Real Estate Marketing On The Ground

Hey, everyone.  I have started up a new blog at a different location on the internet.  If you want to follow what I am doing to put into practice all that I have learned in 9 years of supporting agents to build their business, please keep following me at Oliver in the Hat.  In case you were wondering, Oliver is my real first name, and I decided to go by it to reduce confusion with a more unique name.If you are a Canadian agent, I would love to talk about establishing a referral network.  Please contact my - all my correct information is on the new site.  Take care!

I was just sent this link to a summary of SEO experts’ opinions on many different factors that affect organic search engine optimization.  It is very good, but a bit of forewarning: it uses a lot of html jargon, so if you aren’t a website hobbyist or professional it may be a bit much.

This article is courtesy of REALTOR.com.  Fantastic ideas.

Simple suggestions on how to maximize your Web site with the right content.
By Kristi Lynes Kennelly

• Do put yourself in your potential client’s shoes, and ensure that your Web site answers a few basic questions.

1. What are you going to do for me for free?

2. Why should I trust you? (family, civic responsibilities, testimonials)

3. What about you can I identify with? (affiliations, interests)

4. What makes you an expert in the area I want to live? (how long have you been in the area, etc.)

5. What differentiates you from all the other agents in the area? Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re in Colorado Springs, you are in luck today!  I’ve been getting calls off an on from agents in the Colorado Springs area for years, since we launched the Market Snapshot.  Sadly, for whatever reason we were never able to complete development on the module for that board.

However, as of today, we have full Market Snapshot compatibility for the Pike’s Peak MLS!  So now, our full Market Snapshot is available for purchase for all agents who are members of the Pike’s Peak MLS.  Click on the link for more information on the Market Snapshot.

Additionally, the Market Builder postcard farming system is also available, so you can be first to market with our highly successful postcard farming system.

Please give me a call if you would like to take either or both of these services for our 30 day money-back guarantee, and see what they will do for you in your area.

I often get asked, “What’s the difference between your Market Builder postcards and the ones I can get from (insert mailing house name here)?”

It’s a good question.  I think it comes down to numbers - I believe in a side-by-side comparison with any postcard system in existence, ours will produce more leads per 1000 pieces.  By a significant margin.  And I challenge any of you to try it.

Let me show you why I am this confident.

• Postcard Size: traditional postcards are 4″X6″.  They nestle themselves down in a handful of mail and are easily overlooked.  We use an 11″X5″ jumbo sized postcard that sticks out of a handful of mail.
• Card Content: We don’t boast about agents, we focus on value provided to the recipient.  Consumers want information, and our card demonstrates that is exactly what they will get.
• Call-to-Action: the typical postcard will usually offer a paraphrased, “Phone me personally and I will come to your house and produce a Comparative Market Analysis for you in a face-to-face meeting.”  This is great if a person wants to list today, but when you are farming, 99.9% of the people you are mailing have no desire for this level of contact, because they aren’t even sure they want to list their house.   In contrast, our call-to-action offers tangible, customized, specific information about their neighborhood.  And the method to obtain it is private: a custom fulfilment code printed on each card specific to their address, so they don’t have to “give away” their information.
• No Overkill: time after time I hear agents voice their surprise that we don’t send postcards every month to everyone.  They tell me “it won’t work” unless the rate is high.  This is true with the old school call-to-action which relies on the recipient being immediately ready to transact, but the total cost to farm the old way on a year is four times as much as our system.  Our system does not need to fill up people’s mailbox with junk, because people don’t need to immediately transact - they just need to be interested.
• Low Pressure Approach: offering them a drip of tangible, detailed information on their local area’s listings and closings is useful and meets needs, so it loads your book of business with a mix of early, mid, and late stage leads.
• Built-in Followup: The Market Snapshot is automatically generated and sent as a response within minutes of the customer using their fulfilment code.  Instant followup makes you look great, but what is even better is being able to check, at any time, which of your leads has viewed their reports, how often, and how frequently they want them sent.  Suddenly your leads become transparent to you, and you know who to spend your time on to maximize your efficiency and turn more leads into listings.

My challenge to you: compare apples to apples.  Run this system for 30 days, and send out 100 traditional postcards that same month.  If our system has not produced significantly more leads for you, I’ll give you every penny back, and eat the cost of our postcards we sent for you.  You keep any leads you get regardless.

I was just reading a post by a prolific twitterer, Sarah Stelmok, and I noticed she had a chat window on her website.  It was by Digsby, a kind of all-in-one Instant Messaging client, that allows you to merge Microsoft Live, ICQ, Yahoo IM, AOL IM, Twitter, and Facebook (and much more) into one interface.  I don’t think it’s a perfect solution, but I have used it at home to centralize my old ICQ and Microsoft Live accounts, and its Facebook updates are convenient so I don’t have to stay on Facebook all day.

When I saw the widget, I thought that would be a great feature to add to my website.  It gives my potential clients and current clients a means to quickly message me and ask me questions without going through all the trouble of emailing or calling.  Just one more option to make myself available.  For me, it is ideal - I am at my desk all day anyway, and if I am on a call I can still often answer a quick inquiry without interrupting.

I am putting this here because I think the same advantage can be used by agents.  I have seen many agents use various Instant Messaging clients on their websites.  Now that cellular phones are becoming so robust that you can use IM on them realtime, this gives you the potential to interact even more with potential prospects and current customers.  I’d encourage you to consider implementing this type of widget on to your blog or website.

