Archive for the ‘Sales’ Category

In this blog we usually talk about ways that you can gain real estate sales leads using technology.  In this posting we are going to kinda – sorta deviate away from this idea a bit and talk about a time tested method for marketing to your target real estate market.  I am speaking specifically of real estate marketing postcards and how you can use them to gain more listings and prospects.

Just a Little Deviation Away From Technology in Real Estate Marketing

Actually, we really aren’t getting away from marketing with technology aspect of selling real estate because we will still be using technology in the delivery system of the real estate postcards.  You can easily go to an online service and order post cards for your marketing campaigns.  Most of these online services will not only allow you to design your postcards using stock photography, but they will print them up in the quantity you need and then send them out to the address that you give them.  This saves you a tremendous amount of time.

However, don’t expect the printing service that you choose to write a marketing message for you.  For that task, you will either have to learn how to write the message yourself, or hire someone that is real good at it.  At any rate, you will want to have a call to action somewhere on the real estate marketing post cards so that people or potential real estate sales leads will be spurred onto to call you.

The best call to action that a real estate marketing postcard can have is something that is tangible for free;  just for getting together with you and talking about your services.  You can always get boat loads of inexpensive gifts to give to people that make an appointment with you. There are tons of online companies that gratuitous gifts that have your company’s logo and contact information on them, from pens to desk clocks.  Generally, offering a free consultation is what many real estate professionals use, but this does not work and does not have a strong enough pull for real estate leads to actually take action and meet with you.

Make Your Real Estate Marketing Postcards Unique!

Another thing you have to consider when dealing with marketing with this type of vehicle is that on average, people make a decision whether or not to read or keep an advertisement sent to them within three seconds.  You have to really have a unique post card that initially arouses a person’s interest enough to make them read it.  Many of the online companies that make these types of post cards have templates that are like this.  Look, if you get a post card in the mail with a pink penguin on it that has big yellow letters on it that says “NAKED”, wouldn’t you at least look at the back of the card to read it???  So, make sure that you have a mind blowing picture with a caption that makes the prospect interested enough to read the back side of it.

To recap on how to Get Real Estate Sales Leads With Real Estate Marketing Postcards, remember to have a good free offer with something tangible, make sure there is a good call to action, and always have a compelling picture and text on the front to ensure that the prospect will read your message.

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.

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.

Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents Part IV

In my last blog post I wrote extensively about how a real estate professional should use quality email marketing pieces and never, ever spam anyone for any reason.  Today I’m going to write to you about one of the lists that you should learn to put together called the “announcement list”.

The announcement list is just exactly as it sounds.  It is a list that specifically talks about blog updates, product announcements, or anything that is of a particular interest in your target subgroup or list.  (To see more about subgroups, go to one of my last blog posts on email marketing.)

Now, if you create one of those lists, you can then put on your salesman hat, because people want to know about new products that have either developed or are basically selling from your web site.  This list is probably one of the most profitable subgroups that you can have in email marketing because they are EXPECTING you to send them information on the products that you are selling.  Now, if you have a good readership, reputation and people have come to respect your sage advice, then chances are, you will make good money from a list like this and you won’t see too many unsubscribe notices from them either.

There are marketers that are out on the Internet that make considerable money from lists like this and there is nothing at all wrong with it.  As a matter of fact, there is everything right with doing business this way, just make sure that you have an opt-in list and that you never spam anyone for any reason.

There are however, several basic types of email announcements for real estate agents that can deliver these types of messages and they are as follows:

1. Free Trial Offers – If you are a part of an affiliate program or know of a certain type of item that you can backend and make some extra money, then you can get an individual to try the service or program out.  You don’t have to sell you own product or service and there are loads of companies that will have free trial built into their affiliate programs as well.
2. E-zine Articles – If you publish a regular online newsletter this can be a very viable way of delivering a targeted message to people.  You can easily disguise advertisements as product reviews and critiques without appearing too salesman like.  Also, this type of format could be seen as another entirely different subgroup wherein you could inform other publishers that you have an article they can use in their newsletter.
3. E-books – I have used this method extensively and it works great.  You can make e-books (.pdf files) on specific subjects and have them on your website available for free downloading.  You can put all sorts of affiliate links in those e-books and in some cases the affiliate companies will even let you customize them with your affiliate number so you can make money from it.

