4 Easy Ways to Establish Your Online Brand

Your online brand should be an extension of your real estate business, but it must adapt to the confines and nuances of the Internet.

In real estate, your brand is everything. If clients do not trust your brand, and the professionalism and work ethic it attempts to communicate, you’ll have a tough time making it in real estate, an industry where perception and competence are both paramount for success.

But how do you extend that brand to the Internet? How do you show yourself to be trustworthy, hardworking and charismatic when you do not have a handshake, lively anecdotes or other personal touches to rely upon? It’s not an easy thing to do, but by following these three tips, you’ll be off to a great start:

1. Write a Compelling, Succinct Biography – There’s a reason that every personal website since the dawn of time features an “About Me” page. If someone is visiting your website, chances are they want to have a better idea about who you are and what you stand for, and the About Me page, complete with a compelling, succinct biography, will be the best way to communicate to prospective clients what you are all about. Notice, though, that we use the word “succinct”! Though surely you could go on and on and on about how wonderful you are, Web users have notoriously short attention spans, so you’ll want to cover the gist of what makes you so awesome in 300 words or less.

2. Design an Attractive Logo – We’ll admit from the outset, the brokerage you work for will have a huge influence on your success with this strategy. We won’t name any names, but there are definitely some brokerages out there that do not take kindly to agents designing their own logos, especially if those logos are more prominent than the corporate brokerage logo. That being said, should you have the capabilities, your own personal logo can be a fabulous touch to your website and online brand. A colorful, dynamic logo not only complements your brand – it completes it, and offers a compelling visual component to who you are as a real estate professional. We should mention, though, that your logo should be original to your brand, and not stolen; as the most unfortunate case of Tracy Glesby demonstrates, there will always be watchdogs out there searching for logo piracy, and the penalties for such transgressions can be fierce.

3. Make Your Site Mobile Ready – Within the next year (if not sooner), we anticipate this point being as important as having your own website. As we’ve covered before, 89 percent of consumers shopping for new residences utilized mobile devices at some point in their home search, and 40 percent went mobile throughout their entire home shopping process! Mobile searches are gradually becoming the norm for how consumers shop for real estate, and you’ll need to ensure that your website is mobile-ready – or risk being left behind.

4. Adapt Your Message – And finally, you’ll want to adapt your brand and its central message across various mediums, especially Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com, sites that comprise nearly a quarter of all real estate-related Web traffic. The more people who see your brand, the more your brand develops, and of course, if your brand is featured in a number of different avenues, your versatility and reach will both become integral parts of your brand.

 Article courtesy of Chicago Agent Magazine

Where Should Your Real Estate Marketing dollars go?

It’s always a tricky task, cleverly allocating where your ad dollars should go, but a new study on advertising trends offers some stern guidance.

Advertising is normally one of the largest expenses that real estate agents accrue in their businesses, but it’s often an exercise in stress; after all, between newspapers, magazines, websites (both desktop and mobile), and physical ad spaces such as benches and billboards, where is an agent to advertise, given the overwhelming array of choices?

Thankfully, BIA/Kelsey, an advertising consultation firm, has just released a very interesting study of advertising mediums, and has made some bold predictions on what forms will receive the most attention in the coming years.

New Age Advertising – It’s a Web Thing

Here were the major findings in BIA/Kelsey’s research, which projects the advertising landscape from 2012 to 2017:

• Local media advertising revenues are expected to climb from $132.5 billion to $148.8 billion by 2017, a 12.3 percent increase.
• Interestingly, though, national brands will primarily drive that growth, with their share of local media ads rising from $42.5 billion to $51 billion; that’s a 20 percent uptick, compared to an expected 9 percent hike in local brand spending.
• Digital media will also increase its share of local media revenues, boosting from 17.4 percent in 2012 to 27.6 percent in 2017, or, $41.1 billion in advertising.
• Also, spending on mobile advertising is expected to rise six-fold to $6.4 billion by 2017; though online ads will increase by 46.5 percent, total spending will only be $6.3 percent.
• And sadly, while all this digital exploration is taking place, traditional advertising – think newspapers, magazines, the yellow pages – will see flat or slightly negative revenues, and will settle in 2017 at $107.6 billion.

