Archive for the ‘Sales’ Category

Using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, a real estate agent can add another dimension to his or her personal marketing strategy.  Even though some of the networking sites like MySpace are becoming less prevalent, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are becoming more prominent with businesses and professionals.  These sites seem to have noticed the fact that people want a more serious approach to social networking.

In the case of Facebook, a real estate agent could easily network with all sorts of business professionals in a particular geographical area.  He or she could easily do so, by connecting with and networking among a group of people that are defined in such a manner that would be beneficial to a marketing strategy.

In this video, you will learn the basic steps to finding people in your geographic area that you can make friends with, and begin to develop a marketing network using Facebook.  It will teach you how to make friends in your area as well as how to connect with business professionals that will be able to help you in your real estate profession.

Watch the video: How to use Facebook to Find Clients and Network with Professionals

Resources: How to Network on Facebook In an Hour a Day

Before I forget, I would like to invite you to sign up for my FREE real estate marketing course.  It is packed with tips and ideas that will help you attract clients, and gain an online presence so that you will be able to attract more clients and sell more properties.

In this video blog post I am going to tell you about a basic trick that everyone in Internet marketing should know about. I am not going to go into great detail here because it is on today’s video post. I will say that this is an easy but important tip that you need to pay attention to, and I go into detail about how you need to use it.

Use Pictures of Your Real Estate Listings

I recently mentioned in another real estate marketing blog how important good clear pictures were in the selling of houses. I was sort of chastised by the moderator of the blog because he said that he had to do a heck of a lot more than put pictures of their properties on his blog to make his clients happy. While I have no problem with that statement, I can’t tell you the number of times my wife and I were looking for properties on the Internet and glossed right over the real estate listings that did not have pictures. As a matter of fact, if there were only a few pictures or poor quality pictures, I glossed right over those as well. Why would someone pass right over these properties? When you are looking on the Internet at the vast number of houses that are on Realtor sites you have a tendency to get distracted by the properties that have good pictures. Also, if there are few, poor, or no photographs, then you have to wonder, “What is wrong with this property and what are they trying to hide?” After all, you are selling a very big investment with real estate so why not present it in a way that will get it noticed?

So, in my humble opinion, photographs and pictures are very important, probably more than you would think. While I’m on the subject, I want to also point out that if you are selling land, the same principles apply. You need to take as many, good, clear pictures as you can. Let’s face it, if your pictures are going to derail people from coming to see your property, then chances are when the people actually come to see the property, they are probably not going to be interested in it anyway. So, don’t be afraid to post a lot of good clear pictures on the website or blog.

Keeping it Simple – The Easy Trick for Real Estate Websites Video:

Resources:

Adobe Photoshop – This is the most elite photograph altering software on the planet.  This program is so incredible that I amazed every time I use it at the depth and magic you can do with it.  There is a downside to this program such as a learning curve to using the software as well as the price.

Corel Photoshop Pro -  A much cheaper alternative to Adobe Photoshop and it is also a great program that works well

As many of you already know, one of my favorite quotes is by the famous marketer named Dan Kennedy.  Mr. Kennedy’s quote was, “If you are making money from only one source or direction, then you should not be sleeping well at night. “

You Need to be Diverse!

What he is trying to tell you, is that you need to be diverse in your business dealings and ventures.  I will give you a good story about what this principle means from a personal perspective.  Years ago, I had an online embroidery business, in which I would create musical instrument apparel like tuba hats, oboe shirts and a host of other creative apparel.  I marketed my business strictly online, and for a long time I experienced some online success in my business.  I used basically two methods of online marketing; I ran items on eBay and I also developed a commercial web site that I could sell my hats and shirts directly from.

Google Changes its Rules

I learned how to do search engine optimization by reading books and networking with successful Internet marketing entrepreneurs.  One day, something interesting happened.  Google decided that in order to be the most sophisticated search engine in the world, it would change the way it ranked websites.  In other words, rather than choosing websites that had tons of links pointing to a site as one of the determining factors , Google decided that the links pointing to a website needed to be relevant.  What this meant was that you had to have links pointing to your website that were related to your content.  To give you an example of this, if you had a website about Burmese pythons, a website about selling mattresses  that linked to your site would not be counted too much as far as relevance is concerned.  However, if you had a snake charmer’s website, or a snake supply website linking directly to your site, then the links helped your site as far as relevance was concerned.

Millions of Dollars a Month…Gone!!

