Archive for the ‘real estate marketing’ Category

Usually, this blog covers the area of how real estate professional can sell real estate utilizing technology. Well, I guess I have been ignoring a certain segment of the market that is also involved in real estate; the mortgage professional and their industry. Yes, that’s right; we are going to talk specifically to mortgage professionals in this post, particularly professionals in the reverse mortgage industry. So, this article is going to talk about how mortgage professionals can utilize Internet technology to get prospects for reverse mortgages.

The reverse mortgage industry, as many of you already probably know, is a growing industry because of all of the baby boomers that are getting older and moving into retirement age. So, when you consider the fact that many people that still have mortgages can get a loan that is like this, it really doesn’t seem to be too daunting of a task to cultivate these folks as prospects. It would be foolhardy for any mortgage company to ignore the reverse mortgage industry and not have a focused marketing plan in place.

To get quality leads from the Internet, you need to know several different things. First of all, you need to know as much about your target market as you possibly can. You don’t want to be chasing the wrong herd of people that don’t have a need for what you or your services have to offer. If you do your research enough and it is thorough, you will at least find out that most homeowners over the age of sixty two are the target age of the prospects that you are looking for. The value of the home that the target prospect is currently living in is another factor to consider when you are looking for a good reverse mortgage lead.

Not only should the value of the house be an important factor, but also the equity that has been built into the property is an important factor as well. Also, a person that has been subject to medical bills in their older years would make a good candidate as well because they can probably use some help with finances. Some of the ways you can use the Internet or technology to help you with looking for reverse mortgage leads or prospects is by visiting a forum or blog that talks about mortgages and real estate issues. Many times, people will be looking for information or advice when considering an action or financial decision. You want to make sure that you visit the most reputable sites, because if you are going to forums that look or act unprofessional, then you will get a reputation that you, as a mortgage professional; could probably do without.

Start Your Own Reverse Mortgage Blog

One way to establish yourself as an expert in your field of expertise online is to start a blog dedicated to your profession. If you are an expert at a particular area in the field of mortgages, then you can establish an online presence for yourself. All you have to do is get a blog either with Wordpress or with Google’s Blogger (both are free platforms and services) and start writing good articles on reverse mortgages. Don’t worry about the design of the blog, like everyone else does, just grab a blog theme or set of colors and start writing.

If you really want to bump it up a notch, you can always write an e-book that you can give to people to read as well. One other thing that you can do to find good reverse mortgage leads is to go to a site that is, a lead generation firm. You can buy leads for your target market and start a direct mail campaign through the regular mail. Do not buy email leads, because you don’t ever want to run the risk of being blamed of spamming people.

As always with any marketing plans that you have, always make sure that you do your research before approaching any segment of the market. That way you will be much better prepared for other plans that you may have to implement a different strategy or segment of the market.

It is vital to know how to get real estate leads if you are going to be successful at selling properties.  As a matter of fact, the only way that you can guarantee that your real estate business will succeed is if you know how to prospect in a way which is conducive to your business goals.  It is very important to know how to keep the clients that you have and market back to them, but without your initial client base, that is going to be very hard.  It probably goes without saying, that if you want to become successful in the real estate business then knowing how to generate real estate leads is vitally important.

Most people usually go through the route of handing out business cards, advertising, attending community events, running newspaper ads, and cold calling, but without a proper system in place, your marketing plans as well as your prospecting efforts will go unrewarded.  The best system to have is an automated one wherein prospects contact you and then your system automatically collects their contact information for you.  There are several ways to do this, which is what we will be discussing in this article.

Getting Real Estate Leads Using a Call Capture System

A call capture system is a system wherein you place an advertisement talking about your listings or services and then people call you and leave you their call back number.  You can actually have the number placed on a real estate website asking the potential prospect top call and leave their information, or you can use an online service like Aweber to place an opt – in box on your website to get them to leave their contact information.

