Everyone in marketing knows that Seth Godin is the father or permission marketing. His post today takes his discussion of permission one step further. He was speaking to a group of Realtors. Knowing Realtor’s, I’m sure he really got there attention when he told them to “quit now.” He’s right on the money however. His point is that a massive swath of the Realtor world (and other worlds too) are nothing more than order takers who pass out business cards with their picture on them and wait for the phone to ring.
It is interesting when you look at markets how few Realtors ever stand out beyond the standard Real Estate magazine advert, or open house sign. I’ve vacationed often in Maui, where Realtors are as abundant as tourists. It is difficult for anyone to stand out above the fray, yet over the past couple of years, there is a pair of Realtors there that have caught my attention because of their outstanding use of digital marketing.
Tom Muldoon and Sean Crowley are like everyone else on the island trying to sell a little piece of
Paradise to the visitors to the 50th state. However, they have become the property experts in an area know as Wailea. Instead of just sending out listing, they produce full-color, digital reports with detailed market statistics, area information and resale information. They have a blog that talka about more than how great they are with new listings.
A friend of mine owns a condo on the island, and when they decided to put it on the market, they selected Tom and Sean. They have created a fantastic web site for the property, and are using 37Signal’s Base Camp to communicate with the owner. Tom and Sean are definitely not Realtors that are going to be impacted by a downturn in real-estate sales like others in the market. All they need is a SubscriberMail newsletter, and their marketing will be perfect.
Going back to Seth for a moment, he points to Daily Candy as a great model to follow if you are looking to “talk about what matters” to your audience. See my posting about Daily Candy’s CEO Pete Sheinbaum at the EEC on how they do this.
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