Inbound Marketing - Will you lose customers while playing on Facebook or LinkedIn? I've read several opinions this month by social media experts that are predicting that Facebook may be on its way to becoming the Internet's next big search engine. I've also heard some very experienced real estate people suggesting social media sites are a complete waste of time. Hmmm... seems to me I heard this song in 1995 when real estate sites started popping up on the Internet. Times are changing. Email blasts and direct marketing campaigns (outbound marketing) have slowly been losing their effectiveness. Do not call and do not mail registries are also slowly having an impact. Inbound marketing however is growing in popularity and is beginning to take hold. Shortly, a solid presence on Facebook and LinkedIn will be as or even more important than your existing website.
Shhh... Listen...
You can almost hear the executives at Google, Bing & Yahoo scrambling to find new ways to compete with sites like Facebook? Well... Google gets it because they have been working like crazy to get "Google Buzz" up and working. They've realized that it's not just about whose algorithm will deliver the most relevant content to the user. They have to have a social network component too.
Ultimately it's about trust.
Social networks are about connecting to people that you like and trust. I won't connect to someone that is just trying to make a contact to sell something. If they do, they will find themselves "unfriended" fairly quickly. I also won't instantly trust a friend that I just meet. But over time, as I get to know them better, I begin to trust and respect their advice and opinions. I might even entertain buying their goods or services. Well... maybe not all of them, but you know what I mean. Inbound Marketing is about earning the right to be a trusted partner. It's about nurturing relationships. It's about being there when your customers need you. That's what makes social networks like Facebood and LinkedIn so critical to any Inbound Marketing program.
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate and trust Google's efforts to deliver relevant content. I think they do it better than anyone. But it doesn't mean that I automatically trust the companies and people that come up on page 1 of their SERP. That's where Social Media networks have a huge advantage over today's search engines. When a friend suggests someone to me, I can ask questions about performance, service, and quality from someone I trust. I will put a lot more faith in a service provider that is recommended to me by a friend, than I will one I found through a website.
Think about what that means to you as a service provider.
Customers are going to expect to be able to find out more about you. If you're not on Facebook, LinkedIn, or don't have a Blog, they are going to be suspicious as to why no one knows anything about you. Think they will do business with you simply because you have a website? Remember the yellow pages?
Like it or not, social media and Inbound Marketing are changing the landscape of real estate sales. I've heard other brokers say my entire career that real estate is a numbers game. Well, that's certainly true, but it's also about relationships. Peter F. Drucker once said, "The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer." Agents will always be looking for new business, but what will keep those customers loyal to you? It may just depend on how they found you in the first place, and how connected you stayed with them after the sale. If you don't start paying attention to Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media, your customers will probably belong to someone else in the future.
Whether you are actively engage in social media or struggling to figure out where to start, my advice would be to go buy and read Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah. As of this writing it was ranked in the top 25 at Amazon.com. I couldn't put the book down. I'd lend you mine, but it's all highlighted, and I've written notes on virtually every page. I haven't seen the new strategy of Inbound Marketing and social media laid out any better.
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