Usually, a call capture system has several features that go along with its services.  You can have your own unique 1-800 number system put into service from the company that provides these services for you and these numbers make it very easy for you to capture real estate leads with.  One of the best innovations that is included with the call capture system is what is called an “Automatic Number Identification” or “ANI”.  Basically, this system allows you to store in memory any numbers that call your number so that you will have their number to call back.  Having this system in place will also protect you from the dreaded “do not call” list because it will give you proof that the prospect initiated the contact with you.

Once a real estate agent or Realtor has the call capture system in place, they can begin to publish and use their number whenever they begin to market their business.  You should put your number on every advertisement, website, business card or any other marketing vehicle that you are using.  You ought to use the number liberally with your ads and you should display the number prominently in all of your marketing ads no matter where they appear.

Call capture systems can sometimes be rather extensive on learning how to use them; this has been just a brief overview on how to set up and use a call capture system to generate and get real estate leads for your business.  The best way to see some of these phone systems and ads that are in actual use is in the various opportunity magazines that you can find at the store. Looking at these ads will allow you to not only see how ads are set up to use this phone-marketing vehicle, but it will also let you take a look at the ad copy and call to action that is used by each business.

Before the advent of the Internet, real estate marketers had to rely on media such as radio, TV, the Yellow Pages and newspapers to generate leads for their real estate sales and listings. Despite the power and draw of the Internet in the real estate marketplace today, a Realtor or agent can still use offline medial to generate interest in their listings and services.  Newspapers, TV, radio, and especially direct mail, plus all of the other traditional ways of advertising should still be a part of your marketing plan.

Here are a couple of tips that you can use to build your print media off-line marketing plan in generating real estate leads:

1. In the real estate realm, there are many related publications that you may be able to use.  Now, you don’t want to use real estate publications, but if there are magazines that focus on local issues and articles, then you may want to get some ads or articles placed in those periodicals.
2. You should know your real estate geographic target market.  If you are in a big city, you should have a good idea of who you will be selling to and in which location.  In these areas, try to find out which publications are popular and then try to target the publications that are most related to your business.  If you are dealing with upscale people then the local upscale metro magazine should be a great place for you to put a small advertisement with your web address and contact information on it.
3. If you are a pretty successful Realtor that handles vacation properties, try to find out which national publications that you can get into that will help you market seasonal properties.  Seasonal rentals, vacation properties, time shares, etc. are great for this type of marketing idea.
4. To break down the best method to generate the types of real estate leads that you want you can run print ads in different publications and have your web address a phone number in the ads that you run.  If the prospect calls your toll free number, then you can have a service set up (at a modest price, of course) so that it will automatically take their contact information.  If the prospects go to your site after seeing your real estate ads, then they can simply fill out a form that is on your website so that you can call them and talk to them about what you have to offer them.

Bear in mind when placing these advertisements to generate real estate leads that you are getting collateral prospects that quite possibly most other real estate professionals and Realtors may not be considering.  A large number of people are looking on line these days so don’t expect a flood with printed media.  Also, you may want to start collecting small advertisements from several magazines which will give you an idea of how to write a small ad with a call to action on it.  If you want to write a bigger ad with a larger advertising space, expect to pay for it.  These types of advertisements, even in local periodicals and papers can still run you quite a bit of money.

In my last blog post, I told you the first steps that you need to take and some of the things that you will need to consider when creating a real estate flyer.  If you want to generate good qualified real estate lead leads that actually will want to contact you, then you will have to put some thought and work into creating your flyers and advertisements.

How to Create Text and Content for Your Real Estate Flyers

A key factor that you will want to consider in creating your flyers, is the font and the size of the font which must be clear and easy to read.  My personal favorites are Arial and Verdana because they are very easy to read.  I also like to use between a sizes 10 to 12 font when putting text into a document, because it is easier for most people to see.  You don’t want to use fancy or artsy-tartsy fonts and letters except for your logo if that requires it.  You will also need to break up the paragraphs into small chunks and be as concise with your writing as you can.

In the case of writing, you will want to use the old adage, “less is more”.  You are trying to generate interest in your services or the houses that you represent, so, don’t run on too much with the dialogue about a subject, just state basic information and try to have a call to action on your flyer.