If you’d like to know how to add the Digsby Widget to a Top Producer Website, read on! Read the rest of this entry »

I ran into a twitterer the other day who was wondering how Twitter relates to Facebook.  It got me thinking about how easy it is to lump a bunch of different applications together and then try to leverage them in similar ways.  The best example of this is Twitter and Facebook.

Both of these systems have the means to create dialogue and conversation between people and both offer this information up as a feed which can be used frivolously or not depending on your interests and disposition.  Both facilitate connection.

However, I don’t believe they can be considered in the same breath, and I would discourage real estate agents to consider them both with a similar strategy.

Twitter is probably the more pure social network.  It exists to facilitate dialogue.  Other than your Twitter homepage, there very little that can be connected to you personally other than the content you generate.  You are your words in the Twitter platform.

In addition, if you begin to twitter, you will likely know few people you twitter with personally.  You associate based upon interest - interest in what the other person has to say or interest in how they say it.  Twitter can be a great way to learn about things - for example, I sell software to real estate agents, so my intention is to network primarily with agents, but secondarily with other professionals who sell to agents, because I wish to learn more about how to do my job and also because I wish to learn about other programs that may help my customers (or potential customers) to do their jobs more effectively or use our software more effectively.

It is possible to twitter without a specific purpose, but when you get down to it, you will only follow those who interest you at some level.  It may not be for work - it could be recreational - but it still is the interest that drives the relationships.

In contrast you have Facebook.  I have always understood Facebook to be for linking me to my friends, family, and other people I interact with on a social basis.  I understand it can be used for work and professional relationships, and I don’t question that it can be effectively used that way.  However, Facebook is very intensely personal.  It lets people behind your veneer of professionalism into how you play, who you relate to, and what is really important to you.  It is kind of like inviting people into your home and letting them go through your underwear drawer.  I don’t want casual work relationships that I do business with going through my underwear - and I don’t think they want me going through theirs.

Facebook is evolving into something more work-friendly, but I still, unless I had a very personal relationship with a customer, wouldn’t add them as a “friend” on facebook.  I’d happily follow them on Twitter, because it’s not like I’m going through their underwear - I am only listening to what they say.  With Facebook allowing the creation of groups and impersonal objects (fan pages), it is starting to become more friendly to work-type things, but it isn’t there yet in my opinion.

Another limitation is that Facebook is unique - you have one facebook profile and that’s it.  Technically, it is possible to create more than one, but it seems kind of silly to want to split your person up that way.  Whereas it makes perfect sense to have several Twitter profiles.  I have one that is personal, where I twitter about my after-work interests, and I have one that is dedicated only to work-related interests.  Ne’er the twain shall meet, if you know what I mean.  This division is clean and logical, whereas having two Facebook accounts seems bizarre, and perhaps a little psychologically questionable.  If there was a work-related facebook, it would be LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is designed for professional networking and I think it works pretty good as far as it goes.  It isn’t as wildly popular as facebook (probably because work isn’t usually fun enough to keep up with like Facebook is) but it gets the job done.

For you, as an agent, I would think that unless you want all your customers knowing what you do in your private time, looking at your party pictures from Malibu, and checking out what embarassing photos others have taken of you and “tagged” you in, it’s probably not a good idea to use facebook for social networking.  While I fully encourage pursuing Twitter as a great way to build a social network that can really help your business and facilitate professional conversation and education, I don’t see Facebook in the same light.  If you want to be professional on a facebook-like platform, try LinkedIn.

Check out these statistics: (courtesy of Top Producer Campus)

Quick Facts To Consider

• 87% of buyers used the Internet to research their options in 2008.
• 1000% more buyers find the home they buy on the Internet than in a newspaper.¹
• 3200% more buyers find the home they buy on the Internet than in a home book.²
• 90% of Internet buyers found their agent online.³
• Truly motivated buyers in this market buy because: price decreases (67%); lower rates help them move to better area (39%); worried that rates will rise (22%); lower rates help them buy larger home (10%); move to more affordable area (9%)⁴

Where is your marketing dollar going?  You can question the effectiveness of various tools, but abandoning the internet because you didn’t get 3 listings in the first 3 months after starting your website is a decision the pretty much dooms you to losing the game and changing careers within the next 24-48 months.

We’re here to help you get over that hump and get your fair share of the internet dollar.  But it doesn’t happen overnight.  Call me if you’d like to look at how our tools can help.

You, the REALTOR, know perfectly well that while the national media love to trumpet the bad news nationwide, there are countless examples of local markets that are actually doing quite well.

This not only applies to the city level, but even the neighborhood level.  Sometimes a given city can be suffering through recessionary drops in prices, but certain neighborhoods will still be highly attractive.

Take a look at this home value data: it is a perfect example.  Irvine, CA is suffering… with one exception.

(data from Irvine Homes by Erika Chavez)

If you are an agent there, how do you communicate to the pessimitic homeowner that their neighborhood is actually the exception to the rule?  That’s right: the Market Snapshot.  It would illustrate that exact point for you, via the detailed graphs and the mls mapping.

If you don’t already have the Market Snapshot, what are you waiting for?  Give me a call.

Our marketing department just put together this excellent 90 second video illustrating how to leverage the Market Snapshot to produce buyer leads.  It’s the question that’s on everyone’s mind right now.

Lead Conversion System from Top Producer on Vimeo.