Marketing Yourself Virtually Through a Pandemic

Paul Copcutt

Sarah: Welcome REITE club community. I am Sarah Larbi. I'm excited to be here today with Paul Copcutt. Paul actually first met me about three years ago when I reached out to him because I needed marketing help and has been working with me ever since, and also with the REITE club and in many others.

Today Paul is going to have a great presentation. We're going to have some Q and A opportunities as well. Team is a major part of success. We're fortunate obviously to have Paul Copcutt marketing and branding expert on our team. And he's a brand and marketing strategist and coach. His niche market is real estate investors and related professionals.

And today we are going to discuss marketing virtually through a pandemic. Paul, I'll let you take it away, but what can busy real estate investors do to market their business effectively and successfully in a market like we are today?

Paul: Great. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you REITE club for giving me this opportunity and giving you the opportunity to hopefully walk away with some ideas and some actions and some insights as we continue through this challenging time, but there's still opportunity.

And I still feel that there's lots of things that you can be doing and also preparing yourself for when things get strange. Hopefully, maybe not back to normal. I don't think we're necessarily going to see that, but back to whatever the new normal looks like and give you some actions that you can be taking over the next few months as we build towards that.

So, just very quickly, a little bit of my background. I come from a sales and marketing background. As Sarah said, I've been real estate investing focused for about three or four years now. And I also speak at conferences and to professional associations. The subjects of personal branding and marketing I've also got a podcast www.reibranded.com/podcast and I appear as a guest on other podcasts as well in marketing, in the real estate space and have been running my own business for over 15 years now.

So, key points that I'm going to want to get across today are things around online strategies that work and can work for the long-term for you. And also perhaps one or two things to think about avoiding, and then also some offline actions that you can take even in a pandemic and also again, the longer term play as well.

And choosing what are the right mediums and media for you. So, I'm going to try and get that across to you and around 20 minutes, and then we'll leave some time for some Q and A. And please do put those questions in the chat as you think of them and we'll get to them. But before I talk about marketing, I'd like to talk about branding because marketing is how you get their attention, but branding is why they choose you.

So, one of the key things that you need to have in place first, prior to even thinking about your marketing activities and actions, is to ensure that you have a very clear and established brand foundation and the things you want to be thinking about are, what's your vision, what's your bigger idea around where you want this to go? What's the mission that you have? What is it that you want to see happening? And what are your core values? Not just from putting a list together of, yeah, I'm trustworthy, I'm honest, whatever you pick up as values, but what do those values mean to you? Because your values around trust might be in definition may be different from what I say, my definition is of trust.

And when you're thinking about your brand, what you want to be doing is painting a picture for people to be attracted to you, but also potentially for people to not be attracted to you because you want to attract the people that are like-minded that buy into who you are and your brand. And therefore, make it easier for you to do business with them or partner with them versus people that are going to be not a great fit for you.

And you end up wasting time and resources trying to get them converted over. So, vision, mission, values, purpose. What is it you're trying to do, what's your why? Why is it you're doing what you're doing? And then also getting very clear about your target audience and what you know about the competition?

So, if you can get those three things very clear, that kind of key piece right in the middle is your offering, your essence is your unique proposition and your unique brand. So, assuming that you have that in place, then what I find with a lot of real estate investors and business owners generally is you don't have a ton of time to dedicate to marketing, right?

Unfortunately, that can sometimes mean that you rush into stuff. You try it, it doesn't work, you drop it. And the one thing I want to stress as I go through this today is to really stress to you about being in it for the long term. Putting things in place, actions in place, activity, in place that will give you rewards and benefits for the long-term versus trying to get those quick wins or quick fixes.

Sometimes people aren't very clear about what brand strategy is or what their brand strategy is. And at the end of the day, people want a manageable, easy to implement system that is going to give a consistent flow of leads, whether that's for wholesaling and motivated buyers, whether that's for JV partners, whether that's for other types of relationships and clients that you're trying to do.

