Welcome to Ten, CORE founder and CEO Shaun Osher’s rapid-fire interview series with prominent CORE figures. Read on to find out how this week’s subject deals with being on the hot seat.
CORE has set the standard for New York City real estate brokerage websites. Luna Vega has been working with CORE for the past two years and is responsible for the look and feel of our webpage. She started her own business in 2006 and has been a digital strategist for the past seven years with a range of clients including Unilever, Chase, Nissan, Nokia and Verizon Wireless. Here are Luna’s answers to Ten questions:
1) How long have you been a digital marketing strategist? 
My “digital birth”, as I like to call it, was in 2003 when I attended ITP, a NYU graduate program and immersed myself in the digital realm. I fell in love with the tech industry, so I decided to follow my passion and start my own business in 2006.
2) How did you get into the business?
While working at RGA, a digital advertising agency, I witnessed first hand the newly-found power of bloggers. The roles were shifting. Influential blogs like RocketBoom, Cool Hunting, etc. had more committed audiences than bigger publishers. Audiences were also becoming increasingly segmented, creating more opportunities for marketers to target desired demographics. I was exhilarated by all these novel opportunities and wanted to transfer this knowledge to small businesses. My goal was to empower and grow their business organically, strictly using the web.
3) What’s the best way for a business to generate maximum exposure online?
It varies. For instance, I am still baffled by businesses who don’t have a Google+ page and therefore are not listed on the Google map directory.
There are a few key questions I ask my clients when we are working out a strategy:
1) Who is your demographic? Where do they spend their time online?
2) What are your brand’s immediate goals? Generate awareness? Drive more sales? Both?
3) Is your website’s user experience clear? Will users know what to look for once you have brought them on your site? What makes your company different from everyone else? What’s in it for the consumer?
Strong SEO, online PR exposure and social media klout are the first steps to generating awareness, but maintaining customer interest is more important to creating long lasting results.
4) How do you tailor digital strategy specific to each of your clients?
I listen to my clients’ needs and challenges. I familiarize myself with their online brand by reviewing their available metrics data. I look for insights that my clients may not be aware of and conduct a SWOT analysis so we can identify the white space of opportunities.
5) What is your favorite app and why?
Evernote! It is the most under-rated app, perhaps because it’s been around for a while. It enables you to organize and keep track of all your online bookmarks. You can create topic-specific folders and share them. Best of all, your saved information is accessible from any device: iPad, iPhone, desktop, etc. I live by it.
6) How do you think social media affected the real estate industry?
The opportunity to get new customers is now ubiquitous. Users are constantly on their devices, digging for information as they walk through a neighborhood. Reputation and adequate online presence is key to funneling the incoming traffic from interests to contact.
7) What real estate or neighborhood apps are you most excited about?
Zumper is an apartment search tool that connects landlords with tenants via a map. The app is location based and all listings come directly from brokers. Radiuus is another pretty cool app that will come to market pretty soon. It’s currently only available on desktop, but it enables users to connect with the neighborhood they care about the most. Users can include neighborhood-specific tips such as new restaurants, news, events and other gems to check out. Radiuus allows you to discover user-shared local notes filtered by location.
8) What is the most challenging part of your job?
Unlike traditional forms of advertising, digital marketing allows you to directly track the effects of online campaigns by giving insight into how many people are clicking, on-site behaviors and social engagement such as likes, re-tweets, shares etc. Data is a great guide to prove that a campaign is on track, but at the same time, it can be overwhelming. Therefore, it becomes a balancing act between not getting too caught up with metrics and keeping track of the big picture.
9) What do you like best about working on the CORE brand?
CORE is receptive to new technologies and implements ideas in real time, which is critical in today’s marketing world. CORE understands it’s business and carefully picks platforms appropriate for their clientele. It’s incredibly refreshing.
10) Do you have a question for me?
What is your favorite part of CORE’s website?
The homepage. It is a snapshot of our company, culture and brand and has the ability to continually evolve with our business, industry and clients needs.