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I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but email has changed quite dramatically in the last couple of years. For many of us using it for email marketing or sales it just doesn’t work as well as before. There are at least three reasons for this: 1) everyone woke up to the opportunity and started using email newsletters for marketing; 2) companies like Google have started creating tools to shield users from marketing emails; 3) people are moving to mobile, where our marketing emails are often irrelevant.

There’s not a day I don’t unsubscribe to at least a newsletter I don’t remember signing up for. Email marketing has exploded in popularity, and my already overcrowded inbox has become unmanageable. Google came to the rescue in May, and started automatically organizing their Gmail users’ email in tabs. Now your automated emails are treated as a second-class citizen and hidden from sight in a “Promotions” tab. The result? MailChimp, one of the largest email newsletter companies out there, measured Gmail’s new feature alone accounts for a decrease of 25% in “email open” rates.

That’s only the latest change. The transition from PCs to smartphones and tablets has been fast and steady in the last 5 years. In 2012, phones outsold PCs 5:1, and next year the ratio is expected to reach 8:1. But how does mobile affect email? Assuming you have optimized your emails and newsletters to be displayed on a mobile device (if you haven’t your email content will look so tiny it will be unreadable), chances are when your customers click on your emails they land on a desktop-sized website. The result? They just close their browser and tap away. To give you some sense of the numbers: 29% of emails today are opened on smartphones, 12% on tablets (that’s a 41% total, see this report for more).

So what’s left to do in a world where email doesn’t work as well as before, and mobile is taking over PCs?

You have probably heard of content marketing. The idea behind it is that by creating and sharing valuable content and information you can position yourself and your company as experts in your field, create strong and valuable relationships with your customers and, ultimately, sell more. Recent stats hint at content marketing taking the lead as 2013’s hottest marketing trend.

What do you need to start using content marketing?

1) Create a blog. This is quite easy, and can be done with open-source software like WordPress.org, to be installed on your own server space, which you can get from the likes of GoDaddy.com.

2) Start creating content, anything from interesting articles, investing or first-buyer tips, to alerts on new properties.

Add a mobile app to your content strategy, and you get a channel to deliver your content straight to your users’ phones and tablets, in a much more effective way than email.

Why a mobile app? Mobile users spend 80% of their time inside apps – this figure alone shows a clear preference for apps versus using the browser. If users are going to access your content frequently then an app makes sense. Apps offer a faster, better user experience, encourage repeat visits and can drive conversions. App users are simply more engaged.

By getting your clients to download your app on their smartphones, you’ll get an opportunity to alert them with push notifications whenever you publish something new on your blog. Push messages are front and center on your client’s home screens, rather than buried in a crowded inbox. With a 10x greater average open rate than email (figures from push notifications company Urban Airship), you can be confident your clients receive your messages and stay engaged.

On your app, your content is optimised for mobile, so you don’t have to worry about images not being displayed by email clients. With your blog and a mobile app, you can create any rich media content, including photos and video and broadcast it to all your app users.

With your own blog and mobile app, your clients can share your content with their friends using networks like Twitter or Facebook or email, directly from your app. Your articles, links and property alerts then are spread in the form of a link to your blog.

If you don’t have one already, you should also create an email newsletter using MailChimp or Aweber. Your email subscribers can then receive your blog posts automatically. Some users still prefer email to other channels, you need to cover them too.

How do you promote your new blog and app? Using social media of course! Create accounts on all social networks, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and start following and befriending professionals, thought leaders in your industry and, naturally, your clients. Share links to the content you publish, like and retweet content created by others, help your audience find interesting content that can help them in their property search. You’ll soon start accumulating followers and traffic to your site will grow steadily.

As email clients get smarter and people move to mobile, you’ll have to work harder to get people’s attention. At the same time, for those that are willing to put in the extra work, there’s an opportunity to increase your reach and network, rise above the crowd and ultimately close more deals by creating your own content and delivering it online using a combination of blogging, email newsletters and your own mobile app.

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NEW YORK (AP) — It was supposed to be our IPO, the people’s public offering.

Facebook, the brainchild of a young CEO who sauntered into Wall Street meetings in a hoodie, was going to be bigger than Amazon, bigger than McDonald’s, bigger than Coca-Cola. And it was all made possible by our friendships, photos and family ties.

Then came the IPO, and it flopped. Facebook’s stock finished its first day of trading just 23 cents higher than its $38 IPO price. It hasn’t been that high since.

Even amid the hype and excitement surrounding Facebook’s May 18 stock market debut a year ago, there were looming doubts. Investors wondered whether the social network could increase advertising revenue without alienating users, especially those using smartphones and tablet computers.

The worries intensified just days before the IPO when General Motors said it would stop paying for advertisements on the site. The symbolic exit cast a shroud over Facebook that still exists. Facebook’s market value is $63 billion, some two-thirds of what it was the morning it first began trading. At around $27 per share, the company’s stock is down roughly 30 percent from its IPO price. Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index is up 27 percent over the same period.

