Realasponse™

Marketing guru Seth Godin responded to questions from Ubertor.com regarding real estate business. Though there were only three questions asked, I felt they were well answered. However, the last question is what really stood out and exactly captures what we at Realasponse.com are all about. Here’s the question:

Ubertor:
How would you pick a Realtor to sell your home?

Seth Godin:
Someone I trusted
Someone respected
Someone who was the clear and obvious best choice!

We couldn’t agree more. Which is why we’ve been providing a marketing solution that allows you to do just that: (1) win trust (2) build repoire (3) offer something valuable to prospects that makes it easy to choose you over others.

Thanks Seth!

Is it really as simple as just throwing up a real estate website and having prospects line up for business? The short answer is an obvious no. However, it’s quite common to hear many play up the benefits of having a website. For certain, a website is a necessity for today’s Realtor, but it’s important to understand that having a site alone means nothing if it isn’t marketed. And with thousands of agent sites already in existents, and more being added everyday, marketing is ever an important thing.

Using Google Adwords is certainly an option, however, here’s the problem with this channel of marketing: it’s not personal enough. If you think about it, you’re using the same thing as your competition to attempt to stand out and appear different. A simple looking headline along with two lines of body copy. Is that really enough? Where’s the experience for the customer? There isn’t one. And the fact is it doesn’t take much for them to move past your ad and go to a larger competitor like Ziprealty or Redin who are buying up better ranking Adwords in the area you work. Bottom line: it’s too easy to get eaten by the big guys and not enough to stand out for the customer.

The answer to all of this is using real estate postcards to market your website. If you really want people to get a sense of what you’re about and what you can offer them put something in their hand. Give them something in their hand they can interact with and experience. Remember, according a 2005 National Association of Realtors study, most home sellers and buyers contacted only one agent. That means prospects aren’t doing a lot of searching out there for Realtors. So it’s best to go to the prospect first and meet them at their doorstep in the form of a postcard.

Another benefit about marketing with real estate postcards is that your marketing material is only competing for attention with mail that the prospect has received for that day (and chances are it won’t be another agent’s postcard right then and there.) So, again, using our website postcards will give you a better chance of standing out and securing a customer. It’s about increasing chances not taking them.

With winter coming up it’s going to be difficult for many agents to survive the market altogether. Just this past week many retail stores reported less than expected profits into the next quarter; and they’re right. Because many households have aired on the side of caution with the housing crunch outlook and plan to be frugal for coming months, overall spending will be less than favorable as a whole. However, this doesn’t mean people have stop buying homes. It just means it’ll take more to get them…or at least more whit.

But for many agents that choose to market themselves with real estate postcards that are plagued with recycled messages and weak visuals; their days at marketing to today’s buyers and sellers are almost just about up. Why? Because today’s seller and buyers knows the game and is being persuaded by the “commission debate” to seek out selling or buying a home themself. Companies such as Redfin are helping consumers to see that the market and times are-ah- changin’. What agents have to do is PROVE their value. And guess what? Offering a Free Market Analysis or Free Consultation is not going to cut it! They expect a consultation and are being moved daily to refer to ball-park estimates on Zillow or Trulia (regardless of how far off they are).

Postcard marketing is not dead, however, the old way of just sending any postcard in the name of having to touch the prospect is absolutely the wrong way to think about effective marketing. Prospects aren’t laughing real estate postcards with animals having talk bubbles with cheesy saying. It’s no time to be cute! It’s all about being effective. With the market the way it is, they’re looking for answers.

And what’s better than meeting prospects at their door and offering to address what is already on their minds; then by sending postcards that do, in fact, that. Grab they attention and get them to act.

Check out Realasponse.com and view our demo for more.

I’ve been asked this question many times by agents who (1) have never marketed with real estate post cards before or (2) have marketed using real estate postcards, however, have never really see any return on investment and giving it another go. Well, here’s what you should certainly beware of: companies preaching MAIL, MAIL, and more MAIL. These are tell-tale signs of products that have no pull and are hoping on the sheer quantity and frequency of mailing to compensate where they lack. In other words, they want you to play the numbers game until you just about break your pockets.

Now don’t get me wrong, real estate postcard marketing is a numbers game and frequency does matter. However, not every week. It’s important to remember that a normal mailing has a lifespan of about two weeks. You’ll generally receive the first half of your responses the first week and the remaining half the second week. Although you’re certain to have a few trickle in weeks after.

A monthly farming campaign with a reasonable number of postcards generally will do the trick. Remember, it’s not so much about mailing 2,000 postcards in as much as it’s about mailing EFFECTIVE postcards. If your postcard has no call-to-action, guess what? You guessed it…no calls. To increase your chances of receiving calls you must offer something of value to the prospect. You need to offer something that has the prospect to say, “Man!! that would help!!” Don’t offer senseless crap that hints to the prospect that you’re cheap and tasteless. Offer information that stands to save them hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result of having received your report. And you’re bound to receive a call!

An easy way to achieve all of the above said is to check out proven products from www.realasponse.com that save you time and money on good real estate postcard marketing and position you as the go-to person in the eyes of your prospects.

First off, as a real estate professional you’re pressed for time when it comes to creating quality real estate postcards and marketing material. You’re generally given a couple of options. You could go to a graphic designer, however, chances are you’d have to keep following up with the designer and they’d probably be late or you could try to design it yourself with some online automated tool dotted with all kinds of restrictions. Let’s take a closer look at this restrictions.

The #1 thing real estate agents sacrifice when creating real estate postcards using online tools is quality. It’s true. The tools you’re given to make your postcards are limited in flexibility.

FONTS
You can only choose from a certain number of fonts. This is a big mistake given that fonts add character and mood to a really good real estate postcard. Most companies will only provide the basics because they could care less about spending the $50-$100 needed to create great looking copy.

EFFECTS
Another effective visual for any real estate postcard is the ability to use drop shadows and gradients on headers to allow certain elements to jump out and grab the prospects attentions. You can’t do this with do-it-yourself online tools.

LAYOUT BALANCE
Also bad is the ability to easily add and move elements around to maintain balance. Generally adding a new element to your real estate postcard means settling for clutter. With a company like Realaspones.com designing it for you (same day) resizing, moving and cropping elements can be done to maintain order and impact on the postcard.

All in all, the truth is many agents get suckered into believing that do-it-myself postcards mean saving a coupling pennies and possessing equal impact. WRONG! You may save a FEW pennies, however, in today’s market, it’s worth paying pennies more to have a message stand out and be seen and also maximize the chance of a transaction happening because you’ve used all the tools needed to make it happen.