Writing Your Real Estate Flyer Content In a Way That Will Generate Real Estate Leads

You must write the ad content of your flyer in a way that will grab your reader’s attention very quickly. You will want to answer all the questions that prospects will probably want to know while spurring them on to take some sort of action that will be conducive to your real estate sales.

Tip: If you are going to be designing and writing advertisements online or off line you should invest in a couple of books that will train you on how to write advertising copy.  The popular marketing expert, Dan Kennedy, has a great book on this subject on Amazon or you can buy one of his courses at his online store, here.  This would be an excellent way to learn how to write and copy to magnetically generate real estate leads.

Don’t Forget the Important Details on Your Real Estate Flyer!

If you are designing a flyer that is specifically trying to sell a particular house, then you will need to include the exact address of the property or properties, and directions on how to get there. You can use Google maps to get graphics so that you can actually print it up and place it on your flyer, if you want.  Make sure that your contact information can easily be seen right next to your call to action and make sure that all of this information is correct.

Tip: You should always make sure that your ads are as professional as possible with zero mistakes in the content.  Get a ruler and straight edge of some sort and go through the content line by line reading in aloud.  Next, get two other people to read it to see if they can find any mistakes.  Whenever you work with something too close, it is always easy to make errors and overlook them.  By having a fresh set of eyes looking at them you can get that error rate in your content moved down to nothing.

I hope that this post can help you get the real estate leads that you need  and I hope you can and will use the advice in this post to help you design your real estate flyers for your prospecting and sales marketing plan.

In the last blog post, wrote about how you could use Google Maps to get prospects to come to your open house.  In this blog post, I will show you how you can create great, effective and professional looking real estate flyers to generate qualified interest in your real estate services and listings.

Real estate advertising has evolved from the printed page into internet marketing from the old days when people used to use news paper ads and even flyers. Today, most real estate advertising is usually done online, which has become the predominant method of selling real estate.  As a matter of fact, over 80% of all people looking for a home that was surveyed stated that they look for homes on the Internet first over any other method.  However, real estate leads and letting people know that your client’s home is up for sale in the bricks and mortar world with a flyer would definitely attract possible buyers to visit your location. Fliers are an integral part of real estate marketing, because these are the marketing vehicles that people will look at if they bump into you or come to your open house.  In this article I will give you step by step directions on how you can create great flyers for your own real estate marketing plan.

I have listed here, a step by step guide as to how to create a great real estate flyer that you can use to promote any open house or event you might have.

Identify your Real Estate Market Before You Make Your Real Estate Flyer

When you are trying to decide what type of flyer content you are going to need, you must consider your audience and ensure that you make different types of flyers that can be used for different situations. You should make flyers that relate to the different types of people it will be used for in order for it to be effective and interesting. You will also need to consider what understand what the different groups of people will need and think about how you can design an advertisement out of that market.  If you can make the real estate flyer relevant and hit a particular need, then this will help you increase their interest in what you have to offer.

Decide On What Type of Art and Layout You Will Need

When you are trying to figure out the best type of design for a real estate flyer there are a couple of things you need to think about.  First of all you will want to consider the size of the flyer, color of the background, as well as the number of pictures and types of photos.  The reason you need to first consider the size of your flyer is because the price depends on the size, and when you think about all of the information that you will be putting on them they will have to be easy to read. We will also need to think about the text fonts and the finish on the paper.  Now, when you begin thinking about your color scheme, you will want to consider your company’s branding and use of color. Try to use a color scheme that will catch a person’s eye while using the colors of your company’s logo or advertising design.  You don’t want to use colors that are too bright or florescent because it makes the flyers, as well as your real estate business, look cheap.

You are going to of course think about the number of photos that you will be placing on your flyer, and as the size of the flyer will naturally affect the size and the number of the photographs on your advertisement.  If you have room to include pictures of the property, then try to use the rooms that people are most concerned with, such as the kitchen. You should also choose your most professional looking photograph to place on any of your advertisements.  One of my pet peeves in real estate marketing is seeing female realtor’s pictures that look like they were made at the photography vendor, “Glamour Shots.”  Ladies, have those kinds of pictures made for your husbands or boyfriends; when it comes to the sales business of real estate, you should get the most professional business picture you can afford.  You are trying to sell and represent a real estate business, not attract the opposite sex.

