Marketing for my business has to match with the amount of business I desire & the budget I have for that amount of business. It took careful planning and strategy to get this going after years of doing not much but floor time and relying on referrals.
Strategic Planning for the Balanced Realtor® is the book I'm writing about how to enjoy your get a life and also have a successful career and business too. Okay, I'm not really writing a book but I might as well after all the blogging about balance I've done :)
On top of everything else, blogging became my first and foremost marketing tool and I believe has far better results than anything I've done. So, BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS is #1 in my book. Just the writing didn't get me anywhere...until I started doing my Localism posts on Honolulu County, topics of interest and so forth. Not only did I do wonderful eye appealing posts but I had titles, content, keywords and tags to match my target niche for my biz. Cost? Free on ActiveRain and some other sites. Minimal per month to do your own outside blog.
Mililani Hawaii Home for Sale, 95-091 Waipuka Place is a flyer I made with 
the www.realestateshows.com program. It incorporates the Real Estate Show I made of the listing into the flyer with all the details I added as well. Pretty cool, huh? #2 in my book is from our own RES Pres Jeff Turner is the President, Founder & CEO of Real Estate Shows. ActiveRain member discount...click...click ....click. Now, I not only do Real Estate Show, but Localism area posts, family, my dog and anything and everything I want....with panning in and out...left to right, music and the whole bit. UNLIMITED use for a year. Yeah...I'm promoting RES ....I just signed up for year two. :)
Remember my embarrassing moment of 'not seeing' that my riders were spelled wrong....for YEARS? Good thing I already ordered new ones when I 'saw' the YEARS old mistake! Read that here: Living It UP Today #3 in my book is having correctly spelled name riders for my For Sale and Open House signs. :) And this goes for everything else. Biz cards, flyers and anything and everything I'm marketing myself with.
Now, I finally took the leap after Randy Prothero (friend and fellow agent in Century 21 Liberty Homes) suggested (how many years ago Randy????) to do the website decal on my car window .....after I kept saying I didn't want magnets on my car because it'll mess up my paint job. Since then, I still don't want magnets...seems people like to steal them for whatever reason I can't comprehend. So, we were riding along the freeway yesterday and I saw an Infinity with a decal on it and it just clicked! Randy said to go to Aloha Sign shop and get the decal of my website on my back window. And voila! I love it! This is now #4 in my book because Gary said he would put one on his car too. Cost? $25 and I had them install it for $15. (they clean the windows and stuff). Time? Took 30 minutes from the time I chose...looked at the different styles on pc, them printing out, installing and paying.
These are just a few cost effective marketing tools that have and will help me with my business. Most importantly it didn't cost a bunch of money for the volume of business I choose to do.
I will always keep in mind that balance is the key to any success....with my life, home life, family life and business. Yup. I got it made! :)
© 2008 Celeste "Sally" Cheeseman, All rights reserved
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