And also having the ability to turn that up or turn it down rather than go through the roller coaster of marketing that I see very often is people they're not busy with. So, they ramp up a whole bunch of marketing. They get a bunch of leads, they get some new clients and prospects, and then they switch everything off.

And then things tail off as those that work with those clients complete. And then they're in this trough of no business again, and you get this roller coaster up and down versus having systems in place that will provide a consistent flow of prospects and then you can turn up and down depending on how busy you are to handle that business.

And obviously people want to know what works and what doesn't work. What is the best way to market and brand my business? And how much work is it going to take? And not get me in a pickle. So, did it give you some facts and figures, and this comes from carrot.com and is specifically motivated house sellers, but I think you can apply this generally across marketing activity is these are the number of leads that you need to generate depending on the activity to get one deal or for one person to become a client. So, if you're cold calling, then it's between 50 and 60 leads that you need to generate. For that one lead to turn into a deal, TV and radio, very similar one in 60 direct mail, whether that's those printed handwritten notes or more put together professional postcards, but one in 30 to one in 40 direct mail pieces should end up with a deal.

And then Google pay-per-click when you're going into the more sort of online direct type of generation, then Google pay-per-click ads. One in 15 to one in 20 should generate a lead into a deal. Facebook it's a little bit of a wider margin because Facebook is a little less targeted than Google, but one in 15 to one in 30 from Facebook should generate a deal.

But the one activity that can generate you a much better ratio is organic search. So, this is where people are searching you a fine, putting in keywords into Google search and your website or your domain is coming up because of that. So, one in eight to one in 15 people that find you viral, organic search will end up as a deal, which is a lot more attractive type. There's not to say that any of these activities are right or wrong. But you've got to kind of balance the activity with the amount of resources and the amount of time that you have that is going to potentially generate those leads into deals. And the way that I like you to think about the analogy. I'd like you to think about your website and how you are active outside of your website to get people to your website is the analogy of a home country with its emphasis.

So, your website is in your home country. It's the only piece of online real estate that you 100%, because you control that website, that is yours, that is your domain, and you can drive people there and you can choose to do what I choose to do and say whatever you want on that website.

But anywhere else that you're active online, you don't own the platform, you don't own the rights. So, what that means is that, and we've seen that happen. Places like Facebook changed the rules or Google changed the algorithm and all the time and activity resources, potentially lots of money that you've spent building something on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or wherever.

Suddenly, there was a way because the rules have changed. So, the goal with social media in particular is that they are your embassies. Those are places where people get a flavor, a feel for the home country and are interested enough that they then choose to come and look and check out the home country. And you want to drive people to that website.

And when they're coming to your website, what you want to be thinking about is being the place where you start to build trust. So, you're converting somebody that comes as a visitor. They potentially become a lead by taking some kind of action that you encourage them to do or call them to do, and then eventually become a customer or client.

And there are some core conversion areas on your website that you really want to be focused on first and foremost. And when we're thinking about building out a website and building content you want to feel, think of it like kind of building bricks and building a wall and just adding a brick at a time that slowly builds over the course of weeks and months and even years.

And it becomes content that is evergreen. So, you're not having to go. You do something on Facebook, 72 hours later, it's gone, it's disappeared. You do something on Instagram. It's gone in probably a day and people don't see it again. If you're doing things on your website and you're optimizing the website and the content, then people can find that all the time that they will come up in Google searches and you can potentially have things that are forever generating potential leads for you. So, those core conversion pages, whether you'd like where you should focus first homepage, when somebody lands on your website, generally you have most schools of thought are eight to maybe 15 or 20 seconds for somebody to make a decision about whether they're going to spend more time on your website.

So, you have to answer the question even before people start scrolling. Will you solve my problem? It's not about who you are, what it is you've experienced, what it is you've done. Will you solve my problem? And if I can find the answer in that first eight to 15 seconds, then I'm much more likely to stick around and take a longer look.