In my next blog post, I am going to tell you how to write content for your real estate flyer so that it will create a need for real estate leads and prospects to contact you about the services or properties that you are representing.

Jott.com is an inexpensive and powerful tool for real estate marketers and sales people. Jott is a system that allows you to send voice messages out to other people’s cell phones as a converted text message. This voice messaging system can save a real estate sales professional precious time because it creates short 60 second messages that deliver exactly what you want to say concisely. Here are a couple of other things Jott can do for your business:

1. You can utilize Google’s Calendar program to post times for call in meetings or events that you will be having.
2. You will have the ability to convert voice messages into text messages and then send them to specified contacts on your list.
3. Reminders can be set in the Jott system which will send you a text message when you need to be reminded of an event or important task.

Setting up Jott is relatively easy, just go to www.Jott.com and set up a free account. Once you are finished with that, you will be able to input clients and business partner’s names so that you can send out a message to everyone on your list. You can then enter your message enter your message by voice which will then be converted into a computerized text message (These short messages are called Jotts, just like Twitter calls its short messages “tweets”.) The Jott system will then send out the voice message to everyone on your list.

I used the free account that Jott offered just to see how well it worked. When I called into the system a voice came on that said, “Who do you want to Jott?” I then sent myself a converted voice into text message by simply telling the system to send it to my account. It was really a very easy system to learn and use.

Jott is a Great Tool for Real Estate Agents to Save Time With

I can easily see where this service would save a Realtor or sales agent a lot of time. For one thing, it would help you avoid lengthy conversations that usually occur whenever you need to tell a client or business partner something. For example, if you wanted to tell a buyer that their offer has been accepted, then all you would have to do is say the name of the client when you called up your Jott account. Just like magic, the Jott system would send out the voice message in the form of an email. Jott will also send you an email confirmation letting you know that it has delivered your message.

Jott also can be used with other online applications like Google’s Calendar. By simply calling into Jott, you can tell the system what app to use by using one word commands. If you wanted to place an event into Google’s Calendar, just simply say the word “Google” and say something like, “Meet Freddy at 4:45 on Monday at Fanzoli’s Restaurant for meeting.” Jott will then convert that message into text, and then send it to your Google Calendar where it will appear in text form.

There are many more functions and features that you can use with this program, so much more than I would be able to go into here. However, you can jump over to Jott’s website at: http://www.Jott.com to get a free account and start checking the system and some of these features out.

Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents Part III

If you read my earlier marketing real estate with email articles, part I and part II, you know that my philosophy concerning the use of email is pretty important in the world of establishing yourself with your real estate marketing online.  Today I want to back off just a little and talk about the most basic principles of email marketing to make sure you understand the fundamental strategies you must use to become successful.

First of all, if you are like me and consider email to be the foundation of your Internet marketing presence, then you should make sure that you do it right.  In other words you must put the time into the early phases of email marketing and have patience.  It is the same care and patience you must use when you are putting together a blog.  It is a daily process of writing and tailoring your message to a good, well targeted market.  As one master email marketer once said, “Impatience is the forerunner to quitting.”

You want to make sure that you are taking the time and care to slowly build your readership; otherwise you will never see the fruits of your labor.  At the most, you will wander off into the sunset thinking that you either were led astray or you just did not have whatever it took to become successful n the online marketing world.  So please, take your time whenever you are building your email list and when working your blog, it will definitely pay off.

Doing Email Marketing Right When Selling Real Estate Means Quality Writing

Repeat after me, “Quality is more important than quantity.”  I personally would rather have an email list that is only several hundred  strong than a massive list, because I will know that only a small number of people will actually read my message in the first place.  What you really want in email marketing is a tight group of people that you know exactly what they are looking for, or several lists that are sub grouped in the same manner.   For example, you could have one or two hundred people that are interested in renting or renovating condominiums rather than a massive list of people that want to talk about real estate investing in general.  Why? Well, for one thing on a larger list, you are going to have to have a vast amount of knowledge and some people will be interested in some subjects while others will not.  Second, if you don’t address the needs of one group of people they may leave or opt out, so catering to everyone is going to be difficult.