In my next post I am going to try to do a recap of some of the most important aspects of email marketing before moving on to another subject.

I once had a friend that was trying to sell a piece of land from two states away.  Since the prospect seemed like he was pretty interested in a property, my friend who was really prone to taking action, wanted to send an email and attachment with photographs.  However, when he did so, the photographs were disorganized and he had a hard time explaining to his client over his cell phone certain aspects and features of the property in question.  One of the ways my friend could easily overcome this problem would be with virtual meetings.

Virtual Meetings May Soon be a Reality

There are several online companies that have services which allow you to use the Internet to hold virtual meetings.  One of the companies that is excellent in what they do to provide a platform to give you the ability to hold a virtual meeting is an online company called Go To Meeting.  (www.gotomeeting.com)  With Go To Meeting you can use a webcam to talk to each other while sharing visual documents like pictures, charts and anything else you can think of.  This platform is very versatile because it will allow you to alert people not just by email that you are going to have a meeting, but also by phone.  (Please bear in mind that this system will only work if the other parties involved in the meetings have Go To Meeting’s platform and software installed on their computers as well.)

This system is really pretty versatile in its applications as well.  For one thing, you can have a conferencing session by way of phone and computer at the same time.  If a person is even in their car, they can hear you and other online attendees to the meeting over their phones.  If a client can’t meet with you due to conflicting schedules, you can easily record online audio and video sessions with them and play them back later.  So if a person wants to see a piece of real estate by way of a virtual meeting and their business partner or wife can’t be there, you can always record the session and the client can play it back later for the absent party.

I predict that for businesses and individual clients, virtual meetings for Realtors will be a commonplace reality.   It will save gas and traveling to offices, as well as allow people clear across the country to see pieces of real estate that they might be interested in.

Other Uses of Virtual Meetings for Realtors and Real Estate Professionals

Not only are the presentation opportunities available for this type of a platform, but also you can train staff with it as well.  Go To Meeting has interactive training features that allow for assessments that you may need such as tests, quizzes and polls to gauge the effectiveness of your training even if you are still clear across the country.

I remember my first job in sales.  It was at a store called PIX Shoes in Dallas Texas.  I was about 22 years old and I had zero sales experience.  I knew absolutely nothing about selling, but I needed a job so there I was, selling shoes.  Anyway, not only was I a greenhorn at selling shoes, I also wasn’t too good at it.  My idea of selling shoes was to try to find shoes a smaller size that what women actually thought their feet were.  For some reason, women feel better if they think their feet are smaller…Go figure!  So, I really had no strategy when it came to selling the darn things.

Fortunately, I had a friend at the store named Dan that was a seasoned sales pro.  He actually was a retired old dude that just like selling for fun….Go figure again!  One of the most valuable things this gentleman taught me about sales was that I looked at people like they were objects not people.  Not only was that wrong, but Dan also told me that if I wanted to be in sales, that I had to learn that retaining a customer was a lot easier than servicing new ones all of the time.  He was right, of course and the proof was in the pudding because he had customers that requested him all of the time and his sales were unrivaled at the store.

Learning to FORM the Customer

The thing that Dan taught me to do was FORM the customer. This was an acronym that he used to learn to make friends with and relate to his customer and can work for any real estate agent or Realtor.   This is the way it works:

1. “F” stands for Family.  You are going to engage your potential client by talking about his or her family.  There are several ways you can do this.  First of all, you can tell them that they look familiar and if they know you already.  You can then usually segue into asking them if their family is from the area and how long they have lived there.
2. “O” stands for Occupation.  Occupation is an easy segue from the last subject, because if they say they are from someplace else, then you could always ask who they work for.  Now, if you read or watch the news or are interested in just about any subject, you could easily ask them how they feel about certain things.  For example, if the person worked in the car manufacturing business, you could ask them how they felt about some of the cars being recalled that are on the market.  Or if you know anything about a particular subject you could mention that you or a relative has one of their cars.  If you didn’t know anything about the subject, you could ask what their favorite model is.
3. “R” Stands for Recreation.  Once again, you can easily move from the last subject to this one with great ease.  Just keep it sort of natural sounding and don’t talk to fast.
4. “M” stands for Message.  Once you have your potential client comfortable, you can much more comfortably talk about what you have to offer them without making it sound like you are actually trying to sell them something.  This will come very easily with use.

