In 2004, a real estate team spent a significant amount of time sending postcards to potential clients in Ontario. The postcards featured the team’s photo, logo, and a brief message, but the goal wasn’t to convey complex information. Instead, the team focused on being seen by as many people as possible.
The team’s strategy was to send postcards to 400 homes every 10 days, creating a consistent presence in the neighborhood. This approach was considered innovative at the time, as most real estate agents hid behind their brokerage’s brand.
The results were impressive, with the team achieving a return on investment of over 700 percent. As the team expanded its reach to 1,000, 3,000, and eventually 10,000 homes, the return on investment continued to grow, reaching over 1,000 percent at its peak.
The team’s ability to measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts was a key factor in their success. By tracking the response to their postcards, they could see a direct correlation between their spending and earnings. However, as the team’s brand grew, it became more difficult to attribute their success to a single tactic.
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According to the team’s leader, Amy Flowers, the brand had outgrown the initial marketing strategy, and it was time to shift to new mediums. The team began to focus on online marketing, including social media and branded vehicles.
Today, the team’s marketing strategy has evolved to focus on creating content for machines, rather than humans. They build websites with hundreds of pages of content, including neighborhood pages, property pages, and guides. The goal is to create content that can be easily read and understood by AI assistants, increasing the team’s visibility and driving traffic to their website.
The team’s marketing approach is designed to be cited by AI assistants, with the ultimate goal of driving click-throughs to their website. While the team’s marketing managers initially pushed back against the idea of creating long-form content, Amy Flowers explained that the content was never meant to be read by humans.
The team’s experience with video content was similar, with managers expressing concerns that the videos were too long. However, Amy Flowers emphasized that the videos were not intended for human viewers, but rather for machines.
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The team’s approach to marketing has been successful, with clients increasingly finding them through AI-powered searches.
The team’s story shows how marketing has changed over time, with the medium changing, but the goal remaining the same: to be seen and to drive results.
They continue to adapt to the changing market.
