Break the Rules: Market Better than your Competition

By Bill Svoboda

Today, there's a lot of pressure put on title companies to begin marketing online.  I'm sure the most common thing you hear about is the necessity of being on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and countless other social media platforms. However, for most title companies, I firmly believe this is not the right advice for two reasons:

1. While it's great to market your company, most websites are not optimized in a way to actually capture the traffic that your marketing should drive.  If your website doesn't check off a basic list of features (I'll provide later), you will probably spend money marketing without seeing any results.
2. You probably don't know what to market.  Think about this... does the average Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram user really care about title as they are scrolling through their newsfeed?  Nope.  You're the furthest thing from their mind and the last thing they want to see/read about is "what is title," unless they happen to be in that big moment of closing on a house. But, you might spend thousands and thousands of dollars marketing before you ever have your ad appear in front of that person at just the right time; and still, if their agent does not mention your company as one of their 3 recommendations, all that marketing was for nothing.

So, here's my simple solution that will add 100x more value than spending thousands and thousands of dollars on your marketing...First, before marketing to outsiders, consider those in your Sales Funnel (currently closing or deciding to close with you). When someone decides to use your title company, googles you, and lands on your website, what do they see? Is it something that builds trust in your company and merits the fee you are going to charge?  If not, what can you do about it?

Here's a basic list of things you can do today (or tomorrow) to get your site to a place where Google actually cares about you, and your message can be clearly communicated:

1. Mobile Responsive Site (i.e., Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix, etc.)
2. A Blog on your site
3. A Google Plus Account
4. A Google Places account for each location
5. A Google Analytics account tied to your website

Without these 4 things, don't spend $1 marketing because you'd be driving people to a site that does not communicate your message the way websites that you, me and consumers experience 99% of their time surfing the web.

Once your website meets these 3 criteria, your next steps should be:

1. Set up a Facebook Fan Page
2. Set up a Twitter Account
3. Set up any other social platforms that you want to begin to have conversations on.

From there, you can actually begin to "market." I'd actually like to turn the idea of "marketing" into a better and more approachable concept of "having conversations."  Here are some first steps towards having conversations:

1. Connect with the Real Estate agents that are your best referral source.
2. Like, comment and just show them some love online when they post... not on every post, but on the best posts.  Just let them know you're still there.
3. Post a helpful tip or two on your social media platform, possibly quoting one of your favorite real estate agents, then drive people back to your site to read more about the interview or topic.  
4. Use social media to have conversations and tease people to your site. Don't use it to just broadcast about title all day, every day. The majority of people don't care, and it costs soooooo much money to constantly reach out until that one time they do care.  

Bottom-line: Make amazing content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc will love you... and your customers will love you too.  That's the BIG win!

 

Bill Svoboda is the co-founder of CloseSimple, a software that helps with communication during the title and escrow process. Svoboda, along with Wayne Stanley  of Bowe Digital will speak more in depth about how to market in the title industry during a session titled "Break the Rules: Market Better than your Competition” at ALTA ONE in October. Click here to register for ALTA ONE.