What is educational marketing?

Educational marketing is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to build trust and unlock more buyers and sellers for your business.

But how do you do it?

Well, you got to understand that a lot of expert marketers use what's called "The Curiosity Gap." That's where you pose a question or you put a statement out there and then it makes people curious about knowing the answer.

Now we fall into this curiosity gap all the time — from headlines to news soundbites that are trying to get you to watch the news at six o'clock, book covers, wine labels, and all kinds of things create curiosity in us. But when we look at our knowledge quest as human beings, we're always driven by not knowing and the power of wanting to know what we don't know, right?

So here's an example of this:

One of my good friends, Scott Lewis, a superstar realtor that I work with put this post out. And it was simply about the...

What are the digital tools that buyers and sellers want us to deliver to them?

There is a new study that's recently come out that shares exactly what buyers and sellers would like us to use when we're working with them.

1. 3D Virtual Tour

Kind of like a Matterport tour. Another one that goes along with this is a digital floor plan. Now that might be a Matterport situation again where people can see the entire floor plan of the house. Sometimes we have that for new construction. Other times we might have to build that.

2. Email Notifications

Most of us have email available through our franchise groups or even through our offices where we can send automated emails to clients based on their needs that match the MLS database.

3. Video tours

Video tours with their agent (aka you!) offering to walk somebody through a house, maybe on FaceTime while they're not even physically present.

4. The ability to unlock a home and not even have the agent (aka...

Something interesting that you might find surprising that it relates to real estate, but fertility rates in the US have gone down dramatically over the last hundred years. In America today, we've actually had another 1% decrease.

We have the lowest birth rates than we've had in a hundred years.

Here are the numbers:

For every 1000 women in America aged between 15 and 44, there's 58.3 births. And you compare this to World War Two, when all the baby boomers were born, that number was more closer to 140 births! So huge difference in the numbers.

Now, how does this relate to real estate? I'm going to share with you now. Here is the the data today:

Looking at buyers who have children under the age of 18 in the home, the share of that group has declined from 58% in 1985, all the way down to 33% in 2020. So there's a much smaller group of people buying homes. It's actually the minority, not the majority, who have kids under 18 at home.

So you need to...

Why would you use a pending sign? A lot of REALTORS use a pending sign because they want to encourage people to list their home with them. And they want to show off to the marketplace that their marketing actually worked.

But a pending sign can actually be the worst possible thing you can do for your marketing.

Why?

Because when homeowners in your neighborhood see your listing go up, that's when they're most likely to call you and be curious about the home. The pending sign can help a little bit, but you're going to miss out on the most qualified buyers you can have. 

And I'll give you a classic example:

My wife and I have identified an area of town we want to live in called Echo of the Pines. It's a beautiful area with some nice homes in the neighborhood but very few homes come on the market. The other night when we were driving home, we saw a new for sale sign. As a REALTOR, I get all these alerts, but they become noise and I tune them out.

You are sitting on one of the best CRMs on earth — but you probably know that.

Facebook is absolutely your best CRM on earth. And then Instagram comes second and LinkedIn is third.

All of these social media platforms give us an insight into what's happening in people's lives.

Now how do you use that information? A lot of us just get up, drink our coffee every morning and scroll through social media meaninglessly. But you don't actually look at it as a CRM.

I want you to look at your social media differently. Look at it like it's a CRM Strategy Feed.

That means, I want you to look for "life changes" — meaning new jobs, new babies, retirements, and college graduations. Or people that are sick or going on vacation. There are many different scenarios where people have life changes — even divorces and engagements.

There's so many different life changes that people go through and today it's all public. Every single thing is public.

Now, when...

Do you use a Social Media Blitz every single time you take a listing?

If your answer is no, you're missing a huge opportunity to create energy and excitement around your listings to capture more buyers and sellers and potentially add more closings and referrals.

Here are six posts you should do for every listing you get:

1. The Coming Soon Post

First thing you do when you take a listing is you record a raw, no edit walkthrough video of the house. This could be an Instagram story, a Facebook story, or both. This shows people you're actually taking listings and that there's a new listing in your market.

Now, in some markets, you may have to adhere to your MLS rules before you start marketing the property — it's usually between 24-72 hours in most markets. But in some markets, you can't do it at all. Hopefully, you can do that quick, raw, no edit video where you're doing the quick walkthrough in your market.

2. Launch it into your social media when it...

One thing we're all challenged with right now is the speed of the market — or how fast listings sell as soon as they hit the market.

When you listed a house in a traditional market, you would have 90 or 180 days of market time. During that market time you'd able to be able to put out just listed cards, call and farm neighborhoods, host multiple open houses, and receive sign calls from your marketing. And with all that marketing, you would be able to convert those interested people into more buyers and sellers.

So every listing could easily lead to five or six more opportunities for more buyers and sellers.

But today things have changed. Every time you put a house in the market, it's generally selling within a few days with multiple offers. So you're getting robbed of that extra marketing opportunity.

But you can change that by using what I call a Marketing Sequence.

A marketing sequence simply means that you have a strategy about how you...

We see so much marketing that is irrelevant and meaningless — it doesn't resonate with anybody. It's trying to be ironic, cute, and Instagram perfect.

But nobody really cares so these marketing gimmicks fail.

What do our potential clients care about then?

Learning something new — which will always make them stop dead in their tracks and consider your message.

That's the basic idea behind my "Educational Marketing" strategy.

Now let's think of it in terms of real estate:

Not everyone has an interest in real estate. Buyers and sellers usually only get interested right before they're ready to sell their home or buy a new one.

So when a buyer starts to think that they should buy a house, that's when they start to look at all the terms and processes around real estate. Or when a homeowner gets interested in selling, that's when they suddenly get tuned into the market conditions.

That's the power behind using "Educational...

Would you buy a house sight unseen? According to a new study done by NAR, 1 in 20 purchases during COVID has been a done by a buyer who did not physically view the home they purchased.

When buyers are looking at homes through the lens of their devices according to the same study the most important digital search preferences are photos, the description, property floor plans, virtual tours, interactive maps, videos, virtual open houses, and virtual listing appointments.

Buyers also looked on average at nine homes over eight weeks. But surprisingly, out of the nine homes they looked at, five were viewed virtually. Yes, today buyers look at a virtual showings as being almost equal to live showings. This shift could fundamentally change how we practice real estate going into the future.

Questions for You:

Can someone virtually tour your listings and would somebody pull the trigger and buy that home based on how good you've done in terms of marketing?

Do you have a virtual home...

It's likely that you know someone who has had a business close this year. We're seeing this across the country; about 8,000 businesses have already closed in 2020 . With Covid-19 and to online shopping - small business are suffering. Shockingly - 61% of retail purchases this year were done on a mobile device and that number is likely to grow in the coming months.

So what can you do to help people in your database who own a business that are struggling right now? First it's important to understand that we are all small business owners. We are all in this together. When a local business closes - it hurts the owners sure, but it also hurts the suppliers, the building owners, the employees, vendors, and countless other people who rely on small businesses in the community.

Four Ways You Can Help:

1) Endorse them on social media. 

"I'm going to feature a local business every single week on my social media throughout this COVID crisis. I want to make sure that we're supporting...