CMAEON's CEO Tim Vasko just returned from New York, where he was invited to speak at the REMarTech conference. One of the presentations he was asked to give was on social media, and how it in particular, is changing the way the Real Estate industry is using the Internet to generate leads, find qualified buyers, and market itself.
Tim's talk, titled Social Conversation Lead Generation, covered some of the most common questions from Real Estate agents about social media: How do you make sure that you are the real estate professional that gets referred? How do you become part of natural social conversation? How do you inspire word of mouth online? How do you find buyers? How do you qualify them? How do you convert them to use you rather than your competitor?
Sound like something you've been thinking about? As not everyone could be in New York to hear Tim's presentation, we have uploaded a Podcast of Tim's presentation, and a copy of his slides. Please let us know what you think in the comments below.
CMAEON's CEO Tim Vasko was recently invited to speak at the REMarTech Conference in New York City. The goal of the conference was to connect the real estate world to the technology and tools that are shaping its future.
On that matter, Tim delivered a keynote presentation entitled 'Web Portal Magic'. The basis was this:
“Don't just build a website – build a web portal that utilizes SEO, social media and interconnectivity to take your web presence to the next level. What is that next level? A web portal that comes out more highly ranked on Google, keeps content fresh and alive with minimal time each week, and engages buyers with interesting content.”
It makes no sense, for any business, to invest in technology based on a comparison of features. Today, the basic features of CRM are well-defined - any CRM will provide the basics of contact relationship management.
CRM has been around for more than a decade. It was originally designed as a tool to enable businesses to share information between sales and other various departments that dealt with customers. Those features are clear.
The next iterations of CRM were designed to better track, manage and empower the sales force - hence the brand of a CRM by that name. Again, no real "dream" here.
Everyone today knows that CRM solutions save money and make moving information between employees, customer and clients much easier. Between 1999 and 2005, it seemed everyone was jumping on the CRM bandwagon – and with good reason – who doesn’t want to streamline their data capture and make more money?
However, more than 10 years into CRM, some interesting statistics start to emerge:
- "55% - 75% of all CRM installs failed to achieve results or even go live..." (source: HBR 2001)
- "70% of large scale CRM projects - costing more than $50mm do not achieve objectives ..." (source: Gartners Study, 2005)
- "One in every 5 users reported CRM not only failed to deliver profitable growth ... but damaged long-standing customer relationships" (source: J- Banis Annual Survey, 2001)
Is this really true? A member of the CMAEON staff shared a story with me about CRM software. She had just started with a large, well established natural resources company, which was using Peoplesoft to manage its mandatory safety training. One of the first things she had to do was learn how to use the system:
“So, when you take your first aid classes, you’ll have to enter your records into Peoplestupid.”
“People… stupid?”
“Well, it’s called PeopleSoft, but it doesn’t work very well.”
What happened? How did a piece of software designed to make processes better end up with such a bad reputation internally. With CRM, it’s really a question of intentions: people are not managed, and neither are customers. What you should be managing are your processes.
In other words, YOUR business processes that build YOUR relationships should talk YOUR talk and walk YOUR walk. If your CRM is only focused on features that capture information, ignoring what you do with it, the technology you use, or what your employees and clients like, chances are it’s not going to work for you. When a company implements a CRM system, it should work with the company, not change the company to work with the CRM system. If the focus is adapting the system to how you walk, and how you talk, then you can start streamlining processes to you can do MORE of the RIGHT stuff better.
I've seen it happen time and again. Beautiful, well designed web pages, with flash and media, that cost the equivalent of a Ferrari are delivered, deployed, the companies and executives are excited. It rolls out, like a brand new red Ferrari slowly backing out of the garage. Then - nothing! It sits there.
Where are all the visitors? The neighbors come by and ohh and ahh. The proud owners stand by the car, jump inside, show off the bells and whistles - this video does this, and look at our virtual tour. Cool huh? But, very soon, the customers leave, the neighbors (clients) are bored. The proud owners don't really ever start the engine. Then something gets them going about their regular day, and way of doing things. They shut the car door and walk away - expecting it to drive itself. There it sits.
The difficulty of marketing today, and using the web is that it is a business within a business - it requires expertise (a lot of expertise), discipline and an entirely new level of thinking. Marketing has never been easy. But with all of the Conversation Marketing [you can view my video here #2 in the series - for a more in-depth understanding of Conversation Marketing]- actively engaging your prospects and turning them into customers - keeping them as loyal clients, is more difficult than ever. We deliver a ton of tools to clients.
Through travel, I’ve had the rare opportunity to view businesses, entrepreneurs and work forces from many different industries to watch how things are shaping up and changing. From E-Health in Pharmacies, to RealEstate, Mortgage Banking and Wealth Management -every industry is shifting to become more closely connected. As our world continues to connect, pushing the envelope for change and challenges; there is little question that we continue to push the boundaries of how we become connected. Each of us is driving this change every day when we set up or manage our Linked-In or Facebook pages. Or when we create a membership on the Realestock.com portal or run searches for the tools for the businesses we run, represent, or are thinking of starting.
This begs the questions, How connected are you really? How do you get and stay connected 4 real?
I met with a good friend of mine who deals in the financial sector in the UK today. It was great to see Andre - haven't seen him since last August when the markets went to hell!
The last time we met, I was just discovering that our largest health client had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy - it was a distraction during our regular board meeting in Toronto.
In the last few posts I've been talking about "Smarter Marketing" - which is why we call "Smart Marketing" in The Connected Market Space iQ3. I talk about it here on my Video.
Do you still pay $3.00, $5.00, $10.00 per minute for international phone calls? Ever hear of Skype?
Of course if you were a business person who was paying $5.00/ minute for a phone call (if you still use the phone at all with email, SMS and your Blackberry in hand) you'd be working for the Government and have an unlimited budget. Oh wait, Governments are cutting back and getting smarter too...
The latest and greatest online buzz marketing tool seems to be Twitter. It's all the rage. Business guys like me are wondering though, will it stick? Obviously, no one really know - so a better question is this: Does it matter to your business?
In today's economy - especially in sectors like Real Estate, Mortgage Banking, or Health Care - transition, uncertainty and economic challenges facing the future of said sectors make business models look more like a Rorschach Test than a Harvard MBA based case study.