Despite its disappointing stock market performance, the company has delivered strong financial results. Net income increased 7 percent to $219 million in the most recent quarter, compared with the previous year, and revenue was up 38 percent to $1.46 billion.

The world’s biggest online social network has also kept growing to 1.1 billion users. Some 665 million people check in every day to share photos, comment on news articles and play games. Millions of people around the world who don’t own a computer use Facebook, in Malawi, Malaysia and Martinique.

And much has changed at Facebook in a year. The company’s executives and engineers have quietly addressed the very doubts that dogged the company for so long. Facebook began showing mobile advertisements for the first time just after the IPO. It launched a search feature in January and unveiled a branded Facebook smartphone in April. The company also introduced ways for advertisers to gauge the effectiveness of their ads.

Even GM has returned as a paying advertiser.

Now, Facebook is looking to its next challenge: convincing big brand-name consumer companies that advertisements on a social network are as important – and as effective – as television spots.

“We aspire to have ads, to show ads that improve the content experience over time,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts recently. “And if we continue making progress on this, then one day we can get there.”

To achieve those aims, the company has rolled out tools to help advertisers target their messages more precisely than they can in print or on television. Companies can single out 18- to 24-year-old male Facebook users who are likely to buy a car in the next six months. They can target 30-year-old women who are researching Caribbean getaways.

Analytic tools like these weren’t available a year ago. But last fall Facebook hired several companies that collect and analyze data related to people’s online and offline behavior. Facebook’s advertisers can now assess whether a Crest ad you saw on Facebook likely led you to buy of a tube of toothpaste in the drugstore. The services take what Facebook knows about you and what ads you saw and combine this with the information retailers have about you and what you’ve purchased through loyalty cards and the like.

Advertisers are also making use of Facebook’s partnership with audience measurement firm Nielsen Co. Nielsen introduced a tool last fall that helps marketers discover “not only who saw their ad online and who saw their ad on TV, but also how these audiences match up,” says David Wong, vice president at product leadership at Nielsen.

Sean Bruich, Facebook’s head of measurement platforms and standards, believes the new tools are paying off.

“What we can see conclusively a year after the IPO is that ads on Facebook really do help drive people into the store and help them make purchasing decisions, help influence their purchasing decisions,” he says.

A recent Nielsen analysis found that consumers are 55 percent more likely to recall “social ads” than traditional online ads.

So powerful is Facebook’s new analytic arsenal that privacy advocates are growing concerned about the potential intrusiveness of merging consumers’ online and offline experiences.

People “are getting served ads based on things they didn’t put on Facebook and maybe wouldn’t be comfortable putting on Facebook,” says Rainey Reitman, activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil-liberties firm. Facebook says mechanisms are in place to protect privacy.

“We’ve never had anything like Facebook,” Reitman says. “We’ve never had an entity that was able to collect so much information on so much of the world’s population, ever.”

Advertisers aren’t complaining.

“Anywhere that more than a billion people spend time with their friends each month is extremely valuable to us,” says Brad Ruffkess, connection strategist at Coca-Cola.

At Procter and Gamble, the world’s biggest advertiser, “we saw almost from the start that social media is the world’s largest focus group,” says Marc Pritchard, the company’s global brand building officer.

Both companies are important advertisers on Facebook and members of the company’s client council, a group of more than a dozen brands and ad agencies that have met regularly with Facebook executives since 2011 to talk about advertising and marketing on the site. Other members include Unilever, AT&T, Walmart and GroupM North America, a subsidiary of advertising agency giant WPP.

Still, some advertisers remain skeptical. Ryan Holiday, director of marketing at American Apparel, is critical of Facebook’s “sponsored stories.” These are messages from marketers that are interwoven into users’ news feeds. He says the clothing company spends less than 10 percent of its online advertising budget with Facebook.

One thing is increasingly clear: The future belongs to mobile advertising. And just a year ago, Facebook warned investors it was behind in capturing this market. In response, Facebook retrained engineers and rebuilt its mobile applications, which users complained were clunky. Now, there’s an explosion in the number of ads shoehorned in between status updates and cat photos.

“The transition to mobile happened even faster than we believed,” says Carolyn Everson, vice president of global marketing solutions at Facebook.

In the first three months of 2013, Facebook generated $375 million in revenue from mobile ads, about 30 percent of its total ad revenue. That’s impressive given that Facebook had no mobile ads at all just a year ago.

And there’s room to grow. Research firm eMarketer estimates that U.S. mobile advertising spending will grow to $7.29 billion this year, up fivefold from 2011. Facebook is expected to capture some 13 percent of the market, a distant second behind Google at nearly 55 percent, according to eMarketer. By 2015, the mobile ad market is expected to hit $16.2 billion.

Facebook’s stronger grasp of mobile advertising helped get General Motors back.

“Mobile was something GM was particularly passionate about,” says Everson, who joined Facebook two years ago from Microsoft Corp., where she headed global ad sales.

