Starting my 5th year in real estate I looked back on all of the advertising/marketing I have done. Post cards? Did that for a year. Nothing. Calendars and football schedules. Tried that too and got the same result. Nothing. All of the so called "tried and true" methods of marketing just stunk.
Then 2 years ago we tried a billboard. I had just started my team the "Mallett Integrity Team" and we needed to hit the ground running. The billboard was expensive but generated over $50,000 in commissions, after the cost of the sign, within 6 months. It was a huge hit and even now people say "You're the guy from the billboard!". It's a great conversation starter. I also notice lots of people around town just seem to know what I do for a living. No secret agent here.
In July last year our local radio station, KDRP Radio 103.1, asked me to do a radio show. They even had a name. "Mallett on the Market". My co-host, Anthony, and I started out not knowing anything about broadcasting but trying as hard as we could to do an entertaining show. We talked sales stats, staging tips, and market overviews. Our feedback was; good stuff but pretty dull and dry. Kind of like listening to grandpa talk about the war. You want to listen but after awhile you just start thinking about what you were going to have for dinner or if the Spurs were on TV that night.
We then switched to a show about anything we wanted to talk about. We did a segment on the McDonalds McRib comeback. The segment got tons of comments. We started a "Celebrity Homes" segment where we talked about ridiculously expensive homes and what they sold for. We have talked about politics, the national economy, agent mistakes and real estate nightmares. Breaking out of just hard core real estate issues broadened our listening audience and created lots of new clients and potential clients. Our social networking and blogs started getting more and more traffic.
Your coaches and trainers will beat you over the head to do the same things that everyone else is doing. But don't forget to look outside the box to areas where no one else markets. This makes you stand out and rise above the rest. And trust me a radio show is way more fun than a silly refrigerator magnet!
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