Marketing Homes to Millennials [HIGHLIGHTS] - by @todmaffin

So we're here to talk about millennials, who are, of course, as you know, entrepreneurial, they are engaged, they are liberal. No, no, sorry, no, no, wait, that's not true, that at all. They are self-absorbed narcissists who live in the basement of their parents' place. Right? We've heard both things about these— this group of people, haven't we? I mean, this is the predominant thing, is they're all self-absorbed narcissists. What I want to do is tell you a bit about, about some of the experiences through my company that we have. We work with brands to market to millennials through digital campaigns. We work with some of the largest brands. Time magazine wrote this: We are now in the me decade, dwelling upon me and every delicious nuance of my conduct and personality. I'm sure many of you have heard this. Recently, Time magazine did write this in 1976, and now it's their turn, right? It's the Millennials' turn. Here is something you need to understand about generations: every generation abuses the generation that follows, right? The traditionalists thought the Boomers were the laziest generation ever. They have no work ethic, nothing. The Boomers had kids and they're like, my Gen X kids just lie around the house They're just lazy. They live in our basement. This was something that was applied to Gen Xers. Gen Xers started having kids. Their Millennial kids, you know, the Millennials are just lying around. They're just, they're in our parents' basement. It doesn't matter what generation. It's very much like technology. You know, we always saw technology comes in and everyone believes it's going to replace it. You know, I want to talk a bit about comparing the generations. Talk about who these people are. And then some of the things that we have learned through my agency around how to actually attract these people. There are 5 keys that we've learned. Story and voice, you'll discover, is probably the single most important one, also the single biggest one that realtors— and they are self-organizing. They also don't think twice about using technology. This comes as a shock for big organizations who have very tight IT controls. As mentioned, I used to work at the CBC. When I first started at the CBC, prior to coming to the CBC, I started a dot-com company near 2000 that went public after 18 months through an RTO in Nevada. It was very successful. My partners and I were at one point each worth about $10 million. We never got any of the real money because the dot-com bomb hit. But I came out of a very technological-driven area. And I was a young, you know, a relatively youngish person. And so, I went right into the CBC, which is a completely different world than an entrepreneurial world. It's a lot better these days, it really is. But back then, I mean, it was very labour union-driven. I got in trouble for moving a printer once. For moving a printer. Because Jacques from the union of local printer movers 007 is responsible for the— I'm like, are you kidding me? No, no, no, I will call him, he will move the printer. No, no, no, I get it. You know. The CBC has this, had, replaced it now, this email system called GroupWise. Does anyone use GroupWise still? Has anyone heard of it? Oh, you still, yes? You've heard of it? Yeah. So GroupWise was last updated in 1872. And it was a horrible system anyway. But like all these systems, Exchange Server and so on, they had this like, what would you call, like a group discussion board, right? You could go and create a board, a bulletin board, and share it. And I thought, my first, very first month at the CBC, I thought, here's some technology, I'm just going to use it for the benefit of the organization. So I created this group called the BC Buy and Sell. And the idea was, forget Craigslist, trying to find a bike from people we don't know. We have like 5,000 employees in Western Canada, or whatever the number is. Why don't we just all have a group? So I created it. I didn't ask permission. I just created it, 'cause you can do that. You can't anymore. They fixed that loophole. But I created it. Well, here's the thing with GroupWise, is when you create one of these groups, it sends an email to everybody who has access to it. And the email is like this templated thing that they wrote at Novell and it is really generic and it makes reference to Tod Maffin has created a folder in your mailbox. That's all it said. So I started getting phone calls. What the hell are you doing in my email? I'm not in your email. What I thought was interesting was you could see the breakdown of how the different generations handle these things right there, right? People under 30, under 35, they just started using it. Like, they just were like, "Great, no problem." They just started using it. People 30 to 45, or 35 to sort of 45, had no idea how I was in their email box. You know, like, "How are you? How did you get? Why did you? Do you have my password?" Everyone over 50, they didn't care about that I was in their mailbox, because they didn't really use the email anyway. They just wanted to know if I had permission to do this first. You know, did I fill out some kind of form or go through the whole processes and so on. So, you know, I thought good employee, hey, I've learned my mistake, I'm just gonna delete the stupid mail folder and be done with it. So guess what GroupWise does when you delete a shared folder? It sends an email to everybody and now this email is even worse. Now it says, "Tod Maffin is deleting your mail folders." Right? And now I can hear— and CBC in Vancouver is this sort of corridor of underground tunnels and I could hear like, I could hear like dozens of people running downstairs to our studio "why are you—" I just left the building. Like, I just left. And the next day I showed up with literally like this 10-foot-long Subway sandwich that I got at Subway to make up. And I sent it to IT as an apology and I survived another day. But you know, this generation, like me in many ways, doesn't want any excuse. You can use technology, you can't use technology. Forgive me if you are one of these organizations that bans Facebook in your organization, but stop it. Stop it. The 5 keys that we have picked up are trust, friends, story and voice, participation, and mobility. You address each of these in your marketing and you will connect with this generation. The first 2 are critical. Millennials have an innate distrust of marketers. The worst thing you can do to a— for a millennial, to a millennial, is to sell to a millennial. Or at least have them perceive that your only interest in them is a paycheck at the end of the day. They're so— it is— these people can see an ad a mile away. Look, when I went to school, there was no such thing as media literacy. Hell, when I grew up, there was no such thing as remote controls for TVs. I mean, I was the remote control for the TV, you know, "Go change the channel to 12." "Okay, geez," right? Media literacy is now taught in schools, and a lot of media literacy is recognizing advertising for what it is. Another large survey, 1,300 millennials was asked, "Would a compelling advertisement cause you to trust a brand?" Guess what percentage said yes? Would a compelling advertisement cause you to trust a brand? 