The Truth about your Marketing

People judge you now faster than ever.

They form opinions about you and your project before you ever see them.

In this digital world they judge your project by the website alone.
Prospects will make multi million dollar decisions on what buildings to go see and what to miss based on your digital presence alone NOT on the how good the actual building is.

Sure not all of the time but do you want to gamble on what the percentage is by trying to save on the place/website where they form their first impression? - and where they have their first contact with you?

Do you realize that the paradigm has shifted? The consumer gets to make an opinion before he ever sets foot in your project, before he ever meets your sales person.

So what is your digital presence saying about you? about your projects?

And who is helping you get that piece of your business not only right but head and shoulders better than your competition?

What's their strategy to navigate this brave new 2.0 world?

Olympic Inspiration & Real Estate 2.0

This Ad for Visa by TWBA/Chiat/Day really got me thinking about innovation and in particular how Paradigm Shattering Dick Fosbury was and in my opinion still is.
Watch this if you haven't seen it already.





“The problem with something revolutionary like that was that most of the top athletes had invested so much time in their technique and approach was that they didn’t want to give it up, so they stuck with what they knew,” Fosbury said.

Sounds a lot like how most Real Estate Sales and Marketing Programs are currently conducted.

He said it took a full decade before the flop began to dominate the sport.

I’m hoping we can shift our industry faster than that.

You would have thought that all the other high jumpers and their coaches would have copied him because after all he did win the '68 Gold Medal and break the World Record.

They didn’t - the elite high jumpers and their coaches were too invested in the straddle.
They could not and would not undo all of the years of repetition and the results that they use to get with going with their old style, the Straddle.

Does that look or sound similar to our industry?

It certainly does to me as I see all of these new tools/skills/techniques that so few are using and I keep wondering why.

So what happened next in the High Jump World?
The establishment "attacked" him and his Flop - they were not going to have their paradigm shattered.

Check out this quote:

“Kids imitate champions,” said U.S. Olympic coach Payton Jordan at the time. “If they try to imitate Fosbury, he will wipe out an entire generation of high jumpers because they will all have broken necks.”

Fosbury laughed long and hard when reminded of that quote and then said:

"There were some doctors who felt I was threatening kids’ lives".

His stunning, and almost comical, break with the conventional straddle high jump sparked a revolution in the sport.

Today, the “Fosbury Flop” is the standard technique for high jumpers from high school to the Olympics.

But Fosbury still recalls the debate that raged in the press over his radical approach to the bar.

So what are you doing to shatter the paradigms in your industry, are you trying new approaches or are you happy to continue to do the “Straddle”

Good news for people who love bad news!

Today’s article in the The New York Sun is about how the NYC Condo Market is performing.

And yes I’m quoted heavily in the article and I don’t paint a pretty picture - but we do need to look at the current “landscape” objectively and realistically.

We need to make decisions on how things actually are right now.
Not how we want or need them to be based on what happened previously or where we were hoping the market was going to go.

Looking way back to Zeno and Socrates for a more stoic approach to the market and one that helps me is that “we should try and maintain an attitude of equanimity in the face of life's highs and lows - getting carried away by neither”.

Easier said than done but it is the goal - because according to Zeno " man conquers the world by conquering himself " and we can do that by conquering how we react to all external factors.

(both the good ones as well as the bad)

Focus on what we can control, work hard on those items and leave the rest in the hands of the gods.

The Stockdale Paradox

The "Stockdale Paradox" - was named by Jim Collins in his book "Good to Great" - and he sums it up this way: "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be." This quote is attributed to the famed POW Jim Stockdale.

I thought of this quote in response to the following article by my friend Michael Stoler in today’s New York Sun.
He is absolutely right about what he is saying about the current market and trust me he isn’t the kind of person to mince words.

My experience shows me that most people do not value what they learn for free and make no mistake some people are paying a heavy price and it isn't just the mom's and pop's, the big boys are feeling the pain too.

Right now a lot of us in the Real Estate Industry are getting some pretty expensive “tuition” from this market and the “lessons” are far from over. (The picture BTW is the Tibetan Circle of Punishment - which sums up my view of what the market is doing to some of us)

Hearing the true state of the market is exactly what consumers need to hear from real estate agents and brokers.

Real estate markets go up and they go down.
The scope and size of this financial crisis does bring a new dimension to this particular cycle, but we will get through it and the smart ones will learn from it and the really smart ones will do even better because they were already a head of the curve in the first place.

Six degrees of separation - (the 29%)

You’ve heard the term but what does it really mean?

It comes from a social experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 70’s and it’s objective was to see how many people would need to “touch” a letter to get it from one person in the mid west to a complete stranger in Boston.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_phenomenon


The rules were you couldn’t call them direct and you had to send it a person who you personally knew who might be able to move the process forward. On average it took around six contacts to achieve that. Most people who are very social and especially salespeople think that they are only a few contacts away from making “it” all happen.

