Athena's marketing masterclass! 💣

Apart from running an amazing property business Athena is also a marketing whizz! Today she shares a mini-masterclass in marketing & branding with the girls focussing on new property businesses. 

Have you ever wondered:

• What the difference is between marketing and branding and which to do first?
• How to build trust & credibility through marketing?
• Whether business branding should be separate from our personal branding?

All of these things are key to getting a business out there to the right people and making your marketing effective.

Click here to see all of the Star Collective bundles that cover either the full Marketing toolkit or individual sections. 

Mark your calendars! Join us on Saturday, December 7, 2024, for the Girls in Property Christmas Gala Ball. Want early access to tickets and updates on future events? Just send a DM with "COMMUNITY" and we’ll add you to our mailing list.

Additionally, if you're interested in taking your property journey to the next level, click here to book a FREE 30-minute consultation with Athena. We'll discuss how the Property Lifestyle Accelerator Programme can help accelerate your success.

ABOUT THE HOST

With more than 5 years of experience as a landlord, Athena Dobson departed her secure corporate job two years ago to chase her passion as a full-time property investor.
Now, she successfully manages multiple businesses handling HMOs, SAs, & BTLs, all while sharing her expertise to guide &teach others on their own journey to success.

Athena's mission is to be able share as many tips as possible from her own experience, to empower others to navigate the complex realms of business & property with confidence! 🌟

Girls in Property is recorded at Absolute Music Studios in Poole.

CONNECT & CONTACT

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Transcript

Sophie: 0:04

You're listening to the Girls in Property podcast, where we explore the world of property, meet amazing guests to hear their stories, and support you in your property journey. Hi, everyone. How are you doing? Hope you're good. So you're here today with me, Sophie. I'm also with Simon.

Simon: 0:23

Hello.

Sophie: 0:23

Julia. Hi.

Athena: 0:25

And Athena. Hiya.

Sophie: 0:26

How's everyone doing?

Athena: 0:28

Good.

Simon: 0:28

Very well indeed, thank you.

Sophie: 0:30

Good. So today we're going to be doing a mini marketing masterclass with our girl Athena, who happens to have a first class marketing degree. We're going to use your knowledge and spread it to the listeners so we can all be marketing kings and queens.

Athena: 0:47

Sounds good. Is that good?

Sophie: 0:50

Athena, can you tell us about marketing and branding, why we might need to use it in property, and what even is the difference?

Athena: 0:57

Yeah, sure. So the question I get asked most frequently all the time is there even a difference between marketing and branding? The short answer is yes, and a lot of people don't actually realize. And the second question I get asked is, where do you even start when you're thinking about marketing and branding? And so the place to start, absolutely is first thinking about, well, who are you marketing to? Who are you trying to engage with? Who's your audience? And a lot of the times people will say to me, well, I market to a lot of people, my audience is quite vast. And I always say to them, that's absolutely fine, but you do need to have a target audience, even if you have I call them avatars. So even if you have multiple avatars, they still have their own marketing toolkit or marketing way of advertising to them. So let's use some examples. So, for example, do you have your demographic as females? What age group are they in? Are they 30 plus? Are they younger? Where do they shop? What do they read? Where do they go to? All of these things are so important because it will therefore determine, should I be advertising on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook ads? Where should I be actually doing these ads? All these questions that you ask yourself about your customer avatar will determine then what marketing strategy you actually use to go forward. Are they investors? Are they landlords? So that's the first step, I would always say. And then it's the second bit of marketing v branding chicken and egg. Which comes first? So for me, the answer is always branding should always come first. Because what branding is it's your identity? So what is your company's identity? Would always be the first one to start with, I would say.

Julia: 2:35

So, Athena, when you think about branding, would you say there's different types of branding out there?

Athena: 2:40

Yeah, absolutely, there are different types. So let's take a company as an example, because I think that would really help listeners. So I always use one that is most commonly known by quite a few people like Virgin, for example. So when you think of Virgin, the company brand is the name Virgin. And you think about their tagline, you might think of their color scheme, for example, being red. I mean, what do you guys think of when someone says to you virgin, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

Julia: 3:08

WiFi and red, right?

Athena: 3:11

Red. So the color red and Wi fi. So that's their company brand. What else do you think about?