If it doesn't answer I'm going and the chances of my ever coming back are pretty slim. So, you need to answer that question on the home page. What you then need to do is answer the question. How does it work? Whatever it is you're trying to do. If you're wholesaling, what are the steps around? How does the wholesaling work, or how do I buy your house for cash?

If you're trying to get a JV partner or private investor, private money, what are the steps that people can expect? So, people want to say one to understand, is it easy? Can I do it in a fairly painless way? And then the other thing you need to think about is how are you different? Because whatever you're doing, it is not going to be necessarily unique.

So, what is it that you do differently? Is it the steps that you take? Is it the questions you ask? Is it the way that you view somebody's house? Is it the way you make an offer or do you add extra value? How are you doing? If somebody gets to that point, then they're probably going to want to know it to some degree, some social proof.

Have you done this before? Have others worked with you with success? So, ensure that you've got somewhere on your website that could be located throughout a website or it could be on a certain page. Do you know what people say about us, but what is it that people think about your service? Are they happy with yourself?

Google rankings, Google writings, five-star ratings, that kind of thing. The other thing you need to be thinking about with regards to testimonials or feedback, when you're collecting that from clients is what are the objections that were in their head when they originally came to you and you obviously satisfied because they became a happy client.

Those are the kinds of things that you want to grab in terms of feedback and testimonials and having your site, because you want to eliminate people's objections before they're even asking them and testimonials do that very powerfully. You think about whenever you're buying something online. Often your check goes to Amazon and you'll check what other people thought of that product.

And that's sometimes you make your buying decision based on that feedback. And it's very much the same with why people come to your website. So, testimonials are key. You then want to ensure that you have a nice, descriptive page, about you. And if you're going to profile your team about your team.

Many people do not have an about page, or tend to hide behind a sign, to come sign a company name and not have the people of the business up there on their website. And I think there's a missed opportunity in a big way, because people want to buy from people. Yes, we have big brands that we buy from and we're connected to, but at some point, there's an emotional connection and that emotional connection will happen with people.

So, you really want it to get across who you are and not just necessarily who you are as a business or a business person, but then also a little bit more about that. Personal side up to you and what level of comfort that you want to put in that information. But I would suggest that the more that you can bring more holistically who you are completely. Then the more likely people are going to relate to you or potentially not relate to you.

And that's great because they're not the right client for you, but getting more of an overall emotional connection. And then you want to be thinking about either location pages or if you're offering different services or different types of joint venture partners and information around that.

But location pages, if you were particularly looking at wholesaling is to build out probably initially two to five location pages. Because if you have a website that says, yeah, we buy houses anywhere in Ontario, that's not targeted enough that you're ever going to end up appearing in a Google search for somebody that puts in ‘sell my house in Ontario’.

And typically, people aren't doing that. What people are doing is so my house in wherever it is, Niagara Hamilton, whatever and those are the kinds of keywords that people are putting in. And those are the kinds of things that you want on location pages. Now, if you're focused in one particular city, then I would suggest you can go a little bit more granular and you can build out a neighborhood page.

And again, that's going to help differentiate you. It's going to help you in the rankings in Google. It does take time if you're trying to build organic reach and that's where those leads come in. The eight to 15 leads turn into a deal. You want to be thinking probably three to six months for you to start appearing on page one of Google.

The usual recommendation may happen faster depending on what content you've already got on your website, but those are the kinds of timeframes that you need to be thinking about, but building out location pages, putting in pictures of locations and neighborhoods so that people make again that connection. Oh, they know me, they know my area, they know my city, they know my neighborhood.

And then in terms of content, what do you want to be thinking about from a content point of view? Yes, a short form content to gain attention, and then long form content to build your authority and credibility. So, short form content quite often, we'll be out in those embassies on the social media platforms, gaining enough attention that people are going to be interested enough to come and check you out at your home country long before.

Content is more about building your expertise or showing your expertise. So, from that perspective again you want to be thinking about consistent content. I would suggest blog posts and video posts at least once a week is great because then you're building that keyword. Bank of bank of keywords that eventually will help you get up in Google.

