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Serving Real Estate Builders and Brokerages

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

BizyDad

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Can't believe it took me this long to see this thread. Awesome stuff.


I thought I was the only one. Not too long ago I dived a little into programmatic. Talked to an expert, a media buyer who had been in the game for a long time. Also talked to him about interactive TV ads. Even he was like "if you don't know what you're getting into, don't buy programmatic".

VERY interesting bit about press though. That's something I've ignored for... well, ever. I know basically nothing about it. What would you say is the most important thing to know about getting press releases out there?
@The-J 'sup my dude? Sorry I just now remembered to reply to this.

A couple caveats first.

There's a difference between getting press and doing press releases.

Also, in the SEO game, doing press releases usually means signing up for some press release service. Those are a waste of time, imo.

Last caveat, we get press for all kinds of clients, but this is my real estate related thread, so I'm just going to talk in terms of real estate.

Since you asked about press releases, the "secret" is you've got to have something newsworthy. PR folks talk about having an angle. I like to think of it as telling the story in a way that normal humans are actually interested in it.

So there's two stages in a new project's life cycle that are pretty "easy" to get press releases out there and get them picked up. Maybe three actually. First, when you announce the project. There are a lot of factors to consider, and like I said in the original post, I don't take part in all the meetings, so I can't really advise you on the best time to announce a project. But honestly, a lot of these projects don't do a big push when they first announce it.

They do their big push when they do a groundbreaking. So that's the second ( or first) time. And then the third one is when your phase one of the project is done, or you're somewhere around halfway and you make it sound like a phase one is done. I know some real estate communities have multiple phases, but I've yet to work on a bigger project like that.

Taking a human interest angle on it makes things so much easier. Like the project that's bringing affordable housing to downtown. Super easy. The project that was coming out of the ground first after the great recession. Super easy. The community that took great steps to make sure they were friendly to people with special needs, including not having streets or garages so that there was plenty of wide walkways. Super duper easy.

But sometimes you got to dig deep. And sometimes you take swings and miss. That one project I mentioned up above where we upped the prices and sold out. That project is in South Phoenix. We never got a bit of press for it. We just couldn't figure out how to tell the tale in a way that the press wanted to share the story with their readers. They didn't want to cover the groundbreaking. And that big rush of sales at the end took us by surprise, so we never did the first phase sold out.

Anyways, beyond just releases, there's a bit of an art to getting press. I feel like it's a game to connect the dots sometimes.

Find a magazine you want to get into. Do your research on the kind of articles they've done before. Pitch them something that's similar, but with a different spin on it.

I see last year you wrote about travertine. Well this year we've got a project that's using porcelain. Would your readers be interested in learning more about the porcelain countertop trend? (That's a terrible pitch. Don't use it. This is why I pay other people to do the pitching. But you get the idea...)

Sometimes it's easy to figure out what kind of magazines would want to write about your project.

Find the publications that write about real estate. Submit yourself for their annual awards (if you live in a big enough city).

You can probably connect some of the dots, as I've already shared what makes some of these communities special. Golf course home community gets written about in luxury magazine. And a golf magazine. These luxury apartments are using smart home tech, we get that written up in a tech mag.

There are architecture magazines, and design magazines, and home and garden magazines, and builder magazines, etc etc.

I didn't even talk about blogs. We don't do much pitching to blogs. But you can.

But you don't use the press release strategy on these kind of things. You just approach them and pitch tailored story ideas. Well, we usually pitch one story idea at a time. Or we'll give him a quick three ideas and ask them if they're interested in any one of them.

Anyways bro it's late, that's all I got for now. Hope that helps you get started. Feel free to ask any follow up questions. I am planning on writing more about this topic in its own thread at a later time.
 
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The-J

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@The-J 'sup my dude? Sorry I just now remembered to reply to this.

A couple caveats first.

There's a difference between getting press and doing press releases.

Also, in the SEO game, doing press releases usually means signing up for some press release service. Those are a waste of time, imo.

Last caveat, we get press for all kinds of clients, but this is my real estate related thread, so I'm just going to talk in terms of real estate.

Since you asked about press releases, the "secret" is you've got to have something newsworthy. PR folks talk about having an angle. I like to think of it as telling the story in a way that normal humans are actually interested in it.

So there's two stages in a new project's life cycle that are pretty "easy" to get press releases out there and get them picked up. Maybe three actually. First, when you announce the project. There are a lot of factors to consider, and like I said in the original post, I don't take part in all the meetings, so I can't really advise you on the best time to announce a project. But honestly, a lot of these projects don't do a big push when they first announce it.

They do their big push when they do a groundbreaking. So that's the second ( or first) time. And then the third one is when your phase one of the project is done, or you're somewhere around halfway and you make it sound like a phase one is done. I know some real estate communities have multiple phases, but I've yet to work on a bigger project like that.

Taking a human interest angle on it makes things so much easier. Like the project that's bringing affordable housing to downtown. Super easy. The project that was coming out of the ground first after the great recession. Super easy. The community that took great steps to make sure they were friendly to people with special needs, including not having streets or garages so that there was plenty of wide walkways. Super duper easy.

But sometimes you got to dig deep. And sometimes you take swings and miss. That one project I mentioned up above where we upped the prices and sold out. That project is in South Phoenix. We never got a bit of press for it. We just couldn't figure out how to tell the tale in a way that the press wanted to share the story with their readers. They didn't want to cover the groundbreaking. And that big rush of sales at the end took us by surprise, so we never did the first phase sold out.

Anyways, beyond just releases, there's a bit of an art to getting press. I feel like it's a game to connect the dots sometimes.

