Lane Bailey

...and is just a down-to-earth nice guy, to boot.

Readers of his blog here at AR "Looking Out from the Garage" already know that.

ANd he has definite marketing chops we can all learn from.

After taking a look around at his whole plan, I had to ask him how it works.

...And after reading this, you'll probably want to tap into some of his marketing kung-fu:

Hey Lane, how many sites and blogs do you have and how often do you update them?

I have two direct sites, http://LaneBailey.com and http://GarageHomesUSA.com .  I also used to blog on blogger, and there is "legacy" address there, but the site is no longer updated.  I also have a customer site at http://9010BrixhamCourt.com that is a single property blog.  I write 10 posts a week for Active|Rain, 7 posts a week for LaneBailey.com and 5 posts or so per month for GarageHomesUSA.com.  For this property blog, I produced about 20 pages of content in a week... and mostly kept up with everything else.  I have also been asked to write for a couple of other sites... but haven't done much of that so far... but I will write for some others soon.


How long did you work on your Wordpress site for http://LaneBailey.com ? How long did it take you to develop the content and get the blog posted?

I started blogging seriously on Active|Rain back in June of 2007.  I had written a few things before that, but not regularly.  Shortly after I started with A|R, I also started on Blogger... I wanted to have more control over my content.  A few months later I picked up WordPress and migrated Blogger to that.  I actually used the address from my old "static" site LaneBailey.com as my blog.  I have had a post almost every day since.

Building the site was actually pretty easy.  I had the site up and running in a few hours with the content from Blogger.  It took me a little longer to find Shifter (link: http://payloadz.com/go/jump?id=378910&merch_id=62241&aff_id=17201 ), which is the theme system I use.  I wanted more flexibility than I was getting from free templates, so I picked up a premium theme.


Okay-now tell us what else you do-any traditional marketing? Postcards? Newspaper? Fridge Magnets?

The first thing I did was chip clips... I still have some, but have almost gotten rid of them.  I have done postcards as well.  In fact, I ordered postcards today.  Those are specifically tasked, though.  They are announcing an open house and there are 600 of them going out.  They feature the blogsite for the house on the front, and my blog is on the back.

I also had an online ad on Autoweek Magazine online for April.  I will be doing it again over the next few months.  It is geo-targeted to the Atlanta and North Georgia area.  That ad pointed to GarageHomesUSA.com and brought in a good bit of traffic.

Finally, I have been doing a monthly print newsletter for a couple hundred people in my database.  It contains excerpts from LaneBailey.com and GarageHomesUSA.com.  It points readers back to those sites for the rest of the story.  I'm trying to get back on track with an eNewsletter based on that content, but haven't found the right solution yet... well, I did but it is having a compatibility issue with WP2.5.


How do you tie all these things together, track the results and use Obeo at the same time?

I use Google Analytics and Clicky (link: http://getclicky.com/29580 ).  I can see where traffic is coming from, and that is a key.  I'm not interested in being famous among agents, or even among consumers.  I want to sell houses and enjoy my life.  Knowing which avenues drive traffic lets me concentrate on what works.  I'm always willing to try new things, but they have to give an RoI (Return on Investment)


What is the total cost of marketing a property like this?

Part of me doesn't want to know the answer.........   (Click and Read on!)