The Best Real Estate Marketing - No Gimmicks, Please

Hi there, it's Kevin Award with yes Masters Real Estate Success Training, helping you get more yeses and more successes in your business and in your life. And today I want to talk to you about something that happened to me recently, in fact happened this week that was hilarious but also a little bit embarrassing. So to give you a little bit of background, last week we launched, I launched one of my new training programs called the FX Extreme Online program. And F and X stands for for sale by owners and expired. So for real estate agents, that simply means it's a training program for how to list and sell for sell by owners and expired listings in high volumes and how to do it successfully. I've been doing a training camp on that for the last two years and have an online program, but we're launching a new program. So I was doing a live webcast that was on how to convert, reach and convert for sale by owners and expires and with it then I offered them a special offer to sign up for my FX Extreme Online training course. So they get a bunch of emails to do that. And then those that actually sign up and register for the online course, obviously they're going to get other additional emails including a congratulations, you know, on, for registering and confirming here's your online access and all of that kind of stuff. Well, what happened was I made a mistake in the autoresponders and ended up sending the congratulations email to over 10,000 real estate agents that are basically that are on my list, which means they've come to my stuff or they subscribe for my videos or they registered for a webinar or whatever. And literally over 10,000 emails by accident went out that should not have gone out that said congratulations, your registration is confirmed. You know, welcome to FX Extreme Online. And basically it's congratulating them for spending money. And so we immediately. This happened on Tuesday evening, Monday evening, happened on Monday afternoon. And I didn't catch it until late Monday night. Well, my inbox was, was blowing up with people going like, I didn't register for anything. I can't believe this happened. And you know, and you get all kinds of responses. So some were saying, you know, I, apparently there was some under, I accidentally got this from, I got this email by mistake because I didn't register for anything. There were other people that go in, like what, I don't, I don't think I registered for this. Or there were others that go like, you know, what is going on here? If you charged me or you did anything without my permission, I'm Going to report you for fraud and bank fraud and credit card fraud or whatever and all kinds. So I had everything from people totally confused to people freaking out, to people that were threatening lawsuits and fraud charges and all kinds of stuff. So it's kind of like I'm sitting there going like, oh my goodness, what do I do? Well, it's late, late Monday night when I see this. So early Tuesday morning I get up and I send out to all these people, well over 10,000, an email saying, oops, wrong email, I apologizing for the mistake. Alright? So that's what I did. And then when I sent out that second email, oops, wrong email, my inbox blew up again. And this is just right behind me. I've got, actually got it open here and you can see that the. And well, you, I don't know if it's, if you can see here, but literally this is just a sampling of all the oops, wrong emails that I sent out that people responded to. And so there were people. I mean, you got every kind of response now that's going like, well, I figured it was some mistake, make sure it doesn't happen again. And somebody going like, why, you know, why did this happen? And. But most of it was like, no problem. I figured it was some mistake like that. But here's what was hilarious. What was hilarious to me was how many emails I got probably a dozen replies, which is probably 10% of the replies, maybe more than that. That said either said great marketing gimmick or I thought it was a marketing gimmick of some sort that literally were saying, this is a good strategy, you got great attention and so forth. And when that happened, I was just like in shock. I was surprised at how many people thought that when I sent out this congratulations email, even though you hadn't done anything, that they thought it was a trick, that they thought it was a marketing gimmick to get them to open the email. And then they're going like, I registered for something. I didn't know that. I don't know what they thought the gimmick was, but they thought it was some kind of brilliant strategic marketing move on my part to get them to, I'm sure, to spend money, right? Well, it wasn't and I was totally embarrassed. And now I'm looking at these emails and I'm going like, oh my goodness, is that what our world has come to? That when you make a mistake, people think it's a gimmick, that it's actually a marketing gimmick. And I Assure everybody it was not a marketing gimmick and that it just. It was funny to me when that happened, but here it made me think about, do marketing gimmicks work? And when you talk about an effective marketing strategy, one of the keys of a great marketing strategy is it must first get people's attention, right? So they talk about, I can't remember, it's attention, interesting, something, and then they buy or whatever. But the first step is you've got to get their attention. And so the immediate thing I realized is if this had been a marketing gimmick, if attention was my goal, I got it. It worked great. So here's one. The first lesson I learned about marketing gimmicks, they work. They work at getting attention. But the second thing I thought was, they get attention, but do they attract people to you? Do they. Do they make people want to work with you? Do they make people want to sign up with you or want to have a relationship with you in a business relationship with you or give you money? And as I was thinking about it, I was like, okay, so if marketing gimmicks get attention, but when people get on the other side of the gimmick, what happens? And I realized, and I went from my own experience and from watching others, I'm watching the responses that the people, the emails, because we got probably, I don't know, a couple of hundred emails, either on the