When you hear copywriting, real estate probably doesn't come to mind. But I'm surprised at how much of my work can be reduced to writing, editing and revising copy.  Marketing flyers, monthly mailers and listing remarks are just a few that come to mind.

That's why I was pleased to read this entry from MarketingProfs courtesy of HiredPens: Good Copy, Bad Copy.

Realtors, like all of us, get into a rut. Flyers begin to lack originality and relevance and listing remarks can be downright unreadable. And why not?  You've convinced yourself that flyers and agent remarks don't sell homes, so why worry about precision and clarity?

Besides smacking of laziness, these presumptions just aren't true.  Even if a buyer has never said "The listing agent's remarks really sold me," well-written copy can encourage or discourage a prospective buyer from even taking a look.  Marketing materials saturated with industry jargon, a silly number of abbreviations (3 bed, 2bt, hardwd lvng rm flrs, 10 ft high drs), or fraught with error are turn-offs.  There is too much inventory on the market to overlook your marketing copy.

I give myself a reminder to review the marketing materials and agent remarks 30 days after listing the property.  It's not uncommon for us to make changes based on feedback from showings or input from the homeowner.

Do you have friends or family look at your listing to make sure it's appealing and readable? How about a colleague?

The author of this nifty little article has four suggestions for achieving good copy.  Here are three:

Pretend you are not you. Get into the mind of your audience by reading the draft from their perspective. Does it make sense? Does it hold your interest? Does it include the information you need to take action?

Channel your inner English teacher. You may use contractions and an informal tone if it's appropriate to your copy. But banish the dreaded passive voice, all grammatical errors and any incorrect formatting.

Revise, print it out and read aloud. Your ear will probably catch anything your eye missed.

Don't settle for the status quo. Work harder than your competition and you will start to generate leads from your flyers and hear what we've heard. "After reading the remarks, I just had to see the house."

A local title agency sent us some links to real estate articles, and one of them is this article at Bankrate.com, 20 things that can alter the value of your home.

Leigh Wilson (one of the agents I work for) blogged about this article on our company blog, and I'd like to know if any agents are seeing the trend take place. Here are some highlights:

"But I question making improvements to your home that include "a well-appointed master suite," ("a luxurious bathroom, lounging areas and walk-in closets") or a "modern bath" with a spa. Yes, I suppose those are ideal and might play a factor in how much you actually GET for your house. BUT... There is an important factor at work today that might have been overlooked in the heady days of the housing boom, and it's taking a while to trickle down to the real estate "how to" articles! That is: buyers are tightening their belts.

Ridiculously high gas prices, fears about the economy in general and the housing market in particular will translate into buyers choosing (potentially smaller) homes closer to work and school--and this means becoming less picky about what kind of tub the home offers! Consider this article (At least skim it!)

How are you advising your clients when it comes to questions of size, energy effeciency and location? Or are they simply opting for cheaper, smaller and closer?

Does anyone have statistics about the ratio of homes sold by agents representing buyers versus homes sold by the listing agent on a particular property?

Any suggestions, guidance or links would be much appreciated!

Like many real estate teams, we post our listings on a variety of third-party websites, some of which are free (CraigsList), others of which we have paid for (BoiseHomeSites.com or Homethinking, for example). Until recently we did so glibly unaware of any problems.

We are now a little more informed, a lot less pleased and are doing what we should have done in the beginning: posting a disclaimer in our listing packets about third-party websites.

Here are a few of the problems we've run into.

(a) Listings are sometimes duplicated,
(b) frequently display incorrect or insufficient information, or
(c) are being attributed to agents other than the listing agent.

Zillow is one of the worst offenders, albeit inadvertently. Though it may offer some buyers a real service, it also does them a disservice. Zillow maintains a database of properties in most major real estate markets. They gather data on properties from county assesor records and make it available on their website, regardless of whether or not that property is for sale.

Unfortunately tax records are all over the map (at least in the Boise area). For example, we have a listing that received permits to remodel and expand, substantially increasing the square footage. The assessor's office doesn't show it--so Zillow doesn't display it. While we've corrected the information, Zillow displays the Assessor's information AND ours, which is terribly confusing and, in my judgement, may raise questions about the agent's credibility.