So, expert driven content blog posts, if you are going to do video posts, the recommended length of a video typically is now three to eight minutes, but if you can invest. The money and it's fairly cheap. Now, places like rev.com to get your video transcribed, then you're going to get a double bonus for putting up video content with a transcription of the video.

And the reason for that is because from the written side of things, does we know that helps you get appearing on Google and in Google search, but from the video perspective, the second biggest search engine in the world is YouTube. And if you put your videos on YouTube and then get them transcribed, then you're getting that double chance of being found.

So, video post very critical where we're seeing video more and more and people like to consume video. But again, it could be very simple stuff. It could be a neighborhood video. You could be on location in a city and saying, hey, I'm here at such and such city. Just been taking some take out from X, Y, Z restaurant.

I like that restaurant. Again, people like it because you're making a connection to places that they know and love and therefore build more trust. So, consistent content, core conversion pages, making your website, but kind of a destination beyond the emphasis of social media. Some one-line, no-no’s some things you need to be thinking about you shouldn't be doing. Don't make it all about you. That's not why people are coming for help. They want to know if you have a solution to their problem. It's not so much all about you. So, don't make it all about you. Again, it astounds me how many people do not personalize their marketing.

It can be as simple as putting in a first name in an email. Using a first name and a voicemail, or, when we get back to the point of meeting people again using their name in a conversation but so many people don't just choose not to do that. And again, we love the sound of our own name, and we'd like to know that again people care enough that they're using our name.

So, make sure that you're personalizing your marketing as best you can, or as many times as you can. Don't try to target everyone. Don't try to be the answer to everything for everyone because then you'll be offering nothing to nobody. It really does. You need to get very clear about a target audience or a target location geography. Whatever it is, but you need to get much more targeted.

And when you're thinking about your marketing activity, don't assume that people know what to do now. So, always have some kind of task that you want them to do. It could be as simple as like my Instagram post, or please comment on my Facebook posts because I'd like to know, you have a quiz or something or it could be as much as, visit my website or it could be call me or whatever it is, but always make sure that you're making it very clear about what you want people to do next. Otherwise they won't figure it out. People's attention spans are short and people's ability to make decisions.

If you can help make that decision for them or point them in the direction of the decision, you want them to take much more likely for things to happen positively for you. And I'm sure everybody listening to this does not like span and therefore don't spam people. It has amazed me how many companies, whose email lists I've been on and unsubscribed in the last 12 months.

And I'm talking even to big people that I used to follow and I lost interest in their content. Yeah, it's amazing. How many of them have added people back into their email list? Which, as we all know, is actually illegal. It's against spam act, but it amazes me how many people are doing that.

But if you actually even think about it. If I've chosen not to receive messages from you and you choose to add me back to a list, what does that say about what's the impression I have of your brand, very negative. So, just don't do it. Don't spam, only send your messages to people that have requested and want to receive your message, some offline actions that you can think about.

I realize at the moment for many of us, it's very difficult to even think about what you can be doing offline, particularly if it's you're trying to do anything in person but that's an opportunity. Because when you think about COVID, I'm sure any of you that involved in any activity that involves having to go and see people house inspection, for example, walkthrough, you're probably saying, oh, yes, yeah, we'll take COVID into consideration, but really a lay people's fears. Take the time to explain what your COVID protocols are. Even on your website. I make that quite prominent because again, if people are landing on your website, one of the concerns of somebody who's thinking of selling their house is how are they going to handle coming into my house.

So, make that evident about what it is you're doing for them. And you're thinking about them again. It's solving their problems by eliminating the objections before people raise them. So, share the resources that you have. If you have them answer questions that they've got double down on relationships. I think the worst thing that could happen eventually, we are going to get back to having in-person events and the opportunity to meet people and interact with people again, which will be great.

But the worst thing you can be doing is doing that with silence for the last 12 or 15. So, start to rebuild those networks. Now, start to reach out to people. People are craving connections anyway of any type, certainly online meetings and presentations and webinars like this. People are getting a little bit strained around it, a little bit tired, but there's still that opportunity to make more of a one-on-one connection on a quick zoom call or touching base with people.