To cut a long story short, in one single night people that were making literally millions of dollars on the Internet, were making nothing.   Websites that could easily be found could not be found anywhere, to include mine.  However, because I was a small businessman that had just entered the arena of Internet marketing, my loss was a mere disappointment.  I surfed around the Internet to find out what had happened, and I met a man on a forum who was really whining.   He was making millions of dollars online with a computer parts business and he was now making nothing.  Why?  He was in trouble because he only used one avenue of marketing to sell his wares.  Here was a man that had a huge data base of customers and he never sent them a marketing email or any direct mail pieces at all.

This is why you should have as many avenues of marketing and obtaining, maintaining, and cultivating clients as you can.  Not only do you need multiple channels of marketing, but you also need other ventures to make money with as well.  In my next blog post, I am going to tell you more about these other channels and avenues so that you can make money no matter what happens.

Video: Dan Kennedy Talks About the Worst Number in Marketing:

This is kind of a common sense article, but I am compelled to talk about it because it is just another way that a real estate agent or a Realtor can use offline marketing in tandem with online marketing.   This is going to be another good argument as to why a real estate professional should have their own web site or blog, instead of just the one their agency gave them.

A Creative Way to Use Your Magnetic Sign

What you can do with magnetic car signs is advertise your website or blog right along with all of your other information.  On the magnetic sign you could have a call to action like this: To get a free report on how to save thousands on selling your home go to: www.housetreasuresonline.com

It’s All About the List!

When the people go to your website or blog you will have an opt-in box that will ask for their email address or their full contact information to include their phone number.  The reason for this is so that you can build a massive list of people that are interested in what you have to offer and so you can continually market back to potential clients.  Once the people put in their contact information and it is collected into your database, you can then market back to them again and again.

Considerations When Making Your Real Estate Sign

There are a couple of things that you must consider when doing this type of marketing.  For one thing, you need to consider the size and amount of information that you will put on the magnetic sign.  You really can’t cram too much information on there.  So, if you are going to put a call to action on the sign as mentioned in the example above, then you may need to leave your picture off of the sign or possibly some graphics.    This is one area that you will have to play around with the idea or consult the sign maker that you plan on using.

As a real estate professional, whether you are running an agency, managing properties, or just selling real estate, you need every type of marketing tool that you can get your hands on. One of the more innovative methods of connecting with people is using door hangers. Door hangers aren’t new, they are just underused. The concept behind door hangers is fairly simple, you can create a marketing message on a card that is hung on doors in neighborhoods, business offices, and even car handles. They have been in use for a very long time, and today door hangers can use technology to help sales professionals and marketers connect to potential clients and customers.

Create Compelling Calls to Action

One of the ways that door hangers can be used effectively is by creating compelling calls to action on them. You can also tell potential customers and clients about sales, upgrades and services that you provide right on the card. However, you can use these door hangers in new and creative ways using the Internet. On the cards you can easily create a compelling call to action which leads them to your blog or website. Why would you want to do this? You are doing this so that you can build up your client and customer list. In the case of a real estate agency, you could create a door hanger that announces a contest asking people to login into your website (of course, they would at least have to give you their email address to do so) and write about what their dream home would look like. On the door hanger, you could give them a web address to go to so that they could navigate to your web site and login to your contest. This will give you their email addresses, and descriptions of properties they are interested in. So, when properties that match the description of the home these people have written about come to the market, you can email them and tell them about it.

Check Your Mail!

If you sit down and brainstorm about ways these door hangers can be used, you can come up with all sorts of ideas. One way you can get great ideas is right in your mailbox. Start keeping and collecting advertisements that come to you in the mail. Many of the companies and businesses that market through direct mail hire very expensive marketing consultants and ad copy writers. You can use these ads to see how they are using and writing similar ads. I recently got a post card in the mail that had a new domain name dedicated to me on it. When I went to their website, it said, “Welcome Mark!” and had a page that used my name on it to sell me a seminar to go to. You can see how easy it would be to make a door hanger with a similar message on it.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Door Hangers

There are benefits as well as disadvantages to marketing to people in this manner. For one thing, you can target places that have people who may be looking for a new home, like apartment complexes. (You may need the manager’s permission to do this or work out some sort of deal with the apartment manager.) You could also hang the door hangers on houses that have “For Sale by Owner:” signs on them; that way you don’t have to be so intrusive and call people like that on the phone. On the downside, there is the cost of printing and distributing these door hangers to people.

