Posts Tagged ‘real estate marketing’

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

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:

The last time I checked my Facebook account I had connected to just about two hundred people that were in some way related to my real estate marketing through technology website. I had several real estate professionals that were discussing online methods of attracting clients, a banker that wanted to let everyone know about low interest rates and a person looking for a piece of acreage. Now, I know what you are thinking, “Gee, 200 people are nothing on Facebook.” Well, you are ri9ght about that. As a matter of fact, I know some marketers that have thousands of contacts. However, I am developing a highly targeted group that is in my geographical area that will help me further my business.

Facebook is Opening New Doors

Considering the fact that real estate professionals are already plugged into networks in their communities, Facebook is opening new doors and opportunities for them to connect to people in their communities. Facebook, believe it or not, does not reside on the World Wide Web but it resides on the Internet as an application. Applications are programs that perform specific functions outside the Web and cannot be entirely crawled and indexed by Google. Applications have become really popular in the last several years because of the sophistication of cell phones that use them considerably, and now new innovations such as iPads are being released daily that extensively use applications.

Applications are Changing Demographics

The importance of using social networking sites like Facebook are becoming more important to Realtors and real estate sales professionals every day. There are several reasons for this. In a recent poll conducted by the National Association of Realtors, 87% of the people polled said that they used the Internet exclusively to perform a search for real estate. So, it would stand to reason that using online social networking sites like Facebook would be a viable method of extending your sales and marketing network.
Another reason that online networking sites like Facebook are becoming more popular to real estate professionals is because the demographics on age have changed. If you recall the glory days of MySpace pages which were not applications, but actually web pages that everyone could modify (especially kids). These pages were fun to add codes of line to the pages to allow them to play music, add pictures of friends and overall allow people to make some really crazy pages that suited them. Today, sites are more professional looking and sophisticated, gaining traffic and members from not only young people that like to chat and share things, but also a more professional group which is older.

Better Cell Phones = Better Marketing?

Lately, real estate professionals have been purchasing more sophisticated phones because of the interfaces and photographing capabilities, as well as the normal usage. With online applications like Facebook ,as well as Twitter, they can let people that they have made friends with in their geographical area know about events like open houses and conventions. The ability to connect, relate and sell properties through applications like Facebook will continue to become a part of a real estate professional’s marketing tool box. Perhaps someday in the future, the entire process of purchasing real estate will be completed on a cell phone, if it hasn’t happened already!

Here is a video that I created while taking graduate studies at Boise State:

In this post I am going to try to give you some information that will immediately help you in your quest to build an online presence.  Most real estate agents are completely reliant on their agency’s web site.  The problem with this is that probably most of the real estate agents and professionals that are in your agency have the exact, same looking web sites.  This means that if you want to stand out from the crowd of real estate agents in your agency, it will be very hard because Google hates duplicate content.  If the site that your agency has provided for you has the same or similar content on it for each salesperson, then it will be very hard for the search engines to find you.  It is very similar to multilevel marketing opportunities that I see all over the Internet, because those companies provide cookie cutter web sites that are identical for each sales representative.

Real Estate Tools to Gain Clients Online

The tools that I will talk to you about in this video will show you exactly what you will need to know in order to start marketing yourself on the Internet.   If this is too overwhelming for you, you can always hire someone like me to do the work for you.  As I have stated in earlier posts, I am very affordable and I will work with you in establishing an online presence.  However, if you want to learn some of this stuff yourself, then I will tell you exactly what you need to know and what tools you will need.

There are a few things that I think you should know about the process of marketing online.

1. Internet marketing is not easy.  It requires you to push yourself to learn new things and have patience.
2. It does require some money.  Just like any other aspect of business, you will need to buy some tools, books, domain names, and hosting plans.
3. There is a learning curve.  It takes time to learn the new software and to understand how to implement and use Internet marketing techniques.
4. It takes some time.  (Please reread #1 above).  You will need to sit down and work at this. High quality articles don’t write themselves unless you hire someone to write some of this stuff for you.
5. There are no shortcuts.  There are a lot of things that you can do to market yourself on the Internet, but none of them will make you an overnight success.  The odds of instant success happening the way Facebook took off was probably worse odds that playing a lottery.