Keep Your Eye on the Mobile Prize

The message of BIA/Kelsey’s findings, though, go far beyond the “print is dead” meme; rather, as Mark Fratrik, the chief economist at BIA/Kelsey, explained to Inc.’s Samuel Wagreich, mobile technology, and its hyper-specific nature, represents the future of advertising.

“Mobile’s the explosion – just in the way it affords advertisers the ability to target people in specific locations at specific times,” Fatrik said. “If you want to advertise something like a lunch special, most working people can’t be reached by local TV or radio, and they’re not necessarily reading the newspaper. But they have a mobile device that can display an ad at 11:15 for french fries at the McDonalds that’s three blocks away. And boy, that’s the great aspect of it.”
Or, thinking in terms of real estate, an open house at noon? or a brokers’ open at 3 p.m.? Or a new listing that just hit the market, and that you’re now taking calls for?

If BIA/Kelsey’s research shows us anything, it’s that mobile advertising is not going anywhere – and that we ignore its rise at our own peril!

Article courtesy of Chicago Agent Magazine

5 Ways to Build Trust in the Digital Age

A consumer’s decision on whether to work with you is ultimately based on trust. Here’s how you can get the inside track on gaining their confidence — and their business.

 

March 2013 | By Scott Schang 

 

 There was a time when the decision to do business with someone was based on the number of known options and the availability of information about that person or company. If you saturated your local market with advertising, or if you were the only game in town, there was a pretty good chance that you would be top of mind when the consumer was ready to buy or sell.

Things have changed dramatically. Consumers today are empowered with unlimited access to educational resources and information about every topic, product, or service they can possibly think of. The evolution of hyperconnected consumers in highly networked markets has forever transformed how we earn the trust of consumers and how we advertise or market our businesses.

The decision to hire a person or company depends less on the availability of options and more on the degree of perceived or actual trust that is earned during the shopping or research stages of the buying process. The April 2012 Nielsen report Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages tells a very clear story about which forms of advertising are considered trustworthy and which are not.

Respondents were presented with a list of advertising media and asked to rate their level of trust as either “Trust Completely/Somewhat” or “Don’t Trust Much/At All.” Let’s take a look at the top five most trustworthy forms of advertising and promotion:

1. Recommendations from people I know (92 percent of respondents said they trust these endorsements).
2. Consumer opinions posted online (70 percent)
3. Editorial content such as newspaper articles (58 percent)
4. Branded Web sites (50 percent)
5. E-mails I signed up for (47 percent)

Now, let’s analyze how to apply this knowledge to amplify a Mayorism campaign.

1. Recommendations from people I know

Tapping this high-trust source of information has always been the absolute best way to grow your business, because these are referrals that know and trust you, and in turn they are trusted by people who know them. Ultimately, getting these recommendations involves a simple two-step process:

1. Do a good job for your clients.
2. When the transaction is over, ask them to refer people they know to you.

It’s amazing that more real estate professionals don’t do this. While you’re asking them to spread the word, see if they’d be willing to share their positive comments online, either in a text testimonial or a promotional video.

2. Consumer opinions posted online

You might be thinking about Yelp or some other online review service, but there are even more powerful ways to earn the trust of this consumer.

Answering questions and comments on your Web site and answering questions on other consumer-focused sites is a fantastic, free opportunity for you to show your expertise and experience. Great resources for this strategy are Zillow.com Advice, Trulia.com Voices, and Realtor.com Q&A.

Best practice on these forums is to openly share your experience. You will see many of your competitors using these services to troll for leads by responding to questions with answers like this one from Realtor.com Q&A. It took me all of 30 seconds to find this response to a consumer’s question:

“Hi Mitch,
I would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have; feel free to contact me directly.”

