The Found Gen

Marketing That Works.

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Want More Listings? Here’s How to Grow Your Real Estate Practice

The real estate industry is packed with professionals trying to out-bus-bench and out-billboard the others. Maybe you want to follow this playbook to grow your business, too, but trust us when we say there’s a better way. 

The truth is agents who consistently land listings aren’t getting them from drive-bys; they’re building their pipeline strategically: through time-tested relationship-building and effective content marketing. 

If you’re ready to level up your real estate practice, here’s where to start:

Make Sure Your Brand is Doing the Heavy Lifting

Your personal brand should be working just as hard as you are. If your marketing materials, website or social profiles are outdated, unclear or forgettable, it’s time for a refresh. 

As a real estate agent, you need to create a consistent brand identity with colors, font and tone that match your target clientele. Focus on credibility and connection as you build out your brand. People want to hire a real human they trust.

Work Your Connections

Your best source of future listings is your past and present relationships. You have to stay in touch. Send monthly newsletters with local real estate tips, market trends or recent wins. You might also consider sending a small holiday gift with a quick personal note. By staying top of mind with your past clients, your portfolio is bound to grow.

Go Hyper-Local with Your Marketing

Trying to be everywhere at once rarely works. Instead, zero in on specific neighborhoods or property types where you want to grow as a real estate professional. Then, you can implement marketing tactics like:

  • Using geo-targeted ads to show up in front of sellers in specific zip codes
  • Mailers, especially when they offer value (think home maintenance checklists, market reports, coupons or even personalized notes)
  • Sponsoring or attending local events. Name recognition goes a long way when homeowners are deciding who to trust with their listing.
Position Yourself as a Local Market Expert

Sellers want someone who understands their neighborhood better than Zillow ever could. Become the local market expert – and then market your expertise!

  • Double down on SEO and content marketing by posting blogs weekly and optimizing your website with keywords people are actually searching
  • Leverage photography and videos on your social media accounts
  • Offer free home valuation consultations
  • Regularly share market stats, listing tips and neighborhood updates 
Need Help with Your Marketing Strategy? Call us at The Found Gen.

Need help crafting the right message, building a real estate marketing strategy or revamping your digital presence? We’ve got the tools, team and talent to help you stand out in the competitive real estate industry. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you grow your listings.

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The Marketing Fundamentals for Marketing Your Hotel

A stunning lobby, enviable infinity pool and prime location can only take you so far in the competitive travel industry. To differentiate your product, it’s paradoxically not about your product at all. It’s about building your brand and delivering experiences that start before guests even check-in.

Whether you’re a boutique B&B or a luxury resort, mastering the fundamentals of hotel marketing is key to staying competitive in a saturated hospitality market. Here are the core pillars your hotel’s marketing strategy should stand on.

Branding That Goes Beyond the Logo

The right branding should evoke an emotional response. It’s the je ne sais quoi feeling guests get when they book a room, walk into your lobby or scroll through your Instagram feed.

To define your brand, you need to first understand your value proposition. What makes your hotel unique? From there, craft your message and create a cohesive tone, look and experience across all your marketing platforms. Consistency builds trust, and trust builds bookings.

A Website That Converts

Your website is your hotel’s virtual front desk. Make sure it is mobile-friendly, fast and optimized for SEO. Lean into your brand messaging as you craft compelling copy paired with high-quality images and clear calls to action for an easy booking experience.

Increased Visibility with SEO + Local Search

What good is a beautiful property if no one can find it online? Optimize your website for keywords travelers actually search (e.g., “best hotel near downtown [city]”). Be sure also to claim and update your Google Business Profile so that Google and potential customers know your business is legitimate. For more simple SEO fixes to optimize your hotel’s website, check out this post.

Social Media That Shows (and Sells) the Experience

Social platforms let you bring your story to life. Hotels must post consistently and with purpose. Respond to comments, share local insights and participate in relevant conversations. You might also consider using paid ads to boost visibility for special packages, seasonal events or to retarget past visitors.

Email Marketing That Actually Works

With the right strategy, email can drive bookings, encourage loyalty and keep your hotel top-of-mind, but your message has to resonate with readers. To be most effective with your email marketing, create segmented lists (i.e., families, solo travelers, business guests, repeat customers) and send targeted content based on your audience.

Contact Us for Help with Your Hotel Marketing

Marketing your hotel has always and will always be about getting the fundamentals right. Even as flashy trends come and go, when your brand is solid and you have a content marketing strategy dialed in, everything works together to fill rooms and build loyalty.

Contact us today to see how we can help you, just like we’ve helped hotels like Kamalame Cay and Kanopi House double their bookings and solidify their reputation in the travel industry. 

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3 Things Every Hotel Should Be Doing to Market Their Property

Hotels are ubiquitous. No matter where you are going from small town to big city to even a remote jungle, you have options…endless options. While some customers filter by price or location or the number of stars reviewers give, they all must whittle down their options and ultimately make a choice about which hotel property to book. Good marketing can make this choice easier. It could even eliminate the decision altogether. 

