Own your community: Tips for staying top of mind

Justin Ulrich
Awesome. Well, hey, I think it would be good, Michelle, I know that you’re a client of ours and you guys have been great partners over there at Side. I think it would be good for our audience to understand a little bit about maybe your background and then kind of your role over at Side and what Side actually does for agents.

Michelle Denogean
For sure. Yeah, no problem. I have been leading marketing teams, like you said, for over 20 years, both on the consumer side and the business to business side. Full stack marketing teams. Everything from brand marketing to events to demand generation, to content creation to social to product marketing, you name it. Anything that’s been part of a marketing team at this point. 

But I do think from a background perspective, it’s interesting because I actually don’t come from a traditional brand background, actually come from a digital background and built up the brand component of my career. So it’s been an incredible journey. I always tell people I’m not traditionally trained, but I’ve learned in the trenches. I’ve worked for small companies, big companies, you name it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, very cool. I mean, you’ve got a lot of solid brands on your resume, so really good experience comes from working at big companies. I’ve had a similar path and I’ve worked at large companies as well as real small ones. And you get different types of experience. 

The small ones you get a lot of experience very quickly, but the big ones, it kind of help you to fine tune the skills and just get more, I guess, optimized in your approach because you have bigger teams, more budgets, stuff like that.

Michelle Denogean
Yeah, they’re definitely very different. Startups have a very dear place in my heart because you get to build everything from scratch and I’m a builder, but for sure there’s different experiences that you get from every single thing that you do. 

I think for me it’s always about being somewhere where there’s really a big problem to be solved and a target audience that you can dive deep and get to know and do some amazing things to disrupt different industries in whatever space. So you’ll see my resume has a lot of different industries in it and that is why.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, no, that’s super cool. Mine does, too. For me, I like it. Because you don’t just come up in an echo chamber of one industry. You’re able to take experience from all sorts into your current role. With your experiences, really, like you said, it’s taken you across tons of different industries. Your current role, you’re back in the real estate world. You did a huge stint of time over at Realtor.com you tried some other industries. Now you’re back in real estate. 

But being on the marketing side and with the tools that Side provides to realtors firsthand, you need to know, hear from realtors what their pain points are so that you guys are actually developing tools that will help them hit their goals and be more productive agents. What things are you hearing from your agents, or what tools are you providing to them to help them to become the best local marketers that they can be?

Michelle Denogean
Yeah, you hit it on the nose, by the way. It is really about understanding your customer, whoever your customer is. Right. So at Side, we consider ourselves a brokerage platform, which means that we help the top agents go independent without the cost and risk of becoming their own brokerage, which means they’re all little individual companies. 

And so what we’re constantly doing is talking to them about what they need, and every one of them is a little different. But providing them with platforms that they can leverage, whether it is their CRM or their email marketing tools, their website, their digital marketing capabilities. Thanks to our partnership with Evocalize, all sorts of different components. A marketing studio to create collateral. Right. 

So we’re trying to constantly find tools that they can leverage, but we don’t dictate it. That’s something that’s unique and different at Side. It really is. Because they’re running their own real estate companies, it’s really up to them what works for them in their local market.

Justin Ulrich
So what are some things or some ways that you kind of work with them to determine what works best in their markets?

Michelle Denogean
Yeah, I mean, we leverage the power of the community, and so a lot of times we’re taking best practices from one partner and giving it to another. Right. They all work very independently. They’re not competitive. And so it’s a very collaborative, open community. 

And so we’re constantly looking at what they’re doing, looking what other people are doing, and then talking about whether or not that might work for them in their market. Right. And it really comes down to we don’t know their market as well as they do. And so we really need to dive deep into what that local experience looks like, feels like, and what that particular audience is going to see as valuable. At the end of the day, no.

Justin Ulrich
That makes a ton of sense. Is your team then working? Do you have customer advisory boards where you’re compiling all this feedback, or you said you’re listening to the community? Are there forums or boards where you’re actually compiling tons of data points that then inform your product development?

Michelle Denogean
Yeah, it’s a couple of different things. First and foremost, we have business managers that get assigned to every single partner on the platform. And those business managers work with a lot of other accounts, so they’re constantly seeing what is working for others and bringing that up organically, also connecting them with other people that have done something similar so they can actually have that first hand bridge. 