I’m thinking a nice Cabernet might best be paired with this cheese. (In other words, don’t be this guy.)

3. Editorial content such as newspaper articles

The best strategy here is to reach out to the local newspapers and circulars in your neighborhood and offer to provide advice, information, and market statistics about your home town. These contributions need to be completely consumer-centric and not an advertisement for you or your company.

Newspapers will not publish you if they feel like you’re only out for yourself. You will find the return on investment for this strategy will pay off in multiples if you approach it as an educator and consumer advocate. The best-case scenario here is that you simply republish articles you’re already writing for your own Web site or blog, as this should be your approach to your own blog as well.

4. Branded Web sites

Similar to the strategy above, if you consistently publish answers to the questions that consumers have about your area of expertise on your Web site, you will earn their trust and — if Nielsen is right — you’ll have a 50-50 shot at earning your reader’s trust.

5. E-mails I signed up for

Never underestimate the value of building an opt-in list of people who trust your message. Give consumers the ability to “stay informed” through e-mail after they leave your Web site, visit your open house, or read your articles.

The strategy I use on my site is to send a weekly e-mail of the articles I wrote during the previous week. This not only helps hold me accountable for writing at least a couple of articles a week but also allows the reader to get to know me through my posts. I find consumers from my opt-in e-mail list who call me about have already made the decision to do business with me.
Most of the strategies I detailed above focus on online consumers, but offering to keep folks up-to-date and informed is just as effective when meeting with buyers or sellers in person. Big picture–focused, savvy Mayorism “candidates” will see that all trust-generating strategies can be woven together into a sales funnel that will produce consistent, long-term results for you and your business for years to come. Be trustworthy, and they will come.

Article courtesy of Realtor Mag

Convert Buyers Through Pinterest

by Mitch Levinson

While Facebook may dominate in terms of number of users, Pinterest wins the battle when it comes to converting online pins into real life sales. According to Bizrate, 69 percent of online consumers have purchased an item they found on Pinterest, while only 40 percent of Facebook consumers have converted to a sale.
 
The same report also found that consumers think Pinterest is the best place to get inspiration on what to buy and to keep tabs on items they like.

What does this mean for real estate agents and homebuilders? You should be pinning.
Not only is Pinterest a solid social media site for attracting buyers, but you can also easily build brand by using your company’s tagline in board names, pinning images directly from your website or blog and showing off your homes, interior finishes and community features.

Here are a few tips to making the most of your Pinterest page:

• Add a “Follow” and/or “Pin It” button to your website in order to encourage website visitors to check out your boards and pin your images onto their own boards.
• When writing descriptions for your pins, make sure you use hashtags and keywords in order to increase search visibility.
• Examine your Google Analytics report to see how effective Pinterest is for increasing your site’s traffic.
• Use the new Pinterest Analytics function to see how many people are pinning from your website, seeing your pins and clicking your content. You can also learn more about consumer behavior with information on your most popular pins.

However, while pinning your own images is a good start, your boards should also include other brand related images (with proper credit) such as local attractions, pet boards, recipes and gardening tips. By doing this, you not only diversify your own content, but you will also increase the amount of traffic to your page.

With visual Internet marketing on the rise, it’s time that your business got off the sidelines and started pinning.

Article courtesy of Chicago Agent Magazine

3 Keys to Personalizing Your Real Estate Website Marketing

Success in marketing is not a matter of having the most money or the best technology. It’s about implementing the best strategy.

 April 2013 | By Scott Schang

 

Since late 2007, I’ve invested more than 10,000 hours into our online and offline marketing strategies and systems with one simple goal: generating real estate leads and referral partners.

We have spent a lot of money, made a lot of mistakes, and learned many valuable lessons during this journey. My goal here is to provide a 30,000-foot view of the lessons I’ve learned during what feels like a 30,000-mile journey.

The most important thing I discovered is that the success or failure of your online marketing success has nothing to do with the specific technology you’re using. At its best, technology will help you to execute more efficiently and automate your existing marketing strategy. But tech tools are just a ticket to the game, not the game itself. They will not help an already broken or flawed marketing strategy. If anything, technology will accelerate the failure of a poorly thought-out plan.