To guide customers to your hotel property, here are three marketing strategies you need to implement today:

  • Build an SEO-optimized website – Your hotel’s website should do more than look pretty, it has to work hard. That means showing up in search results when travelers are Googling phrases like “best boutique hotels in [your city]” or “hotels near [local attraction].”

How do you do this? By consistently posting fresh, keyword-rich blog content that highlights things like local events, travel guides, unique amenities or behind-the-scenes hotel stories. Pair that with intuitive navigation, strong technical SEO and irresistible photos, and you’re halfway to converting curious browsers into loyal guests.

  • Stay social – Hotels have the perfect playground for social media: stunning visuals, guest testimonials, seasonal décor, spa days, room tours and food that begs to be photographed. But it’s not just about the photo that makes marketing effective, it’s about telling a story. Use your social platforms to highlight the experience your hotel offers, and you will build instant connection with your audience.
  • Nurture relationships through email marketing – Don’t underestimate the power of an inbox. Email marketing allows you to keep past guests engaged, encourage repeat bookings and promote exclusive offers. But the key to success is a tight email list. You want to make sure the right message is resonating with the right audience. When you do, not only will you benefit from repeat bookings, but you’ll likely also get referrals and grow your list through word of mouth.

Need Help with Your Marketing Strategy? Call us at The Found Gen.

Marketing a hotel, especially a niche or boutique property, means going beyond glossy photos and seasonal sales. You have to see and be seen by the people who matter most to your business. The right messaging in the right place at the right time will do this for you. We can help. 

Contact us today to see how we can help you, just like we’ve helped hotels like Kamalame Cay and Kanopi House double their bookings and solidify their reputation in the travel industry.

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Why Blogging is the Best Thing You Can Do to Boost Your SEO

To start, a brief primer on SEO. SEO, a.k.a. search engine optimization, is a buzzword that’s been buzzing in marketers’ ears for years. The purpose of SEO is to increase your website’s rank on search engine results pages (SERP) by improving the quality and quantity of your website’s content (among other things). Better, more frequent content gives the internet bots something to chomp on, which thus pushes your site higher in SERP. 

Of course, that’s an oversimplified explanation of SEO. It’s far more nuanced than that, and before pursuing any type of SEO marketing campaign, you must know your goal. There’s an SEO strategy for every marketing goal, and without first defining yours, you run the risk of spending a lot of time and money on an effort that won’t yield the results you want. That said, no matter your goal, blogging will usually be an all-star player in the game because it is one of the best ways to increase your presence on Google and other search engines. Here are some reasons why.

Fresh Content for the Win

Google loves fresh content, and a regularly updated blog tells search engines that your website is active, relevant and worthy of higher rankings. Every new post is an opportunity to get indexed. Indexing is basically Google reading your webpage to assess its content so that later it can use this information to determine how useful your site will be in a search result. 

To demonstrate ongoing relevance and usefulness, you need to add at least four new pages of content to your site every 28 days. When you do, the bots will keep chomping on your site, and you’ll be in the best position to boost your SEO ranking.

Bye-bye to Bounce Rates

Another reason blogging is a boon to your business strategy and SEO is because when your content is good – and by that we mean it is useful, relevant, answers a customer’s question, etc. – it feeds a need. When content feeds a need, readers are going to stay on your page longer, which reduces your bounce rate and increases your SEO performance. 

More Keywords, More Ranking Opportunities

Blogging is also beneficial to SEO because more content = more keywords = more ranking opportunities. That said, the days of keyword stuffing are long gone, but that doesn’t mean keywords aren’t important. Keywords are your clues to what your audience really wants to know – and when you answer more questions better than the rest, Google (and the AI-overview feature on Google) will reward you. 

Contact Us at The Found Gen for Help with Your Blog

If you’re serious about SEO, blogging should be at the core of your strategy. It’s not just about ranking higher in search results, it’s about creating engaging content that answers questions, adds value and converts customers. Call us today to learn more about how our team at The Found Gen can help.

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Why Blogging is So Dang Important for Law Firms

You’re a busy legal professional. You’ve got clients to manage, court appearances, research and research and research. Who has time to blog?

Well, you might not want to hear this, but you need to make the time. Blogs are number one for driving traffic to your site, establishing trust and authority,  and landing leads. However, if you don’t want to make the time, there are some great options (ahem, like us) for outsourcing all your marketing needs

You’re just not going to escape the need for blogs in your law firm. They’re just that important.

One of the great things is that you probably already have a massive amount of content just sitting in your legal documents, your client emails and in-house communications that can readily be turned into blogs. So, look at the bright side. All that finger strain and knowledge poured out can fuel future blogs and a strategic marketing campaign.

Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty. We can push you to blog all day, but you need to know why it’s so important for your law firm. Here’s why…

Trust and authority

In the legal field, your clients need to know that they can count on your knowledge, skills and expertise. You can talk up your practice all you want but the proof is in the pudding. Think of it from your client’s perspective. If they came to your website and just saw you tooting your own horn with no content to back it up, they wouldn’t establish the kind of trust they need to reach out to you. Show them that you’re an expert, that you understand your legal field inside and out and that you understand their needs. Share stories that they can relate to – and how you would solve or approach the issue at hand. This can provide a level of solace to a potential client that makes converting that lead and done deal. Yes, you can accomplish all this and more through blogs.