Sophie: 3:17

Their staff can wear anything they want, can't they? And wear makeup and express themselves. And it's all really like progressive.

Athena: 3:23

Exactly. So that's the personality of the brand, the fact that they can be expressive. Why can they be expressive? What does the company actually represent? What is their identity? So somebody would say what you've just said, that's being disruptive, that's being forward thinking trendsetter. That's how people see virgin. So you have the company brand, you have the product brand, and then you have the personality brand as well. So the personality brand is Richard Branson. So when you think of Virgin, you think of Richard Branson and then you think, well, what is Richard Branson like? He's this billionaire who left or never went to uni and is a disruptor in the field and therefore he shows that through his air stewardesses who look the way they look and things. So you always got to think about, well, there are different types of branding and how it all flows. So for me, my biggest top tip I can always give for listeners listening who are starting off their brand, their company is think who you are and who you want to represent because it will be a great way to then reflect that into your company. So for example, I always start with what are my three pillars so what are my three pillars of value? So they could be money, mindset, motivation, those could be three. It could be integrity, honesty, loyalty. But what are the three things that you want to represent that then go into your brand? Because everybody thinks of a personality brand first.

Julia: 4:46

So when starting out businesses, obviously you're not just going to be Virgin straight away. It takes time. So I think a lot of questions and a lot of people know, do you brand as your company or do you brand in your personal name and then branch out into marketing your company?

Athena: 5:05

So this is a really interesting one. We had this conversation recently, soph because we listened to the Girls That Invest podcast, and she gave a really good top tip, which I'm going to share on this podcast, which was if you actually do it through your personality and your personal brand. If one company, for example, was to actually fail, let's say that you did a flower business, random flower business, and that flower business failed. But because your personality is so strong and you therefore then go into a bakery, they're like oh, well, Athena has her name against it, says, bakery is going to be amazing. Sophie's got her name against this sunglasses business. And people will always buy from people that they like, it's just a matter of fact. So it's always, in my opinion, best to promote your personality first and then your company second.

Julia: 5:51

And I think that links closely with what you said about the three pillars. So when I started my branding and my marketing, I used to market as my company, and I started with an instagram with my company name. And you would realize, yep, some people would engage, a lot of people would support, but it's not as effective as your personal branding. And so then I took a whole different approach and I actually asked all my closest people, what are the five words or things the way that you would describe me? And the most people would go, you're black and white, straight to the point you're funny and you're knowledgeable. And so I would take those things and I'd be like, okay, that's how I'm going to brand myself. That is who I am, and that's how I'm going to portray myself, but then link my business with me. So when people think Julia, they'll think deluxe. And they all said, you're luxury. So I was like, okay, I'm going to have a luxurious brand.

Athena: 6:47

And you're a great example of this. I remember when you moved from HMOs and service accommodation, you were the HMO girl, and then you literally transitioned in service accommodation, but it was seamless for you because you were just Julia golly Bisca. Like that's who you were. And so it didn't matter that you were doing service accommodation or HMOs or whatever it was yours, it was your business.

Julia: 7:07

And what I say, so like, for everyone listening there, it's like when people ask me these questions, I say, you're not McDonald's. When they see your logo, they're not going to know, oh, she does service accommodation or she does HMOs or they're not going to know that because your branding isn't as big, it's still building. So I always say, start in your personal, start showing what kind of person you are, promote your business and what you do through that. And then once you get to a stage where you're getting quite well established, you can then promote for your business and you can try get like, we get a few celebrities, stay in a few of our accommodations. So our branding name gets out there and people are like, oh, this person stayed with deluxe. And obviously that builds that trust to that company credibility. Because with McDonald's, you know what you expect when you go there. You know it's going to be a fast service, you know it's going to be efficient. And the way you know that is one word of mouth, but two, they've been running for years and you've got people who trust them who people like them, who can recommend them. And when you're starting out, you need to build that. And the only way you can build that I think is through your personal brand first, if you agree.

Athena: 8:15

Absolutely. So that's basically branding in a nutshell. And there's obviously more to this, but we're just going to do a really quick snapshot. So if anybody wants to talk any more to me about branding and starting out, then obviously come and find me. Just moving on to marketing then. So we now have our brand identity, we now have our three pillars. The next step is, well, how do we get that message out to there? So what marketing always is about the message that you want to give. So this is through marketing content. So guys, give me some examples of marketing content then that you could do to get your identity and brand out there.

