Category: Marketing

Congratulations! Your House Didn’t Sell!

That’s the first line of an Expired Listing card John’s been playing with.  The second line, or the back of the card, would say something like:  ‘Now you can really sell your house and save a lot of money! ‘  Let us Help-U-Sell-A-Brate!  Ok; I added that last bit.  But I can see this whole campaign taking shape.  You know, it’s like:  ‘Wheewwww!  Thank goodness  your house didn’t sell!  Now you can save some serious cash!’

It gets down to one of the great truths of Help-U-Sell:  if sellers see our program, they almost always list with us.  An Expired lisitng — or a FSBO — or a property listed with another broker — is probably a seller who didn’t know we existed, didn’t know what we do, or didn’t realize we were in the local market.  In all three cases, it’s a marketing challenge.

Think of it this way:  There are no traditional sellers;  it’s just that some sellers haven’t met Help-U-Sell . . . yet.

Remember the three messages at the heart of all Help-U-Sell marketing:  That Help-U-Sell is HERE and represents savings, people use us, and it works.

We say we’re here with blitz signs and car wraps, with seller held open houses (featuring many, many signs in the local area).  We also say we’re here with a strong web presence and office websites that can easily be customized, optimized and localized so that homeowners in the area can find us.  We say we’re here by putting our logo on everything.

We say people use us by featuring pictures and descriptions of homes for sale on almost all of our advertising.  We also establish that message every time we send out a Just Listed, Just Sold or Open House card.

And we say IT WORKS! by making sure 1/3 of the homes in our advertising include a ‘Sold and Saved’ banner across the edge.  We also lean heavily on satisfied client testimonials for this message.

Back in the Pleistocene Era when I was a Traditional Real Estate Broker, I would never have included testimonials or ‘Sold and Saved’ listings in my advertising.  No way I’d be giving up that expensive marketing space to something I couldn’t sell!  I wouldn’t have wrapped my vehicle either because, well, it’s gaudy.  And Blitz Signs?  Forget it!  I wouldn’t want to tick off all my friends at the Board!

Of course, most of what was around in the Pleistocene Era (including many Traditional Real Estate Brokers) is extinct.  So much for playing by the rules your competitors set for you!

If you haven’t figured it out, this is a pep talk.  My message is to get out there and tell people who you are.  Do it all day, every day.  Do it with paid marketing and low cost/no cost marketing.  Do it with conversation and personal notes and door knocking and just being friendly.  Do it by wearing your name badge and responding when people ask, ‘What do you do?’

NAR was nearly ecstatic today announcing that sales of existing homes were up 7.5% in April.  Things are slowing turning.  It’s time to stand up and be proud!  Don’t stay locked in the real estate closet!  You’ve got a story to tell!  And people surely DO want to hear from you.

 

URL Tip

I just learned something.  Remember when I exhorted you to ‘Do This . . . ‘ and that was to go to Google and search ‘Sell Real Estate’?  Help-U-Sell usually shows up near the top of the organic (non-paid) results, which is great.  Robbie — who knows everything — told me why:

Our web-pages — corporate and broker sites — make abundant use of the phrase, ‘Help-U-Sell Real Estate.’  That’s especially true in boilerplate on the broker sites.  When you search the string, ‘Sell Real Estate,’ Google is seeing that combination every time ‘Help-U-Sell Real Estate‘ appears on one of our sites.  Duh!

There’s a lesson in this.  As you get to the point where you’re ready to remove the ‘beta’ from the tail end of your NEW broker site URL (i.e. go from acmerealty.helpusellbeta.com to acmerealty.helpusell.com), you will likely have a URL conflict with your existing OLD website (chances are you’re already using acmerealty.helpusell.com on the old site).  If your plan is to shut that site down, there’s no problem.  But, if the OLD site is producing leads for you and you want to keep it, you’re going to need to go get a new URL at GoDaddy or whichever registrar you use.  You should choose that new URL very carefully.

Do your Google Analytics to see what search terms people in your local market use when they search for real estate.  Try to come up with a URL that uses that information.  For example, ‘www.homesforsaleinSarasota.com’ might be a pretty good choice, as would ‘Sarasotahomes.com’.  Make your URL something that people use when searching.  Then point that URL to whichever site you want to get that traffic.

Even if you’re not ready to remove ‘beta’ from your NEW site, you may want to begin searching for the perfect URL.  If you can come up with one or more that will draw well, you can tie them up now and redirect them as you see fit in the future.

And as always, if you need help with that, contact Tami, Lori, Robbie or me at corporate.  We live to boost your lead count.

The Electronic ETM

The ETM or Entire Target Market Mailer (I guess that would actually be ETMM) is one of the Help-U-Sell core marketing pieces.  The idea is:  you regularly blanket your target market with flyers via some direct mail vehicle, usually supermarket circulars, Pennysaver inserts or post cards.  In years past this was a monthly event in most Help-U-Sell offices and was one of the more expensive parts of the marketing program.

