Category — Experience

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I was walking downtown the other day and came upon this sign on the door of a walk-in retail business:

Let me get this straight. This is a retail business in the middle downtown Steamboat Springs which is one of the few retail districts left where people actually still walk around and it has this sign on the door? What a message to send to “potential” customers.
“Hey!!! We’ll solve your bowel problem if you give us money - otherwise go away.”

So being in the business I’m in, I walked inside to see what could be soooo important. There was a guy behind the counter reading the paper. No greeting, no acknowledgement just ignorance. I walked around a bit unimpressed (obviously a bit biased by the warning on the door). While businesses on the mountain are dying and would pay you to use their restrooms, this business owner has made the genius decision to turn potential business away.

How about this for a solution:

Make the experience inside the store so amazing that I become a customer even if I didn’t intend to. MAKE THE EXPERIENCE AMAZING.
Surprise, delight, entertain, satisfy & cater to me. Provide an experience that I’ll talk about to my friends in a positive way.

I found out later this business is owned by a real estate broker. Blew my mind.

In 1998 it was all about eyeballs. If you had a website that attracted a lot of visitors, you were considered a success - business model & profit be damned. Value to the customer? Who cares. All you needed was eyeballs to get funded. It was a crazy time and of course it didn’t last. But the web didn’t go away. 6 years from the tech melt down, web technologies are better than ever and the key term today is “value.” Websites have become web applications and web applications have become rich experiences. Usability, value and relevancy are all being played out on the web. It’s no longer good enough to have a “brochureware” website online. Your potential and current clients are expecting a lot more in terms of their online experience with your company. They want maps, interactivity, video, context, personal service. Don’t believe me? Take a good look at the graph below.

Century 21 was started in 1971.
Coldwell Banker was started in 1906.
Redfin was started in 2004.

This graph compares daily website traffic of the three companies. Redfin is not national and only serves a few markets and yet its site is getting as much traffic as these national giants. Why? That’s for you to figure out. And you should because they aren’t going away and I’m sure there are more companies like Redfin on the way. I believe a lot of their traction is due to taking a fresh perspective on the real estate business. They’ve created tools that users want, value and are easy to use. They create a rich experience for their users and guess what - those users tell their friends. And so on, and so on… until you have a graph like this:

(Click for a larger image.)

The days of putting up info about yourself are over. It’s all about how you are going to solve problems using a rich experience. If you don’t, that’s fine, but someone else will and that’s what will get talked about and that’s where buyers & sellers will go.

If you were here over the 4th, hope you got to see the ski jumping. If not, here’s a video we took to give you a taste of what you missed. Sorry about the alignment but we wanted to give you a better video. (high-speed connection recommended)

 

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From the MLS 6/15/07 - This broker doesn’t care enough to update the pictures in the MLS.

Can you find the For Sale sign in this picture? There actually is one but this broker didn’t care enough to position the sign so it could be seen by traffic.

Do their clients even know or care? The bigger implication is what this does to their reputation. As we, the market, see these obvious screw-ups we make judgments in our mind about competency, value, etc. We say to ourselves, why would I hire a broker who markets this way?

So not only are they doing their clients a disservice, they’re shooting themselves in the foot for future business. The seemingly trivial interactions with the public are in reality a big deal. We notice.

We have 2 humming bird feeders in our back yard. My wife loves her’s - it’s made from hand-blown glass, has interesting colors, has a copper hook, etc. It’s beautiful! It also costs 10 TIMES more than mine which is a simple plastic red & yellow feeder.

And yet I noticed that the humming birds NEVER feed from hers! They flock to my cheap feeder over & over. Why? It turns out that humming birds are attracted to red flowers. So no matter how gorgeous my wife’s feeder is, its not what they want. My el-cheapo has what they want.

This happens in business all the time. With websites, marketing materials, advertising and so on. We think we know what will attract new customers. We spend a lot of time and money to get it just right and no one shows up. Real Estate companies spend thousands on website redesigns incorporating the “latest web technologies” and their traffic is the same as before or worse. Then all kinds of reasons get made up as to why it’s better; how we’re future-proofed, how we’re ahead of the competition. Or we ask our friends. “Looks great Jim” they say.

Before you spend another dime marketing your business do your homework first. Talk to your clients. Find out what is important to them. Ask them what would make their life easier. What “feeder” are they looking for?

We don’t buy what you’re selling. We buy what we want.
Big difference.

After spending four nights at the Hyatt near Disneyland in Anaheim California, two very different hotel guests became apparent; families & business travelers. These two segments have no overlap, completely different needs and different expectations. Yet we didn’t feel like a family trapped in a business traveler’s hotel and the business travelers’ needs were met as well.