And then we do things like masterminds, master classes. We’re constantly trying to bring the community together, whether it’s in person or virtually, so that they can actually just share it directly. Right. So we aggregate it and share it to our best knowledge, and then they share it with each other.

Justin Ulrich
Got you. So as your team is compiling all these best practices, what are some things that you’re seeing are really helpful in moving the needle for agents out there?

Michelle Denogean
Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say is everything, when you’re a real estate agent, everything is hyper-local. Right. Literally, it’s not even just like the state or the city. It’s typically the neighborhood that you serve.

And so the biggest thing that we are seeing that, I don’t know if it’s as much of an aha. It’s probably obvious to a certain extent, but it’s really understanding the market that you serve. Becoming a local expert, and this is the case whether you’re a real estate professional, whether you’re a car dealership locally in the market, a restaurant, any small business that’s really dedicated to a very specific neighborhood needs to become a local expert. 

And so in the case of a lot of our partners, it’s about knowing the local coffee shop that you recommend. Right. Sitting on the PTA at your kids’ school so that you’re connected with people or volunteering time at a local charity. You need to understand what everybody is interested in in your market locally, and then work to get involved so that you’re showing up as it relates to what they’re interested in.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. It’s a common thread that we hear a ton on the episodes that we do. Specifically, one of the comments that we had a guest, Eric Knott, he’s the chief operating officer over at PDQ, he brought up the concept of being the mayor. 

And it’s like if you can engage with your community in every way possible, especially if you’re trying to engage your sphere in real estate or trying to grow it, you have to stay top of mind in different ways for a long time because people aren’t necessarily ready to take action right then and there. They might not be ready to sell their house for two years, but if they’ve seen your face and you’ve nurtured them for a long time, then you will come top of mind when the time comes for them to take action.

Michelle Denogean
Yeah, and there’s a lot of ways that you can do that. But I do think it all starts with, “how do I personally provide value to my potential clients in a way that is evergreen in a way that isn’t just that moment in time for whatever that transaction is I’m trying to do at the end of the day.” So whether it’s somebody that’s trying to sell their house and signing a listing, or like I said in my automotive days, getting them to buy a car, but it can’t just be that moment. 

You have to try to provide value all through the year. So to your point, you’re top of mind, especially those transactions that are not happening every week. If you’re the local coffee shop, I might be visiting you every week, every day, if you’re my husband, a couple of times a day. But a car, a house, these are things that do not happen on a regular basis and typically not even annually. Right. So it’s really important that you stay top of mind.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I did a stint in my career leading the brand team over at Polaris for their RZR brand. And it’s the same type of thing. It’s a nine-month buyer’s journey. So from when they start thinking to the point they make the decision, it’s nine months. And so we had to do things to constantly just keep them engaged and keep them nurtured. So when that time came to make the decision, we were top of mind. 

What are some things that you’ve seen, I guess folks do that may be interesting or stand out more so than other tactics?

Michelle Denogean
Yeah, I think when it comes to local, the biggest thing that I’ve seen people do successfully is either get involved or produce their own events. So when you’re local, being in person is a really big piece of that. Right. 

Being out in market, we’ve got one partner out in San Diego, Melissa Sophia at the Avenue Home Collective, that over Thanksgiving she did a DJ camp for the kids. You know, how cool is that? Like, come learn how to be a DJ. And she invited all the kids in the neighborhood at a time when parents were probably trying to figure out how they were going to prepare their Thanksgiving turkey. Right? Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
That’s really cool.

Michelle Denogean
Yeah. She hosts a monthly mompreneur kind of mastermind gathering, meet up locally. So she gets all of the women-led business owners, not just in real estate, but across the entire neighborhood together. So these are things that, again, it’s about. Maybe not every single neighborhood is going to be interested in DJ camp, but her market in San Diego was. 

So you have to understand what is going on in your market. Then, you know, there’s all sorts of fun things you can do. It’s not about getting you know a million people to your event, it’s what you do with that content once you’ve engaged people. Social, you know, is a great avenue to capture that with video and content and be able to reach more people locally in your community. Tag the people that were there, they’ll tag everybody else, and you’ll get to reach the people that you’ve never really talked to before. 

So I think those are some fun things that I’ve seen. Content is obviously a big one. We have another partner out of Florida in Orlando. She does a monthly newsletter called What’s Happening in Orlando? And just like you would find in the newspaper, she sends out all of the upcoming fun events and things that you can do that weekend or that month. And so she becomes a resource to the people that follow her because now she’s talking about things they can do locally in the community that they may or may not have been aware of.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, man, those are amazing ideas. Like you said at the beginning, providing value. If the meetups, especially for those, like you said, what do you call them?

