About Century 21
Century 21 is an American-based real estate agent franchise company which was found in 1971.It has almost 6900 broker offices which are independently owned and operated, spread across 78 countries and territories with more than 101000 sales professionals.It was founded by two real estate agents,Art Barlett and Marsh Fisher.
Business Objective
- To connect with new audience innovatively in an engaging and relevant way
- To provide their real estate sales professionals with unique chances to reach new home buyers and sellers.
- Drive awareness and brand preference among consumers between the ages of 25 and 34, who represent the majority of home buyers
- Increase the Facebook “likes”
- To support the brand’s Smarter. Bolder. Faster. marketing campaign by increasing the views of advertisement.
Some Strategies
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Simcity social facebook campaign
The main goal with SimCity Facebook campaign was to connect with and engage an important target audience that is the online gamers. They developed an option where the players could build a Century 21 office building in their city which will help them to earn virtual currency (Simoleons), helping them to grow their cities by buying new homes, businesses and land using the Simoleons.Players could consult with an agent or steal open house cookies and earn additional merits in the game.Users were also able to earn free energy boost by watching an in game advertisement (Smarter.Bolder.Faster).
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You tube takeover
Century 21 was the first real estate band to initiate a Youtube takeover. An expected homepage vistors of over 27 mllion had the opportunity to engage with the C21 ‘Puppy Cam’ a series of 8 videos showing fluffy lovable puppies playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjttwEN9sa0
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Real time marketing
Century 21 has cleverly displayed how real time marketing can be used in real estate.
The company’s first campaign was stimulated by Twitter’s launch of its IPO. Twitter’s business venture and bird logo ignited the concept for a video where Century 21 gave a virtual journey of a mansion to create a need in the viewer to move up to a bigger birdhouses. Although Twitter was never directly mentioned, the video reflected bird-based innuendo.
Another example of company’s real time marketing was in a marketing campaign that leveraged Amazon’s publication about the testing of a drone delivery service. To send across the message, Century 21 made a video that offered a similar service which they called the C21 Delivery Landing Pad which would allow the homeowners to customize their delivery landing pads to increase their visibility for deliveries and their home’s market value.
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Video marketing campaigns
Century 21 owes nearly a 20% increase in sales to real estate video marketing campaigns which they ran through viral social media sites like YouTube, Facebook and Flickr.
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Facebook application
Century 21 created a Facebook application that enabled the partners to get most out of their page in social network.
The app provided page managers with features like:
- Display their present listings
- To be contacted by potential customers via Facebook
- It had an option to add a home buyers toolkit, which helps potential buyers to compute mortgage payments and decide how much to spend, it also had an option to start the process of getting pre-approval for mortgages
- Offer to download Century 21 mobile app download
5 Social Media Marketing lessons from Century 21
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Distinctive content
Quality content is the key method to connect with your audiences. Original, creative content always attracts the attention of your readers. By providing extremely important information in a simple checklist format led to people liking and sharing it. The content should be as simple as possible, unique and to the point with good presentation to get the reader’s attention.
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Use of effective Videos
Research has revealed that 73% of home-buyers prefer realtors that incorporate YouTube in their marketing strategy. Century 21 share very effective videos about various open houses and detailed video tours of listed properties. You should make sure to tag the videos with relevant keywords so they show up in search result.
Check out this Game of Thrones like ‘Throne of Homes’ video by Century 21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7gDMBcK32M
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Images can talk more than words
As we have heard before ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, a relevant picture is always helpful in getting a reader’s attention. Century 21 Flickr stream has more than 20 thousand photos where they share pictures of their brand in conferences, summits and so on.
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Target Engagement not numbers
People lose interest if you continuously keep sharing only your product features or their prices. Try to share positive content that will trigger a productive conversation and thereby engaging your audience. Share some tips that you think the target audience will find helpful like the book shelf tips Cenytury 21 has shared
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Be Consistent across different social media platforms
Century 21 have strong presence on different social media platforms, and they consistently share content on all the platforms, which is very crucial for strong social media presence. It can be seen very commonly that many companies are active only on Facebook, it is very important for brands to remember that social media is not limited to Facebook.
Real Estate marketing which was limited to hoardings and newspaper pull-outs are in the past, now the most effective marketing for real estate is done online. The companies which have not adopted online marketing are missing out on a lot and will eventually get out dated and overshadowed by other companies which adopt this.
Result
Facebook page has 166000 followers
- Main Twitter account has about 68000 followers
- Flickr has about 20000 Photos
- YouTube page has more than one million views
- According to the Millward Brown 2014 Ad Tracking Study Century 21 is the most recognized and the industry leader in terms of brand awareness
- SimCity Social Facebook campaign generated awareness and was a big success in terms of increasing the brand recognition. Also generated 23,000 views of our branded video and the campaign increased 53,466 Facebook “likes” which is roughly a 225% increase from the start.
- Century 21 had nearly 20% increase in sales because of real estate video marketing campaigns ran through different social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Flickr.
Learning
- It is very important to share unique content to connect with your audience. To get your audience’s attention always create and share content which is original, creative and to the point.
- Create videos of yourself addressing common industry problems to position yourself as an expert in your domain. The videos should be tagged with appropriate keywords so that they show up in search results.
- Visual impact is higher than reading text, so appropriate and creative use of visuals will always help grab the attention of the audience.
- Real estate is picking fast online and going social, the companies who do not adapt will miss out on a lot of networking possibilities.
Image Credits: Century 21
