Aaron Hoos

Disclaimer: This is an unsolicited recommendation. I received no compensation or promotional consideration from the company described below.

Compliance is a sticky issue and a lot of professionals (especially those who work in larger investment firms) are discouraged or even forbidden from participating on social media because of potential compliance issues.

But we live in a socially connected world so those professionals who want to generate leads from the web need to find a way to connect with prospects but ALSO keep the compliance department happy.

I’ve seen a couple different ways that companies do this on social sites:

• There’s the blanket disclaimer that is jammed into the tiny character-restricted profiles on Twitter or Facebook. They all say something like “Historical performance does not guarantee future performance” and “tweets should not be taken as advice”… or something like that.
• There’s the link to the disclaimer in the profile, although if you only have one link it’s kind of disappointing to use only URL to link to your disclaimers instead of anything else!
• I’ve even seen an attempt to jam disclaimers into a tweet in brackets or hashtags. Disastrous!

None of these options are ideal so I was pleasantly surprised when I heard about CMP.LY, a company that is innovating in the compliance space. (If ever there was an opportunity, this is it!!!)

They’ve created a compliance framework — a group of disclosure services specifically designed for different compliance needs.

CMP.LY works like this: You (or your firm) sign up for the level of compliance disclosure you need. You get a unique page where you can place your disclosures. Then, when you post on social media, you can include the short http://cmp.ly/XXXXXX link that alerts readers to your disclosures. (Here’s a generic example specific for finance and here’s another generic example specific for an agent).

I think this is smart: You get a link that is consistent across all of your media but also fairly transparent that it is for compliance purposes. Plus, you can measure the data.

To learn more about the different compliance codes in their framework, and to get some at-a-glance details about how to deploy it across different social media, check out their compliance framework page.

I haven’t seen it widely used. However I appreciate their innovative approach and I think it could become a standard in social media compliance. Could this be the tool that will help your compliance department finally agree to allowing its agents and brokers to use social media?

I was talking to a prospective client late last week. He’s a real estate investor and he was asking me about different sales funnels that I thought were particularly effective for real estate investors. Here’s the answer I gave him:

There are two sales funnels that I really like for real estate investors right now. Each one is perfect for a slightly different audience.

SALES FUNNEL #1: THE BLOG SALES FUNNEL

Sales funnel overview:
Drive traffic > Blog > Newsletters > Become client

Driving traffic to your site: In this sales funnel, you drive traffic to your website through some fairly standard online marketing techniques. Right now I really like press releases and social media for driving traffic. I like articles, too, but because of the recent Google Panda update, I’ve become far pickier in recommending articles as a solution. I’ll only recommend them in certain situations.

Once a visitor is on your real estate investing site: On your website, visitors are greeted with a blog. You blog regularly about topics that are of interest to your audience and you build up your credibility and authority on the topic. You can present yourself as a solution but it needs to be a softer sell. You also prominently feature a newsletter subscription.

Once a visitor is subscribed: Here, you provide even deeper content that makes your subscribers feel like they’re part of an inner circle. You also present more clearly your ability to as a solution to their problem or need.

Buy from you: This is the action that your subscriber takes to contact you so you can help them.

SALES FUNNEL #2: THE SALES LETTER SALES FUNNEL

Sales funnel overview:
Drive traffic > Sales letter > (Newsletter) > Become client

Driving traffic to your site: Just like the above sales funnel, you drive traffic to your website through some fairly standard online marketing techniques. But you can also drive traffic to your site through Google AdWords.

Once a visitor is on your real estate investing site: On your website, visitors are presented with a long-form direct response sales letter and a very clear call-to-action. The call to action can be either a subscription to a newsletter or to contact you. (It depends on what you’re selling. I’ll talk more about this in a moment).

(Once a visitor is subscribed): If the call to action (above) was to subscribe to a newsletter, you would send helpful content to them on a regular basis.

Buy from you: This is the action that your site visitor takes at the end of the sales letter OR it’s the action that your subscriber takes at the end of each newsletter you send them.

WHICH SALES FUNNEL IS BEST?

I presented 2 sales funnels that I really like right now because I think they both can work… it just depends on who your audience is and what you are selling. Here are some ideas to help you choose the right sales funnel for you:

• If your audience is highly skeptical, choose the first sales funnel because you can spend time building rapport with them. For example, if you are a real estate investor who wants to find hard money lenders to help you buy properties, a blog might be good.
• If your audience has a very time-sensitive need, choose the second sales funnel and the call to action of contacting you, because a direct response sales letter will help them move forward quickly.
• If you have helpful content that you can divide into “great for everyone” and “great for only a few people”, then the first sales funnel can work because you’ll want compelling content in your blog and in your newsletter. This doesn’t work for everyone, though.
• If you want to measure the success of your marketing and drive traffic more effectively, use the second sales funnel because Google AdWords tools can help you manage the metrics in your sales funnel far better than a blast of online marketing and social media efforts.
• If your audience is already convinced of their problem or need, use the second sales funnel.
• If your audience is facing a problem or need for the first time and needs to be educated before they can choose your services, use the first sales funnel.
• If your message has a certain amount of exclusivity to it (i.e. you do something completely different than everyone else), use the second sales funnel.

Storify.com is a social media tool that enables users to pull together snippets of social media from several sources (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and more). Users bring different social media together into one “Story” that can be published and shared.

This provides yet another point of differentiation for real estate professionals who want to establish their expertise in a particular town, city, neighborhood, or community. Storify.com can help real estate professionals to sell more homes by giving potential buyers an overview of what makes that particular community so special.

Once you’ve created a Story, you can publish it, share it across other social media, and embed it on your websites.

Check out the example Storify.com Story I created to demonstrate the potential: How real estate professionals can use Storify.com to sell more homes (opens in a new tab/window).

Storify.com is free to sign up for and use (and if you have a Twitter account, you don’t even need to create another account). You can create as many stories as you want. Why not create the following stories:

• Create a Story about the city or town you live in so you can link to it for your out-of-town buyers.
• Create several Stories about the community (or communities) you specialize in. Introduce potential buyers to the area — where all the schools and shopping malls are. Embed videos of a drive down a typical street so visitors to your Story can get a sense of what the area is like. Interview local business owners and residents about the area and post videos in your story.
• Create a Story about yourself, pulling snippets of social media where other people talk about you.
• Create Stories that are linked to target markets like first time home buyers, young families, growing families, empty nesters, retirees, etc. For example, show the top three neighborhoods in the city that are perfect for families with young children.
• … and more!

There are so many possibilities and you’ll discover new opportunities as you mix and match social media in new and interesting ways!