08 Mar Sometimes it’s good to read a simple marketing strategy to remind yourself of the basics. Barbara Schenck’s article does exactly that. This is not ground breaking material but stresses the basics we should all be doing. I find it interesting that the basic tactics she mentions can easily be applied to social media as well as our traditional marketing efforts. I will elaborate on this later in the blog.

Schenk makes a couple of great points that can help all of us in our marketing efforts. All of her suggestions tie back to the important practice of research and knowing everything about your potential consumer. In real estate we tend to assume we know our buyer. I think this is dangerous for two reasons: consumers don’t fit into neat little demographic packages anymore and the consumer is changing at a fast rate.

She talks about identifying the geography, demographics, and psycho graphics of potential consumers. I think we all understand that in order to develop and sell a product successfully, we have to understand the values of who we are selling to.

So Why Am I Sharing This With You?

Well, I am sharing this with you to demonstrate that social media isn’t really all that different than what we have done before. Message development and follow up is what is different, but the disciplines of locating and researching our consumers are still very necessary. In fact, social media has made these disciplines easier.

Schenk talks about profiling our potential consumers, but guess what? They have done the work for us. Most social media profiles across the social networks contain profiles where a lot of users identify their age, location, relationship status, and career or education.

As far as psycho graphics go, social media can really help you in your research. People talk about what they like and don’t like. They talk about what they believe in and what they like to do. Social media is a gold mine for voluntary consumer data for you to collect.

I hope you can make the same connections I did after reading Schenk’s article. Even though it seems basic, sometimes we need to take a step back and try not to get caught up in the new hot marketing tool. Even though the way we market to consumers is changing, some of the techniques to do so will still be necessary.