But it is a myth

Because only 29% actually got the letter through to their intended target – the rest failed.

The best ones in the survey who achieved it did it in 2-3 attempts and the weaker 8-10 connections.

With the average path length being 5.5 which got rounded up to 6, hence the term “six degrees of separation”.

Interesting story but what does that mean to you?

Think for a moment about your connections and what you need to grow your business.
How well connected are you?
And what about your Sales Team?

Can they get you in front of the customers who want and need your product?

Are you/they in the 29% who can connect to whoever they need to in order to get the job done?
Or are they in the 71% who couldn’t deliver?

What is your Social Networking strategy and what are you now doing differently to improve your “network” and your projects results?

Relaunching a Property Development

Re-launching a failed project should be done with a new team and a fresh approach.
A team that is untainted by the first failure.

Harsh words but true - however before you drop the axe on the old team, and before the new team emerges from their chrysalis you need to "harvest"the experience because what they learned is very valuable and can be helpful in the second launch and in the projects "next life".

Here are some but not all of the key questions that you would need to know before you “jump in”:

What are the costs and time needed to fix a product. (Yep -there may be few things that need to change)

What is the required capital investment to re-launch the product. (It is useless to think or say “well I’ve spent my entire marketing budget the first time and now have no money left”) Get creative – find a way to make it work for you and your new team.

What is the optimum pricing strategy (Painful I know because right now it usually means lowering not raising the prices but the market is now VERY different to the one in which you did your initial pro forma)

What is the current “appetite” of the different market segments to the re-launched product i.e. what are the prospects/consumers saying about your Studio’s, 1, 2, 3 Bedrooms, Penthouses, common areas, etc.

These questions and there answers will give you and your new team a better insight into

Why potential customers are not buying your product.
What the market segmentation is and what they now want.
Better understanding of what they value for each segment.

If I were running the re-introduction of [Property Development name removed] I’d run it like a product launch campaign, but with a few interesting (but profitable) variations.

· I’d change the product name to be more exciting, descriptive and different to what’s been used previously and what is currently out there.

· First priority would be an effective sales/informational website – with redesign and sales-driving content and new information.

· 2nd would be an informational blog that goes above and beyond what almost everyone else is doing. I would have streaming video content i.e. Vblogs from the Developer, Architect, GC, Interior Designer, Local Neighborhood Expert, etc. All talking about what is special and unique about this project and this location.

Why these two? Because they will cross-pollinate with each other by sending traffic back and forth to close more sales. Plus, the linking back and forth will drive you to the top of the search engines faster. All of that means is more sales.

3rd would be to have a new true “Blue Chip” brokerage firm put in place and replace the incumbent agency. They would focus on a “co-broker program” that gets it out and across all of their agents, branches and agencies in addition to a specific plan of attack to do that with all other competitor agencies.

Why? Because most sales are co-brokered and it is now all about how many people know and “get” your project.

It is absolutely useless to have just a handful of people who know it well – there is strength in numbers – make no mistake about that.
It’s not about “who you (your current brokers) know - It is about “How many people (brokers/potential customers) know you – AND it is now about how easily AND how much info that they can get beforehand.

Getting A Head Start with your Marketing Program

So why is there a picture of Jorge Perez and his new book at the top of my post?

Well I'll get to that in a moment.

But first off I am always shocked that not every developer in NYC is not taking advantage of the CPS-1 program that allows you to start testing ad marketing your project before your Condo Offering Plan is approved by the Attorney General.

My only conclusion is why they don't is that they don't know what it is.

I know Jorge would use it - read his book and you'll see why I say that.

So for those of you who focus on the construction side of the process and aren't that into the marketing side let me give you a "heads up"on this program.

CPS1 is shorthand for Cooperative Policy Statement 1, and it sets out the Attorney General's rules governing how a developer may test the market for a new building before filing the offering plan, and, for that matter, even before construction is completed.

The CPS1 period, which lasts 120 days but can be extended for an additional 60 days: ''This is so Developers can advertise and take names of people who are interested, but they cannot take money. They can talk about price ranges, but nothing specific. No reservations can be accepted; no deposits can be accepted, and all advertisements must be approved by the Office of the Attorney General.''

I'm not an Attorney so have your counsel check it out for you - but here's the link in the mean time.

http://www.oag.state.ny.us/realestate/policy/Cps1.pdf

So what you say?

Well the sooner you can start building the Buzz about your project the better.

According to one of the greatest Property Marketers Jorge Perez (He's the Southern Half, Chairman, CEO of the Related Group) The first things/principles you have to do according to Jorge is:

1. Develop Awareness

2. Build Interest

3. Create Desire

He has a few more steps so buy his book - but you get the idea right?

These things take time, creativity, skill and money to execute - So let's make sure from this point forward your team knows how to get you a head start and give you every possible advantage in this changing marketplace!