But branding yourself in a new light is tough in a community and industry where you’re recognisable for one thing: property sales.
Michael approached Dani Benson with his dilemma. Sure, he’d been a marketing expert for years. But marketing in real estate traditionally pertains to newspaper advertisements and hosting listings on property portals. He needed a new approach, a creative story-telling strategy, and to familiarise himself with social media.
Dani quickly identified that Michael’s confidence, warmth, charisma and sense of fun would be the basis for successful social media content.
She built funnels to capture leads for mentoring prospects, launched a landing page, and developed a content strategy that leveraged his “joker” persona mixed with hard-won and happily-shared wisdom from his successful career.
“We had to capture his jovial side, afterall, if he’s going to mentor you, you’re going to experience that,” Dani explained.
“Michael’s marketing persona as an agent felt stiff and strict, and unless you’d dealt with him directly you wouldn’t know that beyond the suits and the Aston Martin, there’s this almost childlike zest for life, a total optimism and a generosity with his advice and wisdom that makes him quite special.”
The initial content campaign was all about advice; anecdotes and experience, tactical solutions to common problems, and mindset frameworks fo success.
“After a very success advice series, captured both as longform LinkedIn articles and 40second videos, address everything from surviving business during coronavirus, to working out what to do when you have nothing to do, we decided it was time for some fun.”
“Mixing cocktails, escaping his house after coronavirus, attempting tiktok dances… yes, it was polarising particularly for the staid old real estate industry, but it worked.”
In just over 4 months, Michael arrived at over 8,000 instagram followers from a standing start. His Facebook audience grew significantly too, and LinkedIn increased by 800 connections.”
“With a small budget split across content creation and ad spend, and a monthly content-creation day set aside, we now reach about 250,000 people each week through the advice videos, blog series and fun videos.”
Dani says that she and Michael have a creative trust that allows them to test new content ideas without fear of the content being too controversial.
Today, Michael has 10 mentoring clients per month joining his business.
Follow the journey
