. Tomrrow or sooner you realize what you really are is a marketer. Every marketer faces the challenge of how to make emotional connections with their customer while coming across as authentic.
Making an emotional connection with your customer/prospect has real meaning. How, though, do you make that connection? Connecting means you make them feel something - whether that’s through joy and laughter, nostalgia or inspiration or even anger.
For real estate companies, which every agent is the CEO of their company, it’s fairly easy to think about the types of feelings that can be evoked for people about to buy or sell a home. It’s already an emotionally charged situation. It would be more difficult to identify an aspect of real estate that does not engage an emotion.
Sometimes a point is easier to make if we back away from our environment. Software companies, for
example, particularly business-to-business companies, face a more difficult challenge. How does a b2b tech company create a feeling for its customers? It somewhat refreshing to realize businesses are made of people too, just like you and me. B2B does have a more difficult task regarding making that connection than real estate agents. How do they do it?
By knowing their product and conveying the emotion, stimulating emotion, with story.
This is more than a new buzz word - story.. To convey ideas, concepts, thought, the smartest minds throughout time and in the business today, have been using story as their starting point for marketing for decades. It’s fundamental. Stories produce breakthroughs.
But why?
Think about the best TED talks you may have heard. Remember the 'Six Word Memiors' or "I Don't Deserve To Be Here" shared on my blogs? Did the presenter stand on the stage and rattle off fact after fact while showing corresponding charts on a screen?
No. They told you a story - or two or three - to get a message across that made you feel something that you still remember today. "So much life in 9 years," "I am not there anymore' are the take aways for me, the thoughts that engaged so much emotion, from the mentioned TED talks.
This holds true in marketing. Facts are absolutely necessary. But without a story to thread them together or give them context, they mean nothing or very little to your potential customer, and means even less as the hours of the clock pass.
I prefer to look outside of real estate for examples. By doing so new ideas, not derivative work used by all real estate agents, is the outcome. Let me show you what Zendesk has been doing. They have some really unique marketing around a powerful story that’s very central to their service, which includes things like branded help centers, live chat, and customer phone support, among other things. Hmm, those are disciplines in which the COE's of real estate companies are engaged. That means you and me.
Zendesk is a business-to-business software company. The temptation would be to market around their software and the efficiencies it provides for customer service teams. They have the stats and could justify strutting their stuff.
They do not do that. They realized their business is really about helping companies improve their relationships.
Relationships. That is the heart the keeps the blood flowing in real estate.
Books on improving relationship have always been at the top of sales volume.. Relationships are a universal human experience. They are professional and personal. And they are much more significant to most people than software or service.
Zendesk has taken the time and care to develop this story of relationships, which supports their marketing. If you are new to this concept of story and want to see an example of what this looks like chect out these two links:
- Relationships, a page devoted to the story on Zendesk’s site,
- RELATE , a sister website that’s all about relationships.
Personally, I use The GeniusTest (I am a TEMPO) as a fun tool to help connect with those I may work with. Recently I engaged a website to evaluate my 'influencer type' with these results. They say I'm a HUMANISTIC Influencer.
Zendesk is a perfect example of an inherently un-sexy b2b product whose marketing has been elevated to a point of emotional connection with its customers and prospects. Bravo.
- As a real estate company, and that is what you are, you may think your story is about efficiency, for example, when it’s really about offering your customer more time in their day for the things they love.
- You may think your story is about having a superior product, when your story really about choice.
- You may think your story is about selling a house when your story is really about transformation.
- You may think your story is about all the years you have invested to become an expert when your story is really about outcomes.
OK, so you’ve got a great story. What’s next?
You invested the mental energy to uncover and polish your story. Now it’s time to get creative and draw marketing ideas from that story. This is where the emotional connections to your brand will start to happen. Building a brand is a process.
You saw how Zendesk, took their core story around human relationships and created memorable ad campaigns like this one called “Relationships are complicated,” which features short takes of what life is like when a scuba diver and an astronaut live together.
You can view #1 HERE, #2 Here and #3 HERE
As the CEO of your real estate business you have a choice. Participate in the market economy and race to the bottom, seeing who can be the cheapest.
Or, stay out of the market economy and create a business based on relationship, transparency, outcomes and transformation. It’s when you elevate your value above the mechanics, above the marketplace, that you really start to see how you can forge emotional connections with your customers, prospects, clients and even family and friends..
Do you feel me now?
Leave a comment below, Do you think YOUR story is #1, #2, #3 or #4? If none of those, what is your story?
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