Understanding Your Client and Creating a Long Term Experience

 

So, what do you actually KNOW about your clients and referral sources?  You probably know the following demographic information:

1. 1.  Where they live.
2. 2.  What they do for a living.
3. 3.  What their general income looks like.
4. 4.  Their race, sex, and family status.
5. 5.  Possibly their educational level.

But the question becomes, “Does this truly make them people,  or are these just demographic factors that we often draw assumptions from?”  I think this is a huge difference between knowing your clients’ Demographics and their Psychographics… and I believe that the Psychographics are what we really need to know.

What’s the difference between the two?  According toWikipedia…

* Demographics – refer to selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research. Commonly-used demographics include race, age, income, disabilities, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, and even location.

* Psychographics– are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. They are also called IAO variables (for Interests, Attitudes, and Opinions).

I made my first post this morning on www.Utterz.com(this site is incredibly cool.  Audio-blogging) talking about how I am working with my agents to develop marketing campaigns geared around creating a Long Term Customer Experience throughout the course of the relationship… not just the transaction.  Where this is pretty Real Estate specific, I believe that it could easily be incorporated into any business that depends on the word or mouth advertising or referrals of clients. 

–> If you’re interested in putting together a long term email campaign for your clients like this, listen to my Utterz post here:  http://tinyurl.com/5hqztl

I think that the important thing to focus on when developing this type of email campaign to your clients is your target, or “Top Ten” list.  These are your “Top Ten” client and referral sources that you would like to  clone into ALL future business.  These might not be your most expensive clients, or most likely to buy tomorrow, but they are people you enjoy working with, respect you as a professional, and think highly of the service you provide.  Below are the steps I recommend you take to develop this campaign:

1.  Send the email below to your “Top Ten” list of clients and contacts

To get a copy of the Psychographic Variable Introduction Email click here http://tinyurl.com/5d2qmg

2.  Follow up with a phone call afterwards to go through the fact finding questions with them.

To get a copy of the Psychographic Variable Questions for clients click here http://tinyurl.com/6s3z2r

3.  Review the answers that you get from your “Top Ten” and find the 6 degrees of separation between them.  The typical shared interests will usually be food, drink, family, travel, fun, etc.  These will determine the “Personal” content of your campaign.

4.  Print out a 12 month calendar and determine what your campaign will look like over the next year.  (i.e. July might be an Al Fresco dining recommendation, August could be day/weekend trips before school starts).

5.  Determine what “Professional” elements you are going to include in the campaign. (i.e. market data, links to articles of interest, etc.)

6. Put these elements together into a short (2 – 3) paragraph email with a couple of hyperlinks together for your database to review.  (1 paragraph intro, 1 paragraph personal, 1 paragraph professional).  The idea is that even though the campaign’s content is based on what those MOST IMPORTANT TO YOUR BUSINESS would find valuable, it will probably appeal to a much broader database. 

Our goal is that our clients and contacts will:

*Find it VALUABLEenough to pass onto their personal sphere of influence

*Brand us as a local community EXPERT, and increase communication between us

*Open the lines for referrals, because referrals are a Two Sided Business

*Take the first steps in becoming a LOVEMARK to our clients, and not just a brand

Ask yourself this question.  “When you’re driving down the street and see a For Sale sign from your company that isn’t your listing, don’t you feel just a little proud of that?  Don’t you feel that because you have contributed to that company, that the agent’s success for that property is partially yours?”

Usually, the answer is YES.  And just like that situation, we want to make our clients and contacts feel part of our business, feel like contributors to YOUR success, and most importantly… special.

The thing to remember here is that this is target marketing.  We are not trying to be all things to all people… we are attempting to truly understand and deliever information to those that effect our business most positively.  On top of that, I believe you’ll probably feel much more confident (See Become the Jame Bond of Real Estate Post) in your communication with clients when you provide something of value to them. 

Matt Dollinger

@properties