Practice it Until it is Second Nature

Once you begin to practice this strategy, it will become second hand.  As a matter of fact it will become so second nature, you won’t even notice that you are using it.  The more you practice, practice, practice, the better you will get and the more people will feel comfortable with you and remember you.

This rule of sales is paramount: The more people know you and like you, the more they will want to do business with you.

This is got to be one of the strategies that real estate professionals and sales agents seem to overlook on a large scale.   It is an element of the sales cycle that is very important and should be focused on with a high degree of priority. If you do not focus on this segment of your sales and business you are leaving huge piles of cash on the table, a ready mark for any other sales predator to pounce upon.  Of course, what I am talking about is staying in contact with people that you have already sold to.  This is an obvious oversight by most sales people, especially in the real estate arena because most agents think that once the house is sold, the client is of little use to them.  This is a vast mistake and in this blog post I am going to show you how to use technology to stay in touch with your clients, and help you gain more them while increasing sales and listings.

How Many Times Should You Market to Your Clients?

The famous sales guru, Tom Hopkins, says that if you are going to make it as a sales person, then you should market back to your clients and let them hear from you for at least 6 to 12 times a year.  Direct mail for real estate seems to be the most noticeable method if you know how to do it right.  Sending birthday cards, Thanksgiving Day cards, Halloween cards or any excuse you have to make contact with your clients and former customers is a great way to remind them that you are still there.  There are three distinct reasons for this activity.

• Referrals!
• Referrals!!
• Referrals!!!

Yes, I think you get the drift; referrals are the reason that you are going to stay in their back pockets.   You can also use technology to keep in touch with your clients.  Email marketing is still one of the cheapest methods to market to people you have already done business with.  Currently, banks are offering lower interest rates, not just in the avenue of selling houses, but also refinancing them as well. A well written email could easily inform your clients of this opportunity.

Do you think anyone that you have sold a house to in the last several years would be interested in this type of information?  Not only will they appreciate you making them aware or remind them that this is a great opportunity, but it also opens up a back-ending business for you as well. You can refer these people to mortgage brokers that you have previously worked out a deal with, wherein you could make a commission for referring them.  But the largest reason for keeping in contact and sending them informative emails is to market back to them.  Could they possibly have relatives that need a house?  How about friends?  What about themselves?  Are they now empty nesters and need a smaller place, while selling their own?

Email is Cheap, so…..

Since email is still very cheap, you can send them a message every week or so telling them about important real estate information and news.  So, the number of times you could contact them through email is 52 times.  Any other holiday besides Christmas should be considered.  The reason you can ignore Christmas is because they will get too much mail anyway, therefore yours will probably ignore yours.  However, you can send out cards for just about any occasion you can think of.  So add at least another 6 times to that.  Also, you could call at least twice a year just to say “hi”.  Let’s not forget Facebook, Twitter and any other method of connecting to them.  So all said and done, you could have contacted them somewhere around 70 times during the year!

Below are a couple of links for tools that will help you connect to your target market and reestablish the fact that you are an authority to your client and past customers:

Aweber- An excellent method of connecting to your clients.

TweetGuide- An automatic way to use Twitter for your business

Being an aficionado of history as well as business, I am somewhat fascinated with the story of the American Gold Rush of 1849 (It actually started in ’48 but let’s not split hairs.) Anyway, Gold was found in a place called Sutter’s Mill, in Coloma, California, and people came from all over the world to seek their fame and fortune there.  A lot of the folks that had gold fever literally risked life and limb crossing the country just to get a chance to find their fortunes in the small golden nuggets that they thought was there.

