On today’s show we are talking about the importance of digital marketing. Regardless what business you believe you’re in, today’s market requires an expertise in digital marketing. As real estate investors we are marketing products digitally as well. Whether it’s a vacant apartment, an empty pad in the mobile home park, lockers and eight self storage facility, or even listing a multi family apartment building for sale. Every single one of these, in someway shape or form are vying for attention from the target audience.
But here’s the problem, all of us are overwhelmed by the number and quantity of people, advertisers and opportunities that are vying for our attention. we have tune the vast majority of it out as a matter of simple survival.
So if we want our opportunity to be noticed, we need to go where people are looking. When we think of search, the name Google usually is the very first to come to mind.
The problem is the Google searches the entire universe. It is too big. We’ve all experienced the case where we conduct a search and Google reports that there are 3 million instances of our keyword search results. But the fact is, most people rarely search beyond page 2. In fact, 50% of the search traffic goes to the first one or two listings on page 1 of the search results from Google. Google is great at indexing keywords. But they are not great at determining search criteria that are not purely keyword-based.
For example, if you are looking for apartment complexes for sale of more than 100 units, and a cap rate of 6% or higher, google will not give you any useful search results. There are more specialized market places , and search engines that are specific to those market places. For example YouTube is another powerful search engine. If I am looking for instructions on how to do something like maybe repairing a fitting in my dishwasher I will use YouTube as search engine to find an instructional video. If I’m looking to buy or sell something locally, maybe a piece of furniture or some sporting equipment, then I would use craigslist or perhaps the Facebook marketplace as the search engine for something like that. If I am looking to hire a keynote speaker for an event, I would look to the national speakers Association as my search engine for finding a great keynote speaker. If I am looking to purchase a specialty item or a gift, I might choose Amazon as the search engine. If I am looking for a place to stay in the city on visiting I would choose Priceline.com, or Airbnb as my search engine. Every single one of these search engine’s use a different method, a different algorithm, for presenting their search results.
If I’m looking to hire a virtual assistant, I would use up work as the search engine. So when we think of search, there is much more than just Google we need to focus on.
Each one is different. To be successful, we need to find someone who is a specialist in that specific search engine so that we get the best possible results from our initiative. How do you stand out and get noticed on each of those platforms? You might have the best offer in the world, but it’s irrelevant if people don’t know about it.
One of the common mistakes is for someone to copy what is common on a given platform and make their listing looks like all the others. We often get trained at school to act like the other students, just like the other children in the classroom, and conform to the norms that society sets for us. We need to fit in. We need to act and look like we belong. That when you do that you get stuck in the sea of sameness. It’s virtually impossible to get noticed when your offer is unremarkable.