(On the plus side, you can brand homes in the Zillow database as being for sale.)

Google Base is another headache. (By the way, have you tried searching for property on this site? It's a bear. The listings are all but impossible to navigate and the site is cumbersome. If I were I buyer, I'd leave that site faster than you could say, "Does *everyone* have to be in the real estate listing business?!")

Our broker syndicates our listings to Google Base...but that doesn't mean that dozens of other offices aren't entering our listings, too! For whatever reason, some other dude's submission usually trumps ours. That means our clients' listings are branded to any number of other agents, whose tactics are harder to observe and regulate. (This is different from IDX, where, in Idaho, a third-party vendor is necessary for displaying other agents' listings. Those third party vendors enter into a contractual relationship with the MLS and violations, like failing to acknowledge which brokerage holds the listing, are more easily recognized and reported.)

While Google acknowledges that they receive listing submissions from multiple sites (and even provide an inconspicuous link to "All Sources"), the inherent concern remains: Listings may be branded to other agents (not unusual in the industry, but elsewhere dependent upon a mutual arrangement), but violations are harder to identify and report. (Try it: I dare you.)

This says nothing about the fun you'll have trying to explain this to your seller when they visit Google Base to find their listing and validate their relationship with you, only to find it listed (accurately or otherwise) as another agent's.

Homescape and IdahoHomeSpot are a couple of other third-party sites that we've wrangled with. Of the sites where our listings are syndicated, Trulia has been remarkably accurate and easy to use.

Needless to say, it’s impossible to keep up with all the online real estate listing websites and what they’re doing. Here are a few suggestions about what we CAN do:

• KNOW where your listings are being syndicated, and monitor them periodically. I've given myself an automated reminder to find our client's listings on what I would consider prominent listing websites, review them, and email them to the client. In this way I pre-empt a mini disaster if a client finds their listing online (or worse, CAN'T find it) and it's missing information or wildly inaccurate.
• Whenever possible, flag listings that have errors or report them to that site's tech support immediately.
• Provide your clients with a disclaimer.
• Try to keep a sense of humor.  I yell at the computer a lot; that helps.

I know this is a long post; and it's certainly not exhaustive. I'm anxious to hear reactions and stories from other agents/marketing staff.

I don't remember how we stumbled across Realbird, but I'm glad we did.

Initially I thought it was just another (free) site for us to post our real estate listings, but I discovered they had a resposive staff, and that was enough to keep me around. (Zoltan and Gabe. The geniuses behind Realbird and super-nice to boot.)

See, I'm not your typical web user.  I'm a beta tester.  I annoy the IT people, but eventually they appreciate me (right, right?).  I find the errors they overlook; I sniff out the bugs (quite by accident, mind you); I give them suggestions for improving their site; I send them feedback from our clients. Ad nauseum. Maybe these guys don't know what they're in for.

So responsiveness is in their favor, but that doesn't mean much if their product stinks.

But Realbird rocks.  You post your listing and they give you the tools--oh the tools!--to promote your listings on every imaginable corner of the Internet. 

Not seeing the value? 

Sure, right now you are probably posting your listing on CraigsList.  Yes, you can send your clients links to their listing on your website.  Realtor.com? No problem.  But try giving them the HTML to imbed a beautiful slideshow of ther listing on their own website, social networking site, Facebook profile, etc. and well, aren't you a little stumped?  You know it's POSSIBLE, you're just not sure how.

They make it possible.  And for free.  Everything you wanted: map widgets, RSS feeds, listing widgets, instructions for embedding listing slideshows--everything.  It's all there. You can buy really inexpensive property domain URLs through them, too.

Check it out and see if I wasn't right.  Email me or comment if you think I'm not...or, heck if you're stumped once you get there, maybe I can help!

PS: See that beautiful little widget over there on the right.  Thank you Realbird.

I rue the day the dairy industry launched its "Got Milk?" campaign. It spawned a decade of unoriginal ad campaigns that nauseate and bore millions of marketing-conscious Americans.

Got Church?
Got Plaque?
Got gastro-intestinal trouble?

Got an original thought?

Think how effective and refreshing signs that read, "Do you need a new transmission? We offer transmissions at a fair price" are. Or, " First-Time Patients: Free Teeth Cleaning. Call 555-5555."

