Read any Real Estate oriented news release, news feed or website these days and you will observe two dominant themes, the state of the economy and new forms of communication.
The former will focus on the housing sales, foreclosures, lending, banking, the bail out or government legislation affecting one of the preceding. The latter will be all about the social and business networking explosion, blogging and tweeting — and how they are impacting the former.
On the downside, the increase in communications, led by the 24-hour news cycle, inundates us with tremendous detail about issues that are out of our control. On the upside, the increase in the number of ways to stay in touch with our networks of family, friends, clients and referral sources has never been more diverse. Since staying in communication is the cornerstone of referral marketing, it’s great to have new options.
With one caveat: make sure you communicate with clients and referral sources in the way they most prefer. Trying to text a bank vice-president who barely embraces e-mail is not the way to go. Networking on Facebook when targeting referral sources who prefer face-to-face communication, will get you nowhere.
There’s a hierarchy of effectiveness when it comes to marketing communications. At the top is face-to-face contact: lunches, dinners, meetings, etc. Without question, this is the most effective form of cultivating rapport with someone – especially in the early, formative stages of a relationship while both parties try to gain the trust of the other, seek common interests and establish a firm bond.
Telephone contact, which still conveys aspects of your personality through your voice, is next in the hierarchy, and can help to reinforce the bond made by in-person contact.
Traditionally, once a relationship is established through personal contact, it moves into a less formal phase in which phone calls, letters, e-mail, and texting become viable options for future connection. Listed by order of effectiveness, these methods fall further down on the hierarchy and decrease in terms of impact and intimacy.
The savvy marketer uses the early stages of a relationship to detect how a new referral source, for example, likes to communicate. If the person spends their first meeting with you showing you their new blackberry and how easy it is to text, that’s a clue. If their cell phone never leaves their side, and they offer you the number right away, it should be obvious how they prefer to communicate.
Watch, learn and listen. Don’t be overly dazzled by the latest forms of communication – pay attention to what is most effective and practice what works for your target market.