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March Dates to Remember |
Marketing ideas that will get you noticed
Marketing ideas that
will get you noticed
By Melissa
Dittmann Tracey
Take
some risks with your marketing, promote yourself everywhere, and be unique.
Those were key messages from real estate trainer Terry Watson, who spoke at
the recent REALTORS® Midyear Legislative Meetings about how to gain an edge
in your marketplace.
“With 1.3 million real estate professionals,
most of our advertising looks exactly the same,” said Watson, also a broker
for his family’s real estate company in Chicago. But to get that word-of-mouth
advertising that every practitioner should crave, Watson said it takes being
bold and different.
Watson highlighted some of the following
ideas to give your marketing more impact:
- Speak to customers’
desires. Don’t ask customers: “How did you hear about me?”
Instead, you should be more interested in learning “What did you hear
about me?” This will give you insight into why exactly they came to
you and you’ll be able to better tailor your marketing to what is most
important to your customers.
- Go green. Being environmentally
friendly is important to younger generations and it’s a popular topic
of today’s media. Watson encouraged attendees to use it in their marketing
and to earn their Ecobroker designation.
- Use better words. Customers
don't care much about marketing that tells them you’re in the million
dollar club, how long you’ve been in the business, and other “me”
types of promotion, Watson said. They care about how you can help them. So
statements like “I sold 200 units this year” would have more impact
if you said “I helped 200 families move into new homes.” Also,
use words to your advantage. For example, when you tell customers that they
will be working with your “assistant,” it makes it sound like
you are passing them off to someone insignificant, Watson said. Instead, call
your assistant a “specialist” or “partner.” Also,
use the word “bought” in replace of “sold” and “new
price” instead of “price reduced.”
- Beef up your Web site.
Include your Web site’s URL everywhere, including your voicemail, name
tags at conferences, your e-mail signature, and your personal and business
checks. Buy all domain names for common misspellings of your name. Also, give
customers reason to keep coming back to your site. For example, have a recommended
reading list of books, quotes of the day, humor section, photo gallery, or
an area for testimonials from your customers, Watson recommends. And make
sure your Web site’s design is energetic.
- Establish yourself as
an expert. Write a book or a white paper. For example, you are trying to convince
a customer who is facing foreclosure to work with you. Why would they want
to? “I wrote the book on foreclosures!” Watson said. Or, if a
book is too grandiose of an idea for you, write 10-15 pages on a subject for
a white paper (possible topics: foreclosure, how to purchase a property, or
expired listings).
- Take advantage of NAR's
free resources. The Library
section of REALTOR.org offers free access to eBooks
and ProQuest, which you can use to scan real estate books, magazines, and
journals. Also, downloadable NAR brochures can help you be a resource to your
customers in learning about mortgages and other homebuying and selling issues.
- Get on social networking
sites and blog. Be on Facebook, YouTube, Plaxo, MySpace, and LinkedIn. These
social networking sites, when used for business purposes, can help promote
yourself and elevate you higher on search engines, Watson said. Also, Watson
encouraged practitioners to have a blog to build community on their Web site.
Get inspired for blog posts by doing a search of what other real estate blogs
are covering, highlight community events, or talk about common problems that
you run across in your business (such as buyers continuously making lowball
offers).
- Always be marketing.
“Everything is a marketing opportunity,” Watson said. The back
of business cards is often one of the most forgotten marketing spaces with
most business card backs blank, Watson said. He recommended using the back
of your business card to put a quote, a selling or buying tip, or motivation
to visit your Web site (i.e. “To view, an article on the 7 mistakes
buyers and sellers make, visit…).
- Have more fun. Be more
upbeat and use humor in your marketing to get attention and make yourself
memorable. “Start having more fun,” Watson told the crowd. “It
tells customers you are in more control of your market, and it’ll make
customers want to work with you.”
(Reprinted from REALTOR® magazine online [http://www.realtor.org/realtormag] May 2008 with permission of the National Association of REALTORS®. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.)
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