Click Here for Examples of Info - Products

Well, for almost 90% of the people that went to California, the gold rush was nothing more than an exercise in frustration and heartbreak.  Most of the people that went lost whatever they had because they sold everything to get there.  However, this is not to say that people didn’t make any money at all; quite a few entrepreneurs made a boat load of cash in other avenues of the gold rush.

There was one individual, in particular, that actually bought all of the shovels he could find in San Francisco.  He then ran through the streets proclaiming that there was gold near Sutter’s Mill. However, when the people went to the stores, there were no shovels because this man had bought them all and they could only get them from his store. Of course, he sold them at a premium price.   The man’s name was Sam Brannan and he was the first millionaire in San Francisco’s history.

Sell Your Own Shovels

One of my favorite motto’s is by the famous marketer, Dan Kennedy who said,

“If you are making money from only one source or direction, you should not be sleeping well at night.”

One of the best things a real estate professional can do for his or herself is create several other streams of income by turning their expertise into a marketable product.  I have personally met hundreds of people that have a particular profession by day and an information product business by night. I have met dentists, Realtors, housewives, and I even worked with a gentleman one summer that made millions of dollars selling information products.

Dan Kennedy's excellent info product book

Let’s face it, people desperately want to know what you know if you are working in a particular industry. Just to prove my point, let’s take a look at real estate forums, for example.  If you go to a popular real estate professional forum on the Internet, you will see people asking all sorts of questions that are related to real estate sales.  So, obviously there are people that are looking for answers to a problem that they are having, and if you know something that other people don’t know, they will many times pay for it.

Why Can’t They Just Get an Answer in a Forum or a Blog?

I know what you are thinking.  Why would someone buy information from me when they can find it on the Internet? There are actually three good reasons why people won’t do this.

• First of all, if you are a busy person, you don’t have time to look all over the Internet for the answers you are seeking. Yes, you could find a really popular blog or forum on the subject and ask people on there for answers to your questions, but good luck with all that!  You’ll have to ask yourself if the people you are talking to have the credibility to answer your questions properly.

• Second, you will have to wait for an answer.  Since the people aren’t getting paid to take the time to write you detailed answers and information, you are going to have to wait to get the answers you are seeking.  If they do answer, chances are that the information won’t cover everything you need to know.

• The third and final reason most people would buy information from you is that they will have all of the information they need at their fingertips, whenever they need it.  If you create a really good info-product with high quality content (more on this in three days) your customer or client will have a great resource that they can use.

I hope I have opened your eyes to a concept and idea you should consider.  I am including several links to books and courses that you might want to take a look at to explore this alternative method of making money.  Stay tuned for the next post in two more days in this series on information products, and making extra cash from your real estate business.

God Bless!

Mark Ellis

Resources:

Dan Kennedy’s Information Marketing Guide

Ok, so I decided to have some fun with Camtasia! (Screen capturing software for those of you outside the loop.) Gee, can’t a guy have some fun once in awhile? Anyway, I wanted to show you in a quick and fun fashion how you can get the word out about your real estate listings and services. If you are a Realtor or real estate sales person, you should really consider getting a blog and using one. In earlier posts I have shown you how to set up Wordpress and Google’s Blogger and even use them to showcase your real estate listings.

The Benefits of Blogging for Real Estate Professionals

As I have mentioned before, there are several benefits to blogging about the properties you are representing as well as your services . First of all, if you optimize your blog posts for your geographical area, you may get some local traffic to your blog that would like to see and hear more about a property. Your clients that you are representing will appreciate you more because you will have gone the extra mile for them. Also, blogs used in tandem with your email messages, post cards, letterheads, and anything else you can put the address on will help you network with the people that are interested in you or people that work in your industry. I know if I was a mortgage broker and I wanted to recommend a real estate professional, a person with a consistent and professional blog would wreak of authority and professionalism.

Another couple of reasons to have a well written and updated blog is so you can back end other services like property management or joint venture with someone that does as well as other related products and services. (Notice I said the word “related”, you don’t want to try to sell candles or fishing lures on a real estate blog.)

This video will give you some ideas on how you can use a blog to get the message out…..sort of….