Michelle Denogean
Mompreneurs?

Justin Ulrich
Mompreneurs. I can’t even say that word.

Michelle Denogean
Mompreneurs. Like, Mommy. Mom.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, it’s perfect because those are folks who are trying to establish a network and especially from a local level, the relationships and the connections they make, they will always tie it back to that event and that experience that they had and who it was that hosted it. Incredible. 

And then being the resource for the weekly things to do. If it’s like, if they’re legit, really cool events, then, yeah, people are going to stay tuned in until they buy a house from you or need to sell or whatever. Yeah, very cool ideas. 

So I want to switch gears a minute. So you mentioned that you like offroading you love the outdoors and some of the facts that you’d sent over. In terms of offroading, what is it that you like the most? Do you go side by sides or you go dirt bike?

Michelle Denogean
Yeah. It’s actually a pretty funny story. So the reason that I am outdoorsy is because of my husband, and when I met him. So he used to race mountain bikes professionally. He had dirt bikes and everything. And this will give you a little look into my personality. I started going with him and his friends out off-roading. 

And at one point, I was like, you know, maybe I should get a dirt bike. That way I can ride with you. I don’t have to sit in the motorhome this whole time. And he’s like, maybe we should get you a quad, four wheels, a little bit better for you. And I said, absolutely not. Are you saying I can’t dirt bike? And so a dirt bike I rode for many years.

Justin Ulrich
That is awesome.

Michelle Denogean
That’s my story. Not that I ever loved it, but it felt like somebody was telling me I couldn’t do something, and so I was going to conquer that and get it done. Now you fast forward. My kids are teenagers. They weren’t even born when that happened. I’m like, no, four wheels is good. I’ll ride a quad now.

Justin Ulrich
That’s what I love about the side by side. You could ride. It’s four wheels on the ground. It feels a little safer, but you can get a little crazier, and you can enjoy it with someone who’s sitting right next to you. 

Well, I thought it would be fun to kind of pull your experience offroading into an image here and just show you in your element, just throwing mud. I think to a rider, the thing that folks, obviously, you’re going to wear a helmet, but I couldn’t capture your likeness behind goggles and in the helmet. 

But when you take off those goggles and you have just the dirt and everything, and only the clean spot on your face is where those goggles were. That is what demonstrates that you had an amazing day.

Michelle Denogean
That’s awesome. That’s a great picture. Yeah, I’ve literally done that. We’ve gone out in the desert. I’ve been riding around with the kids, and it just rained the day before, so it’s all muddy, and so it’s just thrown up all over you. And then take off your goggles, and you’ve just got this clean white space over your eyes.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, it’s perfect. Yeah, that’s a testament. You had an absolute blast for sure. Well, cool. Michelle, it was fun having you on, but before I let go, you know, why don’t you let everyone know how they can follow you? Follow the brand?

Michelle Denogean
Yeah, sure. So you can first and foremost follow Side on Instagram. It’s @siderealestate, but I also encourage people to follow…we have our own podcast at Side. It’s called the Own It podcast. So you can go listen to that available wherever you listen to your podcasts, or you can go to side.com/ownit and you can see all of the episodes there. 

And if you want to follow me directly, I’m just @ Michelle Denogean on Instagram and LinkedIn. So as long as you can spell it, you can find very hard on a lot of people on how to spell it and pronounce it. But I’m sure it’ll be part of your post, so I’m not going to spell it out here.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, it will definitely. We’ll have all the links in the description. So I would absolutely suggest you go follow Michelle. She’s got some pretty fun content. Also, Side has awesome stuff. Follow their podcast, listen in. They’ve got great resources, especially if you’re in the real estate space and you’re looking to kind of grow and engage your own sphere. Check them out for sure. 

Michelle, it was a ton of fun having you in the lab. I appreciate you joining us.

Michelle Denogean
Thank you for having me, Justin. Take care.

Justin Ulrich
You too.

If you learned something from today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook @Evocalize. That’s Evocalize and on X at Evocalize. 

And remember, keep innovating and testing new things. You’ll never know what connects with your customers best unless you try. Until next time. Thanks for listening.