Julia: 8:44

You've got the aggressive approach, don't you?

Athena: 8:46

Even simpler than that. Just give me straight up, where do you go to market yourself? Letters to landlords, right? Letters. Letters is a great example. What other ones are there?

Sophie: 8:54

Socials perfect.

Athena: 8:55

Social media. Yeah.

Sophie: 8:56

Face to face.

Athena: 8:57

Exactly. Networking. So all of these are different types of marketing content that you can basically go to get your message out. So what I say is think about the type of message you're trying to get out. So let's take for example, two different examples which would use two completely different types of marketing content. So the first one is a high value item where you physically have to build real relationships in order for people to actually buy your product. It's not a product that they're just going to see and buy, it's one that you got to build over time and relationships. So from a marketing content standpoint, where is the best place to do that?

Sophie: 9:30

Face to face.

Athena: 9:31

Right? Networking. Exactly. So therefore that type of business should be more face to face. You should be looking at networking events, business events, you should be going, you should be promoting it. That's the type of marketing content you should do. Yes, of course you can raise brand awareness on social media and things, but it's all about credibility, it's all about brand awareness and building that. Whereas let's say that you had a product that you had to demonstrate, so you now have a product that you've got to demonstrate and that people would buy. It kind of like on a fly, that it's like an intuitive purchase. It's not necessarily one that they have to think a lot about. Where would you market that video on social media? TikTok. TikTok would be a great place to do that, where you could demonstrate using something. It could be literally anything. Where they're like, oh my God, that's amazing. Click here to buy. Done. It could be shopping online, it could be anything. So you see how different types of products and different types of services will require different types of marketing content, then.

Julia: 10:23

I think that links very closely to who's your market audience, because it's like, if our market audience, for example, if I'm looking to acquire more investors, my market audience will not be spending time on TikTok.

Athena: 10:34

Exactly.

Julia: 10:34

They'll be on their yachts, and they'll be enjoying life. So it's like, how do you get to that type of clientele? So I think, as you said in the start, it's like, look at your people who you're trying to reach. Absolutely see how you can reach them. Where do they spend most of their time? And it's like Ferrari. They say, we do not advertise on TV because our audience, our buyer, is not watching TV.

Athena: 10:56

Perfect. So that's a classic example where you really need to understand where your marketing should be to use the most effectively. You should never just do marketing for the sake of marketing. We always say, me and Sophie, we always say to each other, always do money making activities. So if you're ever going to market, think, what is your end outcome? What is your ROI from this? And you're right, Julia, to always think about, well, where are my clients going to be? So, for example, if you've got an older demographic, they might not be on Instagram, but they might be on Facebook. That's just a natural thing. So it's important to know where these are. So marketing and branding will work really effectively together if done the right way. You create the identity, you know the audience you're doing it to, and therefore, you can establish where you should be marketing that message to. So that's overall, how I would use that one, and then the other bit is, how do you actually use these? So we now know that we want to be on Facebook, we now know we want to be on Instagram, or we now know we want to be in networking. Therefore, you then have to think to yourself, okay, how should we use this marketing? So what I always say is there are two different ways you can market. There are reactive techniques and there are proactive techniques. So proactive marketing is where you're effectively going somewhere to build credibility, to build brand awareness, to be the leading expert in the field, because you're going forward with your knowledge ahead of the game. And so people see you as the expert, as it were. That's proactive. Reactive marketing is literally what it says. Let's say that there's a current thing that's happening in the market. Let's just take a fashion show, and there's a really scandal on the fashion show, and you're first to comment about it. You're therefore being reactive to the market. Obviously, in property, the renters reform bill or the mortgage interest rates, you could be commenting about that as soon as the news hits. You could therefore be seen as the expert. You could be seen as a trendsetter. The person to go to. It builds knowledge and credibility, but more importantly, it also gives you an engagement with your audience. So you always want to build credibility, build awareness, but also create engagement because the more engagement that you get, the more people talk about you and therefore you build yourself up. So that's how you can use marketing effectively.

