Reading marketing books to spark my creative brain

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I've taken on a lot of reading this weekend to get my brain going and start some ideas processes relating to my estate agency.

The main area I've looked at is marketing and how the business sits in the market.

I've read two books this weekend-

Brilliant Marketing by Richard Hall

And

The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger

Brilliant Marketing is a good starter book to get ideas about the process of marketing your business or products. It's probably meant more for someone who works in the marketing industry (particularly a marketing department of a large company or a large consultancy) but there are ideas there that will spark your interest and get your process in order.

I have taken ideas from the book regarding how I should look at the marketing of my business.

1- Setting out what makes us different

2- Deciding what my market is

3- Deciding where my market converse

I am different for many reasons, and I have decided to make a list of what I think sets me apart and to ask friends and family what they would want from an estate agent, from the list. I'm also going to look into the Survey Monkey site to see if I can set up a survey to assess the same, but with a wider audience. Twitter, Facebook and my blog will probably be the forums for this activity.

My market is firstly the town I'll be operating in, but I want to define it further. I will operate as a sales and lettings agent, but I think that with the marketing techniques I'll be using and the overwhelming emphasis I'll put on customer service, I want to be targeting the middle to top end if the market. I want to just concentrate on my town as well. I see many agents that sell in  satellite towns but I really want to establish myself as the expert in MY town.

Where my market converse is a slightly trickier one, as I won't have a High Street office - I'm going to operate as a local online agent. I'm looking into renting/borrowing window space from a retailer in the local High Street, but I feel that online has more mileage than offline in today's market. I have set up 2 online ventures today that I think will assist me in my quest to direct local online traffic to my website. I have set up a Facebook page for the town and a blog on the housing market in the town.  My intention is that the first is a conduit for local people to discuss local issues and the second to establish my voice as an authority on the housing market in the area.

I see modern marketing of a property as a partnership between the expertise of the agent and the reach via social media of the vendor.

First day done!