Marketing 101 starts with getting your business in front new prospects.
It’s been over 10 years ago when I first started the Kiwi First Home Buyers group on Facebook as a place to communicate with potential first home buyers – to share information and potentially to get new prospects for my business – Mortgage Managers.
The group has exceeded all my expectations, but also it has taken a lot more time to administer.
Kiwi First Home Buyers Group
The Kiwi First Home Buyers group has got over 100,000 members now!
So that’s a lot of eyes watching what is posted there on a regular basis.
When we look at some of the statistics from the website, it’s not uncommon to have huge numbers of views. And by huge numbers, we’re talking well over 20,000 views on many of the posts.
Remembering too, most of these eyes belong to people that want to buy their first homes.
What we’re also finding is that a lot of people are trying to get onto the group purely to advertise their businesses with products and services that they think may be useful for first home buyers. We have always had a rule that we have no advertising or blatant self-promotion within the group; however, we still want to make sure that the members are getting access to good quality advice, good quality services, and also some products from time to time.
We have therefore, at times, made exceptions and posted this sort of information on behalf of people.
We Created 1st Directory
What we’re now looking to do is to formalise that process so that people can access the right people for services and products.
Therefore, we have created a website called 1st Directory, which will be promoted on the Kiwi First Home Buyers group on Facebook as a place where the members can search for those products and services that they may want.
We have started with some categories and we will expand that over time. We have also started with some business listings where we have reached out to various businesses and asked if they would like to have their listing on the directory.
This will be an ongoing process where we will reach out to various businesses and make sure they know about the directory so that they too can get a listing if required.
It’s not a free service. It is a service that we’re offering whereby we want to generate a level of income that will enable us to keep dedicating the time to manage the group, but also to make sure that we have the time to help manage the listings so everyone gets good value for money.
Effectively, we are offering two types of listing packages:
- The first is just a basic listing so that you can have your contact details within the directory and then on the Facebook group, you can share the link to those contact details. The expectation is you will then be able to get business because people will find it easier to get hold of you and also if somebody goes directly to the directory to find somebody in your field and your location, then your listing will show up so you will potentially get additional business that way.
- We then have the premium listing, which will sit above the basic listing and as well as having your contact details, you will have the ability to write a blog post or article each month, which will sit on the directory site, but will also be shared. This is a great way to get your business products and services in front of the membership and as well as that, it creates backlinks to your website to help you recognize the authority that your website has. The premium listings come in three sizes – firstly where you have one location, then there is a plus version which allows you to have up to three locations and also a full version which is more for those national companies where you can have unlimited locations.
It’s very simple to sign up and get your listings and we can definitely help with the blog creation to ensure that it’s written in the right manner to ensure it can be approved and shared.
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