Find a magazine you want to get into. Do your research on the kind of articles they've done before. Pitch them something that's similar, but with a different spin on it.

I see last year you wrote about travertine. Well this year we've got a project that's using porcelain. Would your readers be interested in learning more about the porcelain countertop trend? (That's a terrible pitch. Don't use it. This is why I pay other people to do the pitching. But you get the idea...)

Sometimes it's easy to figure out what kind of magazines would want to write about your project.

Find the publications that write about real estate. Submit yourself for their annual awards (if you live in a big enough city).

You can probably connect some of the dots, as I've already shared what makes some of these communities special. Golf course home community gets written about in luxury magazine. And a golf magazine. These luxury apartments are using smart home tech, we get that written up in a tech mag.

There are architecture magazines, and design magazines, and home and garden magazines, and builder magazines, etc etc.

I didn't even talk about blogs. We don't do much pitching to blogs. But you can.

But you don't use the press release strategy on these kind of things. You just approach them and pitch tailored story ideas. Well, we usually pitch one story idea at a time. Or we'll give him a quick three ideas and ask them if they're interested in any one of them.

Anyways bro it's late, that's all I got for now. Hope that helps you get started. Feel free to ask any follow up questions. I am planning on writing more about this topic in its own thread at a later time.

A load of awesome information. I had never thought of press that way.

I noticed, for example, some friends of mine being featured in newspapers, big blogs, magazines and the like. I didn't quite understand why what they were doing deserved an article, particularly since there are guys here who get absolutely no press and are seriously making waves. I assumed they had contacts or were paying for a service or something. Now I get it a bit more.

Thanks for the write-up. I'll be saving this post.
 

BizyDad

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I should written this update 2 weeks ago. Got another complex rented up. I am at least temporarily I am out of the rental market.

My most difficult client put our effort on hold. It's a super niche product in the for sale space, and while we gotten rankings and leads, there just isn't a lot of search traffic for his project.

So at the moment I am down to 2 projects. One nearly done, the other still has a ways to go.

Interesting things I've learned since my last update.

My lead sources have gone cold. Interesting because the real estate market here is hot. But my clients tended towards the smaller builders and maybe they are getting squeezed by the bigger players? I run my business almost exclusively off referrals, and I am not concerned at all, business-wise, but it is a little curious because I am used to real estate being as much as 40% of my revenue.

There's a lumber shortage, prices are crazy cutting into margins. This is partly due to damage to 2 mills from the fires over the summer having not been brought back online. Once it does, it'll still take several months to get timber through the process into the supply chain.

Google has been making it harder to do what I do. That has always been the case, but they are getting stingier with data. Local maps data is now showing less phrases and aggregating small searches under 15 searches per month (as opposed to under 10). Keyword research tool is showing less and less results, and it is combining more smaller phrases so taking a sniper approach to phrase is more difficult. And more and more campaigns are getting marked with all kinds of warnings which restrict the use of some of the more fun tools we have at our disposal for personalized marketing.

That said, Google continues to improve its capabilities for automated targeting. So, they're making it easier to do what I do. (In a sense. The conspiracy theory part of me wonders if eventually they'll be good enough to squeeze guys like me out of the process. But that's a concern for down the road, not today.) For me, this is one of the most impressive things to come out of 2020. My latest trick is setting up audience expansion off of site visitor re-marketing lists. I've always preferred Facebook for all re-marketing, but that may be changing. Google's results are approaching FB's in terms of automated targeting. Still more expensive overall though. I'll continue testing and post an update if I see more positive results.
 

BizyDad

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I didn't expect to be writing another update so soon. But we sold out of another project.

This one again completed ahead of schedule. It was also triggered by a price increase. We had 20% unsold at the beginning of January, but announcement of a coming price increase moved some off the fence, and the scarcity of a few left did the rest.

Not much to share after my last update. So I am down to one client who is down to one project. Today he confirmed that this will be their only project through 2021. It's his most expensive/ambitious project in our time working together, and we did record sales in January, but he expects sales pace to go through Q2 '22.

I did start making a few calls to unearth some referrals which led to 2 new leads in the space. If you want some tactics in that area, I wrote this post a while back, but it isn't just for real estate.
 
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BizyDad

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Yup. Went kind of dormant here. Well, in the last 2 years, I haven't signed any new builder clients, but I have signed 2 real estate brokerages. One is a fast growing agency in AZ specializing in high end real estate. The other is a nationwide group and I supported all markets, except California.

Until yesterday. The California offices are coming on board after seeing the success we've had in the 20 some other markets.

Plus I signed a real estate team too.

Funny how the tactics are basically the same to rank a brokerage office as it is to rank a car shop like @Carlitos or a landscaper like @Juan Pimentel or @Johnny boy . I've said it before, I'll say it again, if you know how to market, you can build just about any business. Think about that Fastlane Fam.

Anyways, we have also been shifting into more web app development and business software for these types of companies. My business partner has been working on this project for 2 years, getting paid the whole time, and it has saved the client tens of thousands of dollars a year, while giving them something that can attract new agents to their brokerage.

The entire time I've been on this forum, I haven't had a true CENTS, Fastlane enterprise. But after 2 years of coding, we just might finally be close to launching and transforming into a proper software company.

Of course, I've said we've been close before... Fingers crossed. I changed the name of the thread to reflect this new direction.

For those following along at home, the quick version of my journey is banker turned salesperson turned freelancer turned agency turned e-commerce store owner...... and soon software. It's all part of this hub strategy I'm developing. And I'm not done yet.

Yeah, I'm just not going to listen to someone try and say freelancing isn't a good stepping stone on your journey...
 

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