Marketing that Moves People

How real estate agents can build a brand, find fans, land leads, and communicate convincingly

Shelley Zavitz

• Publisher: Harriman House
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9780857199614
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Real Estate
• Index: Business

It's time to find your marketing rhythm!Most real estate agents struggle with marketing. After all, we sell homes. There's no reason selling our services should come naturally.Shortcuts won't cut it: purchased leads often lead to random results. Meanwhile, gimmicks get old, and shouting about success turns out to be one of the least successful things you can do.But there is a way to build a loyal, passionate, and constantly growing group of clients who can be the basis of a flourishing real estate business in any market. You will even see high-quality leads brought to you - for free.The secret lies in an authentic, empathic, and creative approach that any real estate agent can adopt and get results with. It's based on proven marketing and copywriting principles that have stood the test of time. And it's an enjoyable and engaging process that will not only set you apart from your competitors but make you a better Realtor® in the process.Author and Realtor® Shelley Zavitz got thrown into the marketing deep end at the start of her first award-winning career, in radio. By the time she took up real estate, she had pieced together the down-to-earth system for success revealed for the first time in this book.With a little help from the musical megastars who inspired Shelley along the way, Marketing That Moves People is your number-one guide to cutting through the clutter and standing out in the ways that really matter to those you seek to serve.

Chapter 1:
Running With Scissors

Or, How I Learned the Marketing Ropes
the Hard Way

“It made sense to me—it was a joke”, I said as three faces looked down at me. They were backlit by harsh office lights, and the seat I was in was getting hotter by the second.

“A… joke?”

“Yes, I—”

“Let me read to you what this listener said about that ad you wrote, Shelley,” said the program director. He picked up the printout. The creative director in the doorway crossed his arms. The work was piling up on his desk. He didn’t have time for this.

I had been in the radio business for about nine months at this point, fresh from college where I had studied advertising and communications. I was a spry 20-something junior copywriter, walking to work in cheap heels past the Jaguars and BMWs in the parking lot of the radio station. I was broker than broke.

And I had just messed up my first real break.

I had been given the task of writing an ad for a pet food store: Ken’s Pet Depot.1 (“One of our most loyal advertisers,” the program director had said.) The radio salesperson who had Ken’s Pet Depot for a client was one of the three figures glaring at me right now in what might as well have been the smallest office space on the planet.

The job had called for wit. My idea had been to do a take on the famous Saturday Night Live skits ‘Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey’—absurd reflections on life delivered with all the solemnity of a mountain-top philosopher over lilting keyboards and babbling mountain brooks. (E.g. “I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate… And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.”)

I was going to highlight some of the weird and wonderful things your pet might be thinking—to share what your dog or cat or bird might say about everyday situations if only they had a human voice.

I had a whole campaign written. There was Spot the Dog, Cocoa the Cat, Paulie the Parrot…

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have started with Spot the Dog. At the very least, I shouldn’t have shared his thoughts on what it was like to poop out a red crayon and see his master’s disappointed face…

The program director finished re-reading the listener complaint aloud. The station’s format was designed for an audience aged 50-plus. We crooned with Sinatra, and ‘a-tisketed and a-tasketed’ with Ella Fitzgerald, and the Big Kahuna had a Thursday evening show for 60s surf rock.

You can imagine what the audience made of crayon poop.

“Greg,” I pleaded, my arms out-stretched as if in prayer: “there was a whole campaign—”

“I don’t give a lick about your campaign. Our listeners are furious!” His voice was reaching stadium volume.

Come hell or high water, I had been determined to smash my talent flag into the mountain. Now I was being buried in the avalanche.

My goal had been to secure a full promotion to copywriter and unshackle myself from answering the switchboard from 1pm to 5pm. (The switchboard in that station was a surreal place where careers went to die. On my first day in radio an announcer had said it was where women truly belonged. Every day at 3pm, Alma, a devoted listener, would call with her own radio blaring in the background, creating deafening feedback in my headphones, to ask if her husband Edgar was there. I would wager that dear Edgar, bless his heart, had not been anywhere for some time.)

“Come on Greg, let up a bit,” said my boss, the creative director, arms still crossed in the doorway. “She’s just a kid.” The creative department, which I only half belonged to, wrote at least 10 to 15 commercials a day. Time was ticking.

“You’re done writing for Ken’s Pet Depot,” said Greg, the PD. “Done. And you will write a formal apology that we will publish in the local newspaper.” He stood up and put his hands on his beltline. The sales guy copied his stance. “This meeting is over.” My stomach went from marbles to mush. By the time I made it the 13 steps back to my desk, there was an all-company email about the pet-food campaign and the red-crayon poop, about my impending apology, and an order to pull all further ads from the on-air log.

Technically, an email was probably overkill. Everyone had heard the program director screaming down the hall.

I sat at my desk and stared at my screen. It was 9:05am. Great, only 7 hours and 55 minutes before I could get out of this place. I remember my next thought as clear as day: ‘What just happened?’

I was in disbelief. I honestly didn’t know.

I spent the next decade answering that question.

Finding the framework

In the end there was more than one answer. It was like piecing together a puzzle.

That puzzle was finally mostly done when I was sitting as the creative director for Vancouver’s Virgin Radio nine years later. I worked for one of the largest broadcasting companies in Canada at that point. In an effort to teach new copywriters for all stations on the West Coast, I was preparing a workbook of how to write effective ads to reach listeners for copywriters all over the nation.

Almost a decade after The Incident, as I was compiling the basics of what everyone who wants to market a product or service needs to know, I was taken back to my junior copywriting chair. I realized I had broken nearly every basic rule in my own manual with that first campaign.

By then, I was an award-winning radio creative director and copywriter, winning both international and national ad awards. However, how I got there was like running with scissors. There was a lot of (metaphorical) blood. Also, sweat, tears—all that stuff, with mist...

Table of contents

• Contents
• About the Author
• Introduction: Singing for Your Supper
• Chapter 1: Running With Scissors
• Chapter 2: The Essential Rules of Marketing
• Chapter 3: Your Target Market
• Chapter 4: Your Brand Identity
• Chapter 5: Your Burning Why
• Chapter 6: Segmenting Your Market
• Chapter 7: Cutting Through the Clutter
• Chapter 8: Copywriting and Content Creation
• Chapter 9: Setting the Stage
• Chapter 10: Taking Center Stage
• Final Thought: Embrace Your Superpower
• Publishing details