Sophie: 13:09

Should we all have a pipeline and like a CRM? And should we be listing things and getting all geeky on the data? Or do we just throw content out there and keep doing it if it seems to be working?

Athena: 13:21

That's a really good question. Actually, I haven't talked about that. So what Sophie's just mentioned is the CRM. So for our listeners, that's a customer relationship management system or piece of software, and you're absolutely right, that's a great thing to do. So, for example, let's say you go and visit some agents. Let's take that as an example for our property listeners. So you go and see some agents, always try and get a business card from them. So every time you go see an agent, whether they say yes or no, grab a business card and put them in your CRM system. Because what you then do is you've got let's take 20 agents, and with those 20 agents, you can therefore create a newsletter that could go out to them to let them know about your business and the current trends in the market every single month. So therefore, the agents see you as the expert in the field and know your face. So when you come back to look at properties, they're like, oh, I know you. Yeah, we do actually have some properties rather than just somebody Joe blogs who comes once every six months to go, hi, I'm looking to do rent to rent. Have you got any properties? It just builds that credibility amongst it. And also you can keep tracking your CRM system about the people who actually will open and are engaging with your newsletter, and those are unsubscribing.

Julia: 14:30

I think the CRM system is really good to keep on track of things to avoid the overwhelm with the whole marketing. But also the other aspect is it keeps things neat and tidy. And I don't know if listeners have heard this before, but typically it takes six points of contact and six different ways. So it's like if you only do one form of marketing, you might not be as remembered or they'll go, oh, that kind of rings a bell. But if you say leaflet as one, then send a letter as two, then they see you on TV, then they see you on a billboard, then you show up at networking events, they'll go, oh, I know you, I know what you do. And it's like, actually, I've seen you everywhere. I've seen you on social media, I've seen you here. And it's like, I actually want to work with you, like, you're inspiring.

Athena: 15:12

So this happened to me recently. So I used to take it as a negative when people used to say to me, I see you everywhere. That's what they used to say to me, they go and they still say to me, they go, literally, you are everywhere. And I used to think, oh, no, that's not a good thing. And now I see that as a really good thing. I had someone say to me the other day, they're like, oh, my God, you're doing amazing things. You're everywhere. And I was like, thanks. I was like, thanks. I know, that's great. It's working. I was like, yeah, so get out there and show people what you're doing. I always tell people who are starting out their journey, I always say to them, are you documenting what you're doing? Do people know what you're doing? And 99% of the time they'll say, no. And I'll say why? And they're like, Nobody wants to see my journey. And I'm like, yes, they do. Because how is an investor supposed to even know about you if you're not even putting yourself out there and you're just going in dry?

Julia: 16:01

So I think a brilliant example of that is the Fontaine brothers. They have documented their journey. They didn't have the right cameras. They literally were learning. They were showing their failures, their ups, the downs, the roller coasters. The thing is, over the period of months and years that they've been doing their business, they've had probably people who follow them from the very start. And then they started building more and more people because they're like, oh, these people are showing the realness. And it's a brilliant example because they sort of gone, we just want to document our journey. We want to build our audience with it. Now, I think they've got 200,000 followers, they're doing really well. And it's just because they didn't care and they didn't procrastinate going, I need to pay this much for this much equipment to start. They just gone, okay, we've got an iPhone. Let's press record and let's see and document and get ourselves out there because people need to know what we're doing.

Athena: 16:49

Absolutely. And you know what? Let's face it, our podcast is a great example of that. When we started out, we didn't have all the latest gear and everything. We had a one dud microphone, and now we've got four brilliant microphones. It's just one of those where if you procrastinate and don't start, nobody's going to see you. And then hopefully the more followers that join you will actually stay with you and watch you grow. And then we'll go on to do bigger and better things.

Julia: 17:10

The only way you get yourself known is by getting yourself out there, literally. And it sort of links back. I don't know. What do you think of this? Any marketing is good marketing.