Nearly everything else exhausts me.

Cleverness only works if you're clever. Remember that your competitors are also trying to attract consumers, and most of them don't know how to do it either. They are resorting to the trite "Got ?" campaigns. Join them and you will be fatally commonplace.

We all try too hard sometimes; we all miscalculate. But failure is no excuse to keep it up. If you don't have the budget or prowess to compete with the dairy industry's million dollar advertising campaigns, don't. Offer a good product or service, sell it professionally and with class. Work to retain your clients and gain referrals. When drafting advertisements use simple, declarative sentence. When in doubt remember that less is more.

If you need help eliminating unnecessary text, Bullfighter is one resource. It is an inconspicuous tool that, with the push of a button, will review your text for "bull." It will even rate your document and explain the rating.

Another helpful document that I've frequently referenced is, "Why Bad Ads Happen to Good Causes." It's hard to overstate the usefulness of Bad Ads, which was originally published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help nonprofits build meaningful public service campaigns. Click here to download (PDF ALERT) Bad Ads. You're not a non-profit, but you'll still benefit.

Extra tip: If you have long-winded friends, Fight the Bull offers a deliciously creepy tool called the Mystery Matador that "sends an anonymous message measuring the amount of jargon and verbosity" in your friend's document. Ouch!

Good luck. It's a crazy, but strangely boring world out there.

Portions of this were first posted here on our team blog. It remains one of my favorites. (Should I be ashamed that I have favorites of my own stuff?)

• Turn the lights on. You won't believe how many people don't turn the lights on in their home before they photograph it. Turn them all on, including those in the perimeter. If you don't, expect dark shadows in the area that is not well-lit.



• Use your flash inside; almost every time. If you're not sure, take two shots: one with it on, one with it off. In this digital age, there is usually no reason that you can't take more than one and delete the baddies.



• Take more photos than you need. "I have a small house and and there isn't much to photograph. Won't one exterior shot suffice?" Don't you want prospective home buyers to see what you see? To love what you love? Then be creative. Take pictures from unusual angles. Get close-ups. Get wide shots. Stand on top of the furniture. Back yourself into a corner. Yes, you'll get a lot of junk shots, but clicking "Delete" is easier than going back two or three times trying to get a better photo for your the limited number you're allowed on your regional MLS.



• When the house you're listing is really a dog (or if circumstances require you to photograph the home before it's really ready), then less is more. Do not photograph dirty rooms, hanging wires, trash.

Thrilled to be on Active Rain.

In case you haven't read my short bio over there, I'm the marketing brains behind our real estate company not the agent. Don't ask me for advice or information that I can't legally answer. But feel free to pester me with marketing questions or ridicule my marketing. I can take it.

I'm going to launch this marketing blog by reposting a few relevant pieces co-authored by me and Leigh Wilson. This is one close to my heart.

In a healthy real estate market, buyers and sellers have to make reasonable concessions. Buyers have to respect a home's value and sellers have to be realistic about what buyers can and cannot live with.

In a market like Boise, Idaho's where, a couple years ago, sellers were accustomed to selling their homes in a short period of time, and at 98% of the asking price, it may take a while to adjust to a healthier, more stable market.

One of these adjustments involves preparing homes for sale.

The most important thing to remember is not to take anything personally. Buyers are picky and they can afford to be, when there is a lot of inventory. Like you, they want to live in a home that they are confident will look and feel like home.

Realty Times columnist Phoebe Chongchua published an article about increasing the odds of your sale just by "cleaning out the clutter."  "Realtors will tell you when they show buyers a cluttered home, no matter how lovely it could be, prospective buyers just can't picture it and will usually pass or make an offer for much less than the seller thinks the home is worth. Yes, packaging matters. It matters when you're buying a product in a store and it matters when you're selling your home."

We've walked through so many homes over the years it may be easier for us to imagine what fresh paint or fewer toys could do to help make a home more appealing. But buyers don't want to work that--and, this is key, they don't have to. They can find a new home where the builder is offering outstanding incentives, or they'll find a more motivated seller.

I KNOW it's common sense. Save time on the front end, bite the bullet and pack your (gulp) "clutter" away. Give yourself a better shot at getting into your next dream home where you can display all your wonderful things!