In my previous article, I shared how to work with local home service providers to provide more value to the people in your database.
In this follow up article, you’ll learn how to execute this co-marketing strategy with the specific steps Vyral Marketing can take to do it for you.
(I picked the real estate industry because many of our clients are in this industry, but these principles apply to any industry you’re in.)
Here are the benefits to helping local service professionals market their business by interviewing them on your video blog.
They can post your videos on their website, linking back to yours, to boost SEO.
They can formally recommend you in their customer communications.
They can forward your direct lead generation email offers to their database.
They can send your co-marketing interview to their database.
They can give you personal, direct referrals when you speak regularly on the phone.
They can mention you in their new customer welcome process automatically.
They can provide a “leave-behind” about you after all their consultations.
They can pay you directly for your professional sales and marketing advice.
The #1 benefit of the co-marketing plan is it’s your “reason” to get on the phone with people at a scheduled monthly time who likely know people who need to buy or sell a home to ask for referrals.
This is an incredible asset – a consistent stream of referrals from local service providers with their implied recommendation because they co-market with you.
Of course, you’ll need to make sure you stay within RESPA and talk to your attorney about the liability of recommending a specific service provider to your clients.
So let’s talk about how to get this started. Here are the steps we will take….
#1: Build a list of local service providers who want to grow their business.
Take a look at all the potential service providers you can partner with on Angie’s List. It’s incredible. After getting a list from you of the people you know you want to work with, we will crawl through Angie’s List, Yelp!, Google Local, The Yellow Pages, and your local Chamber of Commerce to build a list of service providers who spend money on marketing, have great reviews, enjoy a strong online presence, and likely work with people who may want to sell or buy a home.
These are the professions we’ll start with first.
Home Builders – they may have buyers who need to sell their home first
Interior design – they know what the homeowner wants in a home
Credit repair – now they have better credit maybe they can afford a home
Home Organizer – not enough space may mean they need to sell
Property Management – they have renters who may want to own a home
Remodeling – may be improving the home with intention to sell
Executive Recruiting – they know when new executives are moving to town
Vacation rentals – short stays may motivate a home purchase in the future
Handyman – repeat clients may mean home problems and intent to sell
Home Warranty – too many problems with a home and may consider selling
Family Law Attorney – an unfortunate divorce may force a home sale
Wedding planner – people may need to move when they get married
Funeral / Hospice – when someone passes a home may need to be sold
Probate attorney – the executor of the estate may need your help
Bankruptcy attorney – may not be able to pay their mortgage and need to sell
Home Healthcare – clients may need a different home to accommodate care
Woman Fertility – baby on the way and may need a bigger home
Financial Planner – working with people to save for a new home
Life / Career Coaches – new life plans may require moving to a new place
RV Dealer – their customers may want to downsize after buying a RV
Travel Agency – customers who travel frequently may want to move away
#2: Call them and offer a quick 3-way discovery phone call.
We will cold call potential co-marketing partners on your behalf with the following script:
“Hi, I’m the marketing person for a local real estate professional who has an database of ___________ local residents. I’m going to email you a link to their local real estate video blog, and I’m calling to get your permission if we can interview you on the phone or by webcam so our contacts know about your great service. This is all free – we do it as a community service. I found you online and you have great reviews. May I ask who your ideal customer is as we may be able to help you get in front of them? May I schedule a very brief 3-way call with you, myself, and the agent so we can discuss the details about working together to grow your business?”
#3: We will share with them our intentions and see if they are interested.
On a 15min call we’ll share the details of your co-marketing program. The script would go something like this: “We’d like to quickly interview you once a month – either on the phone or by webcam – to answer a FAQ about your service that’s relevant to a homeowner. The call will take about 15 min a month – but the interview itself will only be about 2-3min - and you can do it anywhere since it’s all “virtual”. We’ll put the interview on our website, link back to your website to help you boost your SEO, we’ll include it in our real estate client emails, we’ll post it on our Facebook, and we’ll list you as our recommended service provider on our website and in our app we provide to all our clients after each home sale.
Our goal is to get you customers. We’ll even give you questions to answer we think our audience want to know so you don’t have to think. We’ll make it easy and quick. Each month we’ll meet at the same date/time for a new interview, again on the phone or by web conference. We’ll do this all for free. In return, we’d like you to post the interview on your website and promote it to the people in your database, which we’ll help you do. No work is required on your part. Since you’re the subject of the interview, it’s a great way to stay in touch with your database and position you as the expert.
Additionally, when we speak every month, I’ll ask you if you know anyone who is looking to buy or sell a home, and if you know anyone, I would like to earn your trust to be your recommended Realtor for your customers. We’ll start here, see how it goes, and then I have even more ideas on how we can work together to help grow our businesses. Sound good? But first I would like to meet you in person and learn everything I can about your business, and maybe I can share with you a few of the strategies I’ve used to find clients to sell over _______ homes a year. When can we get together?”
#4: You meet with them in-person and earn their trust and partnership.
This is simple – before you work together you must meet them in person, or at least have a very long phone call or web conference where you really do in fact learn everything about their business. Get to know them, their goals, their needs, their dreams – make a new friend. You want them to really promote you, and this is your opportunity to create a business partnership that’s built on trust and understanding. End the meeting with “We’ll I’m excited to work together – my team will reach out with everything we need to get started.”
#5: We hold a co-marketing orientation call with your new partner
Now that they are on board – we’re going to get access to their website to post your videos, work with them to export and centralize their email databases so we can promote your content on their behalf to their database, get access to their social media sites, and complete non-disclosure paperwork so they know everything is confidential and safe. We’ll provide them with the questions we’re going to ask on upcoming interviews so they can prepare, and schedule the interviews in your calendar and theirs for the next 12 months. When you're done with the interview, just send the recording to us like you do your videos.
You now have a scheduled time to ask for a referral from your new co-marketing partners every month, and once the interview is complete, it will be promoted not only to your database according to The Vyral Marketing Plan, but also to your partner’s database to help you get exposure. Your two emails will become more “newsletter style” since we’ll include all your interviews in your emails from the past two weeks. We suggest you partner with about 10 people to start and we’ll schedule all the interviews for the same day – your time requirement for the co-marketing program would be about 1 day a month for all the interviews which at that time you’re guaranteed to make 10 contacts and ideally get 10 solid referrals in 1 day, not to mention the passive benefit of all the cross-database promotion from the short interview conducted that day. Even better, that evening (once a month) you should get all your partners together for a mastermind where everyone shares 1 thing they are doing that working to get new customers. That's optional, but it would take it to the next level. Next thing you’ll know you’re making money with a coaching company! :)
BOTTOM LINE:
We’d like to help you run this co-marketing plan for an extra $1500 upfront to get all the partners committed and set up (should take about 30 days), and then $500 a month on top of your Vyral Marketing membership to run it if you’re interested. It’s very labor intensive on our part, but we can streamline the systems and processes across all our clients to keep our costs low; so your investment is ideally much lower than what it would cost you to execute this yourself or hiring an employee to do it. Our goal would be to get you on the phone with 10 partners a month for a quick 15-minute call/interview (where you also ask for referrals), and then we do all the work for the content cross-promotion accordingly.
You should expect 10 solid referral quality leads a month from your partners at the cost of $62.50 per lead with the cost of the upfront fee amortized over 1 year into the CPL calculation. Any passive inbound leads you get from the marketing cross promotion to the partner’s database is purely an extra benefit (imagine if you could get your partners to send your “Magical” lead generation email to their database driving traffic to your home seller site – that’s all bonus!). Request a free strategy session to learn more or if you’re a client talk to your success coach to learn more.