The Naked Truth About Relevance
This article has been translated from its original Swedish viewpoint to give marketers and agents around the world a look at why ‘staying relevant’ matters now more than ever before.
When it comes to Facebook & Instagram, there are still many in the real estate industry who talk about reach, ie. the number of people a campaign or post reaches. As these platforms have fundamentally changed our marketing strategies, the importance of our KPIs has also changed.
The current landscape
According to the annual report Swedes and the Internet, which was released last autumn, 98% of Sweden's population is now on the Internet, while 95% spend large parts of their day online. Maybe this percentage distribution should also be reflected in how offices should spend their media budget when it comes to marketing homes for sale? At the very least, I think we are heading for a world where we let the digital rule while at the same time investing in analogue marketing campaigns from time to time, not the other way around.
The importance of relevance
Why then do I believe in this type of allocation? The answer is relevance. With today's digital platforms, we can work with relevance in a more efficient way compared to previous generations. When it comes to brand building, we as media buyers often want to reach a broad mass through a larger media mix. Translated in plain text, this means that we as marketers invest in a number of different media, both digital and analogue, in order to build up the agency's brand around Sweden or around current focus areas.
Applying this to Real Estate
When it comes to marketing 'homes for sale', the ambition is instead to sell the home and broad marketing will therefore not be a goal in itself. The ingredient for selling a home is spelled out by speculators, and in order to succeed in attracting more speculators, we need to market to people who are interested in the specific type of home we are currently selling. Here we touch on one of the cornerstones when it comes to the difference between working with old media compared to working digitally and data-driven methods.
If I only had the opportunity to convey an insight into marketing in our current times, understanding relevance would be one of the more important insights I could convey!