Athena: 17:22

That takes at least a half an hour. Podcast in itself, it's a tricky one. That's a tricky one because you can build I'll tell you what my answer to that is. It takes a really long time to build a reputation in a brand and in a business, and it takes seconds to destroy it. Like seconds. So I would say I don't think that any marketing is good. Marketing no would probably be my answer to that. But do something rather than nothing, but do it effectively. And I'd always ask myself the question, whenever you are going to do any piece of marketing? And the answer can be, build brand awareness, by the way, to this answer. But what is it you're trying to achieve through that piece of marketing? And always ask yourself that question. So what I want to do is just move on to the last bit, which is, in my opinion, the most important bit. So you've done your brand, you know who you're marketing to, you've done your marketing message. Now, how do you actually make money from that? How do you actually then move into sales, which is the most important bit? So I was taught by my amazing mentor, Jess and James, about the concept of the framework of Clamp, which I talk about in the marketing toolkit. And if you can get the framework of Clamp, it literally will set you up for life because you can apply it to any piece of sales that you will ever do throughout. It could be for investors, it could be for landlords, it could be for getting new customers on board, it can be if you want to mentor, it can be anything. So Clamp will stand for it's anagram, the C is complementary, the L is lead magnets, the A is acquisition, the M is main and the P is premium. So Clamp, that's what it stands for. So I'm going to briefly go over this, but if you wanted to go into depth in any more detail, then do come and find me on socials. So when you're thinking about something complementary, this has to be something that is free of charge for audiences to do. So a podcast is a great example. People can listen in to podcast. They don't need to physically give any details to do it or pay anything to listen in. Another one is when you just give out free content on social media. Top tips, for example. Lots of people do that. So that is a complementary piece of information. So then you move into lead magnets. So what do you guys think in terms of a lead magnet? What does that mean?

Sophie: 19:36

Like a PDF or something that you give out and you collect data in return?

Athena: 19:41

Perfect. That's a great example of a lead magnet. So it would be something like if someone said, my Rent to rent guide download here, and they will always ask for something in return. So this would be an email address and therefore what Sophie said earlier, you create your CRM through that you can then sell to at a later point. So again, it's about generating your database. So we're not selling just yet, we're collecting data. So whenever you see a lead magnet of someone saying click here and give me this in return, that is literally what they are doing. So we've now given out complementary information. People are now following us, people like us, they see us as an expert. We've now got our CRM system through the lead magnet. We are now going to move into acquisition. So finally, this is the really exciting bit. So acquisition is moving into sales. So a great example that I always use for acquisition are Discovery Days for training properties. So people go to a Discovery Day, which is free of charge. So that's complimentary. They've taken your data as a lead magnet to get you to that Discovery Day. And now they are going to sell you their three day course. That's where the money comes from. So we're now in the acquisition stage where they have sold you their three day course. And finally you are taking money as a business from them. So this is acquisition. And then what they do is they then go into Main, the M part of Clamp. So main is where you do add ons at the side. So let's take an example of this. Let's say that you're in a restaurant, you buy the main course, but then you want to have sides on top of that. So you have add ons of the sides. That is what it is. If it was a property networking event, it would be they've sold you the three day course. But you could also add on this extra bit on the side that you can do as a random one day off. So that's how main works. And then what you do is the P stands for premium. And then this is when you do your Creme de la Creme. You're kind of your top sale upselling of everything. So you've got your main acquisition, you've got your people that kind of are already in your business, already enjoying it, but then you're going to upsell them. So this could be a retreat. So a retreat that they go to where they will be high spending to go on and do that, as it were. And that is literally how you go from complementary to basically build brand awareness, get people in, you move to lead magnets where you build a database or CRM system. You then move to acquisition, which is physically getting sales. You then move to main, which is add ons of those sales. And then you move to premium, which is always upselling. And that is literally how you do branding. Marketing and moving into sales. In a nutshell, there's way more to it, but that is it in as short a space of time I can give it.

Sophie: 22:18

I love that.

Simon: 22:19

So good job in condensing all that down.

Athena: 22:21

Thank you. That's okay. So hopefully that gives some top tips and helps some people out there. But, yeah, any more information anybody needs, just come and find me.

Sophie: 22:29

So if you have to start with complimentary, and it's just putting loads of stuff out there that frames you as an expert, what if people have rubbish ideas and they're like, Athena, I don't even know what to write.

