Oh my goodness, I can’t believe it has been 12 months since I started working at Foxy! Time flies when you’re having fun! Or when you’re in a lockdown unable to do much else… or in my case… both!

Just a heads up, this article is not going to be one of the professional, well-structured blog posts you are used to. Oh no, quite the opposite.

It’s 4.15pm as I’m typing this and I’m leaning all the way back in my chair, left foot on the desk, left arm elbow-deep in a bag of sweet potato chips, occasionally wiping my greasy fingers on my shirt before placing them back on the keyboard.

Gross, I know.

But it is the reality, and in this world full of fakery and pretentious instagram-worthy captions, I am going to use this outlet to be unapologetically myself. My real, imperfect self. Take it or leave it.

Okay… well, if you got this far, you might as well send me a private message, I wanna be friends.

But first, let’s talk about marketing!

The perfect career for people (like me) who dislike dealing with people on an individual basis but are also infinitely fascinated by humanity as a whole. And that’s why I love marketing – I get to observe human behaviour and study the driving psychological theories behind what it is, that makes our clients choose us over other businesses.

And you know what? Now I know exactly what it is, but let me tell you, was I fighting this belief! Jake, Phoebe and Cody were saying this from the start, but I thought it cannot possibly be this easy. But it is.

Business Success = Value Provided

In other terms:

Give value.

Then ask for business.

More often than not, you won’t even need to ask, the business will come to you.

On this note, I hope I can provide some value to you too. These are the three most important things I learned doing marketing for a very successful and fast-growing Home Staging company. Hopefully you learn something new.

1. The most unexpected content can go crazy!

I have the best example for this. There was one specific article that I spent two whole weeks researching and writing. When I finally finished it, I stood back, chest puffed out with pride, hitting that Publish button with a victorious smirk on my face. “This is it”, I thought. “This is the winner.”

Guess what.

It got 14 views.

I don’t know if you ever felt a physical slap by your computer screen, but I sure did that day. Feeling disappointed and angry, I realised we haven’t posted anything on our social media for the day. So I pulled some random photos from our installs, wrote a half-assed caption, hit Send and went home. The next day, I could hardly believe what I saw. That post has gone absolutely CRAZY with engagement! It had hundreds of likes, comments, and shares.

What I learned:

Quality is subjective. Focus on sharing content consistently every day and let your audience decide what they resonate with. Don’t get bogged down by details, format, or length. Implement. Just do it. And always try to add value.

2. Blogs do amazing things for your SEO!

Okay I realise how ironic this sounds, considering I was hired specifically to write blog posts. What’s even more ironic, is that I never used to read articles unless it was something I was REALLY interested in.

But with time, the more I learned about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation, or in my words “google-ability” of your business), the more I could see the value of writing regular blogs. When someone searches for a keyword that you included in your article, your business website will show right on top of their browser.

What I learned:

You can have the most beautiful website ever, but if you neglect the SEO, it’s like buying expensive shoes and never taking them out of the box. If you want to start writing blogs, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the technicalities and words like web crawlers, CTA, meta descriptions, etc. My tip: Write for humans, not bots. Be real and helpful. Answer questions your clients might have. Share your best tips and tricks. And most importantly (yes, you guessed it) – add value.

3. If you don’t ask, the answer will always be “No”.

There are a few ways this expression applies to marketing:

SURVEYS – Seeking feedback may feel uncomfortable at first, but it’s so worth it! The surveys we’ve sent out in the past have uncovered some interesting and genuinely valuable information for us. We found out that Agents we work with regularly want to see more high-end stock, appreciate regular communication, and want us to run coaching sessions for their sales team. There’s no way we would have known this without asking!

CTA – Also known as Call To Action. I think this one surprised me the most. When you ask people to do something… they actually do it. I know, right? It seems unreal. That’s why I’ve started including CTAs across most of our content. They look something like this: “click here to read”, “Which one is your favourite? Comment below!”, or “get a free quote”.

REVIEWS – We send an email to all our clients who had a successful sale of their home and ask them if they could submit their review on a public platform like Google or Facebook. Nine times out of ten they do, which provides more credibility and boosts our “google-ability”. Understandably, we filter out the not-so-exciting scenarios when people needed to sell because of a divorce or a deceased estate. It would be tactless to congratulate them and ask for feedback.

What I learned:

Just ask, you have nothing to lose.

When I first started adding CTA’s to our social media posts, I was afraid it was going to be really awkward if no one answered (which btw has happened many times). That’s when I remembered that we are our own harshest critics. Nobody is thinking about you because they are too busy thinking about themselves.