By Ron & Alexandra Seigel, Partners--Napa Consultants, International
Involve Your Clients in the Community
As a luxury real estate marketing expert, come up with something that can get your clients involved in the community. It feels wonderful for all who participate as well as those who benefit from your actions. Here are two exciting ideas to start you thinking in this direction.
The Ritz Carlton
The Ritz Carlton chain of hotels has found a novel way to contribute to the communities where their hotels are located. On designated days, guests and hotel staff contribute a half day to a local community experience in a humanitarian or environmental project. Unique to each destination "the program is designed to make a lasting contribution and create an enduring impression." All profits are donated to the participating organization.
For the guests, it is a fine opportunity to join the locals and enhance their experience of the cities in which they are traveling. What a wonderful way to meet people and create new friendships! This is social networking without computers. It is the best way of playing a part in the global village, spreading culture and generating good will. The venues are varied and interesting. You can plant trees in Beijing, preserve monuments and memorials in Washington D.C., or participate in music therapy for children in Istanbul.
FreeRice.com
For those luxury real estate marketing professionals who like to play games on the Web, here is a site that is amazing. Go to FreeRice.com. It is a vocabulary game. For each word you get right, they donate 20 grains of rice. It is free, it is fun, and hunger is on its way out. You improve, and life improves for someone hungry. So far, since its debut in October of 2007, 39,541,334,330 grains of rice have been donated. How do they do it? You can advertise on the site, and those dollars buy rice.
A terrific marketing idea for luxury real estate professionals would be to donate some rice in your client's name and include that in an advertisement. This is a great return on investment, and think of all those eyeballs viewing your ad while learning a new word.