Well the same goes for people supporting an industry going through change: vendors, suppliers and agencies need to observe the markets they serve just as closely as those operating within it. Why? Because if you don’t, you end up creating a major gap in client satisfaction that will open the door for new competitors to move in. Before you know it, existing suppliers are on the outside looking in, wondering what happened.

This occurs regularly within real estate as we have seen vendors come and go across all categories – from Website to virtual tour vendors – from coaches who fail to stay up on new changes to application providers who build it once and never improve the software.

Do you want to matter? The secret is as easy as placing yourself in the customers shoes. It’s what the best brands do and it’s precisely why they remain successful.

What better time than now to get real and make sure you are meeting your client’s needs, in a way that’s relevant to the market of today. This extends across all verticals and across all categories. For instance, here are some true examples from the last 10 days that I have personally experienced that had I been the marketing manager, I would be getting busy on fixing immediately.

• At a recent conference at a major hotel, catering was requested for a small, working lunch in a meeting of 12. The quote was $75 per person, for hotel sandwiches. Even a ponzi schemer couldn’t put that in their expenses with good conscience. Being in NYC we literally walked across the street and brought back a sumptuous lunch for 12, for $38 total. Outcome? The restaurant across the street sees a new opportunity to delivery catering services to hotels throughout the city. Add $100.00 for deliver and it’s still a deal.
• Exhibitors display in hotel ballroom.  Exhibitor needs another small table on which to display collateral.  Do you rent one for 3 hours from the hotel for $750 or go down the road to Office Depot and buy the same one for $200? Choice. I’ll take option #2. Final Answer.
• Bulb goes out in the taillight of my car.  The dealer wants to charge me $300 plus parts to swap it out.  So I spoke to a friend with the same car, who showed me how to undo two screws, and swap the bulb out myself in 5 minutes. I just hope my hairdresser doesn’t give me a reason to try to cut my own hair! (again)

What’s the moral? I think it’s obvious. The world has become a viable resource for many things. Competition comes from all around you. But so is opportunity.

Harness your marketing team. Release them to learn what your clients like and don’t like. Prepare to fix those things that matter most. The ones that will make you stand out from the crowd. Be militant about managing client satisfaction. Leave your customers no choice to seek out a substitute. For Realtors this could mean replacing you as their agent with the new kid on the block that has mastered social media marketing to someone who has figured out they might be able to do it better and cheaper themselves.

These are just a few winning formulas, as demonstrated by some of the most aspirational, game-changing brands across any industry in the U.S., including Twitter, Google, Zappos.com, Disney and JetBlue. More and more, our brand touches become virtual rather than physical, so core elements like these are even more important.

#1: Think like a brand

The most important rule is to always consider yourself a brand, whether on Twitter, Facebook, via email, on the phone or in person. You need to decide what kind of brand you want to be and then let that permeate through everything you do. The most successful brands in the world are consistent and precise.

#2: Send what matters

It’s no secret consumers will look at information that matters to them and discard anything that doesn’t. Sending information that matters will communicate that you are a significant and valuable brand. Therefore, the important thing is knowing what your consumers want – all of them – and then giving it to them.

This is a best practice from Twitter: tweet about the news, information and content that your consumers need. Think local and get granular, if need be. This can also be applied to direct mailings and email blasts – just stay relevant.

#3: Make it easy to communicate

JetBlue prides itself on communicating with consumers, no matter where they are. They respond via phone, email and even on social networking sites. The brand’s value proposition is simple: excellent customer service.

As an agent, you can emulate this same value proposition by communicating in ways that are relevant to your buyers and sellers, whether that is via Twitter and Facebook, email or phone. Communicating in real-time will show your community that you’re available and that you care.

#4: Be accessible

Although very similar to the above, being accessible across all forms of communication is important in order to reach varying audience demographics. No brand has done this better than Disney. From infants to seniors, Disney has long been a beloved brand that can ‘grow up’ with consumers. Although, as agents, we aren’t meant to have the reach of a mega-brand like Disney, we can work on becoming relevant for multiple generations by understanding what young couples and first-time home buyers need up as opposed to a down sizing retiree. The content – and the platform with which you communicate that content – needs to resonate.

#5: Partnering with your community

As Zappos continues to grow, its brand has never faltered in offering personalized communication and in going the extra step to communicate value.

Partnering with local businesses and vendors to get access to coupons, discounts or valuable insight will allow you to offer an extra, personalized service for individual consumers. For example, you could send special discounts for the local craft store to the newest ‘Martha Stewart’-type on the block. This kind of personalized service tells consumers you understand not only their needs, but also your community.

#6: Search easy

Google is so ubiquitous it is a verb. This was made possible largely because the brand is easy to use and always helpful. Taking a page from the Google book, your Web sites should be also be easy to navigate, with search engines and pertinent, updated content for the consumer. If consumers are looking for listings online, shouldn’t your site make it easy to find homes, information and news?

There are lots more ideas coming online every day, but these are a great place to start as we enter a more virtual branding world of the next generation brokerage.

I do two things to organize this constant collection of information:

1) I have an idea notebook. In it I quickly write anything worth remembering. It might be something someone says or a small nugget I read or heard somewhere. It’s usually not a complete thought, just a few words.