The Hyatt provides a great experience for both customer segments because they understand, anticipate and meet the needs of their different customer segments. This applies to real estate as well. Condo buyers, second home buyers, local sellers, investment clients all have different needs and expectations.

Do you “wing it” or do you have a well planned framework for interacting with these different segments? Do you “wing it” or do you constantly evaluate how each segment is changing and what their expectations are? What’s the competition doing to meet their needs?

Next time you look at your website or marketing materials, think about these people. Know that typically the more money someone has, the more likely they are to be a “skimmer/flipper.”

Skimmers & Flippers

• Headlines are key
• Maybe a line or two gets read
• First impressions are everything
• Gone in a flash to skim something else

Readers

• Looking for compelling content
• Want to be educated
• They challenge content

When Safeway recently renovated their store they did several things to improve the experience. New hardwood floors in the produce section, better lighting throughout, and the addition of a Starbucks are just some of the more obvious aspects of the renovation. But what Safeway truly accomplished was a better shopping experience. What Safeway understands is that when you walk into their store you have a shopping problem. A food problem, a drug problem, a party problem, a diaper problem. Whatever the problem is, they want to to be the best at solving it.

When I go to Safeway, I have a number of problems I’m trying to solve and real estate isn’t one of them. I have a time problem (I’m late) not a real estate problem. I have a “What’s for dinner?” problem not a real estate problem. I have an “I’m on a mission for the wife” problem not a real estate problem. So the shopping cart ads are invisible to me.

“Personal, relevant & anticipated” is Altera’s mantra and if you can accomplish that with a shopping cart ad, you can do it with just about anything. Understanding my problem the way Safeway does is key here. Use the ad space to help me. Think of things like “Dads’ Guide” for clueless dads sent on a mission. Or “20 Minute Dinner Your Family Will Love!” with easy to read ingredients along with their location in the store. Scale your current picture way down - it’s not about you.

Top it off with a funny, easy-to-remember-cause-I’m-not-gonna-write-it-down website address: www.safewaykartking.com

www.isawthisinsafeway.com.

Until you’re helping me you’re just another invisible ad in the 800 - 1200 ads I’ve been exposed to today. So next time your working on your advertising, think about the Safeway principle - what problem does your audience have and how can you help solve it?
Personal Relevant & Anticipated.

Everyone knows the oldest trick in the book to help sell a home is aromatizing - filling a home with the aroma of fresh baked bread for example to help create an inviting atmosphere. It works. My wife & I recently toured some homes and the ones with a great aroma had a greater impact. How about taking this concept (”make the home inviting”) outside to the curb?

$134 billion dollars was spent last year in advertising and marketing. The average number of advertising messages the average person sees in a day is an elusive figure but I’ve seen numbers ranging from 800 to 3000 messages per day! Suffice to say, we are bombarded with messages.

Your roadside “For Sale” sign is no different. It’s one of many and for the most part it’s invisible (and crooked and rusting and hard to read from a distance).

Stand out, provide value and get noticed by taking the “bread” concept to the corner. Get some gorgeous “For Sale” signs made up - something that’s contrasting, very simple & easy to read from a distance. Go see the Carving Cowboy when he comes around and get burnished wooden ones made. Then top it off by putting it in a gorgeous flower barrel and put that on the curb. Your clients will love you because their driveway entrance looks more inviting. The neighbors will love you because you’ve added to the appeal of the neighborhood. Potential buyers will notice it because its different (remember 800 to 3000 messages per day) and experience a more inviting, warm & down-to-earth feel.

This isn’t about you or your company - potential buyers driving by don’t care at this point. This is about providing a unique service to your clients. Yes, this is much harder than planting a metal, self-serving, sign in the front yard. But creating exceptional client experiences is what will grow your business in this ultra-competitive marketplace.

I was doing a bit of research the other day and came across an interesting article about Porsches and a little known measurement called “path accuracy.” According to Car & Driver it seems that if you compare a Porsche 911 to a Corvette, in just about every metric, the Corvette wins; faster 0-60, faster in the quarter mile, faster to stop, more horsepower as well as others. And the Corvette costs about 38% less than the Porsche. So why then did over 30,000 people buy Porsches last year instead of the Corvette? It’s unreasonable to assume that $1.8 billion were spent on Porsches solely because of the story of the brand.

It turns out the hard to measure metric “path accuracy” is really important here. A Porsche goes where you put it. The Porsche level of path accuracy gives the driver a superior feeling of control; almost magical. But just because it’s hard to measure doesn’t mean it’s not real. It’s so real that car buyers spend more than $1 billion a year for it.

The point here is that in a metric minded organization, it’s easy to focus on the things that are easy to measure instead of the things that are important but hard to measure. What’s the thing in your company that make clients feel really good but is hard to measure? Are your clients willing to pay more for it?