initial mistake email or on the apology email that went out, is that marketing gimmicks create attention, but they don't create attraction, which means they will get people to notice, but do they actually make people want to work with you? And so the question is, should you use a marketing gimmick? Well, if what you're looking for is primarily attention and just get maybe one, get a few sales, then marketing gimmicks work. And here's how I know they work. I actually had at least two of the emails said, what is the link for the product? What is the link for the program? They literally had missed all the emails inviting them to come to the webcast and register and all that kind of stuff for the free training and for the paid training, they had missed all of those. But when they got this thing, they. It got their attention. And they're like, well, what is the link? And I'll check it out. And I'm like, well, Mark, if it were a gimmick, it actually worked. So, yes, they work. But for the most part, what they work is get attention. They don't get attraction. And so while I may have had the opportunity to make a couple of sales out of it. Here's what I also know. There were many, many other people that were annoyed, irritated, confused, and maybe even angry that they got this email because they felt they were, they were either afraid they got tricked, they were afraid they got charged incorrectly. And so it probably would burn more bridges than it would build. Does that make sense? So if you're looking for just a one, if you're just looking to turn a trick, if you're just looking to get one sale and then you know, I just want to sell you something and then I don't care whether you like me or not, then gimmick marketing works. But if you're looking to build leverage, if you're looking for long term relationship, if you're looking to build client loyalty, if you're looking at a client's lifetime value instead of just a one night stand, marketing gimmicks are losing game because it's like focusing on the short game rather than the long game. It's like focusing on the immediate gratification rather than the long term sustainable relationship where a client will use you and refer to you, refer people to you over and over again. So for me, the litmus test of marketing, of good marketing is is it compelling when they look, Whenever somebody, if somebody were to look behind the curtain of your marketing, would it be compelling? Which means pull them to you, would it be compelling or would it be repelling? If they could look behind the curtain, if they could look under the hood of what your motivation is, of what your messaging really is, and of what's behind it, what would be their response? And I'll give you an example of something that I of an email that I got a few weeks ago. And I got it because I remember it, because it really stood out to me. And the email basically, the subject line said, the email basically said, I have a listing referral for you. Now, if you're a real estate agent and you get an email with a subject line that says, I have a listing referral for you, what do you think? You're like, wow, somebody is sending me a listing referral. And then it was somebody's name. And I'm like, well, cool, I've got a listing referral. So you click the email and open it up. Once you open the email up, then the message in the email says, how would you like to have the opportunity to get listing referrals from agents all over the country? Well, we would like to invite you to join this exclusive real estate agent Referral network where you can network with real estate agents all over the country and you can give and receive referrals to and from each other and you can get, potentially get a listing referrals from other agents in this nationwide network. And, and it only cost you $269 to join our referral network or whatever. I don't remember. I hadn't, I don't remember the amount because the amount was irrelevant. What I remember was how I felt when I had gone from looking at an email subject line that says, I have a listing referral for you, which makes me go like, if I'm an agent, if I'm a real estate agent, we're like, I got a listing referral and then opening it up and going like, no, I got a sales pitch. And immediately when I realized what was happening, what the actual email was, my immediate reaction was, you jerk. You tricked me into opening this email expecting one thing and got another. And that, my friends, is what I have been fighting for years. What I call BS marketing. BS Bad sales, BS Bait and switch. You trick people with marketing gimmicks. Do you get attention? Yes. Now are some people going to look at it and you got them to open it, so they're going to read it and go like, yeah, I want to be a part of this network and they're going to sign up. So does it work? Yes, marketing gimmicks work. But unless you're just looking for the one night stand, if you're looking to build a long term value based relationship with clients or customers, do it based on value and honesty and integrity, not bait and switch tactics. The reason people still use bait and switch tactics is because yes, they work. But my contention is they only work for the short game. They only work for getting you one deal and then you're not going to get that person's loyalty. Because look, you start a relationship with me by tricking me, even if I hang around for a little while over time, that often the real you behind the gimmicks is going to come out. And if you're, if you front yourself with gimmicks, what my belief is is that behind the scene is probably a lot of gimmicks in you as well. And I don't want to build my business or build relationships based on gimmicks. I want to build it based on authenticity and commitment to your clients or your customers best interest in adding true value to them. And when you do that, no matter what, you always win. And I believe that you can learn how to get yes, without the BS that you can develop the compelling message that will cause people to pay attention to, to listen to you. But more importantly is once they give you their attention, they don't regret the gift that they gave you and they're happy to have that relationship with you. So whatever you do, shoot straight with people, be honest with them, build a relationship of value. And when you do that, you can always expect yes.