Athena: 22:41

So, two things you can download the marketing toolkit, because I have given some suggestions in there. But two, go and look at what other people are doing. So find some really inspirational people. I actually recommend this to one of my mentees. He was starting out and I gave him the suggestion of doing this, and he said, oh, I don't know ideas. I don't know what to do. I, of course, gave him some help, but I said to him, go and find me three people that you really like listening to and things. It could be Instagram, it could be Facebook. What are they doing? Tell me and then we can make your own. And also, another one was they said to me, oh, well, you do your own podcast. It's okay for you. You've got your podcast. And my response then was, okay, go be a guest one. What's stopping you being a guest one? That is complementary information that is getting yourself out there. So you can give me as many excuses as you want, but I will fire them right back at you. So if you come on my mentoring, I will be firing right back.

Sophie: 23:38

Yeah, that's really good. I love it.

Athena: 23:40

There we go. So hopefully that helps. Hopefully that gives a bit of information for everybody who wants to do marketing and branding, the toolkit is available. What we have done is the feedback we got from the toolkit was that some people only wanted certain aspects of it. So a lot of people were asking about the social media planner and kind of breaking it down into content in 60 minutes on their social medias and also the 16 posts. Whereas some people wanted the framework of clamp, some other people wanted the concept of marketing rebranding. So we've actually now broken that down. So you can either actually access the entire marketing toolkit to get all of the information, which is 28 pages, or you can get snippets of it for a reduced price and bundle them together.

Sophie: 24:20

Yeah, I think if you're like me and you're not very good with ideas, then just get the whole social media content planner because it'll give you months worth of things.

Athena: Yeah. And guess what? You can schedule them as well. So it's really good. And then you don't even need to think about it. You can literally have 30 days all scheduled, all done, going out at 08:00 every morning and not even think about it. And I know the people who do this because I. See their post at 08: 24:28

00 every morning and I'm like, oh, they've scheduled theirs.

Sophie: 24:44

Lovely. Beautiful. Julia, have you got any marketing insights to share?

Julia: 24:49

I think for me, you always link it back to your audience. Where do they spend the time? What do they want? I think there's value in everything that you give. So I always had this conversation, it's like I think we had a conversation with Millie and I said, do you find people posting a photo of their dinner beneficial to their social page? Because for me it was like, well, what value does that give me? Knowing you had roast chicken for dinner and it shows a bit of personality. So, once again, it's like it depends how you decide around. So I've got, for example, my business page and that is all about me, the person I am, but mainly business and how I work in business and what do we do and how do our accommodations look like. And I help people through my branding and aspects of I'm going to show them what are my mistakes, what have I learned from them so they can learn from them. I tell them about my day so they can see how my day goes. It's value for them because they can see how I started and where I am now and how I got there. So it's once again documenting the journey, but I've also opened up a deluxe page and now that is very different and that is very much branding. You won't really see too much of my face unless it's like to do with assigning a contract for the company. So it's very different. It's mainly videos of accommodations or it's big names or bigger people staying in our accommodations because now we're building sort of now that I've established my personal branding, it's more building an actual company branding, like we said about Richard Branson.

Athena: 26:28

You just made a really good point then. Actually, it's made me think about another question I get asked all the time, which is, should I have a personal page for myself and should I have a separate company page? And I always think that question is really interesting and it is definitely a personal choice. The only thing I would say about it is and we of course do various things we've obviously got a Rooms Bournemouth page and we've got our own personal pages but we still post majority of things on our personal page because let's say an investor comes along for property people out there. An investor comes along, they also want to see who you are as a person. They're not buying or investing in the company. Barely anyone ever invests in a company, really, unless you're like a big dog. They're investing in the person. So if you're hiding behind the camera and almost putting out all of these things that don't show you, I don't actually think it's going to work to your favor. I think you do need to be that person who shows. Again, it comes back to brand identity. What are your pillars of value? What do you stand for? What do you want to put out there? That is what an investor is actually going to be investing in. Like, for example, I said to one of my mentees, do you post much about you and your family? That's your why? And he's like, no, I keep them off. I'm like, why? If an investor came along and he was a dad, and he saw that you were trying to make a life for your two young children, he would naturally relate to you. That is key to trying to get an investor on board. So I think you should have a real mixture. Percy. And then the last thing I'll just say, just because I feel like we've spoken a lot about social media, is that there are a lot of marketing content which is not social media related. So, as I said, networking letters to landlords, letters to investors, a lot offline marketing as well, which is just as important as online marketing. So make sure that you are keeping vast and always knowing who your audience is.

