The ROI of Your Mother

22 Aug 2012 1 Comment

by John Amardeil in Strategies

As I mentioned before, the eBAM department recently attended Social Media Mix 2012, a social media conference that took place in downtown Toronto.

Organized by local company Jugnoo, the event featured renowned experts and speakers like Amber Mac, Matt Hixson, Danny Brown, and even a police officer, Tim Burrows, who has been doing a great job of building the Toronto police’s social media presence.

Sgt. Tim Burrows at #SoMix2012

Sgt. Tim Burrows has been doing such a great job on social media, many marketers could take a lesson or two from him.

The last speaker to go on stage was Gary Varneychuk. According to Wikipedia, Gary is “a video blogger, co-owner and director of operations of a wine retail store, and an author and public speaker on the subjects of social media, brand building and e-commerce.”

According to my team, Gary was awesome (as were many of the other speakers). He had a line my team loved — “What’s the ROI of your mother?” This line doesn’t mean to diminish the importance of tracking results and obtaining concrete benefits from social media (something I’m a big believer in).

Rather, it means that some benefits of social media cannot always be measured, such as creating a feeling of goodwill and transparency and helping create powerful word-of-mouth.

That’s why we sell so many of our clients on social media — because it helps provide their communities with a personality and a platform that no traditional means of advertising could hope to emulate.

What are your thoughts on social media? Are you — or your clients — still not sold?

Why We Love Measurability

31 Jul 2012 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Strategies

Measuring time

Measuring tools may have changed, but they’re still of the utmost importance.

As legendary adman David Ogilvy once said, “The general advertisers and their agencies know almost nothing for sure, because they cannot measure the results of their advertising.”

When Mr. Ogilvy uttered these lines, he meant to draw a line between general advertisers and direct response advertisers. Social media didn’t exist. Print still ruled.

Yet, as we were just reminded when our eBAM department revamped our email marketing practices, measuring the effectiveness of our marketing efforts is now easier than ever.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure many in the industry always do their very best to measure the effectiveness of their results.

In the case of email marketing, we know how many people read your email. We know how many of them clicked on a link. We know how many of them completed the goals we set out.

Best of all, we know (at least we can infer) why they did what they did (or why they didn’t), thanks to cool techniques like A/B split testing. This means we know how to do an even better job next time, whether it involves modifying the subject line, tweaking the layout, or modifying the amount of copy.

So great is the importance we see in measurability, we do our best to measure things that are notoriously hard to measure — such as the ROI of social media. And if the results aren’t what we expect them to be, we’ll be the first to let our clients know.

If you’re not measuring, how can you possibly know whether it works or not? How can you possibly define success?

Why our Client Empire Communities is a Pioneer

12 Jul 2012 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Case Studies, Strategies

What is buying a home about? Is it about square feet?

Or is about emotion?

If you chose the second option, chances are you share with us the passion of exciting people. Chances are you also know passion sells — far more than features and facts alone.

Obvious as this all seems to many of us in the marketing industry, many builders still don’t get it. Where they should be hard at work to excite people, they continue to highlight the same old figures and information.

And when sales fail to skyrocket, they wonder where it all went wrong.

There’s a better, more effective way — one that Apple stores and other retail leaders have long used to their advantage. To inspire today’s jaded consumer, who won’t respond unless he’s inspired, these smart companies rely on cool, unique finishes.

With this in mind, we at BAM are truly delighted that, for the first time ever, a client is willing to step up and revolutionize.

In fact, Empire Communities is putting on the market the most revolutionary kitchen to be offered on a volume basis.

I commend Empire and Paris Kitchens for truly delivering something this special.

Review of BILD’s Low-Rise Forum

29 Mar 2012 1 Comment

by John Amardeil in Activities, Strategies

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably know already that I was a guest speaker yesterday at BILD’s Low Rise Forum, which saw us discuss diversity in the GTA.

I love these events. They give me a chance to chat with old acquaintances and industry people. I also get to learn from my fellow guest speakers.

Yesterday, for example, Andrew Brethour of the PMA Brethour Realty Group provided interesting insights into why so many people from all over the world move to Canada.

He also did a pretty good job of reminding us all of the many reasons why we’re so lucky to live in this country and specifically in Toronto. Andy is quite the inspiring speaker and it was a pleasure to listen to him.

John Amardeil speaks at the BILD Low-Rise Forum on March 28, 2012.

I had a blast with my presentation. I believe in keeping it short and sweet and fun. What’s your approach like?

Later, Susan Wong of Markham Centre Realty. Inc. provided us with a most detailed analysis of immigration from mainland China, and the reasons why so many Chinese buy real estate here.

Susan also said there’s still a lot of room for condo prices to rise in Toronto — she even produced a chart showing that despite our increased prices we’re not among the ten most expensive cities in the world. I found it interesting that Vancouver, London and Singapore join Toronto as the preferred overseas investment locations for Chinese millionaires.

Lastly, Jenny Park of The Epoch Times provided listeners with a great summary on how to market to Chinese buyers. Jenny said 74% of all Chinese Canadians consume media in Chinese.

As for my own presentation, I am attaching it as a PowerPoint file (click this link: BAM Ethnic Marketing). Or you can read the following summary of key points:

  • In 2004, Toronto was ranked second in the list of world cities with the largest percentage of foreign-born population
  • Most newcomers arrive from China, India, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka
  • An increasing amount of immigrants are settling in the 905 area rather than Toronto. Indeed, the city with the highest proportion of foreign born among all Canadian municipalities is… Markham
  • We at BAM strongly believe that you can only sell if you know your markets and your target thoroughly. Sounds obvious, but time and again I’ve come across campaigns that neglect this. Check out my presentation for examples of communities we marketed to a very specific demographic after carrying out a great deal of research. They include:
  1. Castlegate, in East Brampton (targeted to Indians),
  2. Woodside Village, in Scarborough (targeted to Sri Lankans),
  3. Vellore Park, in Woodbridge (targeted to Italians), and
  4. Greenbrook Village in Shelburne, targeted to “white flight” (I explain in my presentation how I was wrong about the target market here!).

What’s your experience targeting diverse communities in the GTA?

Marketing for Female Homebuyers: Is It Time to be Open About It?

09 Mar 2012 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Strategies, You Need to Know

The home of your wife’s dreams?

Experience has taught me women tend to call the shots in the home buying process. If you’re in the industry, I’m sure that’s your experience as well.

This is why many of us implicitly market homes for women, highlighting the features that we think appeal to them.

But what exactly is it that female homebuyers want? Experience can certainly give you an idea. But valuable as it may be, experience is a subjective thing, especially when it’s not backed up by studies.

Thankfully, according to Builder Magazine, two U.S. builders made it a point to narrow down the factors that make female homebuyers tick, going so far as to take women-centric design studies.

They seem to have succeeded — one of them, Patcon Construction, continued to sell homes in new Hampshire and Maine even as its competitors couldn’t, while the other, Hugh A. Fisher of Deer Brook Development Corp., quadrupled his business in the middle of the U.S. housing recession.

Ironically perhaps, their findings not just confirm many a builder’s experience, but also a few gender stereotypes. For example, when men look at a floorplan they think about how they will relax in the house, while women focus on how the family will live in the house and how they will work in it.

Women also tend to focus on organizing, having convenient access to laundry rooms, and making sure their husbands have a place where they can drop their wallet and keys (which apparently they don’t want us dropping on the kitchen counter).

Read the article here, or check out this survey, which helps women find the type of floorplan that best suits their personality.

Have you ever marketed homes explicitly for women? What’s your take on all this?

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