1%. 1%. And the advertising industry meanwhile pours all of its money into creating compelling advertising, which I'll show you in a moment, is miserable. So how do you sell to a millennial without selling to a millennial? You establish some trust first. And the easiest way is to not necessarily sell a home to them first. I actually believe this may force realtors, or the real estate industry, into a completely different model. Let me give you an example of what I mean. So I moved into a new place last year. My wife and I got married, so we had to sell our two places. We moved into a new place. It has one of these self-venting clothes dryers. It's true, it doesn't vent. It also doesn't dry particularly well. I mean, for a year, like literally up until 2 weeks ago, my wife were pulling out clothes and just, just, you know, what is the company, Bosch? Just like putting a pox on the children of the executives of Bosch for selling. How dare you do this kind of thing to us? So finally I call, I tried to call someone to fix the problem. And remember, let's just recap here. My problem was my clothes were not getting dry, okay? So I started calling around looking for someone to help me with my problem. Did I find someone? No, I did not. I found a guy who could fix gasket issues. I found a guy who could help me with electrical problems. I found a guy who could replace the lint trap. I found a guy who could replace this and give me a new dryer. But what I was looking for was not the solution of an electrical guy or a gasket guy. You know who I couldn't find? A guy who could make my clothes dry. And so eventually I did what I should have done in the first place. I Googled it. And it turns out that if you open this panel here, there's a little compartment. And if you pull this out, you pull this giant block out, and you run it underwater, problem solved. It was a massive lint trap. Yeah, it was disgusting. Because you see, I didn't want a gasket fixer guy or a lint replacement guy. I wanted a clothes dry maker guy. But that's the model that services people are sometimes in, right? They model themselves based on the products or services they sell. And this happens in the real estate business far too often. Your future customers don't want the new home selling lady. They won't trust the new home selling lady. What they want is a better place to live, lady or man. This may not be a sale for you at first, but again, trust is more important. You want life— and this, by the way, this applies to every generation, right? Truly it does. If you want lifelong customers that will follow— the home that I bought last year was the 7th mortgage I'd had, the 7th purchase I've had. And I did not stick with every realtor along the way. In fact, I don't think I stuck with one once. Because I never felt that there was a trusted connection. They're great realtors, don't get me wrong. Mortgage broker was great, super friendly. Got a nice card. Every year I got a little paper stand-up thing with a calendar on it that, you know, nobody uses today. Does anybody use that? You know, where am I in the year? Oh yeah, June. I'm glad I have this thing from ABC Realty. They're active on Yelp, Google Places, consumer review sites. They read through reviews in detail. Often they don't even have to go to these sites, because when you just Google something like real estate agents Toronto, it automatically displays a link to your review, whether you want it to or not. By the way, 6,600 people— these are numbers that came right from Google, not estimates, I mean it's an average— but 6,600 people type in the phrase real estate Toronto into Google every month. That's about 220 people a day. If you were to advertise, if you were to buy Google advertising to get those people, you would be paying an average bid price of $3.25 per click. It would cost you $5,000 to reach those people for just a week using Google Ads. 220 people a day. Type this into Google. In Canada. And if this does not sound like a lot of people to you, if you're thinking the whole time, "Yeah, that's really nice. That's not a big number." There's a reason for that. For more than 10 years now, 10 years, people searching on Google for real estate agents has steadily declined. This data comes directly from Google. It is not an estimate, it is precise data. Why the decline? Because they're getting advice from friends and strangers. Guess what search term this is a chart for? Realtor reviews. Do you see the disconnect? Nike actually sells inspiration. Disney sells imagination. And what do most retailers— or realtors actually sell? Based on their marketing materials? Themselves. Usually in that "I mean business so much I have crossed my arms" position. I don't know why you all cross your arms. Which any psych major will tell you is probably the worst position you should, you know, if you're trying to do good body posture, if you're trying to appear open. And if your Facebook page looks like this today, drop it. You should have a montage of happy young clients holding home signs in front of— sold signs in front of their new homes. It's about them. It's not about you. Some realtors really gimmick this up, you know. This Dorito— Dorita thinks this is a good idea. This is Sandy's idea. This guy, you know, credit, he thought, you know, I should put some flowers, and he thought this was such a good idea that he thought he'd throw them in here, and here, and here. At least this guy is trying for some honesty. Storytelling in the right voice, that is the third key to marketing to millennials. But storytelling on its own isn't the full equation. Millennials want to participate in the story. Remember, this generation grew up with instant self-publishing platforms at their fingertips, right? Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, now Periscope. When many of us were in school, this was the self-publishing platform. If you think about your marketing strategy, there are two axes, and this is where you want to go to: shareworthiness and participation. And here's the good news. See, in my parents' generation, they hired the retailer— I keep saying that. The realtor, and they let them do all the marketing because the realtor had all the marketing channels. That's not true anymore. Millennials have better channels than you do, and they are better at using those channels than you will ever be. As I mentioned, my wife and I got married a couple years ago, last year. We had two properties to sell, hers and mine. Now, we had a great real estate agent, don't get me wrong, but it was us that did the heavy lifting on social marketing. Not because we felt we had to, That's just who we were. Her place went on the market, we posted about it. My place went on the market, we posted links to the realtor's page. When her place sold, we posted. When an offer was placed on a new place, we posted. When it got, you know, when we got to it, we posted it. Not because, as I mentioned, we felt the need to, but because sharing is simply part of our generation even, and much more so for the millennials. You bear these 5 keys in mind, and I guarantee you will be successful marketing to this group. Thank you very much. I hope you have a great rest of your day.