I hope this post has given you some good ideas to use so that you can start to effectively use door hangers to market and sell properties in new and creative ways. Remember to keep advertisements that you get in the mail so that you can start collecting ideas and learn more about ad copy because their ideas and formats could prove to be invaluable to you.

Most people that use the Internet have become familiar with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.  As a matter of fact, over the last 24 months these two social media sites have become very prevalent, so much that their presence has been expanded to TV news shows, commercials, and printed media of all sorts.  These sites have proven to be popular forms of advertising because they can be accessed on the Internet by way of cell phones, laptops as well as home computers.  I have personally seen Twitter’s and Facebook’s logos all over menus at restaurants and as a matter of fact, just yesterday I saw a great Twitter ad in a TGIF restaurant. They had a small menu card on the table that encouraged you to write about your worst day at work ever on their Twitter account.  Talk about a creative way of using social media!

In this article, I want to focus on Facebook and how you can use it to communicate and attract clients with this new tool.  Setting up a Facebook account is very easy, and all you need to do to get one is follow their online instructions.  If you want to see a quick online tutorial on how to do this, just follow this link.

Tips to get you noticed and networked on Facebook:

• Target areas and people geographically with Facebook – A real estate agent would do well to start off making friends in certain areas that he works in.  For example, when you are setting up your profile on Facebook, make sure that you list your geographical area as the area you are primarily selling in.  The reason for this is that Facebook automatically suggests people for you to hook up with based on the town you live in as well as where you graduated from.  Of course, you will have to invite the people that Facebook suggests, but that is usually just a click of a button.
• Target the businesses in your area – In addition to conducting a people search in your target area, you can also do a group search for businesses in your area and become a member of their groups as well.  When you do a search on Facebook, you can add the name of your town to locate businesses or people in your geographical area.  Here is an example of a search: building contractors Louisville, KY- or to find a person –  Joe Schmoozer,  Birmingham, MS
• Write and post articles on your Facebook - Here is a real good strategy for you.  If you do any article marketing through your own blog or article websites like Ezinesarticles.com, or Articlesbase you can also post articles to your Facebook page.  So, writing a good, clear and concise article and then posting it to your Facebook page for others to read also helps.  Of course, you will want to use Facebook’s newsfeed feature if you want to announce the fact that you have published your article and place it on your Facebook page.
• Create a Fan Page- When you sign up for Facebook you can also create a separate account that will allow you to create a fan page.  You should also use and develop this resource on Facebook.
• Create a group- You will also be able to develop a group for your real estate business or vocation on Facebook as well.

It seems like I’ve given you quite a few strategies to use on Facebook.  You need to bear in mind, that even though there are quite a few methods to use, you still have to have a committed plan every day to use it and work it.  Remember, whatever you do or post, make sure it is of the highest quality you can produce, because you do not know how long this material will be on the Internet or who will be looking at it.

Today, I’d like to pause for a minute to talk about a philosophical point of view that I think is important. I try not to talk in abstract philosophical terms too often because I like to speak in concrete terms and about action plans that you can implement.

Livin’ it up!

Recently, I was watching a program on MTV that chronicled the lives of three young people. I guess you could say that it chronicled their lives so far, because they were in their early twenties and they looked very young. Anyway, the premise of this reality show was that these were healthy, productive people that lost their jobs. It showed them going through all sorts of life changes because they could no longer support themselves, and it also showed how hard they worked at finding another job.   Lin\ The amazing thing about these young people was that in all three cases, these folks had lost six – figure jobs! Not only had they lost incredible incomes, but the jobs themselves were what I would call “dream jobs”. They had positions such as public relations, purchasing agents for elite companies as well as upper level management. They all three apparently made the same mistakes with money that younger people usually do, and that was, living life high off the hog. They lived in the nicest places, drove fancy cars and partied a lot. Now, they were reduced to scrimping and cutting corners every way they could think of just to survive.

What Can We Learn From This?

There are several important lessons to be gleaned from watching this program. First of all, you should always try to have more than one method of making money, even if it is just a little bit every month. One of my favorite marketers and sales persons, Dan Kennedy, who is also known as the “millionaire maker” says, “ If you are making money from only one source or direction, then you should not be sleeping well at night.” If you have only one income, then perhaps you should consider another venue, perhaps an entrepreneurial one. Another important lesson that can be learned from this episode was the fact that just because you are making a wad of money, perhaps you should still get more education.