So when you start to think about how to bring in more leads and referrals, remove technology from the equation. Instead, think about ways in which familiarity is achieved, trust is earned, and opportunities for personal connections are created.

The foundation of any successful marketing strategy is built on three components that can guide both your online and offline marketing efforts.

1. Presence

Making it easy for people to find you — and find out about you — is an important part of mastering the competency of presence. You have to be where your current and potential clients are.

These days, for the most part, they’re on the Web. That presents a new challenge: standing out in a setting where everyone can easily find anything they’re looking for in seconds, for free, by typing only a few keywords into a search engine. (I’ve written before about how to do this—check out this article for starters.)

Offline, having a presence is a reflection of your involvement in the community, your personal relationship with small businesses, and referrals or recommendations from those in the community who have worked with you in the past.

2. Relevance

This brings us to our second competency: relevance. This might be the most important one. The biggest challenge that businesses have marketing in today’s highly networked, always-on world of information is staying relevant. That requires you to provide value to your customer in a time and manner consistent with their expectations.

In a nutshell, you need to be unique, local, and timely to get noticed online. In a follow-up article to this one, we are going to dig deep into relevance and explore some great ways to stand out online and offline.

3. Diligence

Having systems in place or the discipline to follow up is the secret sauce to any effective marketing strategy. And you do this through diligence — constantly being ready to respond to communications from clients and prospects.

An example of an online system with built-in diligence is an IDX drip to home buyers who register on your Web site. But be careful: Simply having a drip campaign is of little value if you don’t keep tabs on your frequency of communication and the buyers’ changes to search criteria and make some effort to proactively offer value to them.

For instance, maybe you know of a listing coming up in your office that might meet their needs, or you’re able to recommend “like properties” in areas or price ranges that are less competitive than where they’re looking now.

Offline, diligence is your greatest weapon for building a personal, local presence in your community. The consistency and quality of your personal relationship investments will pay off, but it’s going to take time.

In the end, it comes down to having a plan. You’ve heard the old adage: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I would add only one thing; it needs to be a good plan. These foundational competencies will lay the groundwork for a sound and profitable “mayorism” marketing strategy.

Article courtesy of Realtor Mag

#RealEstateNews - March home prices see biggest yearly gain in 7 years

Home prices rose in March, marking the biggest annual increase in seven years, in the latest sign of strength for the recovering housing market, a report from CoreLogic showed on Tuesday.

CoreLogic's home price index jumped 1.9 percent from the previous month and accelerated by 10.5 percent compared to March last year.

That was the biggest year-over-year increase since March 2006, CoreLogic said.
Prices were even stronger excluding distressed sales, rising 2.4 percent from February and 10.7 percent from the year before. Distressed sales include homes that are in danger of foreclosure and properties that have already been seized by lenders.

Home prices have been rising since last year, helped by investor demand and tighter inventory. The top five states with the biggest gains in prices were Nevada, California, Arizona, Idaho and Oregon.

Prices likely continued to rise in April, CoreLogic said, though at a slower pace. Prices are seen rising 1.3 percent for the month and 9.6 percent on an annual basis.

(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Richard Chang)

Article courtesy of 4-traders

Best Practices for Your Real Estate Web Site Home Page

Here are 8 ways to make potential clients fall in love with your real estate Web site and give you more business.

 

Your Web site should be working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, capturing leads and marketing your brand. Your site should be helping consumers search for homes, find local market data, and get answers to some of their burning questions. And all of this can be handled on your Web site’s home page. Yes, really.

I’ve come up with a few best practices to consider for the home page of your real estate Web site, which will provide potential clients with a better overall online experience while boosting your credibility as a go-to resource in your market.