Do Not Spam! One sacred rule of email marketing of any kind on the Internet is to make sure that you are not tempted to buy a list and spam people.  There is also software you can get that will scour the Internet and find people’s email addresses as well.  DON’T EVEN GO THERE!!!  Those kinds of tactics will kill what business you have and really turn people off.  There are literally no short cuts or magic software out there outside of careful planning and hard work.  Even if you can find some sort of short cut, you will have to pay dearly for it anyway.

If you really want to know how to use email properly and what tools you will need, please sign up for my free real estate marketing course at the top right hand side of this blog.

In my next blog post I will talk about the different formats you can use for your subgroups so that you can begin to use these tools to get a tightly grouped herd of people that will actually listen o your marketing message.

If you think for one second that marketing on the Internet is easy, then I have got some real news for you.  It is not.  It is not easy, nor is it something that you do not have to work at.  You have got to write, write, and write to keep that wonderful, fresh content coming that Google likes so much, plus you must implement different strategies. These will be strategies that are spread throughout the week while working off line methods of marketing as well as online.   So, when I mention marketing real estate properties on the Internet, please bear in mind that there is much work that needs to be done.

Learning From Other Real Estate Web Sites

There is another strategy that you can use, that will help you gain an insight and education as to what your real estate prospects are looking for, as far as an agent is concerned.    If you go into Google and look at the top real estate blogs, you will notice that there are certain articles that people are reading and commenting on a lot.  One of the articles I have read recently was from the Your FSBO Expert Blog (http://www.yourfsboexpert.com )

Even though, I fully understand that Your FSBO Expert is for people that are trying to sell their properties without the help of a Realtor or a real estate agent, a realtor or agent can learn some valuable insights from reading the postings as well as comments.  One of the things that I discovered from visiting this site was why people were not satisfied with using an agency to sell their properties.  Most people would probably think that the only reason a seller would rather sell their own property, was because they just wanted to save money.  While this is true in many cases, it is definitely not true in all of them.

Find Out What is Bothering These Sellers

Some of the reasons that people did not want to use a real estate agent were along the lines of unprofessionalism in the agency’s website, lack of caring and attention of the agent, as well as sellers felt that not enough marketing methods were being used by the agency and agent.

When you can easily get insights to the reasons why people try to sell homes themselves, you can adjust your own marketing message and try to address some of these issues in your own sales and marketing plans. How can you, as a real estate professional overcome some of these objections?  If your agency’s website isn’t good enough, perhaps you can hire someone to build a professional one for you or at least start a blog with a professionally built platform.  You can always link your site to the agency’s site even if they have given you your own web page to sell from.

Your Own Website or Blog Can Make All the Difference

If you have a blog, you can write, display pictures and load videos of the properties you have listed and are showing.  This will overcome the objection of not caring for your client or prospect.  How could anyone legitimately say that you are not putting effort into selling or representing a property if you are making blog posts, displaying pictures and videos of their properties?  If you use multiple channels of marketing for your clients, and show them great care, they will always come back to you and refer others to you as well.

By looking at other real estate web sites, blogs and forums and paying attention to what the people there are saying, you could learn to adapt your own marketing strategies.  You could also learn what concerns that your clients and potential clients have and get ahead in the game of marketing and selling to them.

Up to this point I have given you a couple of blog posts on how to create blogs on the Internet using either WordPress or Google’s Blogger. Today, I’m going to show you how to start getting some traffic to your blog and some hard and fast rules and realities of using one. First of all, you have to understand that blogging is a long term strategy. It is one of those things that require diligence and patience and a long term commitment. For quite some time you may feel like it is not worth it because it is one of those thankless tasks that will seem to go unnoticed for a long period of time. So, if you are going to use your blog and draw in an audience, then you will have to pay your dues, man. That’s all there is to it.