2) I have idea files. I started doing this a couple years ago after reading David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. I keep my hand written notes, printed articles, handouts, etc. in file folders labeled by topic. I have two systems on the go, one for work and one for personal. At the office I have an entire drawer dedicated to my idea folders. You’d see folders in there labeled everything from talent attraction to leadership to social media to the future of MLS. At home I’ve got files for travel, recipes, fashion, dogs, reading, and other things that interest me. These files often provide inspiration when working on various projects.

Here are some recent thoughts/ideas from the back of my idea notebook:

• Idea generation (cool term).
• Generation web (alternative term for Gen Y and Gen X).
• The role of today’s agent is to be an advisor, consultant and negotiator. (Quote from Sherry Chris in a meeting).
• Set up photo galleries on Flickr for the markets you serve and add this link to your property promotions.
• Your core company values should be on your talent attraction websites.
• Achieving general life balance.
• Seth Godin: mediocrity- you have to stand out in order to attract people.
• Team work makes the dream work. (Lisa Nichols)
• There’s freedom in not knowing the rules. Knowing the rules will only restrain you. Don’t read the rule book. (I love this!)

I pride myself on having a good memory, but I know it has a limit!  So this is my system. I know this doesn’t seem very “Gen Web” of me and that technology certainly offers many other alternatives to organizing thoughts and ideas. But this works for me and I share this with you because I’m curious on how other people are retaining the hundreds of thoughts and ideas that they find intriguing each week to reflect upon or act upon at a later time.

I was shopping for a new TV over the weekend on Amazon.com, Samsung and Sony LCD TVs to be exact, and I just wasn’t convinced to buy it on the spot as every purchase needs to be considered after buying a house less than 6 months ago.  Let me preface this story by saying that I am an avid shopper of Amazon.com so they have my email address and I have opted in to receive marketing communications.

So on Monday morning I check my email and there is a message from Amazon.com with the subject line “Sony Two-Day Sale in Televisions & Video.”  I obviously opened the message so Amazon NOW knows I am seriously interested in buying a TV.  I was mildly impressed and sort of chalked it up to mere coincidence.  Then this morning I have a NEW email from Amazon with the subject line of “Up to $300 Off Select Samsung HDTVs.”  So now I know it’s not a coincidence as I have received 2 separate promotional emails for both TVs I viewed on the site days earlier.  My conclusion is that Amazon is using browsing behavior to enable micro-targeting in their email marketing program.  This is a concept that has been floating around for almost 10 years, but this is truly the first time I had seen it executed so flawlessly.

Why do I bring this up on a real estate blog?  Because the application for real estate web sites is 100% translatable.  Today a perspective home buyer can sign up for push emails based upon predefined criteria, such as city, beds, baths, price ,etc.  Now that is good but what would be better is if your analytics solution (Omniture, Google Analytics, etc.) that tracks browsing behavior was tied into an email marketing platform.  For example, if you viewed an article on gourmet kitchens on bhgrealestate.com and then ran a property search in Franklin Lakes, NJ we could automate the email system to send you a message when a price drop occurred on a property in Franklin Lakes that has the keywords of gourmet kitchen in the description.  This could obviously be taken to the next level and factor in a relational model to suggest alternatives to the location based upon city attributes similar to Franklin Lakes, for example Ridgewood.  To me this is Pandora Radio meets Real Estate email marketing.

Ultimately this is all enabled by connecting the right email solution, analytics package and data tagging.  The goal being more leads which should result in more transactions.

The only thing left for Amazon to do is figure out how to convince my wife that we need 1080P!

Sometimes I think agents get in their own way and in their quest to do the right end up doing the wrong thing. And miss out an opportunity to do right by their client. Colleen Fischesser documents one such experience representing her buyer and what happens when the listing agent just doesn’t get it in a post she titled I’d rather you just said thank you.

Some simple, but succinct advice on promoting your business through Facebook

Who doesn’t face writers block every now and then? Sometimes, it’s not even writers block you suffer from but burn out from the deep thinking you engage in all day at work. And yet a blog post is due, your at deadline and you need a muse. Sugar Pine Realty/GMAC Blog offers this advice titled Blog Writing Ideas for Realtors.

Authenticity vs Authority. Mark Olson discusses these two schools of thought. Which is more important? Which begat the other? Which matters most? He then asked some of the smartest business and branding writers and commentators for their opinions. Check it out here.

So agents, if you haven’t already, please consider stop spending your money on the wrong marketing vehicle. If you don’t believe me, your broker, NAR stats, and maybe Seth Godin’s input will help influence you.

“Prediction: there will be no significant newspapers printed on newsprint in the US by 2012. So, you’ve got two and a half years before the newspaper industry is going to be doing something else with the news and the ads, or not be there at all. Does that change what you do today if you work in this business?

Insight! The newspaper industry is in trouble, but news is not going to go away, just the paper part. Those who are working hard to preserve the paper part are asking the wrong questions and are doomed to fail.

Prediction: 90% of your sales will come from word of mouth or digital promotion by 2011. How do you change what you’re doing today to be ready for that?”

An excerpt from Seth Godin's blog.

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