So, rebuild those networks, make connections. Let people know you're thinking of them, ask them how you can help that don't make it again. Don't make it about you. What is it you can do for them? And then the third thing I would recommend is thinking about thought leadership in terms of what is it you want to be known for?

What do you stand for and who else can give you that exposure to that audience that you're trying to reach, who else is already in that space and making influence with the target group that you want. And is there an opportunity for you to get in and expose yourself to that person's audience?

So, thinking about thought leadership, from a perspective you don't sound vanilla, make yourself stand out from a point of view of what is it you do again differently? What is it you believe differently enough that people are going to sit up and take notice. And when you're picking the mediums, the media, the target audience, You want to make sure you're making the right choices.

So, target audience, if you're trying to reach a certain target audience, where are they already hanging out and how do they like to consume content? That should be a direction. And that should be an indicator for you as to the marketing that you should be doing. If everybody's hanging out on Instagram and you're spending all your time on LinkedIn, nobody's ever going to hear at least your target audience is never going to hit your message.

First of all, first and foremost is understand where your target audience is, how they're consuming content and adapt your marketing to that. In terms of social media, don't try to do everything everywhere. I find people do that and it just dilutes your time. It gets tiring, pick one channel and get an ideally, it's the channel, obviously that your target audience is hanging out on.

So, again, it may not be one you're familiar with, which is even more. To get proficient and knowledgeable about that channel and then spend time building relationships. They're building presence, building influence, being consistent with your content versus running off and trying three other channels at the same time to pick the medium that you feel most comfortable with.

Because if you're trying to produce content on a regular basis, It's going to be even more difficult if you're picking a medium that you don't feel comfortable with. So, if you hate being on video, I really encourage you to try and do it. But in the meantime, pick the medium that you're most comfortable with.

So, if you'd like to write, write a blog post once a week, 500 words, that's it. If it is video, you'd love to shoot a video, get it transcribed, but pick the medium that you're most comfortable with. As I mentioned earlier, I can't stress enough. You need to be in this for the long-term. You might get the viral post, the video that takes off and has thousands of views that may happen.

That's icing on the cake, but it's not normal. So, you need to be in this for the long game. Set certain goals, measure how you're doing, but if you're measuring and you're not getting the results you expected, don't give it. Something's not working. So tweak something, try it again. See if that changes the results tweak before you give up.

Eventually that may not. You may get to the point where you say, okay, this isn't working. I need you to try something completely different, but don't give up too easily. Don't give up too early. That organic searches, I mentioned three to six months. So, if you're starting to put blog posts out on a weekly basis, don't suddenly expect at the end of the month, you're going to be in the page point of view.

Unlikely it's going to happen. So, consistent activity over the long-term. When you're thinking about anything that you're doing, any kind of lead generation marketing anything that you do think REI think is remarkable. Am I getting people's attention? Do they see me? Am I getting engagement? Are they interested?

Do they like me delayed? They like what I'm saying? We're doing and am I inviting them to take action? Do they want to do something more with you? So, remarkable, engage, invite, and think different, be different, stand out. And sometimes it doesn't need to be a lot of money. You think about this coffee store here.

They already had the board this cost mind. Yeah, a dollar to do maybe, but it has the effect. It's different, it lets everybody have humor, but it makes a point. It makes them different from all the other coffee stores on the high street that are trying to get people to come in and have a coffee.

And again, it's making that more of an emotional connection. It's differentiated enough. It's interesting enough. It's fun enough that people are going to take action then. So, there's my contact details. If people want to get in touch. I'm also offering to the REITE club, I have a free business optimizer assessment, which basically takes a snapshot of your current branding and marketing.

And then we have a call to go through the results of that, and I can make some suggestions and actions that you can take to help your marketing and branding game. So, you're welcome to do that. I'll put that link in the chat as well. And yeah, I'll stop my presentation and see if anybody's got any questions.