Set a Schedule and keep it.
The other thing I would like to point out is that if you are going to get noticed on the Internet, by search engines like Google, then you will have to post frequently. You will have to write articles at least three days a week. A good schedule would be Monday – Wednesday – Friday. Your posts will have to be 300 to 500 words at least, and you will have to write well thought out articles that have content that is of some sort of value to your readers. Now, in the case of real estate sales in a particular area, you can showcase houses and post pictures accompanied by written descriptions that point out the features and value of the properties you are representing. You could also write about trends in real estate that may help your clients as well as news about what is happening in the market. The thing you need to bear in mind is that you will have to make a writing schedule for yourself and then keep it.

The other key point I would like to make is that you will also need to add pictures, post videos, and perform keyword optimization. You will have to also respond to questions from your readers, create links to your other posts and website, maintain content and a host of other things that need to be done in order to be found out by the search engines and benefit your readers. In other words, you will have to work at building a powerful blog that will bring readers, clients and other professionals to your site.

How to become an Authority in your field!

However, there is an upside to all of this activity if it is done right. First of all, once you have crossed the invisible blog threshold (I call it that because nobody in blogging knows exactly at what point a blog will become popular enough that readers will start to migrate in your direction.) you will start to be an authority. This is a very enviable position to be in. When you start becoming an authority, people will begin to link to your blog and hence, the search engines will move you toward the top of many search terms. Translation: you will get more attention and traffic. Another huge benefit of crossing the threshold is other people of authority will start to communicate with you. This opens up a world of opportunities for joint ventures, interviews and a host of other things you wouldn’t even think about. The last benefit I would like to mention is that having a successful blog makes you stand out from the crowd. Since you are now an authority, you can more easily attract clients, make connections and get more listings.
To find out more about what makes a real good blog and blog post, follow these links in my reference section:

In my last blog post I talked about creating an extra income stream by making and selling your own information product right from your blog or website.  I now want to focus on how you will create those products and where you can get some great ideas on what subjects you can base you info-product on.

Find Your Target Market First

Before you even start to write a thing, you need to take some steps to find out what people want.  If you try to sell water sprinklers in a country that gets a lot of rain, then chances are you won’t make any money. However, if you sold umbrellas in that country and then showed people how to use them, you can see where your chances of making sales would be much greater.

Where do you get ideas from? Thanks to the Internet there are loads of places you can go to find out what people want.  Let’s not forget one thing that is important before we start; if you are going to sell an information product on your real estate site or blog, make sure it is related to your business in some way.  You don’t want to be selling a product on how to raise snakes on a real estate blog or website.  If you want to sell an information product on something totally unrelated, then just get another site with another domain name; they are pretty cheap these days.  Here is a laundry list of ideas you can use to find out what are popular subjects within a market:

• Forums & Blogs -The first place you can go to and see if an idea is right or not is a forum. If your product is about managing condos for the affluent, then go to several forums and blogs and see what questions people are asking each other about that subject.  You need to focus more on the questions than you should the answers because you want to know what people are looking for.  If the same questions come up again and again, then you may have found a hot niche.  Also check blogs, articles that have been read a lot and you can even ask in the forums and blogs themselves.  People will be more than happy to help you out.
• Online Bookstores – Amazon is great for determining what will sell and what will not. If you go onto Amazon’s web site there are a whole host of methods you can use to find out if your idea is marketable or not.

As a matter of fact, here is a video that I created to show you how to do this:

Another method you can use to find out if people will want your info-product or not, is to create an online survey.  All you need is a webpage to take it on and a Google Adsense account.  I use a company called Survey Monkey for the free survey form, or you can just type in “free survey forms” into Google and you should be able to find some free forms you can easily install to your site or blog with just a copy and paste function.  You can actually create a survey that asks people what they want or what their biggest headache is. In the information marketing realm, the problem solvers are the big winners.

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!”

Resources:

Survey Monkey – A great way to take online surveys and their basic program is free.

Google Search Results for Free Surveys