Why Your Content Marketing Is Not Generating Daily Leads - No matter how much social posting, content marketing and paid ads you do
Before Walt Disney started doing anything with creating Disneyland, he toured, studied and researched ‘amusement parks’ all over the country and the world.
He was curious.
Asking questions.
Taking notes.
When the other park operators asked him about his plans and his ideas, they were confused.
They sneered:
“You’re not going to have a Ferris wheel?”
“What do you mean there is only one way in and one way out of the park? What’s a Main Street?
“You’re going to waste space where you could have rides or shows?”
“You are going to spend all that money theming? What’s theming?”
“You think people care about things like that?
See, Walt wasn’t investing all this time and money away from his successful studio to visit these other parks so he could copy them.
Walt was learning what not to do.
Walt knew he had reenvision, not just be bigger.
He had to be different, not just better.
He had to be distinct, not just newer.
It took a metaphorical slap in the face for us to figure this out in our business. We’ve been at this (selling real estate) for years.
1997 for me.
2008 for my wife/business partner.
But we didn’t put our finger on the solution until one intense month. We were busier than normal. All of our clients had very different, but similar situations.
This made us step up our service level.
Clients out of town, going through very difficult personal situations, already had moved, etc.
It was a lightbulb moment: This is how we truly help clients.
At the end of the busy, hectic month, we went back to the drawing board and started to sketch out our new, different home selling plan.
This helped our marketing have more impact without wasting time and money; even started generating us more referrals.
Today I’ll share:
Why Your Lead Generation Is Not Working The Way You Want
We’ll cover
Why Lead Generation and Marketing Doesn’t Equal More Clients
Starting with The Offer
Align Your Marketing To the Offer
Why Lead Generation and Marketing Doesn’t Equal More Clients
We’ve been bombarded with it.
The importance of lead generation.
Maybe ol’ school stuff like making our prospecting calls, or door knocking or sitting open houses.
But that’s time consuming and soul sucking.
I guess I could work on my mindset for the first hour of the day - or what we decided to do: just do work that works and use the extra time to spend together as a family and focus on our health.
So we’ve navigated to the new school stuff.
Content marketing, posting on social media, making videos and doing online paid ads.
But is it working as promised?
Are leads being generated at all?
Can we pinpoint content marketing and posting on social media to more leads and referrals?
Look, I’m not against content marketing for real estate agents at all.
I just feel if you’re going to invest your time into something, let’s give ourselves the best shot at it actually working.
“The time you want the map…is before you enter the woods.” - Brendon Burchard
QUICK EXERCISE
To illustrate my point here…
Draw a line, left to right.
On the far left, write content marketing
On the far right, write happy client.
Look at all space in between.
Start filling in all the steps you do to go from content marketing to happy client.
Ex. After content marketing, it should probably, hopefully say,” leads generated.”
So make your chart now.
.
.
.
.
.
Now take a step back.
Put old ideas and thoughts up on a shelf for a moment.
If we hadn’t been told by everyone and their mom about the importance of lead generation, where would you start?
Would you start at the far left? The furthest away from a happy client?
Or would you start as close to the happy client as possible?
We started at the happy client and reversed engineered from there.
Starting with The Offer
Surviving and Capsizing agents try to make their marketing and branding unique. But are still making the same offer, giving the same services as everyone else.
This is backwards. Start with the Offer.
Donald Miller, from StoryBrand says, “People don’t buy the best products; they buy the products they can understand the fastest.”
When You Don’T Have The Right Offer
If leads, client don’t seem interested in what you do or responding you
If they don’t value you, respect you… your time and what you’re doing for them…
If you’re not getting referrals, or not getting referrals consistently…
If everytime you help a client, the process, the transactions, the things you do are different…
If you’re going all over the city or country… or counties to work with clients
If it feels like you have to chase, almost harass leads…
You’re probably starting with marketing and lead generation, and not an offer like what we call a 5 Star/Luxury Offer.
