The World of Real Estate Investing Needs More Youtility

By Richard Dolan

Youtility is the title of a book series authored by the online thought leader and author Jay Baer. He defines this play on words as marketing so useful, people would gladly pay for it.

In the world of real estate investing, if you are marketing, selling or raising capital for real estate consider Baer s words: If you sell something, you make a customer today. If you help someone, you may create a customer for life.

I agree with Baer that today the world of reaching out and connecting with potential investors, tenants, lenders and joint venture partners requires more than just a presence, or savvy marketing ads. It requires you to be innovative, creative and helpful. That is why businesses will look at how they can heighten their marketing expertise with looking into how a free digital marketing course can assist them in this, as well as tapping into creative ways that can be used throughout the process.

Why is this important to us as real estate investors? Well, according to Google Canada, annually there are over 3 billion searches online in Canada for all things relating to real estate . That s right…3 BILLION! I would suggest positioning yourself online, and in front of these folks searching for information and education so to become not only their go-to-source for opportunity, action and insight, but more importantly the youtility on real estate matters.

First consider the Three Dynamics to Developing Your Youtility so to grow your real estate investment business by producing marketing so helpful that people would be willing to pay for it. Begin with…

1: TURNING YOUR MARKETING PLAN UPSIDE DOWN

As a marketing strategy, top-of-mind awareness is less effective than ever before. Gone are the days of aiming for optimal search engine placement (SEO), where people would search you by Googling your name or key phrase with those appearing at the top getting picked. Instead, nowadays you have marketing companies (such as this seo bolton agency) that does the work for you, allowing you to focus on other functions of the business.

However, the former option was true perhaps five years ago when only five sources of online information was required before buying something. Today, Canadians require over 15 sources of information and therefore whoever ranks at the top of the search results is not the only thing that matters. Consider also that this contrarian approach is based on the fact that companies today are fundamentally distrusted by consumers and that trust has a huge impact on marketing success.

Takeaway: Visit Sureshot.io to improve your marketing strategy, aim to build trust with consumers first by being of service without strings attached.

2: ELEVATE YOUR FRAME-OF-MIND AWARENESS

As referenced earlier, being found doesn t create demand, it can only fulfill it. The search engines role in the website discovery funnel is weakening. When YouTube first launched, the need it fulfilled was to share large video files with ease. Today, YouTube is the second largest search engine for people seeking answers to questions. People no longer want to download the latest report or how-to guides; they want to see what the news is and be shown how to do something. So, with that in mind, now may well be the time to start to explore various features of video editing software to see if you, too, might be able to become a part of this platform. Driving this phenomenon is the boom in smartphone access and ownership. Today there are more people accessing the internet by way of mobile device than desktop computers. And that means your Youtility is a matter of seconds away from inquiring minds.

Takeaway: Ensure your marketing strategy and information source is mobile friendly. Without this design principle, you are outdated before you can even get started.

3. BE RADICALLY TRANSPARENT

We ve noticed that companies with websites with 101-200 pages generate two and a half times more leads than companies with 50 or fewer pages. In contrast companies that blog 15 times or more per month get five times more traffic than those that don t blog.

Consider the enormous commercial success of fellow seasoned member Thomas Beyer. When he first started as a member, he spent hours on the myREINspace site answering questions of fellow members and connecting with them with no agenda or in-order to s. He was in the purest way, a Youtility. Today he has evolved into a real estate investment manager and has raised millions of dollars, from hundreds of members representing over a thousand doors. And it all began by being radically transparent; providing people everything they need to invest in real estate from the beginning.

Takeaway: Teach prospective investors, lenders and partners everything with nothing held back or behind. An informed customer is a smarter customer after all.

If becoming a real estate investment Youtility sounds like a marketing approach you can embrace, then begin with these Five Steps to Developing Your Youtility Plan, according to Baer.

STEP ONE: Start with Identifying Customer Needs – You have to understand what your prospective customers need to make better decisions, and how you can improve their lives by providing it.

STEP TWO: Map Customer Needs to Useful Marketing – Determining which is the optimal conveyance for Youtility requires a level of research beyond simply understanding customer needs. You have to understand not just what your customers need, but how and where they prefer to access information.

STEP THREE: Market Your Marketing – People are not going to magically find your Youtility so you have to first develop your content, not just your social media campaign, because content is fire, and social media is like gasoline. Use social media to promote your useful information first and your company second.

STEP FOUR: Make Youtility a Process, Not a Project – Developing your Youtility requires a never-ending, evolving process. There are three reasons this must be an ongoing program:

1. Customer needs change;

2. Technology shifts, changes and evolves; and

3. New and better ideas are always conceived.

STEP FIVE: Keeping Score This begins with developing a Youtility that is going to be more than a marginalized novelty for you. It must be measured effectively from three metric sources including:

1. Consumption = number of people reading and/or viewing your content;

2. Advocacy/Sharing = number of reviews for your content (for example McDonald s Canada has over 19,000 questions posted whereby the answers have been reviewed over 6.5M times); and

3. Lead–Gen = It s not just about getting people s information and email addresses. Consider that Forms are enemy of spread. If your Youtility is strong enough, prospects will contact you unilaterally after they ve finished their research.

Real estate investing is no longer for those with time, assets and idling credit lines. It is the fourth asset class many Canadians and citizens around the world are researching so to invest and participate in a secure, safe and simple method to preserving and protecting what matters most to them no matter what. With the world growing older and markets more complex, there is no coincidence that Google s database of intentions reveals an opportunity of our lifetime.

The question for you is: how will you reach, attract and secure inquiring minds?

I strongly suggest becoming a Youtility, marketing so helpful people would be willing to pay for it.

Richard Dolan is the President of REIN and the resident expert on Performance for real estate investors and professionals. Addicted to producing results, Richard is an expert on raising funds, building brand and strategy with one aim: to produce competitive immunity. Reach Richard at Richard@reincanada.com.

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