The tools that I am showing you in this video, I have used almost every day, and have extensive experience with them.  If you have any questions about any of them, please leave a message in the comment section and I will try to get back to you, or you can contact me here: mark.ellis@insightbb.com

Resources:

Head Start HTML with CSS & XHTML – An excellent book that teaches a novice how to build web pages

Killer Web Content – Gerry McGovern’s outstanding book that tells you about the most important aspect of Internet Marketing – Content!

Dreamweaver – This is a software package that makes it very simple to build web pages and create a professional online presence.

Photoshop – Software that makes it very easy to alter photographs and add pictures to your web site.

I had a friend that told me that he had new clients that were concerned whether or not he was going to use Twitter and Facebook to help sell their property.  I guess he was trying to gain my disapproval of the usage of these two online juggernauts since he did not like to use computers too much, and he liked to use more older, conventional methods to sell real estate.  Unfortunately, I had to welcome him into the 21st Century and inform him that he should consider at least learning about these two online applications, especially since his clients thought that they were important.

I Know They are Everywhere, But Will They Help Me?

I can see why they would think that way.  After all, Twitter’s and Facebook’s logos can be seen all over the Internet, television, cereal boxes, restaurant menus, motel brochures and every place else.  Personally, I don’t really think that people are going to go onto Dr. Wart’s Footpads Facebook page after seeing it advertised on T.V., but that’s just me.  However, as for  small localized businesses, and people in a particular real estate market I think it would be invaluable.  For one thing, real estate sales is a very social type of business that relies on networking and connecting with groups in a particular geographic market.   Since sites like Facebook and Twitter are social bookmarking applications, wherein the demographics indicate that professionals and businesses are using them more and more to sell things and services;  it is a very important tool for the real estate professional.

As you will no doubt see in my latest video, just as with Facebook, Twitter can target your geographical market.  You can easily network with other people and businesses in your area and develop friendships that will prove to be invaluable.  Remember, people are more apt to do business with you if they know you and like you so connecting with them on a social bookmarking site can help further your marketing efforts and area of expertise.

In my last blog post I talked to you about the peril of marketing though having only one channel or marketing venue.  I also mentioned the fact that it is very important for you to get involved with other types of business ventures which are related in some way to your real estate sales or business.  Remember, if you are making money from only one source or direction, then you should not be sleeping well at night.   If you want to read the grim story of what happened when Google changed its relevance ranking which was in my last post, then click here.

Why You Need More Than One Marketing Channel

In this episode, I want to talk to you about how you can expand your sales into other marketing channels and business ventures.   As I stated earlier, you need more than one marketing channel in case the others don’t work, or the conditions change.  I personally know a bunch of people that love direct mail marketing.  However, in several states there is legislation in action that is trying to implement a “don’t mail” list. (Just like the “don’t call” list that has already passed in most states.)  So, if the only method of marketing that you have been using is through direct mail, then the conditions may change and you will have a serious marketing problem as well as a serious income problem.

Let’s Make a List!

One of the ways that you can diversify your marketing as a real estate professional, is to sit down and brain-storm all of the possible methods that you could keep in contact with your past and current clients as well as listing ways you can acquire new clients and listings.  Why is keeping in touch with current and past clients so important? Because it is far easier to get referrals from them than it would be from people you just met.  So, just for fun, let’s make a list of some of the ways you could market yourself as a real estate professional.

1. Email
   1. You could have a blog or website to collect these addresses from people that come to your site.
   2. You can use an auto-responder to keep in touch with a whole list of people just with a click of a button from an online email service, like Aweber.
   3. Publishing an online newsletter which would be in full color and show pictures of the houses you have listed would be a great way of marketing properties, while showing clients that you are going above and beyond typical representation
2. Online article marketing
   1. You could direct people to your website or blog by writing articles for online syndication services like Articlesbase or Ezinearticles.com
   2. You could also write for syndicated blogs and online newsletters that are published by other people, which would also help to establish you as an authority
   3. You can create electronic books of your own and sell them through companies like Amazon
3. Blogging
   1. Writing a blog post about your profession or the houses that you are representing
   2. Posting good high quality comments to another authority blog site can help to lend credibility to your professionalism
4. Website
   1. You can direct prospects to your personal, updatable website by using some of the above mentioned methods to show properties that you have as listings
   2. You can have online streaming videos that show properties that are hot on the market
   3. Posting free reports that can help buyers save money or help sellers prepare their properties to be sold

In my next posting, I will show you more methods of marketing that can be made in the off-line world which will lead people to your website. This is a method where you can automatically collect their contact information while you sleep!

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.