When You Have A 5 STAR/LUXURY OFFER…
You know exactly what your audience wants
The OFFER is so in alignment, cost/commission is almost a non-topic
They come to you
You have ZERO Competition
Lead generation, marketing and content creation is easier
A 5-STAR/Luxury Offer let’s clients know you get them and you’re the ONE that can help…
It increases referrals, because your sphere, clients will know how to explain your value to others. Instead of meekly saying, “I know a great real estate agent.”
They can explain your offer, what you do and how you’ll help.
WHY DO YOU WANT A 5 STAR OFFER?
Identify Their Happily Ever After
2 MOST IMPORTANT KEYS TO CREATING A 5 STAR/LUXURY OFFER
KEY #1 Reverse Engineer
Like how Walt Disney did with his research of other parks, we have to do with our clients.
REVERSE ENGINEER
There is another Disney story.
While on vacation in New Orleans Walt discovered an antique mechanical singing bird. He was intrigued by it and curious about it. So he bought it and brought it back to the Imagineers to figure out how it worked. This reverse engineering process led to the world’s first audio-animatronic attraction, Enchanted Tiki Room, which opened in June, 1963.
In order to discover how to give our clients their Happily Ever After, we have to know what they want.
Let’s do a quick exercise:
What is their Happily Ever After?
Why?
How could you help them get that?
What do you already do?
What new things do you need to add?
Next, it’s time to do some research.
There are two types of research we want to do…
Data Driven and Anecdote Driven
Data Driven
Look at the numbers, the market reports, the industry stats. There will be reports out there for this if you look.
Ex: 73% of home sellers make at least one improvement to their home before selling
Anecdote Driven
This is simple. Have conversations with your clients, with your sphere.
Find out why they made a change in their life. Why did they buy or sell? What was their expectation of the experience? What was most annoying, confusing or overwhelming about the transaction and process?
(As a member of ClientPath I give you a super secret way to get this done even better and even more in depth. Once you ready to really nail this and save yourself some time and frustration, check out ClientPath.)
KEy #2 FOCUS ON THE END RESULT
A lot of marketing and offer making is based on steps or timelines.
Nobody wants to go through the steps of the real estate transaction.
A buyer doesn’t even want to “buy” a home. They just want their keys and to move in.
A seller doesn’t want to “list” and “sell” a home. They want the cash, to move out and to move on.
Just like decorating a room. People don’t actually want a hammer, a nail or a picture frame.
They simply want the picture on the wall.
To take that a step further, what they really want is that picture to remind them, or represent them in some way.
In the morning over coffee, they want they picture to remind them of vacation. Or when they have friends over, they want that picture to start a conversation.
When someone tells you to focus on lead generation, what they’re telling you is to focus on the hammer:
Here’s the 3 types of hammers you could buy for hanging a picture
Why should use this kind of hammer for hanging a picture
Our client used this hammer and get 63% better results
I believe you should focus on the reminder or representation.
Like I’ve been saying to you this article, focus on the client, focus on the offer.
You need to focus on their end result.
JUST CUT MY ARM OFF
When our first child was burn, I was suffering excruciating shoulder pain. It was already causing me sleepless nights, add into it a newborn.
I was barely sleeping.
Worse yet, my shoulder pain was so bad, I couldn’t even hold my 8 pound lil baby girl without it hurting.
It became so bad, I didn’t care what the fix was. A shot. Surgery. Or just cut it off.
Anything to stop the pain.
I only cared about the end result.
Being pain-free.
Luckily, the doctor didn’t take such extreme action. I still have my arm. Some simple PT and I was right as rain.
The big takeaway I want you to have from that story though is I didn’t care about the process or steps. I only cared about the end result. Getting to hold my baby daughter pain-free. Getting a good night’s sleep without a bolt of pain coursing through my body.
Our clients are the same. They want the End Result.
Focus on the end result.
Get In Alignment For Better Leads, More Leads
Summing this up…
Begin with the client and what they want.
Next, develop and present your 5 Star/Luxury Offer
Then, create and start implementing your marketing that is connected and aligned with your offer.
Instead of trying to make your marketing and lead generation unique, but you’re doing the same thing as your competition. Your marketing and lead generation will actually be different.
WHAT’s NEXT?
Read This Article: Simple Content Marketing Formula:
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