Your Wife is Hot!

No, no, no – Guys – Please don’t come over and crack me over the head with a lead pipe as I’m not hitting on your Beautiful Princess.  I promise. I’m referring to the Billboards on I95 and the Turnpike to sell air conditioning.

I have a bit of an obsession with billboards.  The rule of thumb on highway billboards is 7 words or less. The reason being is that you have about 2 seconds to catch the driver’s attention (more in traffic) and for them to intake the message. About half of the billboards are too wordy and don’t connect at all because the end client is forcing every bit of information in.

Anyhow, when discussing marketing, I always ask a new agent to recite any billboards they remember. I do this to make a point about how branding works. Among men and women, the “Your Wife Is Hot” ad, tops the list of memorable billboards. However, that billboard is not as effective as it should be in my opinion which sounds nuts because of its memorability. The billboard is under 7 words (four) and you digest that it’s an AC advertisement and not some scoundrel trying to take away your Honey Bunny. But, when I ask what company it is advertising, I get a blank stare. The logo is not readable and how the name is displayed, because of the font, doesn’t stick out – meaning no company name recall. The consumer sees the main pitch and the lady but nothing else. The ad has a difficult to read 4 hyphen vanity number that is just too hard to see because there are only 2 seconds to take all of this in. The reason that highway billboards are so interesting to me is that they start out creative and eventually end up something basic, like your logo.

The reason that highway billboards are so interesting to me is that they start out creative and eventually end up to something really basic, like your logo.  Keep It Simple.

When we come up with an ad campaign the goal is for it to be memorable, get the point across and in a perfect world have a Call to Action (CTA).

Mnemonics such as our “Home ECHOnomics” campaign are a good example of branding with branding memorability. Home ECHOnomics is a word play on the course Home Economics. It combines the word home, which also means real estate, with our name and the financials of your home. When we add Guarantee to it, Home ECHOnomics guarantee, it wraps up our value proposition of 57 Promises that we promise to do on each listing to make sure everything that happens, happen.

People who interview us on the listing side ask where we get our Buyers when advertising. There are 2 parts to that. The first is we have 5 local Client Concierge. These are 5 locals who answer the phone or chat when you call. The key part to that is a buyer gets to speak to a local with local knowledge. They do intake, match you with the right agent with expertise in what you are looking for, and stick with you the whole way through. The reason we have them is an agent just can’t answer the phone quickly when they are already on the phone, out showing with a client, or at dinner.  As for advertising, here are 22 methods that help us find Buyers for your home.

1. Organic search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the principal ways we find Buyers. We have over 15 years mapped out over 14,000 individual subdivision all with individual original write ups, statistics and listing feeds. See for yourself here..

2. Echo runs ads called pay per click (PPC) for various search terms within Goole targeting Buyers for homes we represent and particular subdivisions

3. We are the largest source for Zillow Buyer inquires in the area as a Premier brokerage within that platform.  We have several other sources as well.

4. Billboard purchases like the one Northbound on I-95 showcasing our new Instant Offer Program. We have a vanity number which is 561-500-ECHO.  The beauty of that number is ECHO being part of the number is a mnemonic branding device to remember our name. Check out our INSTANT CASH Offer

5. 3 Airport billboards at baggage arrival at PBI

6. Email marketing reports. We have over 250,000 contacts in our database and over 700 subdivision reports that go out bi-monthly.

7. Print Media. a)Magazines – We do a few but I find this has the worst return on investment. Being in a print magazine with 100 other brokerages and advertising a home that might have already sold typically gets no phone calls. Magazines have never worked.

b)Postcards – These do work and can be effective.

8. Luxury Real Estate.com (LRE). This hand selected group of 130,000 professionals in more than 70 countries and collectively sells over $300 billion of real estate annually. This lets us market your home nationwide and globally.

9. Charity – Anything from Big Brothers Big Sisters to the Benjamin School Bash or sponsoring a youth soccer team. We love getting involved in CommUNITY.

10. School system. We participate in over 30 schools throughout Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast

11. Beach Buckets at 15 Beaches with our name and logo

12. Sanitation display dispensaries like you see at Carmines Gourmet Market with QR Code Art at the entry.

13. Car stickers. Ever see an ECHO car sticker. Bet you have or will if you pay attention!

14. Trams like the one by our downtown Stuart confusion corner location.

15. Press- Local and National TV, Paper, Podcasts, you name it. Palm Beach Post, TC Palm, Florida Weekly, Real Deal, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and lots more. See the Publications we have been quoted in.

16. Social Media – Social media has become incredibly important. We have our own in-house photography and photojournalist team. This lets us market a home on multiple ways in social media telling stories through reels and Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

17. Awards – We’ve won Best Brokerage in both Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast

18. Networking – ECHO agents are a major part of the CommUNITY. We are members of several chambers and networking groups. Past client referrals from a job well done has driven our growth over the years. The amount of testimonials is pretty staggering and one of the things I’m most proud about. 1194 Letters of Recommendation

19. Supporting Local Business – ECHO for free through our In-House Photojournalism department has done hundreds of spotlights on Local business. That has earned us countless referrals over the years. Local Waves Complimentary Business Videos

20. Our Name – ECHO’s name is derived from dolphins, how they work together in a team environment (POD), and use sonar or ECHO Location (advanced technology to communicate and locate food (for us homes for our Buyers or a Buyer for our Sellers). Dolphins are smart and darn friendly too!

21. Echo Fine Properties. Fine People.  – See the Mnemonic. This is organically true. My Grandfather in business and life said you can’t do a good deal with a bad guy. We’ve worked hard to only have the Finest people at ECHO to serve our clients.

22. Jeff’s Journal – See, You’re reading this!

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Jeff Lichtenstein, originally from Chicago, got his start in the home furnishings textile business where he traveled over 35 weeks a year selling fabrics. After the family business was sold, Jeff moved to Florida and became a real estate agent. Today he is the owner and broker of Echo Fine Properties, a luxury residential brokerage voted best brokerage of the year. Jeff manages a non-traditional model of real estate that mimics a traditional business model. Echo has 80 agents, an average of one million dollars per transaction and over 500 million in annual sales. Between traveling for work and annual family trips to national parks with his wife and 2 now adult children, Jeff has visited 49 states. He is also one of the few Chicago White Sox fans you’ll ever meet.  Some publications he has been quoted in.

Author of business & leadership book How Making a Sandwich Can Change Your World –  The Amazing Success of the PB&J Strategy – Available to Buy Now!

Feel free to ask him a question directly at jeff@EchoFineProperties.com including a complementary  valuation of your home.