Sarah: That was awesome, Paul. I learned a ton. I've been working with you for the last three years, but thank you for sharing. I've learned so much. Can you let us know a little bit more about your podcast?

Paul: So, thank you. So, yeah, I launched it about six episodes ago. Sarah was one of my early guests. So, it's REI branded is the podcast. So, you can find it pretty much anywhere where you would normally listen to podcasts or you can go to www.reibranded.com/podcast notes, marketing and branding insights, tips tricks. So, if I have a real estate investor on there, then I'll tend to ask them more about their marketing and branding than necessarily their portfolio or how they built their business. It's more about, what are the things that they learned and the lessons they learned from a marketing and branding perspective.

I also have guests coming in. I have a different marketing and branding experience, not necessarily real estate investing related. So, for example, the episode this week was all about SEO and Google pay-per-click and the information I was making notes for the whole interview. It was fantastic in terms of information.

So, lots of great tips, tricks, insights.

Sarah: Very cool. And by the way, please leave a rating and review for Paul's podcast. That's how we can help boost it. Alright, so, we've got a question from Elizabeth, which social media medium are people finding most successful? I'm primarily on Facebook and Instagram.

Just wondering whether I should be focusing on LinkedIn and if people are using that platform with a lot of success?

Paul: Great question. Thank you, Elizabeth. So, part of this goes back to where is your target audience hanging out? I would say real estate investors. Generally I find Facebook and Instagram are definitely the two mediums where people are spending a lot of their time.

They're getting a lot of great groups on Facebook. For example, like the REITE club Facebook group and others. So, that would be one way to look at it. If you're looking for joint venture partners in particular. Particularly if you're looking for private investors who maybe are, a good example would be, so, you're looking for professionals who have money to invest, but they have no interest in being involved in the real estate side of things, but they'd like the returns. 

Then I would suggest LinkedIn could be a very good platform for that. And I have had clients where we've gone and specifically use LinkedIn as a lead generation medium. So, LinkedIn more if you're trying to reach specific professionals. I do quite a bit on LinkedIn and reach out to real estate investors. So, there are a ton of real estate investors on LinkedIn. So, if you're looking to network with other investors, then LinkedIn is also a good place for them.

Sarah: All right. Awesome. Great answer. And we've got a question from Bill here. Do you work with different types of companies or primarily investors I'm looking to build the image and exposure of a contracting company?

Paul: Yes. So, really anybody in the professional or service space? I work with, it tends to be real estate investing related. So, yes, we can certainly talk Bill, if that is of interest. Thank You.

Sarah: Awesome. Awesome. And I will say, you've helped me a ton with even just branding and marketing for my podcast. And I know we hadn't talked about your podcast at one point, that's probably like a whole other avenue of reaching people and getting people to come to you.

That's not Instagram, not Facebook. And if ever anybody is interested in starting a podcast, Paul is a great resource because when I first started, it was very sporadic. I had podcasts releasing whichever day, and then, Paul, like really, like you tightened it up a lot for me. And then I actually, yeah.

And it boosted all the downloads and stuff like that. That was awesome. Very cool. Any additional questions for Paul? We likely have time for one more question. If anybody has a specific question to ask. From Alfonzo, your favorite wine?

Paul: I should always say Tara, but Malbec probably would be in mine.

Sarah: Oh, very cool. Awesome. And Paul, just remind us where to reach out to you?

Paul: Yup. So, www.reibranded.com is the best place or paul.copcutt@gmail.com for an email. And yeah, I'd be happy to chat with anybody. If you've got questions.

Sarah: Amazing. Thank you so much, Paul, you are, like a huge part of our success at the REITE club.

Also my personal success. I think Alfonzo, you work with JAG properties and all of us separately too. So, thank you for all you do. And folks, Paul is a great asset and definitely reaches out to him. And if you're looking for bettering your brand, your marketing, there's lots of great ideas. And in ways that you can build that great brand. Paul, thank you so much, club, community. Thanks for tuning in.