Not only are trust and authority important to your clients, but they’re important to Google’s crawlers as well. SEO is about way more than regurgitating keywords. Google actually has algorithms to examine your authority and credibility. Write great blogs with relevant and informative content and boost your SEO. Speaking of SEO…

SEO

Hands down the best way to get yourself on the first page of search engines is through content. And for most law firms blogging is the best form of content to accomplish this. 96% of people are using search engines to find attorneys. 75% of people never look past the first page. Writing blogs that target the key questions that your potential clients are searching for will put you on their radar and drive all that traffic home.

Foster relationships, expand your reach

Consumers just don’t want to be “sold” anymore. They are savvier than ever and know when they’re getting a sales pitch. These days the best way to attract clients and build a brand is through relationships. You build relationships through content. This means providing content that speaks to your audience’s needs and wants, that meets them where they are and answers the questions that are on their minds. Do this and you foster relationships. Relationships lead to trusting and satisfied clients.

A cost-effective marketing strategy

The bottom line is always heavy on the mind of any business owner. Your law firm is no different. One of the best things about blogging is that it’s extremely cost-effective compared to other forms of marketing and offers one of the best ROIs of any marketing strategy. Valuable blogs also pay for themselves year after year. If you wrote about a particularly sticky issue that your clients are needing help on, you could see return traffic to this blog for months and years, helping you rank on search engines and building your authority.

Feed the content machine

With an effective content marketing strategy, it’s imperative to look at the big picture. Blogs are great, of course, you’ll never hear otherwise from us. But without an overarching campaign and strategy, you won’t utilize your blogs to their full effectiveness. Blogs can (and should) work in tandem with social media, newsletters, video content and any other piece of your overall marketing plan.

Are we blog-biased? Of course! But for good reason. Blogs are one of the best forms of content to drive quality traffic to your site, establish authority, and easily convert leads, not to mention they’re so dang cost-effective.

Bottom line. You need to blog. Hope we made that clear. Now, let’s talk content marketing strategy to give your blogs the best shot.

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Are You Tracking Traffic to Your Blog Properly?

A successful blog can mean different things to different people and businesses. One company might be seeking higher engagement and PR. Another might be solely interested in converting leads. While another company may want to build a loyal following.

Regardless of your niche, industry or area of expertise, everyone needs the data that will tell them whether or not their blog is successful based on their key performance indicators (KPIs). With all readers coming to your site, engagements and leads, you are sitting on a treasure trove of data that can further fuel your business. You need to make sure you’re tracking all that priceless data correctly.

Welcome to the wonderful world of blog analytics.

Analytics can help you track your impact with impressions, clicks and click-through rates. They can help you understand your traffic performance, your authority, your readership engagement and your lead generation.

Here are the key tracking methods you can use to measure your blog’s success.

Page views and visits

A visit measures the number of times your site was seen by a user. Any time a user views a page on your website this qualifies as a page view. This can tell you how many people are visiting your site, what pages they’re visiting and how your inbound links may be assisting  or hindering them from more page views.

Search impressions

These come from the number of times your post has been seen in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The higher you rank, the more traffic will be driven to your site. If you’re ranking low, it’s time to review your SEO.

Clicks

It’s great the people are searching for your topic, but you need them click. the more clicks, the more traffic. The more traffic, the more potential customers.

Click-through rate

The click-through rate measure the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. A high percentage means your impressions are doing great. Even if your post had low traffic, if your click-through rate is high, you’re doing something right.

Traffic by channel

The channel refers to the path your readers take to visit your content. This could be coming from social media, email campaigns, landing pages or search engines. This can tell you which channel is most successful for your business.

Time on page vs. bounce rate

You want your readers to spend as much time on your page as possible. Analytics can measure the average time people spend on your site. This can tell you how engaging and relevant your content is. On the other hand, bounce rates refer to people coming to your site or page, finding nothing worth their interest, and leaving. Both metrics will help you gage whether your content is resonating with your audience.

Top traffic posts

By seeing which posts gained the most traffic you can get a better understanding of what content your audience wants. This can help you tailor future blogs to meet your customers’ needs.

The list could go on… But we don’t want to wear you down with too much tactical analytical talk.

We hope you get the point. Analytics are crucial measurements to help you determine the effectiveness of your blogs. Analytics will also help you build your bottom line when it comes to your marketing strategy and budget. DO NOT skip analytics or simply gloss over your indicators. This is priceless data that your business needs.

And we didn’t want to leave you without some tools for tracking your traffic.

Here are some of the best tools for measuring analytics.

  • Google Analytics
  • Tableau
  • Momently
  • HubSpot Marketing Hub
  • SEMrush
  • Google Search Console
  • Visitor Analytics
  • Clicky Analytics
  • Bitly

We wish you the best in digging through your data. If the numbers are overwhelming you, we can help!