IF marketing & advertising

I just got off the phone with the managing partner for one of our full-service real estate marketing and sales clients.  This call was initiated to discuss the end of the term of our existing contract with this project, and just maybe the possibility of signing a new contract for the remainder of 2009. Currently, we handle their web, interactive, media buys, CRM, print pro, and we lead their on-site sales team.  

These types of clients use all of our services, have large budgets and have to take a very hard look at the results of their spend with us. Traditionally, results for real estate are measured in sales.  By no fault of ours, we have had NO sales in the first 6 months of this contract!  Real Estate is not selling anywhere in the country, so it’s not a surprise most developers are not finding value in firms like ours. I called the managing partner expecting to have this discussion.   

To my surprise the first thing this client said was, “I have no problem with your firm’s monthly retainer or the cost of the onsite sales team.”  He went on to say he didn’t think he could have found any agency that would have worked as hard we have, or a team that cared as much. Specifically, he said our creative is better than any he has seen and is far better than any of his competitors.  And he said his relationship with our director of sales could not be better. 

This client has been in the real estate business for years, and he said he has never seen a company deliver so many qualified leads. He told me the weekly sales meetings prove we are doing everything we can to succeed, that our monthly reports give him visibility into exactly what his money is doing for him, and that if he would have had our firm in place when times were good he would have already sold his project out.  

He finished by saying he would be crazy to consider changing anything, and that as the economy continues to recover he would not want to put this project in the hands of any other team. 

So here is a case of a customer who hired us because they saw value in the number of real estate sales we projected, but has retained us because they now see the value in our entire team. 

It’s hard to brag about a project where we’ve made exactly zero sales, but that just goes to show that it’s not always about the numbers. Sales and marketing are changing, and nowhere is that more apparent than in real estate. 

Sometimes we get so caught up in the end result, we forget about the processes and the connections that it takes to get there. Obviously, success for both teams depends on making sales, but reaching our goals becomes a whole lot easier when both sides trust that the other is doing the best job they possibly can. 

This isn’t bragging about the project, it’s bragging about the people we work with and the people we work for. They are the ones that make our work special.

Jeff Novak, CEO

On Facebook, we find it deceiving when someone uses a picture from ten years ago, making him or her appear younger and more attractive than they actually are. On Twitter, we feel cheated when we find out that our favorite celebrity is not actually updating their page, but rather having their publicist write all the updates instead. While reading blogs and customer reviews for products and services, consumers find themselves questioning the validity of the comments. As businesses increasingly turn to these social media networks, they should consider the ethical and moral obligations that follow.

Just like any other user of a network, a company has the moral obligation to be who it claims to be. Internet users are savvier than you might think, and are able to identify when a persona is forged and when comments are well-crafted. Just as well, posing as someone else can do great damage to the business’s credibility. It will not matter how the organization acts offline if they lose the public’s trust online.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis, in an article for Parade Magazine, found that companies spend an enormous sum on word-of-mouth advertising, including activities on social media networks and blogs. “Companies pay about 1.6 billion to generate ‘buzz’ online,” said Katherine.

This is a lot of money to be spent on social media. Considering that memberships on most social networks are free, we have to consider what the money delegated to buzz marketing is really being spent on.

Using social media networks and websites to gain attention and support is a smart, sometimes necessary move for a business. There are many benefits – creating personal relationships with consumers and sharing information with the public. But companies should always be honest. If an organization receives positive reviews from a third party, they should be shared! Even negative comments should be shared, as it strengthens the organization’s integrity and provides an opportunity to address unfavorable remarks. Companies should never provide incentives to people to write good things about their company, as it will hurt the company’s reputation in the long run.

Unfortunately, as opportunities to reach customers increase, so do the opportunities to deceive them. Consumers should exercise caution and vigilance when viewing material online. They should scrutinize the credibility of statements and explore where the information really came from. Businesses should be confident as they become involved in these online networks, as doing so is not considered unethical. However, they need to remember to produce honest, truthful material and avoid engaging in unethical practices, no matter how tempting they seem.

