Just Spell My Name Right

It’s a new year and you are, no doubt, plotting your communications strategy for 2016. We published an article about the top 10 posts of the year on Facebook recently that ignited deeper thought about communication strategies that work. Entertainment is certainly one of them. If the Disney family is the first family of Entertainment in American History, P.T. Barnum is certainly a cousin. Legend has it that he is also responsible for one of the most famous quotes in the PR business: “I don’t care what you say about me, just spell my name right.” If you read the [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:25-07:00January 21st, 2016|Main category, Marketing, Our Services|1 Comment
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Making Vendor Partnerships Work

The tragedy of software in real estate is lack of adoption by agents. Brokerage firms and MLSs who invest dearly in technology solutions start out with the hope that agents will use it and success will come. Since hope is not a strategy, more work is required to find success. First of all, there is a difference between a site license and a user license. As you enter into partnerships with vendors, consider user licenses. That will bind both the vendor and the company to a mutual goal of driving agent adoption of the application.  Companies should not pay license [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:25-07:00January 21st, 2016|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Our Services|0 Comments
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The 7 Keys to A Successful MLS Conversion

If my history recollection serves me, Vancouver is where Canada’s first real estate board was formed in 1888. The current Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) has been in continuous operation since 1919. They are also members of a leading regional MLS that encompasses the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board as a partner and the Chilliwack and District Real Estate Board and the British Columbia Northern Real Estate Board as customers. Together they transitioned 16,000 Realtors to Black Knight’s Paragon system. Many industry insiders are touting it as the smoothest conversion in history. WAV Group connected with Eileen Day, [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:25-07:00January 12th, 2016|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments
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Is there a hidden downside to lead generation?

Real estate lead generation research tells us only about 1 or 2 percent of all purchased online leads become transactions. Another way to say that is 98 out of 100 times, an agent fails to turn a lead into a client, or 98 times out of 100, they are being rejected. Yet, the conventional wisdom in real estate is that you only need to turn one lead into a transaction to pay for all the leads you’ve purchased this year many times over. But is there a problem with this logic? Is it looking at only one side of the [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:27-07:00December 16th, 2015|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|1 Comment
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Hire a Curator

A quick Google search brings up the definition of curator – it is a word derived from the Latin word curare – meaning, “take care.” A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally this word has a connotation of maintaining historical things because it is an official position in museums, but that is not the context intended here.  The role of a curator in today’s business is to keep things current. WAV Group Communications starts projects with an audit. We begin by understanding the variety of audiences that the company engages. We then take a look at how MLSs or [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:27-07:00December 16th, 2015|Main category, Our Services|0 Comments
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Stop Buying Technology

It’s the season. WAV Group is fielding satisfaction surveys to determine how agents and brokers use or don’t use technology offerings. We even encounter a curious situation where we are measuring satisfaction with broker solutions and MLS solutions in the same market. Sometimes the easiest answer to a strategy is the simplest. What WAV Group sees today is that less is more. Too many technology solutions is real estate have feature creep. Regardless if it is a broker CRM or the MLS system – they are too complex.  In real estate technology, usability trumps functionality. Change is Hard The most [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:27-07:00December 16th, 2015|Broker Technology Research, Main category|0 Comments
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Millennials, Shmillennials: Why aren’t we marketing to the over 50 crowd?

Advertising contrarian Bob Hoffman gave a talk at Matt Beall's Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers' Worthshop 5 conference last week, which is a wake up call to real estate agents and brokers everywhere. Why are we spending so much time, energy and money marketing to 18-34 year olds when the greatest, wealthiest, most powerful spending group in the world in nearly every major product category is 50+ years old? Remarkably, Bob helps us answer that question and a more important one: How should we be marketing to the over 50 crowd? Full disclosure up front: The majority of the marketing [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:28-07:00December 16th, 2015|Main category|1 Comment
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Brokers Need To Sharpen Their Value Story

WAV Group is re-launching a number of brokerage brands today. Re-launching a brand does not require a brand to change, but the brand communication changes. We review how the brand is communicated everywhere, but especially where the brand has the greatest reach – in your technology applications. A brand re-launch begins with a strategy to tell the story about why your brand is a good choice. We identify why your managers (employees) work for your firm so competitors do not hire them away. We define the reasons why agents (contractors) work for your firm so they cannot be recruited away. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:29-07:00November 11th, 2015|Main category, Marketing, Our Services|0 Comments
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Is Email Volume Killing Your Company?

Lingchi is the roughly the word that the Chinese use to describe a form of torture whereby a person is executed by 1000 cuts. Dying the death of a thousand cuts has become a familiar business term that can have any range of meaning. WAV Group fielded a question from large brokerage firm – "how do we reduce email in our company?" Communication in a company is good, but too much communication as an adverse impact. What follows is my reply. Calculate the spoilage - If it takes each member of the company an hour to clean out their inbox [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:31-07:00November 3rd, 2015|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|1 Comment
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WAKE UP BROKERS! Hablas Espanol?

Today, 85% of homebuyers are white, but that is changing rapidly in America. The new and growing homebuyer population is Hispanic or Latino, and most do not speak English well enough to have confidence in a real estate transaction written in a foreign language, with an agent who is not bilingual. Yikes or Opportunity? We think opportunity. From 2010 to 2012, the number of Hispanic homebuyers increased 38%! Today, only 20,000 of the nations’ 1.2 Million members of the National Association of REALTORS is Hispanic. By the way – all of the stats quoted here look at data collected in [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:31-07:00November 2nd, 2015|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments
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Online Marketing is for Sellers, Recruiting, and Retention

It's November, the beginning of budgeting and planning for a successful 2016. WAV Group studies the online effectiveness of many of today’s leading brokers and provides audits and advisory services on optimizing these programs. The true measure of online effectiveness is closing a transaction. Unfortunately, we have observed that closing a transaction is coincidental to online marketing and not a direct correlation. The relationship between an agent and a consumer is akin to dating. Both parties must be attracted to one another. There needs to be a connection and the development of things like trust and confidence. It’s a dating [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:31-07:00November 2nd, 2015|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Our Services|0 Comments
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Preparing for Success in the Coming Year

As we approach the end of another exciting year in real estate, now is a great time to sit back and reflect on the best ways to help prepare your members and organization for success next year. We have talked many times over the years about the importance of staying in touch with what is happening in the industry today. Here’s what can happen when an organization is out of touch: They can delay decisions because they seem difficult or controversial causing the organization to fall behind or lose its competitive advantage. Instead of responding to the waves of change, [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:32-07:00October 27th, 2015|Main category, Our Services|0 Comments
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