Posts Tagged "competitive benchmarking"
For More Creative Content, Break These 4 Rules
The best way to come up with engaging and creative content is to think outside the box and, sometimes, take risks. Here are 4 rules to break to produce truly creative content for real estate marketers.
Highlights:
- Produce creative content by throwing out the template approach and start thinking about what makes you stand out.
- Don’t be afraid to showcase what you do best through different avenues, like customer or vendor testimonials.
- When you’re committed to curiosity, you naturally become a learning organization and this learning leads to more creative content.
With over 4 million blog posts published every day, you have to be really creative to drive traffic to your website and attract prospective tenants or buyers to your properties. Marketers may think they need to follow these rules, but in fact, you need to break them to craft creative content.
1. Mirror competitors
While it’s true there might be trending topics that you will want to cover, you should think more about the value proposition of your specific property and put the focus there. This will help you write creative content that stands out from your competitors and is not repeating what “everyone else is doing.” Remember, your property is unique, so your content should be too.
2. Marketing mindset
While your marketing team knows everything about your property, some of the best stories and blog content come from your other teams. Existing residents or buyers, property managers, neighborhood vendors, and local businesses often have a really good prospective or story to tell. Tap into those unique stories for creative (and personalized!) content.
3. Keep it obvious
While there will definitely be some obvious things that stand out about your property that you’re going to want to highlight, sometimes the most creative content comes from a different perspective. For example, you may want to talk about events that are taking place near your property over the summer, like rock concerts, performance art, open-mic nights, or anything else that appeals to your buyer personas. Don’t be afraid to get specific and dig a little deeper; the result will be creative content that stands out to prospective tenants or buyers.
4. Repeat success
While it’s true you should look at the analytics and build upon content that has been successful in the past, you should also be taking some risks when you’re developing your content calendar. Build in a healthy mix of what’s worked for you in the past — what resonates with your target audience — and something new, out of left field. Real estate marketers need to keep experimenting. Audiences are constantly evolving, so your content should be too.
Have you published creative content by thinking outside the box? Have you been successful?
Related posts:
- 4 Types of Content You Need to Sell Real Estate (Besides Listings)
- Infographic: Content Marketing Statistics Every Real Estate Marketer Should Know
- 10 Quick Ways to Grow Brand Awareness
Posts Tagged "competitive benchmarking"
Why You Should Benchmark Real Estate Marketing Against Competitive Properties
Taking the time to benchmark real estate marketing gives you context for your performance — and shows you what prospective buyers/tenants see when searching for properties.
When people are searching the internet for apartments or condos, what are they seeing? Part of an effective, data-driven marketing strategy is regularly taking the time to benchmark real estate marketing against competitive properties.
We all know that competition drives results. Take Elaine Thompson and Michael Phelps. In August 2016, Thompson claimed the title of the world’s fastest woman, and Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time. They achieved these incredible feats by continuously pushing themselves to do better — and they weren’t just tracking and measuring their personal performance. They were keeping track of the performance of their peers and competitors. The data helped to give them the drive they needed to improve their own performance.
Why benchmark real estate marketing?
The same is true when it comes to measuring real estate marketing performance.
Looking inward, focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) like website traffic, social media engagement, and lead conversion metrics is important. But these metrics will only get you so far.
You need to be looking at what’s happening outside your business and benchmark real estate marketing performance against competitive developments, properties, and even companies. That way, you’ll get the knowledge and drive you need to improve your performance and chance of success.
In addition, keeping track of what your competitors are doing can help you to identify threats and strategic opportunities for your properties. If you see that everyone is advertising on Trulia, for example, and you’re not, you might want to think about trying it. Or, you might notice that no one in your market is leveraging Facebook Marketplace property listings yet. Is this a place where you could gain strategic advantage?
Who should you be benchmarking against?
While the obvious choice is to benchmark against properties that directly compete with yours, it’s also a great idea to benchmark real estate marketing against market leaders. By taking this more global view, you can gain ideas and intelligence from top performers in your area. You may learn something that you can bring to your property’s marketing plan that will help edge out your competition.
Related posts:
- What Metrics Should You Track in Real Estate Marketing?
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
- How Pay-Per-Click Helped This Property Get 54 Leads
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