Sophie: 28:15

Amazing. Well, Athena, thank you so much. I hope everyone's been writing all these things down. We'll put the link in the show notes to the marketing toolkit if anyone would like it. To finish off. Would you like to hear about the two things I bought from TikTok? Yes, exactly.

Athena: 28:32

Go on. What did you buy?

Sophie: 28:33

So, about a year ago, I joined TikTok to try and put some property bits on it. And I left after six months because I was like, this is sucking me right in. Really? I love Instagram and I love engaging and stuff, but TikTok, I was just getting sucked in. It's so good. I was like, oh, there's like singing teachers on here and there's music, and it just knew everything that I loved. It was like scuba diving content and dogs. And anyway, the first thing I bought was a green powder, right, which was full of seaweed and stuff.

Athena: 29:12

Oh, no.

Sophie: 29:12

Do you remember that?

Julia: 29:13

The drink?

Simon: 29:14

Yeah. I said I'd polish it off, but.

Sophie: 29:15

I couldn't even bring myself it's in a bag. And it's like, was it vitamins and B? Twelve, and seaweed and lettuce and kale and shit. And someone was having a really nice time on TikTok drinking it, and I just bought it. It was disgusting.

Athena: 29:30

See? Perfect example.

Sophie: 29:31

We tried to mix it with, like, juices. It was disgusting.

Athena: 29:35

And how did you buy that? Was it like a click here?

Sophie: 29:37

It was literally click and buy straight through TikTok.

Athena: 29:40

Perfect. See, it's a classic example.

Sophie: 29:42

And the second one was a little lunchbox, which you could stack. It had three layers and it was like a bento box type thing. And I was like, oh, that'd be great for the kids. Little school lunches because I give them little bits of things. I bought two. They were absolutely shit and they broke.

Athena: 30:00

But I didn't think you'd be so receptive to being sold to like that.

Sophie: 30:04

Well, this is the power.

Simon: 30:06

She's highly impulsive.

Sophie: 30:07

I am quite impulsive. Yeah, actually, you are.

Athena: 30:10

I'll buy anything she loves.

Simon: 30:11

Falls in love with something, she loves it straight away. It wants it yesterday.

Sophie: 30:15

Well, no, to be fair, now I'm good. I just go, I'm not going to buy it now. I'll buy it tomorrow. I'll come back tomorrow.

Athena: 30:22

And do you go back tomorrow?

Sophie: 30:23

No, I'm like, no, of course I didn't need that other pair of sunglasses or whatever.

Julia: 30:29

I think the main thing that you said there is how easy it was for you to buy that.

Sophie: 30:33

So easy.

Julia: 30:33

So if your marketing is approachable and easy, where you're like, it's literally just one button put in your card details, that's it. And nowadays also we've got apple pay. So it's like, if you can also integrate Apple Pay in your services, you're winning. It's just a beep away and you've got the money. Impulsive purchasing. Make it easy and make them influenced.

Simon: 30:52

Bring back checks. That's what I say. Pay with checks for everything.

Sophie: 30:55

Be like, has anyone else got any other impulsive purchases? So I don't feel as bad?

Athena: 30:59

Oh, God, let's face it, we've all.

Sophie: 31:02

Had so go on.

Athena: 31:05

I can't even think. Julia, have you got any my water.

Julia: 31:08

Bottle tracker, which I was so good at for the first month, and then I was like, yeah, I can't do that.

Sophie: 31:13

Is that the bottle where it's like, keep drinking, drink a bit more?

Athena: 31:16

Yeah, okay. Actually, I'll tell you what I'm a real sucker for, which I don't know if other people are. And then you always have purchasing guilt afterwards is actually when I go to some of these events and they're like, you can become this and you can become this, and it will only cost you this. I'm really, actually very bad. But I also learn a lot about.

Sophie: 31:35

Well, what could I do?

Athena: 31:36

How could I sell this?

Julia: 31:38

Do you remember about the idiot sandwich?

Sophie: 31:41

What was that? What are you, an idiot sandwich?

Simon: 31:46

It's a meme of Gordon Ramsay. He's got a piece of bread.

