My girlfriend Erin and I have been looking at houses. We are getting ready to buy in the not too distant future. Sure, we do a ton of looking online, since it's 2014. But we should probably join a gang, because we are masters of the 'drive-by'.
On the weekends, we like to just head out and drive around areas we like. The funny thing is, we don't really have a plan....we just drive. Even though all week we've been looking at houses online, and you'd think we would have them all mapped out, we don't. We just drive.
We have a general idea where we are headed. We know there are a few listings in the area, but we're just getting a feel for the area, and we like to look at houses, even if it's just the outside.
And we are professional flyer collectors. We're both in our........well, I'm in my 30's. Let's just say Erin is......young at heart. We (or should I say I?) are right on the cusp of a generation that does everything on their phone. But there is something about grabbing the flyer and seeing the home come to life on that piece of paper (well, actually, maybe that's just a dream I have......that I will actually find a flyer that makes the home come to life. More on that in a minute). We could just as easily pull out our Trulia app and get the info that way while standing in front of the house.
But I like the flyer. It's something I can take home with me. It's something I can refer back to when we sit at home in the evening and talk about prices and what areas we most enjoyed from the day.
But they all look pretty much the same.
I have probably been handed 500 flyers in the last 3 months (I say handed because I drive, Erin hops out and grabs the flyer, we play the guessing game on price when she jumps back in, then she hands me the flyer. Wash, rinse, repeat). I can think of maybe 3 of those flyers where I thought to myself 'Dang, this is a great looking flyer'. Every single other flyer, all 497 of the others, 99% of them, were carbon copies (and some of them were the really bad carbon copies.......you know, the carbon copy that has the ink smudges on it, and it looks like the carbon paper has been sitting in an overheated garage for ten years. Can you even buy carbon paper anymore? Squirrel!)
I am not alone. People know what to expect from a real estate flyer. Couple of pictures, price, contact info, (in Santa Cruz, one of the places we enjoy browsing, floor plan seems to be popular on the back......really crudely drawn floor plans. I mean, seriously, some of them look hand drawn....it's kind of strange to see a $1M+ property with a rudimentary, what appears to be hand drawn, albeit with a ruler, floorplan) flowery description. Nothing about 99% of the flyers we pick up stands out.
But What If You Could Make Better Flyers?
On Friday, August 8th (which is tomorrow if you are reading this the day I published it) Guy Kawasaki is joining me to share a better way to make a flyer. An easier way. A way that can make your flyer one of the 3 out of 500 that people actually remember.
First, Guy Kawasaki.....seriously? Yep, that Guy! The Apple Evangelist Guy. The Marketing wizard guy. The wildly popular and super entertaining speaker Guy. I just him at Inman Connect and he crushed it! And on our webinar, Guy and Peg Fitzpatrick from Canva are going to show you how to make fantastic flyers in five minutes.
They are going to share Canva with you. Canva is a really cool, free, online design tool, for the average person. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to use this thing, like you do with photoshop. It's simple and effective. Like I said, Guy and Peg are going to show you how you can make a fantastic flyer in 5 minutes. But we'll try to get them to talk about some of the other awesome and easy stuff Canva can help you with.......like Facebook cover photos, Blog headers, graphics for your blog posts and website, and just about any design related elements for your business.
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