Marketing Trends & Strategies for Real Estate pros w. Aaron Norris

By Christina Suter on Nov 02, 2019 at 08:00 AM in Real Estate Issues
Marketing Trends & Strategies for Real Estate pros w. Aaron Norris

Within my real estate circle, the surname, Norris, is a big deal. Bruce Norris, founder of The Norris Group is a great friend and teacher and this week on my radio show I had the opportunity to interview his son, Aaron Norris. Aaron has spoken at my FIBI Pasadena meeting before and I was overjoyed to have him on my Ask Christina First Radio Show to discuss marketing trends and strategies for real estate professionals.

As Vice President of The Norris Group, Aaron Norris' roles include investor relations, business development, community outreach, marketing, public relations, and special events. Aaron teaches nationally on web technology and trends for small businesses, nonprofits, and marketing professionals at colleges, professional associations, and conferences. Aaron's focus is teaching people that the days of marketing to the masses is over; newsletters, mailers, and old-style marketing are out and social media, pay per click and search engine optimization (SEO) are in. 

Aaron shared, "Now we have to think of things that I'm calling VSO (voice search optimization) because it's not only mobile-geddon that we had to deal with 2014-- now we have to start thinking about people with cell phones asking questions. We already know people don't often go past the first page of Google when searching, but now with artificial intelligence... we have to consider how do we get in the way of people that are [going] 'Hey Siri who's the local hard-money lender?' and knowing whether it's pulling the answer to their question from my social network, is it pulling geo-targeted information?" 

Fifteen to twenty years ago websites were your brochure, then websites became interactive and then we moved on to having a blog, an online community, and then social media. I asked Aaron to share what he recognizes is available and what works.

"This is why the branding conversation is so important because it's going to be different for everyone. There's a chart I use called SOPE (Shared Owned Paid Earned)

Marketing Trends & Strategies for Real Estate pros w. Aaron Norris
https://www.prweek.com/article/1350303/peso-makes-sense-influencer-marketing
and within each category of that acronym there are different tactics you can utilize, but where the four circles cross is where you want to be; it's the perfect blend for you to create authority in your market." Aaron says he doesn't like giving it all away, meaning he doesn't put everything onto a platform-- he used Facebook as an example, noting the proof that beyond the algorithm were people deciding what political content to push out and what to suppress. He mentioned that Facebook specifically is making it difficult not to produce exclusively on its platform. 

I asked Aaron how to differentiate for one's particular segment, for example, how would social media help a developer for high-end real estate? "One of the best ways I've seen developers and real estate investors use, particularly Facebook on, is the before and after photos, or during constructions... we have some investors doing some amazing blowouts where they take a house and expand it and stage it and it gets a lot of traction online. I talk a lot about bringing your personality to Facebook because Facebook wants you to be you. Facebook makes you pay for eyeballs and if a person isn't engaging with you on Facebook your views will go way down. I have tips and tricks around building an authentic network, and not being 'like' happy."

"If you're focusing on a specific area-- live-streaming a walkthru of a house, reaching out to a realtor who's very well-known in the market and doing an interview with them about what makes this area so special or doing a tour around time and showing what's incredible about the neighborhood, not just the house. There are a lot of content pieces you can leverage. I video podcast every Friday and thanks to the analytics in the backend of YouTube I can gauge what people liked, and what they may want to see more of. If I were an investor and high-end developer I'd be trying to attract the clients I'd want through paid advertising. These days it takes 21 impressions for a buyer to work with you or make a decision to work with you or buy your product."

"Some businesses aren't ready to have the modern social media conversation; some businesses still don't have a website nor a mobile-friendly website and maybe they don't need a beefy website. Our property website is horrible, my brother doesn't care, and all of our sales come from the MLS and I was looking into data from the California Association of Realtors and buyers said the realtor website is one of the last things that they consider helpful in their buying process. It's about focusing your time and energy on the right thing. I used to upload every property on Trulia, Zillow, and Yahoo real estate but although those sites got eyeballs, meaning consumers were doing their research there, but it didn't necessarily convert to a buyer because they weren't sending qualified leads. So if you're not careful you can spend hours, unnecessarily. It comes down to your market and target."