1. A full IDX search that is front and center

Make no mistake, consumers come to your Web site to search for listings. And they want to search all the listings — not just your or your office’s listings. Give them a full IDX search or don’t bother having a Web site. Keep your search obvious, as it should be the first thing the consumer sees on your home page. Offering a school district search, short sale and foreclosure search, and other advanced search filters would be nice as well.

2. Calls to action and contact forms

Say it with me: “The purpose of your Web site is to get more business.” If not, then why bother? Use calls to action to ask the consumer to take action on a specific item. Asking a Web visitor to “click here to view” some information will typically garner more clicks then just embedding the link in your text. Be sure to have contact forms (in addition to displaying your contact information) to entice visitors further. Ask them to make an appointment, get more information, sign up for local market data, get a CMA, and so on. These forms cannot be ignored – this is how a Web site viewer becomes a lead.

3. Clear and uncluttered layout (and nothing set to automatically play, please)

Always focus on the visitor experience when thinking about your home page design and layout. Be clear with your purpose and don’t overwhelm them with words. Remember that white space is okay. Avoid heavy code, as this will affect your page’s load times. Please (pretty please) do not have something automatically play when visitors land on your home page, such as music, a video, or a voice recording — you are outing the consumer when you do this and you’re likely to have them frantically searching for the mute button, or, worse, quickly bouncing from your site.

4. Fresh and useful content

Content is your not-so-secret weapon. The good news is, even though we know how important content is, most real estate professionals still are not providing fresh and useful information on their Web sites. What is useful content? Try to keep a local flair to a large part of what you post. Focus on the neighborhoods you work in (or want to work in) often. Talk about the local market statistics or events around town, spotlight a business, try a “man on the street” interview, or just showcase a subdivision or a section of a neighborhood. Nonlocalized content can be anything from real estate news to DIY projects and from FAQs to financing information. A mix of text, photos, and videos is ideal. Need ideas or fresh content that you don’t have to write or record? Check out HouseLogic from NAR at members.houselogic.com for free and shareable content. When in doubt, just ask. I recently had an agent call Zillow to see about reposting an article from the Zillow blog – they were cool with it provided she gave credit to the author and a link back. 

5. Add links to your content

Use links on your home page to provide the visitor with a deeper dive into your site. For your Web site to have value, set up your home page as the portal that allows users to easily move through to the internal pages of your site. This can be accomplished in two ways – have clear menus with obvious navigation and add in links to your existing home page content.

6. Use the video stick

These days, we prefer to watch our Internet rather than read it. Look at this shift as an opportunity. I know that many of you have already ventured into video by highlighting your listings and your community or maybe even creating a profile video. Embedded video or video that will play on the page is a big win right now. As video continues to rise in popularity, adding an embedded video or playlist is a great way to increase both traffic and the time visitors spend on a page as well as to build rapport with visitors. Videos make your home page stickier by keeping the visitors engaged for longer periods of time. If you have the right search engine optimization behind your videos, you can increase traffic to your site as well.

7. Social media HAS to be part of your Web strategy

By this, I mean more than just linking to your Facebook business page and LinkedIn profile. In fact, you might be better off downplaying those profiles so you don’t lose visitors to the social media suck. “Share this” buttons or a similar solution should be on all of your content pages, if possible, and woven throughout your site in a meaningful way. “Share this” is simple to set up and allows users to share your content on their network of choice. Use social media to drive traffic to your Web site – share your own content when you have a new post or page or if you just want to draw attention to a page on your site.

8. A word on SEO (or several words)…

Stop overthinking search engine optimization. Try to focus on your content above all else, and make a great experience for the consumer. I know that you have been taught that keywords and on-page SEO are important to a good search ranking – and they are, to a point. But don’t be keyword silly and pack your home page with the little gems. On-page SEO will only take you so far. If your site stinks, you might get the traffic from the on-page SEO, but you will lose the lead. For those who are link crammers … the same goes for you! If the experience stinks, you won’t get the business anyway.
So let’s review our best practices for your real estate Web site home page:

1. Have a full IDX search, front and center
2. Use calls to action and contact forms
3. Be sure your design is clear and uncluttered
4. Create or repurpose fresh and useful content
5. Use links to drive them deeper
6. Try the video stick
7. Use social media to share and drive traffic
8. Don’t overthink search engine optimization

Last but not least, remember, experience matters. Try to create a fantastic experience for your Web site visitor. There are lots of tricks to drive people to your site, but it’s another thing altogether to keep them there (and hopefully coming back). Don’t wait — begin optimizing your home page and get your Web site working for you today!

