real estate marketing: More on marketing for a super 2018
- 12/01/17 10:24 AM
Nadine Larder wrote a wonderful post full of suggestions for winter marketing, but for some reason the system won't allow me to reblog it!
I got a message saying "You're not allowed." (How rude)
So, to heck with the system; here's the link: http://activerain.com/blogsview/5142918/how-to-make-your-winter-real-estate-marketing-pop
I especially like her suggestion for holding a winter event. Not right now, perhaps, but late in January, when the excitement of the holidays is over and the winter blahs begin to set in for those of us who live in snow country.
… (1 comments)
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real estate marketing: 31 days to the New Year - will you use them well?
- 11/30/17 11:08 AM
Wow – only 31 days to a new year. Only 25 to Christmas. I think that means I should start thinking about doing some shopping!
It also means we all should be thinking about how we’ll ring out the old and ring in the new from a business standpoint.
What can we do now to assure a strong first quarter in 2018?
What can you do now to set yourself up for closings in January? How about new listings?
Is it still possible to start and finish another home purchase in 2017? (Sure, if you have a cash buyer or a really speedy … (16 comments)
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real estate marketing: I think “Giving Tuesday” is misplaced
- 11/28/17 12:51 PM
For the past week we’ve been getting ads for Black Friday and Cyber Monday – and today my mail is full of extensions of those sales.
Now, after we’ve been urged to spend every last dime and then some, along comes Giving Tuesday.
It seems to me that it might have been wiser to put the giving day ahead of the multiple spending days.
Hopefully, we all have a little something left to give to our favorite charities. And hopefully, we’ll all give wisely. I’ve eliminated a few “causes” after visiting sites like Charity Navigator and learning that the bulk of the money they … (10 comments)
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real estate marketing: What two disasters result from failing to market yourself?
- 11/11/17 02:27 PM
Yes, if you fail to market your services consistently and give up prospecting during busy times, you’re opening the door for two disasters.
You probably already know the first disaster I’ll mention: A roller-coaster income.
What’s the second one? Bad decisions.
I know all the excuses. I was a real estate agent myself for 19 years, remember, so I’ve used them myself. But excuses don’t lead to commission checks, so they do us little good.
Consistent marketing, even during busy times, leads to a consistently full pipeline of new business. It gets you off that roller coaster and into a steady … (6 comments)
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real estate marketing: Is a voice search different from a typed search?
- 11/03/17 03:05 PM
This isn’t something I’d thought about until yesterday, when I read Bob Bly’s monthly collection of tips and ideas from a variety of marketing publications.
This was shared from Target Marketing, a magazine aimed primarily at direct response marketers. However, since so many buyers begin their home search on line, it seemed worth considering for real estate.
Here’s what Bob shared:
“***Optimize your website for voice-activated search***”
“Comscore predicts that half of searches will be done through
voice by 2020. So you may want to take these steps to do voice
SEO for your site:
>> Rewrite your site copy … (17 comments)
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real estate marketing: You’ve got a “Warm” Internet lead… how do you hang on to them?
- 10/16/17 04:09 PM
You’ve got a “Warm” Internet lead… how do you hang on to them until they’re ready to act?
Some of those leads you get from your website (or from paid services) are people who will buy or sell in the future, but aren’t quite ready yet.
The way to hang on to them is to stay in touch and never let them forget you, but if you begin sending them sales letters saying they need to use you, pretty soon they’ll see your name and hit the delete button.
I’ll never forget one agent who wrote me every few days to tell me … (20 comments)
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real estate marketing: Would this ad prompt you to buy?
- 10/06/17 01:29 PM
What constitutes a “Good” ad?
Is it an ad like you’ll see if you watch the Superbowl? No, not really. All too often those ads leave you laughing – but forgetting the name of the product.
A good ad is one that reinforces the name and prompts you to action. Like the restaurant ads that leave my husband wishing that it wasn’t a 60-mile drive to get there for lunch. (That’s the trouble with living in the woods.)