Everson says she sees Facebook as a future advertising empire. The goal is to help companies achieve so-called cross-platform marketing and target people with ads wherever they might be — in front of smartphones, tablets or TV sets.

“A lot of people might argue that TV is the first screen and mobile is the companion screen,” she says. Her take: Mobile is now the first screen. And Facebook’s hope is that advertisers will soon see it this way, too.

“Your customer is walking around with the most personal device they’ve ever had every single day, checking it 12 to, you know, more than 24 times a day depending on the market,” Everson says. “This is a mass medium.”

At the end of last year, 87 percent of Americans owned a cellphone and nearly half owned a smartphone, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Worldwide, research firm Gartner puts the size of the mobile phone market at 4.4 billion, enough to give one phone to nearly two-thirds of the world’s population.

Of course, television still accounts for the biggest slice of worldwide ad spending, and nearly 96 percent of American households own a TV set. ZenithOptimedia, a forecaster owned by the ad agency Publicis Groupe SA, says television accounted for 40 percent of worldwide ad spending, compared with the Internet’s share of 18 percent. By 2015, the Internet is expected to grow its share to more than 23 percent, but largely at the expense of newspapers and magazines. TV is expected to hold steady.

“On any given day in the U.S. alone, you can reach 100 million people on mobile,” Everson says. “Those numbers are not seen across any TV or print opportunity. I think it’s going to take hold, this message.”

© 2014 Associated Press

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Much of the discussion of technology in real estate at the recent Banff Western Connection real estate conference concentrated on using social media more effectively, but the latest technology allows realtors to get a lot more out of conventional print marketing.

Texas-based Bernie Ross, president of RealEstateCoach.com, said real estate agents must switch their thinking when marketing through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Unlike conventional real estate marketing, Ross said, “It’s not about me, me, me. It is about engaging.”

According to Ross, only 5 per cent of a social media site should be selling the realtor’s brand and listings, with 95 per cent concentrated on a conversation with potential clients.

Ross also encouraged realtors to use video in their online presentations.

She explained that, using a smartphone, a realtor could film and post an effective video in less than five minutes; for example, a voice-over guide through listing photos.

Other tips include using www.facebook.com/business to set up a business page to connect with existing clients and expand to reach other networks. Ross explained that a realtor could link up with sites on such topics as winemaking or even hockey to engage a wider pool of potential buyers.

She recommended making the most of LinkedIn sites by getting testimonials from satisfied customers.

Realtors should also sign onto Saskatoon-based Point2 NLS, Ross said. On this system realtors simply add their listings and Point2 posts them to all key search engines, such as Google, MSN and Yahoo and real estate-specific sites such as Trulia, Point2 Homes and even the NY Times.

Layar

Yet for many realtors it is print that is the first step to getting the message out, whether in the form of a business card, a for-sale sign or ads in the local real estate paper or community paper.

And now there’s an application to make print much more compelling and effective.

It is so new – started just seven months ago in Europe – that some technology experts Western Investor talked to for this article hadn’t even heard of it yet.

But they will.

It’s called Layar (www.layar.com). It works whenever someone downloads a free Layar app for his or her smartphone, which allows access to online information that’s invisibly embedded in any printed material the real estate agent has available.

The Real Estate Weekly in Vancouver began offering Layar ads this January in its 500,000-circulation weekly that covers B.C.’s Lower Mainland. Western Investor will roll out the service this spring.

With Layar, a realtor’s print ad can direct a smartphone user to the realtor’s website, a virtual tour of the listing, other listings or a promotional YouTube video, as examples.

In Vancouver the service costs a flat $99 for the advertiser but makes a printed ad come alive – and can also provide precise tracking of how many people have read and responded to the ad.

Some Vancouver realtors are having their business cards and site signs Layar enabled, turning them into virtual billboards of information.

Best of all, Layar takes what most realtors are using – print – and extends into all the social-media marketing the realtor is using.

Getting social

Here are some more tips on using social media courtesy of past sales and marketing chair with the Greater Toronto Home Builders’ Association, Jacky Hill of Wall2Wall Media:

— Be social with Google; stay local with Google+ Local. To ensure your customers can find you geographically ensure your Google Places page (now called Google+ Local) is optimized. Your page lists your company name, address, phone number and website along with a map of your location. It doesn’t cost a thing and you can edit your information or see how many people have seen and clicked on your page at any time. Learn more about Google+ Local at www.google.com/+/learnmore/local.

— Learn about search engine optimization (SEO). It is extremely important to help increase your visibility on search engines like Google where most consumers go first to search for real estate content. Searchengineland.com is a great resource to help you learn more about SEO, providing useful tips and tools. Learn the basics of SEO in three minutes on the site.

— Tracking the success of campaigns and online efforts is crucial to determining return on investment and the time allocated to those tactics. Google’s new Multi-Channel Funnels tool in Google Analytics allows you to view interactions across different digital and marketing channels, showing how these work together to create sales and conversions. This tool can help you make important advertising and communications decisions, including which ad placements convert best.

from Western Investor March 201

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