Athena: 31:53

Who are you? I've actually got a lot out of those, but at the time you go, Should I have really have bought that? Probably not.

Sophie: 32:02

Fair enough. What about you, Simon?

Simon: 32:06

No, I haven't really got one.

Julia: 32:07

He's the mature one.

Simon: 32:09

Oh, no, they're too nerdy.

Sophie: 32:12

Hang on a minute. Occasionally, vinyl arrived through the post box and you're like, don't look at that. No, don't look at how much I spent.

Simon: 32:20

Look at that. Yeah. No, a long time ago, I had a motorbike accident and I ended up getting a bit of compensation for it. I was just like, I was a student, and it was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me because I just bought complete toss. And this was before TikTok, but I remember seeing an advert for one of the very early, like, flip it open and turn it all the way around. Laptops. That was also a touch screen. So it's like a laptop that turned into a tablet, except it wasn't. It was early 2005, so this thing was huge. So I went into my lectures at university, like 1500 quid laptop that just had the worst touch screen and it just sounded like a Hoover. Everyone was like, who's this guy at the back with the big stylus?

Athena: 33:00

Can everybody please send us in on Instagram? Their worst things they've ever bought on this episode.

Simon: 33:05

The worst impulse buys.

Athena: 33:07

Yeah, we've all been there.

Sophie: 33:08

Yeah.

Simon: 33:08

Do you want a listener's question?

Sophie: 33:09

Oh, yes, please.

Simon: 33:10

I mean, I've gone through all the trouble of rifling through the GIP sack. We've got a listener's question today from Claire. She says, I think this is to do with social media. If I'm building my rent to rent business brand on social media, should I present myself differently to landlords, agents and tenants or have one strategy and hope my message caters to everyone?

Athena: 33:28

Oh, that's a good question. So hopefully, Claire, you've been listening to the beginning of the podcast, which is where we distinguish the fact that landlords, agents and investors are all different people who will be catered to in different ways. So you can try and advertise to them all, but they're all going to be different. A landlord is going to want very different things and have more what's the word? Pain points than an agent is going to have. Than an investor is going to have. So I personally wouldn't market myself to an agent in the way that I would to an investor. Because an investor cares more about wealth, the person and kind of the return on investment and the deal and what you're getting out of it. The agent and relationship an agent might care more about. Well, what is it in it for me? How can I benefit from it? And what can we do in terms of working together? So it's very different in terms of marketing. What do you guys think? Do you disagree?

Julia: 34:24

Definitely different ways of marketing, very different people. And you want to portray yourself as you, but you want to give and sell the right sides of you to different points, if that makes sense. So, like, to an agent, I'd want to sell that I am a person who will get the deal across. I'm a person who is punctual. I won't let them down. I'll get back to their emails, to my investor. I want to make sure that they know that I am a safe investment. I'm not looking to run away. I will speak probably more figures with the investor, but with an agent, I'll.

Athena: 34:55

Hold back the figures.

Sophie: 34:56

Right.

Julia: 34:57

So there's different ways of marketing and different ways of speaking to them as well. And then with a landlord, it's like, well, to be honest, anyone can be a landlord. Anyone can be in a landlord. So it's like you don't really have one clientele for them, but they all share, as you said, the same pain points. So you can relate to them like that if you already have properties. And, you know, like, I always use tenants as an example because everyone laughs, or everyone who's a landlord laughs about tenants because they understand the pain and day to day that it takes. So you just need to find common ground with all of them. And as soon as you know what common ground you have with an agent, what common ground you have with the investor, what common ground you have with your landlords, you'll then be able to market and do what you need to do to get things across.

Athena: 35:43

Yeah. So differently is the answer.

Sophie: 35:45

Yeah. I think if you're getting in a model, then just start with personal brand instead of going, who am I to these audiences? Just go, I need no like and trust, and I'm going to show everyone who I am and how I work and do it that way.

Athena: 35:59

Exactly. Perfectly said.

Sophie: 36:01

Cool. Thank you very much, Claire, for your question. You can find us all over social media. We'll put all the links in the show notes and we'll see you all soon. Bye bye.

Athena: 36:10

Thanks, guys.

Sophie: 36:11

Bye, Sam.