Just like any other intern about to start their first day, I found myself confused about what to wear. Most advise you to dress up, regardless of the working environment. However, was that necessary for IF – an advertising agency started by 2 former NFL players? An office that plays ESPN all day and every day? Better safe than sorry, I figured, as I put on dress pants, a nice shirt, and heels.

I was relieved when I walked in to find another fellow intern dressed up just like me. He was even wearing a tie. It seemed like I got it right, and would not look overdressed and ridiculous when making my first impression to the company.

We walked in, and found all our superiors wearing jeans and flip-flops. FLIP-FLOPS! How could such a successful company get away with dressing so casually? I knew IF was pretty laid-back, but I never thought I could actually pull off flip flops and jeans in a real working environment. I wasn’t fully convinced that this style was okay until the two creative directors walked in and made fun of our attire, telling us we weren’t allowed to work at IF dressed like that. To make it worse, Fridays are considered “Inappropriate Fridays,” as the attire becomes even more casual, including tee-shirts. Two of the account executives walked into our meeting in pink IF tee-shirts – two different shades, as they couldn’t decide which they liked better, so they ordered both.

And nobody told me that everyone brings in food on Fridays. The smell of breakfast tacos all morning made me angry that I had already eaten breakfast before I came. I became even more upset when someone plopped a taco right on my desk, which looked so much more appealing than the bowl of cereal I ate hours before. And don’t forget the cake, donuts, brownies, and other types of goodies that were piling up in the kitchen. Note to self – on Fridays, come to work hungry.

I’ll have you know that as I’m writing this, I’m wearing jeans and flip-flops. The dress pants and nice shirt I wore on the first day are hanging in my closet at home, and will remain untouched for the entire summer. And I can’t wait for Friday, when I can skip the cereal and come in and eat a breakfast taco instead.

Managing the seemingly endless number of social media sites in the era of Web 2.0 may seem like a daunting task, but it can be done.  We at IF were recently faced with just such a task.  We needed to integrate the ever-growing popularity of social networking into our game plan as an interactive marketing agency, and we needed to understand how these sites could impact our clients.  And, like any competent evil scientist, we decided to experiment on ourselves.  Muwahahaha! (lightning crash)

First, it was important to identify which sites best serve each purpose.  For professional social networking, we chose LinkedIn because it’s user-friendly and is building a reputation for professionalism.  In fact, a group of job seekers in Orange County, California have formed a regional job search group on LinkedIn called “Linked Orange County California” and is now among the nation’s top regional job search groups.  While LinkedIn is the most popular of the professional breed of social networking, sites like Ning and Plaxo are also worth checking out.

Facebook is probably considered the standard social networking site (sorry Myspace) so of course IF marketing & advertising has a Facebook page. But Facebook is limited in its ability to communicate information to clients and customers.  Since we already utilize blogging for our website and many clients’ sites, the next step was to extend our reach as bloggers to popular and easy to use sites such as Wordpress, Blogger and Technorati.

Twitter’s popularity as a micro-blogging site has skyrocketed in the past two months and is the buzz word of 2009.  While Twitter is appealing to people who want the world to know what they are doing at any given moment, it is also a useful tool to develop and maintain new professional contacts and relationships with companies and people all over the world.  Since it’s fairly new, the effects Twitter can have on business remain unclear, but research has shown that time invested in Twitter can result in increased brand awareness and more traffic to your site.

Finally, sites such as YouTube, Digg and StumbleUpon are focused on sharing content rather than building social networks and relationships, and the content on these sites can be highly entertaining, informative and well worth sharing.

Of course, these are not the only social networking sites out there, far from it.  But these are the most popular right now, and we decided not to dive in head first, but instead dip our toes.  However, we have taken precautions against social media cyber squatting, and you probably should too.  Check out www.knowem.com and find out the availability of your name, or better yet, contact us and let IF marketing & advertising help you get started today.

Real estate industry publication powerhouse Crittenden Research mentions IF Development in a new article highlighting the benefits exchange companies and affiliate companies for resort real estate developers. Read the article here.

www.IFdevelopment.com