Article courtesy of Realtor Mag

4 Steps to Generating Real Estate Leads With Mobile Marketing

There is no doubt that cell phones are here to stay. With the advent of Smart Phones, you have the power of a computer in the palm of your hands. This new found power has allowed people to be more productive. During those “productive” moments people are often doing much more than work on their phones. Phones allow you to surf the web, play videos, do research, and yes even get some work done.

With the number of cell phones hitting in the billions globally being able to reach prospects on these devices represents a massive opportunity to grow your business. It’s not time to ditch your website it’s just time to reach prospects on a medium that they carry around with them nearly 24 hours a day. To help you reach real estate prospects on their phone I invite you to consider the following marketing methods.

• Google AdWords
Google specifically allows you to target the mobile user. You can even create an AdGroup that specifically targets those on iPhones. As screens on phones are much smaller than traditional computers, make it easy for someone to take action. Create smaller forms designed for the mobile user to get quick access to listings in their market.

• Facebook Places
If you have created a fan page and filled in an address then you have the opportunity to reach prospects through their phones. To get the most from this method will require a focus on marketing through the news feed. Build up a local base of people who “like” your business, share interest piquing items daily and more. When you really want to grab their attention, share photos and videos of your latest listings to help people see what they are missing out on.

• QR Codes
QR Codes may be a bit quirky but they can help you get people engaged with their cell phones. When you are hosting open houses, handing out flyers, sending direct mail consider putting a QR Code that takes your prospect to a specific place on your website. You could share a particular video (with an optin form) to get people to take action quickly and easily from their phones.

• SMS Text
People love to text! Capitalize on their love of texting and provide them with more information. Consider using a service that provides listing information with a simple text. Popular services like TextMyMLS and others make it easy to start and provide listing information directly to cell phones.

When you can put a Google AdWords strategy, Facebook Marketing, and even QR Codes into action you will be able to reach more people on their cell phones. At each step of the way make sure it is quick and easy for people to give you their information.

Article courtesy of eCommission Blog

6 Top Twitter Tips for Real Estate Agents

With the internet becoming the go-to place for resources, it’s understandable that having a knowledge of online marketing is necessary. One of those resources is Twitter and understanding its many complexities is the key to moving you up in the world of real estate.

1) Set Up Customization is the key to pulling people in. Of course, putting a picture up is important. People usually don’t follow people without pictures for fear of that person constantly spamming them. Another useful way of gaining attention is by including a logo or slogan. With Twitter growing by the day, being able to stand out in a crowd is vital.

2) Who to follow Twitter allows you to find people to follow based on your interests. First and foremost, when choosing who you’re going to follow, make sure those individuals regularly update respective feeds and aren’t just casual users. When starting out, it’s easy to want to follow as many random people as possible hoping they’ll follow you back. However, sticking to a specific audience in the beginning can prove more beneficial.
3) Gaining followers Unlike on Facebook, where you ‘friend’ people, wait for them to accept it, and watch you friend list grow, in order to keep up with people on Twitter you have to follow them and get them to follow you. This can at first seem like a daunting process, but it gets easier once you understand the ‘give and take’ nature of the following process. Of course in order to gain followers, you have to be the follower first. Making use of Twitter’s tools and meeting people outside of the social network sphere will definitely gain you those followers.

4) Communicating The most important part of Twitter and any social network is, of course, communicating, especially communicating effectively. On Twitter, learning how to use hashtags is crucial. For example, if tweeting about social media, you would simply use the two words in a regular sentence but type it as #socialmedia. Doing this makes your tweets easier to find. When tweeting, don’t overdo it. Updating every two minutes about the same thing is basically the same as spamming. Your goal is to refresh people, not annoy them.

