The Art of Subtle Selling

Written by Acme Mag

Newcastle Living is a quarterly magazine produced by Identity Marketing for Ray White Newcastle. Since its inaugural edition in early 2020, it has evolved immensely in both content and design.

Acme sat down with Darren Penn, the director and principal at Ray White Newcastle, to chat about how the magazine has enabled the business to elevate its brand presence and offer value to the community.

Ray White Newcastle has been creating market reports for years, but through conversations with Identity Marketing, Darren felt that it was time to up the quality significantly. By creating a custom magazine, Darren has been able to bring to the business a community aspect. The locals enjoy the tangible piece of print – regularly giving Darren compliments on the magazine and it’s content.

For those involved in the property process, there’s real estate content mixed into the magazine. The focus is on local businesses. For instance, an article on perfect flooring is from the local Newcastle carpets and flooring business.

“Each edition we get people who say things like, ‘I love it, it must be so expensive to produce, please don’t waste the money on sending to me,’ or from businesses, ‘how do we get to be included?’” Says Darren.

Darren’s advice to other agents who want to branch out into different marketing avenues is to question why you do what you currently do. It’s important to always go back to what your objective is.

“Steve from Identity Marketing asked me a really good question when I started on the journey – and I remember it clearly. He asked ‘what does a person get from your current market report that they couldn’t get somewhere else?’ I answered ‘nothing’. That is pretty much the core value if you like. We make sure our magazine has something that you can’t get anywhere else, and I feel like we have achieved that. So make it different, and of value, and less about real estate – make it more about
everyone else.”

The process of creating the magazine every quarter is a big one, and it comes down to a few things. Darren commits an idea to a simple spreadsheet and then works on it, constantly looking for an edge to the story that the community can engage with. Newcastle Living is unique and Darren feels that there is no other local real estate magazine that comes close to Newcastle Living. All the hard work that goes into producing it is worth it.

“I love any good business feature that promotes locals. The magazine as a marketing tool is very subtle. I feel it’s just branding that we control, we don’t even have a logo on the front anymore. I would love to see it in every mailbox in the region. Now that’s impossible, so I would love to see it in 30 per cent of the home in the areas we operate in. So increase up to about 30,000 each run, that would be great.”