Keep Learning and Growing

As a matter of fact, it probably would not hurt you to diversify your education too. You can either build on a skill, or you can learn something else. A person that has a skill or trade and can demonstrate proficiency in it will be far more employable than a person that knows just how to answer a phone. Even though this blog is written primarily for realtors and real estate professionals, the advice should be the same. You can either sharpen your skills in sales by going to seminars and reading books, or you can learn how to make information products, write books, become a public speaker, etc. There really is no end to the things you can learn and become proficient at. I personally have been practicing what I preach. I am a fairly decent web designer and writer. I have been writing consistently on and off of the Internet for the last five years at a profit. I have a bachelor’s degree in music education and master’s in educational technology. Just recently, I have started learning everything I can about online streaming video and creating video tutorials.

If I can say one thing about the real estate sales profession that is important to your livelihood, it would be that you are in a business that requires diligence and skill. You are also in a profession that has highly transferable skills. The sales industry has almost always been around and is as diverse as any profession can be. So, if you have been making your primary income from sales, you can pat yourself on the back because it is a skill that not everyone has the diligence and perseverance to do. I would encourage you to always upgrade your skills and education as you continue to push toward your career and goals in real estate sales.

By now, I think most of the readers and watchers of this blog will recognize the fact that I am not too hip to Internet marketing gurus.  If you look at historical marketing events like the California gold rush in 1849, you will see similarities between Internet marketing opportunities and families traveling west in America during that time.  To cut a long story short, the people that sold the food, axes, picks and shovels as well as bad directions and stubborn mules were the ones that made most of the money from gold rush; the people that actually found the gold were few and far to find.

I’m not saying that you can’t make money from marketing on the Internet, however, people that think they can successfully market anything easily on here without getting their fingers dirty, better think again.  I recently saw a post on how you can effectively use social media in five minutes a day or something like that. I think that there are so many people out there making similar statements, even Google wouldn’t be able to track them all.  Yes, you can use social media and bookmarking sites to your advantage, but it will take more than a brief five minutes a day.

Recently, I wrote about how long it took to develop and make a video tutorial and you can you can read about it by clicking on the link. I have used social media for the last year or two, but I had to work it every day.  On Facebook, for example, most people that are business minded are trying to become what I like to call, or think of as spheres of influence.  If a lot of people have that idea or attitude about a social book marking site like Facebook, don’t you think it is going to get very competitive?

I once conducted an experiment wherein I started to interact with people that were into network marketing programs on Facebook.  I pretended like I was a naïve guy that was interested in starting some sort of business.   The network marketers came at me with a vengeance so much that several of them actually found my home phone number and called me.  Within several weeks I had three thousand friends on Facebook because they all wanted to befriend me and get me into their business.  Many of these people were making videos (usually crappy ones that were nothing more than face – cams mounted on their computers) that talked about their philosophies of success.  They were all trying to become gurus in a sea of gurus.

The other thing that I want to point out is that the nature of the Internet is such that a trend or business can have a brief shelf life.  Just three years ago, MySpace was the champion of social sites, now that trend is clearly in decline.  Can you imagine putting massive amounts of time and care into a marketing channel like that, only to have it become an Internet wasteland?

My personal marketing strategy has and will always be; multiple channels of marketing, both online and off as well as multiple channels of making money.    If you want a plan that is actually laid out in a step by step manner, using graphics and detailed instructions, please sign up for my free course on the right hand side of this blog.

It is amazing to me how many times I get told an idea won’t work and then find out the idea does work.  I get told frequently that a particular marketing strategy for a particular business or property won’t work, and every day I have found case studies where businesses have been using that strategy, and that it does work. The problem with many people in sales or marketing is the fact that they abandon a particular strategy too quickly.  So, when I share with you the strategy of using a blog to post properties that you are representing, I’m telling you a about a strategy that is already successfully being used by others.

I have a video in a previous post that shows you how easy it is to actually post a property to a blog.  I would advise you to watch it if you don’t know how to post properties and their pictures to one using Google’s blogging platform, Blogger.  However, there are a few things that you may need to know about marketing with a blog before you go through the entire process.

1.    Don’t post all of your properties all at once.  Google likes to see growth over time.  So, posting all of your properties at the same exact time may not be a good idea. As a matter of fact, you could make a posting about different aspects of the property over a period of time.

2.    Don’t post every day.  When experienced bloggers post, they spread out their posts about three days apart.  The reason for this is simple.   When you begin to attract a following of people and friends to your blog, they will want to leave comments.  However, if you post every day to your blog you will not leave these people enough time to go back to it and leave a comment.  So, giving your audience a couple of days between posts to leave comments is a real good strategy.

