His reply has haunted me ever since.  He said that selling new media marketing services to a real estate agent is like swimming with barracuda.  In explaining that statement Jon (not his real name) gave all of the reasons why he thought that the idea would never work.

I was neither discouraged nor dissuaded because these are the same arguments that I hear every day while speaking to prospective customers and I thought that this would make an interesting article and topic of discussion for marketing and real estate professionals.

In a nutshell, Jon made the following arguments for not using new media marketing:

1. That real estate agents will think that they already understand new media marketing.
2. That real estate agents value their time and that it would be hard to convince them to spend time on new media marketing.
3. That real estate agents are skeptical and that you would have to prove that it would be effective before you could  convince them to consider online marketing as an option.
4. That real estate agents are stingy and that they would “slap your grandmother in the face for $100” rather than pay for Internet  marketing (classes or services).   ß This was said with a large dose of humor thrown in.

These are the same arguments for not utilizing new media and / or other marketing to increase sales that I encounter from most potential clients.  It did not surprise me to have this discussion with Jon but it is interesting hearing someone else say it out loud and list and crystallize all of the objections that we as marketing professionals are confronted with in our jobs.

Understanding New Media

It seems like most of the people that I encounter think that they understand new media marketing but actually do not.  Every time I hear this I ask them how many successful Internet marketing campaigns they have managed and how they measured the campaign for  success.  So far, no one that I have spoken to  has been able to demonstrate a successful online marketing campaign.

Just because Facebook and other social media sites are fun and engaging does not mean that managing marketing campaigns using social networking is easy.   Having a lot of friends on Facebook does not translate into website hit counts or sales.  Internet and social media marketing has turned into a technical profession and is not something that most people understand well.

New media includes social networking, web pages, landing pages, widgets, SEM, SEO, mobile computing, video, e-zines, e-blasts, and even polls and rankings and other engaging tools.

The worst culprits are old school marketing professionals who know that they need to put new media on their resumes but who do not really understand it and IT professionals who assume that just because it has to do with the Internet that ‘of course they can do it.

Yeeeaahh, riiiiight.

In this case the agent that I spoke to thought that he understood new media and didn’t need any training because his IT staff would provide him with a website and he thought that because he could us a browser that that is all that he needed to manage online marketing campaigns.  “A website is new media right?”.

My solution to the issue of customers not truly understanding new media is to provide training free of charge to paying customers for staff and management and to insist that at least some of the staff take the training.   My company Augur Professional Marketing Services also provides inexpensive training in the basics to help the general user and our potential customers better understand marketing and in particular online marketing.  We currently, we offer the following course titles:

• Introduction to Marketing
• Introduction to New Media
• Implementing an Online Campaign, Hands-On Lab

Time Management

Everyone values their time especially busy professionals therefore I do not feel that real estate agents are in a special class on this issue.  All of my potential customers are feeling time and financial pressure.  The toughest job in the world is marketing a marketing company.  How can we as marketing professionals convince others to invest in advertising services?

Value Proposition

We need to show value to our customers or we won’t last long in business but it seems like marketing and especially new media marketing are difficult to sell.  Between the fact that everyone thinks that they are automatic new media experts and the fact that few truly understand the efficacy and benefit means that we have to do a good job of better  informing our customer base.

So what is the value of new media marketing?  Online marketing is relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of marketing, is instant, and can be targeted to specific market segments by age, gender, life style and zip code.  These are the things that we need to communicate to our customers.  Online marketing is also excellent at generating buzz and allows personal interaction with customers and potential customers.

If you think that something is simple and that you can do it why would you pay someone else to do it for you?  That was a rhetorical question of course.  We all know that marketing can be very successful and who hasn’t heard about the miracle of the Obama Campaign and how it utilized new media so successfully?

One of the catchiest new jingles on the market that most of you will recognize is Subway’s $5 Foot long slogan.  For the past few years Geico insurance has also run some very popular advertisements that encourage us to save money with Geico.  These ads include the cavemen and the lizard.  If you know about those ads then you can understand the value and power of marketing, these ads are selling us on the Geico brand and the on the value of the brand.

Paying  for Online and Other Marketing

The last point that Jon made was that real estate agents do not want to spend any money is typical of the business world in general especially now in tough times.  This argument resonates with every customer base and also leads back to ensuring that potential customers understand what new media marketing actually is and how effective it can be.

New media marketing is relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of advertising like print ads and television and can have a great impact on a frugal budget.

At this point in the conversation the real estate agent that I was speaking to made a very telling comment and said that the only way to get real estate agents to go to a class on new media would be if you paid them $200 each.  So even free classes would not entice them to attend.  You can lead a horse to water…

How do you sell marketing success to a business owner or executive?  If someone manages a business and does not already understand the value of marketing then I am not sure how effective we can be to convince them otherwise.  Do you have a tip that works?  Send a Comment / Feedback. Feedback