Looking through old posts, I found this story about an ad that was running on TV in 2009. You may still remember it. I do.
It was … (35 comments)
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real estate marketing: Are you afraid to blog because you think you don’t “Know enough?”
- 10/05/17 09:31 AM
Are you afraid to blog because you think you don’t “Know enough?”
Perhaps you’re new to real estate, so think you can’t give advice to buyers and sellers because you haven’t gained enough experience. Perhaps you’ve moved to a new community and are afraid you don't know enough to write about its amenities. Bob Bly’s letter this morning reminded me of a simple truth: If you’re interested and paying attention to the subject matter, you know more than most people. He quotes master marketer Fred Gleeck as saying “If this is your area of interest and you’ve been studying, you know … (25 comments)
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real estate marketing: Success Prep: BIG Think!
- 09/08/17 03:49 PM
Amanda Thomas has written a thought provoking post which asks this question:
If you don't have enough faith in your abilities to invest in yourself and your career, why should a client have enough faith to entrust you with handling the purchase or sale of a major asset?
The answer, of course, is "They shouldn't."
Truthfully, I doubt if most new agents are thinking of it in that light. They're just looking at how much money they have in the bank and worrying about spending what they don't have before they've ever earned a commission.
As a real estate writer, I talk with many … (7 comments)
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real estate marketing: Why creating and marketing to a niche makes good sense
- 06/20/17 10:40 AM
If you’re still stuck on being a generalist, you may be tired of seeing so many of us pushing you to create a niche.
You’re worried that by focusing on one geographic area, one type of home or property, or one type of buyer or seller, you’re going to miss out sales.You're suffering from FOMO.
For one thing, that’s not true. You don’t have to exclude anyone. So if cousin George wants you to list his home and it’s not in your territory, you can go right ahead and do it. And of course, if your buyers decide that your geographic area isn’t … (25 comments)
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real estate marketing: What is a senior citizen?
- 05/30/17 04:29 PM
What is a Senior Citizen?
Unless you are a senior citizen, as I am, you may be tempted to think that “Senior Citizen” = “old person.” And if you’re thinking “old person” you may be putting us all into a category of real estate clients who are ready to:
Downsize Move to a retirement community Move to a retirement home You may also think we’re necessarily in poor health and / or have diminished mental capacity.
While those statements do apply to some, if you paint us all with the same broad brush, you’re sadly mistaken.
If you stop and think about it, … (45 comments)
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real estate marketing: One Copywriter's Pet Peeve: Lazy Copy
- 05/25/17 12:32 PM
Every writer has pet peeves that make him or her cringe. I actually have two.
The first one is “I want to thank…” It must just be me, because I see it and hear it all the time. Every time I do, my instant reaction is “Well, then why don’t you do it if you want to?”
The other pet peeve, however, I believe is simply the sign of a lazy writer. It marks someone who can’t be bothered to tell the whole story. It’s also generally an untruth.
What is the word? “Needs.”
Everywhere you look you can find ads that say “Call on … (35 comments)
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real estate marketing: Ask An Ambassador: How To Beat The 800 Pound Gorilla
- 05/23/17 10:01 PM
As Liz and Bill Spear so ably point out - if you're in it for the long haul and you're willing to do the work, you CAN beat the 800 pound gorilla!
The big portals make a lot of agents anxious. Z/T/R.com & the big brokers all have WAY more money then we'll ever hope to have. They can out advertise us pretty easily. They make an announcement and the whole industry quivers.
They're 800 pound gorillas and we're chipmunks.
Seriously, how can we as single agents or small teams take on that kind of ferocious opponent?
The answers are right … (5 comments)
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real estate marketing: We’re hard-wired to resist sales pitches
- 05/14/17 12:28 PM
Think about it - when you can see that someone is working hard to sell you something, don't you shut down? Even when you agree to an appointment with someone to hear all about what they had to offer, don’t you set up a shield of resistance? Most of us do.
