Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Hi

And now for something completely different!

The “Finite Universe” scenario is a nice one if you have a unique, unusual or really, really (Excuse me, Douglas Adams and Andrew Lloyd-Webber) useful product. We have a few clients who have gone down this route, but not to estate agents (UK speak for Realtors) I happen to have computerised them with CRM systems to the extent that they can’t find any reasons to hire any extra staff in order to expand, but that’s another story and it was their personal choice. Here are the key points used and they might translate into your product and your realtor market.

For your interest, one of the clients had a database of contaminated land and we showed him how to sell the information to solicitors (That was their Finite Universe) who could use it to help them to sell properties and charge for the additional service they provided. An other was a producer of a unique information medium which they sold exclusively via creative agencies (Their Finite Universe) to blue chip companies.

1. As they are all (Solicitors and Agencies in these cases, Realtors in your case) listed, you can accumulate or purchase a list of all the realtors and associated companies which might effect a leverage on the purchase of your unique product. Spend the money and get a list with named principals, it’s worth it to get off to a good start.

2. Next, start to mail the list with a basic explanation of the product and a more detailed explanation of the benefits it will bring.

3. Then start to phone them. Where appropriate get more decision makers's names and if possible, their email addresses. But have something to demonstrate as an opening offer which will demonstrate the efficacy of your product.

In the real-estate example, we did it with a web portal where their prospect could enter their name, their firm’s name and their address. They also had to enter the postcode (Zipcode) of a property they were acting for.

In return, they got a report of the contaminants in the land the property was built on and a sample bill for the report. A second report contained a suggested letter which could be sent to the client with an appropriate billing for the service, the value of which was suggested by some solicitors we had tested the financial model on. In reality the second bill never reached the ultimate client as it simply became an item in the firm’s costings for the service of producing a report.

Just for good measure and because UK solicitors don’t work by email, we mailed a copy of the report and a mock copy of their invoice for the service.

4. If you can come up with a real life example of your system, similar to this, then the benefits our client experienced should be similar to yours. The benefits of the system and the potential to make a profit for minimal effort through their technology was self explanatory.

5. Make further mailings to the potential client base and repeat and refine the exercise. Every iteration of the process added permanent clients to their database with enough immediate business to pay for the marketing exercise many times over before each phase had even concluded.

6. Finally, based on feedback from the new clients, further products or refinements to the first product could be developed (There are now 6 reports the solicitor can chose from)

The only problem with the “Finite Universe” market and single product is that after a time you saturate the “universe” and possibly run out of new products to offer to them.

These people had been able to move from a business model involving 5 databases and a projected team of 50 people to service the needs of 20% of their target market, to a model involving a single CRM system incorporating their propriety contaminants database and a commercially available postcode to map-reference database, along with an integration link to their accounts system. They have struggled to exceed a headcount of 10 with nearly 45% of their market captured to date, utilising their product on a daily basis. I guess that leaves them with enough cash-flow to provide the investment capital and the time to dream up their next product!

Hope that you can do something similar. At least it might get Realtors to do something more productive than keep asking MarketingProfs for new Tag-Lines!

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions