Digital Marketing Field Guide

JUSTIN STUTZ – VP TRAINING AND EDUCATION

I HATE math.

That is a weird way of starting an article that is about digital marketing, however, many small business owners feel much the same about digital marketing as I feel about math. Lucky for me, tools exist (thank you iPhone) that take the stress out of figuring out how much credit card debt I incurred during the holiday season this year and lucky for all of us that digital marketing can be just as stress-free.

Digital marketing at its basic level can be accomplished in three simple steps. The Digital Marketing Field Guide will show you how you can draw the attention of people who may not know you yet, and how to stay in front of the people who already know, like, and trust you (other than your mother).

Step One – Facebook Advertising

For the un-initiated Facebook continues to be a great place to watch cat videos and reach the far and vast edges of the inter-webs. While the edges may not be what we’re looking for in this instance, you can just as easily target people within your community. To do this we’ll be setting up a Facebook branding post and targeting those folks that are most likely to be our next customers.

Purpose: Use Facebook and Instagram advertising to run hyper-local branding campaign targeted to your farm areas.

Setup: Ads manager – Lead generation

Audience: Pick 2 -3 zip codes or small radius around your farm area. Choose “homeowners” and “likely to move” from detailed targeting.

Budget and Schedule: Daily budget of $5 – $10 per day for 30 days

Here’s an example of what your ad campaign may look like:

Step Two – Create some content

Staying in touch with our database on a regular basis is one of the more difficult tasks that small business owners struggle with their marketing efforts. A well-written monthly article, report, or helpful tip can accomplish several goals. First, provide fresh content for your website which helps for SEO purposes. Second, it provides useful information and helps you stay connected to your database. Third, it will increase traffic and opportunities from your email and social campaigns that we’ll get to shortly.

Purpose: Create a monthly blog post on your website. The article length should be between 600-1000 words and offer information that adds value and establishes you as an expert in your field.

Blog ideas:

• Top 10 ways to increase your home’s value
• Staging secrets from the experts
• Top home maintenance tips you can’t afford to ignore
• Understanding a home inspection
• The new rules of buying and selling real estate
• 5 signs of a seller’s market
• 5 signs of a buyers market
• What you need to know about interest rates
• Here’s what’s happening in your neighborhood
• Top local businesses you need to check out

In addition to the above ideas, there are many resources that should help you get the content flowing. Check out Buzz Sumo to find what content is performing best on the Internet. You can type in a word or two that you’re interested in researching and see if anyone else cares about that topic as much as you do. If research and data are more your speed, Altos Research may be a good fit. Altos does a great job of analyzing and delivering housing market data for 20,000+ local markets.

Step Three – Database follow up and website traffic

You can’t always count on your database to be checking in on your website and reading your carefully constructed blogs. To make sure all your hard work doesn’t go to waste, turn it into a condensed, graphically appealing PDF report to email out.

Setup: Use Word or Pages for copy and Canva.com for images. Keep just the highlights of your blog post, not the full article. You want people to click the link in your email to view the “full report” on your website.

Method: Send an email to your database at the beginning of each month. The body of your email should include a few sentences about why they should open the attachment. Also, be sure to include a link to read the “full report” on your website as a call to action.

Example email:

Headline: Don’t buy a home without reading this first!

Body: I didn’t mean to scare you, but if you’re looking to buy a home in the next few months you need to check out my newest report, “5 Tips for Buying a Home”.

P.S. You can get the full report on our site (link to article)

Last, but not least create a post on your Facebook business page with a link back to the blog post on your website.

See, digital marketing isn’t so hard, right? With just three simple steps to follow you can find those people who are ready to be your next customer and show some love to the people who already love you back.