The down market and changing consumer habits have seen the old fashioned ETMailer go by the wayside.  Oh, many brokers still do them but it’s usually with a different delivery method:  hand delivered or in plastic bags hung on doorknobs.   We’ve dubbed that ‘Low-Cost/No-Cost’ marketing in this new world.

(Brief Pontification):  Please don’t think the ETMailer is extinct.  As the market comes back, so will it.  It’s a powerful and — in a normal market — cost effective way of driving your business.

But we said there were two things that changed, remember?  The down market and consumer habits. What’s changed there?

We’ve seen an absolute explosion of Social Networking.  Facebook has gone from being a blip on the horizon to having more visits that Google.  That’s a story all in itself!  Remember when MySpace was the big thing?  That was only a couple of years ago.  But somehow, about the time they were rocked with the cyber-bullying scandal and news of predator use, they began to tumble and suddenly Facebook was on the map.  With 400,000,000+ members world wide and growing, it’s a position they are not likely to lose.

So how does the rise of Facebook mean a new view of the ETM for you?  If you could find a means of contacting all the Facebook members in your target market (that’d probably be 50%-60% of the households)  you might use that as a great way to electronically (read: cheaply . . no, affordably) deliver the same message you used to deliver with your ETM.  What if you could get the email addresses of all the Facebook members in your target market?  And their permission to stay in touch via FB or Email?  You can, you know.

(Pay Attention!) Why not build a Facebook page for your community?  Say:  www.facebook.com/Sarasotafun .  Make the point of the site something to do with the community that everyone will be interested in:  fun things to do in Sarasota this week.  Start posting to it and inviting members.  (Use Advanced Search 2.0 Beta to locate Facebook users by their location).  (e’hemmm!).  Work it for a few months and as you gain enthusiastic users, make some of them administrators so that it doesn’t take so much of your time.  When you have lots of members — say 1/4 of your target market, slowly start to weave in Real Estate . . . maybe on a separate tab.  You now want all of those people who love your community page to realize that you are in real estate.  Once the page is established, it’s ok to drop a little newsy tidbit about the local market from time to time or an invitation to your next open house.

Check out Get the Audio.   Created by REALTORS, it has nearly 10,000 members.  That’s 10,000 people in the local market who may need to buy or sell or who may know someone else who does.  Not bad.

Are you driven enough to try this?

If you are, Ms. Patzer and I would love to hear from you.  We’ll help in any way we can, with the idea that we’d have a shining example in our midst to point to in a few months.

Oh, that bit about getting the email addresses of all the Facebook users in your Target Market?  Build your community page and start inviting people first.  Then we’ll show you how to do that.

This idea comes from a great real estate/Facebook consultant, Ross Hair.  If you ever have a chance to sit in on one of his online (or live) meetings, do it.  Pay attention, take notes, and within 6 hours of leaving, do what he tells you to do. Your bottom line will thank you.  More great ideas are on his website:  Get the Audio

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Marketing Moments of Truth

The Client Lifecycle depicts the flow of Leads into the office, their conversion to Prospects, then Clients and Sales.  Marketing  generates Leads  into the office and our effective handling of them results in our gaining contact information and permission to stay in touch.  This is when the Lead becomes a Prospect.  At some point early in the relationship, the Prospect becomes a Client when a loyalty commitment is made.  For sellers, it’s a Listing Agreement.  For buyers it might be a formal Buyer Broker Agreement or something less formal.  Our Clients become Closed Transactions and enter our Client Base.  If they are particularly happy with our service and savings (they often are), they may become advocates for us in the marketplace . . . and isn’t that nice?

It is important to understand that at each transition point in the Lifecycle, the Lead can be lost.  These junctures are decision points where the customer decides whether to continue working with us.  These are indicated in the diagram by the red diamonds.  The overall success of the office is determined by the effectiveness with which the Staff handle each decision point.  I call these ‘Moments of Truth,’ because careful analysis of Leads Management data can reveal where the office is strong and where weakness exists.  For example, if there a lots of Leads, but not many Propsects, an examination of how leads are handled should be undertaken.  If we’re marketing, but not getting many Leads, the first thing to check is how calls and emails into the office are handled.  Is each customer inquiry being logged?  Even if contact information is not obtained?   If so, an evaluation of the marketing is in order.

The Lifecycle can be a roadmap for improving your office but it is dependent on having and faithfully using a Leads Managment System that gives the Broker/Manager visibility at each Moment of Truth.  The first step in any of this is to begin using the Help–U-Sell Buyer and Seller Data Sheets every time the phone rings.

Do This . . .

Google “Sell Real Estate,”  With or without the quotes.  Look at the organic (unpaid) results.  Notice where Help-U-Sell shows up.  Notice where our competitors show up.  Notice where REALTOR.com shows up.  These things are constantly shifting but this morning, we were ahead of everybody.  Assist2Sell was the closest to us.  Then, way down at about 20 was Coldwell Banker.  A bit later was Keller-Williams.  Advance Realty didn’t even show, at least not on the several pages I scrolled through before I got bored.  When Robbie says ‘Search Engine Optimization works,’ believe him.

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