As the year is drawing near I thought it is worthwhile noting the achievements of R&W Mosman in reaching $1 Billion in property subscriber sales. I’ve never heard of another agency reaching this milestone which is a valiant effort and a wonderful reward for persisting with an online marketing solution.
Robert has been publishing his Virtual Realty News for the past 10 years from the last week in January through to the end of the 2nd week in December each Friday at 11.00am. During this time if a vendor or a purchaser of a sold property was an existing subscriber then Robert would associate it as a VRN Subscriber Sale. The VRN Subscriber Counter currently stands at $1,007,507,720 in total property sales.
Would Robert have sold the same value in properties if he had not been operating VRN? I’d say definitely no. What Robert has successfully achieved is to build an online community where a large portion of his subscribers have the demographics (in particular financial means) associated with the properties he is selling.
Why has it been a success:
- When he started writing his blog he a chose an overall theme to write about which related to his audience. When your audience are investment bankers, lawyers, accountants and “old money” then discussions in relation to economics and politics are going to be popular.
- Consistency has been key as Robert has not missed a weekly VRN since he started over 10 years ago. If you’re a subscriber then you can expect the email Alert in your mail box just after 11.00am each Friday from the end of January through until mid way through December. This consistency is what subscribers love, they know they won’t be spammed with 10 emails in a week, yet they can expect an email with entertaining reading each Friday.
- Everybody loves controversy and Robert writes in a provocative way to stirrup the emotions of his readers. Sometimes he upsets readers through his opinions but this make for interesting blog discussions. Some readers will post comments which Robert disagrees with but they always remain on his blog (unlike other blogs where you post comments disagreeing with the author they are removed).
- Over time his blog has evolved making sure it stays relevant and interesting to subscribers. When he first started the blog was only text, then 4 years ago he started adding stats, then he added graphs and tables, last year saw the addition of a Tim Mooney photo in each post and then this year he started integrating videos like the one below.
In summary, these factors contribute to a successful blog and through VRN Robert has attracted both property seekers and vendors to his website helping market R&W properties and their selling services.
His VRN news was the beginning of an aggressive online marketing strategy which now consists of iPhone and iPad/tablet websites, Twitter, video and soon an industry first facebook application. This can all be summed up in the yet to be released 2011 RWM Corporate Video, courteous of their video production partner Visual Domain.