I’m way behind the curve when it comes to social media so I’m looking to get in the game quickly. Has anyone used an influencer to promote their brand? If so can you share your experience and give me a few pointers?
Hey Leo,
Really depends on what you’re going for (and how you think an influencer might help).
What are your objectives?
We (Real Estate Webmasters) have partnered with huge influencers (Like Barbara Corcoran, Kevin Oleary, and Fredrik Eklund) and achieved huge reach/results - but those were in general 6-7 figure deals and it took a major push internally at REW as well.
In our case, our ICP is basically all North American Realtors® which matched the audience perfectly but even then, after a while (circa 2017-2018) we found the return was nowhere near as high as it was previously.
Basically, folks lost interest in “celebrities pitching companies” since they were selling out to everyone.
Again, depends on what you’re looking to accomplish. What are your top 2 goals?
Hi Morgan,
Great questions! Our top 2 goals are:
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Engage with customers. Would like to become known as the go-to guy for Q&A on Luxury Real Estate in Chicago
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Drive website traffic - We just switched over to the new Renaissance Platform (Goldcoastrealty-chicago.com) and are looking to increase traffic by 20 - 30% by the end of this year.
From what I understand influencers are paid by the number of followers so you have options
from a spend standpoint.
On a side note, we have been with REW since 2011, love the platform, and have generated over 100K+ leads.
Look forward to your thoughts!
I honestly think your time (and money) would be better spent building your own content/brand if “you” want to be seen as the “go-to” guy in luxury real estate. Exceptional videography, and post-production, social etc - An influencer will build their brand (and mention you), where as if you build yourself, you are the brand.
Also Influencers following is nowhere near geo-targetted enough for a specific city (unless it was a hyper-local influencer, perhaps like a local professional athlete).
If you wanted to test the waters - go on the cheap first, use Cameo (non-commercial), and pick some locally recognizable folks to do shoutouts and see what kind of engagement you get.
As for
There are no more cost-effective ways to do this than SEO / PPC (it’s kind of a hand waive) and more importantly you can control the nature of the traffic (targeting, relevance etc) I would not rely on an influencer to send random non targetted traffic to my site - I’d go PPC / SEO combo - the “Two billboard effect”
Great idea!! as you know Chicago is a Huge sports city and many of our clients are Cubs and Blackhawks players, will def hit them up. My next step will be to find a social media person/agency and get them rolling on building our Brand.