5) Automating Keeping up with all the tweets, hashtags, RT’s, even trending topics can seem like quite a load to keep track of. This is also a reason why many real estate agents are turned off at the notion of using a social networking site to find potential clients. Thankfully, there are ways to applications such as EasyTweets, Tweetbacks, and Twitterfon that allow you to automate specific tasks. If you want to be alerted of people using certain keywords, these are the applications to go with.

6) Sharing Pictures Twitpic is a useful means of posting pictures, such as local listings, directly from your phone onto Twitter. Use Tinyurl.com when linking to make your URL’s shorter.
Remember who your target audience is and be sure to thank the ones who retweet and mention your products.

Article courtesy of eCommission Blog

4 Steps to Direct Mail Success for Real Estate Agents

If we had a nickel for every time we heard a real estate agent say, “I prefer email. It’s so much cheaper.” Email marketing certainly has some powerful benefits (even more so in combination with direct mail) but it is often not cheaper than direct mail, and typically not as effective.
For one, renting an email list above-board can be tricky (email activity is regulated by the CAN-SPAM Act). Sending bulk unsolicited email is not technically illegal, but it’s certainly frowned up and can get you banned by your Internet service provider. More importantly, good-quality email lists – the kind that will generate responses – can be expensive. And those emails are often not linked to a physical address – so they’re not geographically specific to your area.

So the benefits of direct mail include being able to target a specific geography – which is critical in a business that is all about location, location, location. Another important benefit of direct mail today is that the playing field is less crowded – with fewer of your peers sending direct mail, you have a great opportunity to really stand out in the mailbox.
So direct mail marketing can be a great tool for real estate agents, what do you need to know? Read on for 4 steps to direct mail success.

Step 1: Maintain contact.
Whether your goal is to generate leads, to turn leads into prospects, or to stay top of mind with past clients and people within your sphere of influence, you’ve got to be consistently present – sending one mailer once won’t maximize your response potential. Consider that:

• Only 2% of sales are made on the first contact
• Only 3% of sales are made on the second contact
• 5% of sales are made on the third contact and just 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
• So 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

Step 2: Focus.
In our Guide to Targeted Mailing Lists article (also out this month) we talk about the importance of targeting your mailer to a specific audience with a targeted mailing list. That’s nowhere more important that in such a geography-specific business as real estate.

Through the rented mailing list, you can rent from a list of households within a certain ZIP code or even within a certain radius of your office. Advertise yourself as “the neighborhood expert” and watch your response rate increase. Or you could rent from the absentee owner list (also called the non-owner occupied list) and send a postcard to homeowners who may be interested in selling.

Step 3: Test, measure, repeat.
“In direct mail,” said master marketer David Ogilvy, “testing is the name of the game.” Testing different elements within a mailer, different types of mailers, and different lists will help you improve the response rate your mail generates.

So what does it mean to increase response? To start, you’ll have to make your best educated guess as to the best type of mailer, offer, and call to action. Real estate agents looking to define themselves as the “neighborhood expert” have found great success using our flyer self-mailer as a newsletter. Others looking to advertise their services as a listing agent to absentee owners have been successful with stand-out graphics and our jumbo postcard. Experiment with different headlines, images, calls to action, and offers. See what those changes do to your response rate. (Learn more about testing and measuring.)

Step 4: Use Quick Response (QR) codes.
It may seem ironic to eschew one technology (email) while embracing another (QR codes), but this part-direct, part-mobile tool is much more than the latest marketing fad. When scanned with a Smartphone, QR codes can display text, take the user to a website (or MLS property listing), or dial a phone number. Including a QR code on your mailer is simple: use an online QR code generator, design your mailer and then follow the same steps you normally would to upload your design to a web2mail provider.

To target a specific location and to differentiate yourself from other agents, turn to direct mail. 

Article courtesy of eCommission Blog