Why? Because we want to make our own decisions. None of us wants to feel like we’ve been pushed or coerced into doing something – even when it’s something we want to do.
That’s why, as a sales person, you have to walk a fine line.
If you never … (15 comments)
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real estate marketing: Successful prospecting demands consistency – so put it on autopilot
- 05/12/17 04:44 PM
Successful real estate prospecting demands consistency – so put it on autopilot.
Whether you’re trying to gain dominance in a geographic area or a niche market, the key to success is consistency.
Just one letter might get you a response – if you send enough copies of that one letter – but don’t count on it. Those in direct marketing who track and test mailings say it’s lucky to get a 1% response from a first mailing to a cold list.
In fact, they say 5 “touches” should be the minimum, and if you want the full effect, go for twelve.
(Note that a “touch” … (25 comments)
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real estate marketing: Sharing a master marketers advice...
- 05/03/17 10:16 AM
As usual, Bob Bly’s monthly letter offered up some useful tidbits – some of which can apply to your own marketing efforts.
Do you use photographs of people on your brochures?
Then consider this advice from Bob:
“Show a photograph of your target market on the cover of your brochure. The first question anyone will ask when he or she picks up your sales literature is, "Who is this for -- for people like me?"”
“But remember the 20 percent rule. Show photos of people who are 20 percent younger than your target market, 20 percent more attractive, 20 percent better dressed, … (7 comments)
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real estate marketing: Is “Need” a word we "need" to banish from our marketing?
- 04/26/17 12:50 PM
Is "Need" a negative word?
Last week my son sent an interesting article about the word “need.” The message must have sunk in, because when I wrote this week’s newsletter, I caught myself replacing it with something else.
Now I’ll offer the question for your consideration.
According to that article, the word “need” is one of judgment – and a bit of bossiness. The writer mentioned those times in childhood when our parents told us all the things we needed to do – or else!
You need to clean your room. You need to clean your plate. You need to turn off the TV … (11 comments)
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real estate marketing: Content marketing isn't new
- 04/23/17 04:04 PM
Today everyone seems to be talking about content marketing as if it were a brand new concept, just discovered as the way to reach new customers and build brand recognition.
That simply isn’t so.
At least two companies were already using content marketing in the late 1800’s.
Dr. Oetker: In 1891, Dr. August Oetker, working at his pharmacy in Bielefeld, Germany, developed Backin baking powder.
To communicate the superiority of this new innovation, he began using content marketing. The company published recipe booklets, printed recipes on packages, and ran newspaper advertisements with recipes – all designed to show housewives that with Backin, they’d get … (42 comments)
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real estate marketing: Learn through writing – by hand
- 04/22/17 01:21 PM
Writing by hand isn’t very popular these days – and that just might be the reason why our students seem to know less and less. (Do you ever watch Jessie Watters when he interviews college students? Ouch!)
Some time ago I wrote about one of the exercises I did when I first began to study copywriting. The assignment was to hand-copy each direct marketing promotion in a very fat book. These were promotions that have done well, bringing in millions of dollars in sales over the years. They were among the best examples of how to attract consumers and move them to … (22 comments)
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real estate marketing: Work-Around for Adding Photos to ActiveRain
- 04/15/17 11:11 AM
Debe Maxwell wrote this post to explain how members can add graphics even when the Active Rain "upload" function isn't working.
I didn't get in on the upload problem a few days ago, but I do get annoyed when I want to use something I uploaded a year or two ago. It may be my computer and it may be AR, but I cannot view ALL of the photos I've uploaded.
When I "do over" the system reminds me that I already have that title uploaded and the new upload will over-write it.
Perhaps even more important: Deb reminds us that using the alternate … (5 comments)
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Nadine Larder wrote a wonderful post full of suggestions for winter marketing, but for some reason the system won't allow me to reblog it!
;)
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