In this eBook, we'll be introducing the concept of Collaboration Marketing. We will explain how creating a Collaboration Marketing framework, or machine, can significantly unlock greater lead generation potential in your organization, effecting a marketer's three main objectives: brand promotion, brand protection, and leveraging brand assets while juggling the many individual marketing demands of a large, independent real estate sales organization. There are several industry-specific sales and marketing scenarios that may benefit from Collaboration Marketing.
We will be narrating the example of the independent real estate sales agents that depend largely on their spheres of influence, introducing Doreen Fitzgerald, real estate agent marketer, and Don Stamos, top-producing sales agent. We will also be discussing content, specifically how a process of Collaboration Marketing can benefit both Brands and Sales Agents with relevant content that is brand-compliant.
"Great content is the best sales tool in the world," says Marcus Sheridan, content industry expert. We will address specifically how to organize one's content for gathering, reusing, and distributing efficiently across teams, departments, and salespeople to multiple marketing channels in order to leverage the best content, driving more quality leads and referrals.
Our main intent with this eBook is to explain Collaboration Marketing's importance for today's successful real estate marketer, providing a step-by-step approach for setting up a Collaboration Marketing machine. We would like to offer a solution to conquer the oftentimes strange, evolving landscape of marketing and boldly going where (at least) many of your colleagues have not gone before...
That is, efficient and effective marketing in a vast universe of marketing channels and lead opportunities within the large, complex sales and marketing organizations of the real estate industry. Each chapter will represent one major aspect of building a Collaboration Marketing machine.
A marketing approach whereby two (or more) groups collaborate to bring their respective strengths together for mutual benefit. The combined result is greater than the sum of the two individuals.
Keeping in mind that Collaboration Marketing involves combining multiple strengths for the mutual benefit of all, let's look at 3 main benefits for marketers as a result of Collaboration Marketing.
With an optimally running Collaboration Marketing machine, efficient and effective multi-channel marketing is a reality, even with limited marketing resources. Efficiently delivering on-brand, stunning content to an available audience is possible with a well-oiled machine.
A marketer's worst nightmare is a rogue customer service department's script or a sales agent's social media presence not reflecting the brand's standards, and potentially eroding the brand's reputation on a large scale. How can compliance be assured without squashing content relevance and individual relationships?
What do we mean by brand assets? Think about the marketing opportunities that lay hidden in plain sight; an independent sales team's black book of potential clients and referrals, or a customer service rep's written interaction with a customer leading to a referral.
We'll begin with a day in the life of Doreen Fitzgerald, marketing professional, and Don Stamos, top sales producer for a luxury real estate affiliate brokerage in South Florida; part of a larger brand with strict rules governing everything from front yard signage to a sales agent's dress code. Doreen Fitzgerald oversees the marketing efforts for an independent sales team of 150 agents (and growing), in addition to the company's marketing initiatives. Doreen's drawer is full of generic aspirin bottles, as she balances the brand's strict guidelines with sales agents' demands of last-minute marketing eFlyers and Market Reports.
Marketer Doreen gazes out the window of her spacious office in downtown Coral Gables, grabbing a few moments of peace before the typical morning rush of demands. In walks Don Sales Agent, gentleman extraordinaire, top sales producer and demands aplenty. Marketer Doreen greets Don with a big smile, brushing off the disappointment of interrupted peace. "I'm sorry I haven't gotten to your team marketing report yet, Don. We've got a deadline for the new company website that's gone over deadline. Also, I'm unfamiliar with your new email marketing app. It's the only one (out of ten) that I've never used. Can we utilize the company's email marketing account this time around?"
"Sure," Don suavely begins. "On two conditions. One, that you use my new design. I've added one new team member, and they've got ideas...and you know how I don't like sharing my database with the company. Is it possible to have this new team member work with you on this project? I'd prefer she manages the list and the send."
Let's delve deeper into Doreen and Don's world, to understand how to utilize Collaboration Marketing to support the three benefits of promoting brand, ensuring brand compliance, and in particular, leveraging brand assets; in this case, real estate's large, independent sales teams interacting with relatively small marketing teams. So, how can Doreen, Don and the entire company benefit from Collaboration Marketing?
Doreen's concern about Don's team's designs, and his need for help, causes more work than Doreen can manage on her own. She spends a few late nights revamping the new design from Don's team so it stays compliant with brand standards. Doreen also needs to carve out a chunk of time (and potentially move back the website deadline) so that Don's team can utilize her email marketing application, uploading contacts, changing contact information to Don's team's, exporting and deleting contacts; an arduous process (not to mention chasing down the team to provide the subsequent statistics).
Past clients and hard-earned self-generated prospects are what comprise a Sales Agent's rolodex. It is not surprising that they're reluctant to share the associated contact information with their Brokerage. In additional, Sales Agents strongly prefer marketing pieces that are sent to contacts to include their own details; in other words, their own listings and personal contact details versus more general Brokerage information.
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