3.    Try to keep your posts between 300 to 500 words.  Google seems to like posts that are in this range.  This is one of those times that you will need to be creative in how you write about different aspects of the property that you are trying to represent.  Try to be as complete and detailed as you can about different aspects of the property. This strategy will have two beneficial aspects to it. For one thing, you will fulfill the word range that search engines like Google seem to appreciate.  The second reason is that your clients will really appreciate the care and effort that you are putting into representing their property.  Can you imagine the kind of referrals that you will get from people that you are representing when they see how much time and effort you are putting into this process?

4.    Put good, clear pictures into the post.  You should do this even if it means you have to take extra pictures of the property.  Pictures are extremely important and you can write a summary of benefits of each picture that he or she is looking at.

I hope that this blog post has given you some ideas on how you can use a blog to show houses for sale.  Remember; be sure that whatever you do, it is the best quality that you can make it.  This strategy will definitely pay off in the long run.

I want to take a break from my usual video post this week and talk to you about two things that I think are absolutely

Our Savior

necessary for your success in marketing real estate on the Internet. As I prepared my next tutorial on how to create a presence on the World Wide Web I had a premonition that I may possibly be leading people astray. There are two fundamental concepts that I want to share with you before going into any more detail on how you should use the Internet in your marketing efforts.

Whenever I tell clients this first concept or principle, a deer in the headlights expression usually crosses their faces and I can see some hesitation in their mannerisms. The reason they react in this manner is because of what they believed or thought about using the Internet as a marketing vehicle was flawed. Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Clause, or Tooth Fairy or honesty in politicians; however, there is an alternate universe called reality. If I were to list marketing vehicles ranking from the most effective to the least effective it would look like this:
 
1. Face to Face or Direct Contact- Meeting people face to face and letting them get to know you is quite possibly the most powerful marketing method known to man. This is why there are so many books and seminars on the subject of sales and why companies will compensate their best sales people with all sorts of incentives.
 
2. Networking / Referral Building – Knowing people and contacts that know other people and contacts ranks near the top of the marketing food chain. This is why it is always imperative that you have a system in place to get referrals from your friends, contacts and clients.
 
3. Public speaking – This is another method of getting potential prospects to see you while networking with other professionals in your business area.
 
4. Writing – Nothing will call attention to you quicker than becoming an authority in your field and one sure way of doing that is to either become a syndicated writer or author of a book. Thanks to the Internet, you can accomplish this somewhat on your own by writing excellent e-books and articles on one of hundreds of article websites on the Internet.
 
5. Promotional Events – Seminars, business fairs and similar events is a good way of meeting people and getting your business card into their hands.
 
6. Advertising – Getting into the Yellow Pages, writing ads and direct mail pieces are still effective means of getting noticed in the market place.
 
Way down in the gutter is the least effective method of marketing. This method is difficult if you don’t know what you are doing, hard to track effectiveness on and is loaded with competition and distractions.
 
The least effective method of marketing is…(Drum roll please…) The Internet!!!!
The Internet is the least effective for a number of reasons, several I have mentioned already. There is a ton of competition out there on the Web, and there is more of it every single day. There are loads of distractions too, so you are going to have to fight and work like the dickens to get your market share.
 
So my first big tip is – Be prepared to work!
 
My second big tip is that you can use the Internet effectively if you have a system that works in tandem with the marketing methods I have listed above. You should have an offline strategy as well as an online strategy in which both of the strategies work together complimenting and helping each other.
 
Example: You man a booth for your real estate agency at a lawn and garden show. You talk to people and hand out business cards. You also collect names and addresses (email addresses too) from people that want to win a free clock radio. You take the email addresses and place them into an online email and newsletter service like Aweber. Now you can market back to these people over and over again via email.
 
Example: You write an e-book that will be of value to anyone looking for real estate. Perhaps you can write an e-book on how to invest and still make money in real estate in a down market. Next, you place that e-book on a CD along with a list and links of properties that you are representing on the Internet as well as your contact information. (You can also use this disc as a reason to call and follow up with people you meet to ask if they had a chance to look at it.
 
These are just a few methods that you can use to effectively use technology and the Internet to attract and stay in contact with new clients and customers. In the real estate business as well as any other that requires marketing you will need every funnel you can get. The Internet not only can provide you with prospects, but also method of funneling contacts from other marketing efforts as well.