Realasponse™

I’m partly kidding. However, if you look at many of today’s just listed postcards they do a great disservice to the home being featured; whether the home is a beauty or not. I mean, even if the home is a fixer-upper you still want the home to come across as appealing to shoppers. And that’s just the problem with many of the just listed postcard designs out there on the web. They’re generic!!! A good just listed postcard complements the home in categories of style, presentation and character.

What many postcard companies will do is create a generic template and offer several different color schemes of the same design as if this some how provides options. Many of them have the thought of, “Hey, create something quick and easy and tell the agent that it’s solely a numbers game and they have to buy 1000’s of postcards to see any reasonable return on their investment.” This is in no way the case.

If you use innovative eye grabbing postcards that act as a containers to compliment the home being featured, you don’t have to solely relay on large postcard number to make up for lack of presentation. Certainly real estate direct mail, to a degree, is a numbers game. But the winning element has always been presentation and layout. Focus on those elements and you’ve got a ticket to increasing the chances on a higher response on your mailing.

You know… I can almost understand why certain agents refuse to market using real estate postcards. Today’s real estate postcard companies believe we’re in the 90’s. The old approaches may have worked then when using real estate direct mail marketing, however, today’s times require a calculated approach toward getting prospects to RESPOND to your marketing pieces. A cute phrase means nothing to prospects who are weary of the market. Why? Because it doesn’t speak to their core desire on what’s valuable to them. At most, the postcard will garner a chuckle or two. But both you and I know you didn’t get into real estate for a few laughs. You got into this game to make money, do the things you enjoy, and have a life.

For example, how many commercials have made you laugh? I’d imagine quit a few. Now, how many out of those that made you laugh motivated you to get up and purchase that service or product? Hardly any; I’d imagine. At best they became water cooler conversation with co-workers or friends. You see… flattery alone is not enough. What postcard marketing companies need to offer agents are postcards that use design to flatter prospects and prospect research when constructing a “call-to-action” message to get prospects to call. How can real estate postcard marketing companies expect prospects to call you if they’ve done no research on what prospects say they want in an agent? How can they sell you a product which they promise is a “proven product” and have done no testing? The only real estate postcards that cover the gamut are those mentioned from Realasponse.com.

If you desire leaving your marketing to guesswork then use outdated postcards, however if you desire a response from your postcard campaigns then use postcards that speak to the concerns of prospects in today’s market.

I’m often asked the question: “How can I make my real estate postcards stand out?” The question can be tough for many agents because today’ real estate marketing requires that you be different from other agents who may have saturated the market with postcards bearing overused and tired messages. Among the most common over used messages you’ll see today (or may have even used yourself) are messages like: ” Buying or Selling?”….”Free Consultation”… or “Call me for a FREE market analysis”. These recycled messages are sure to have prospects disregard your message quickly because they are tel-tale signs of “another real estate agent trying to sell me.”

One of the ingredients that make up a great marketing postcard is “visual appeal”. Remember, you only have so much time to capture the attention of the prospect. So deciding what will be the focus of a piece is of utmost importance. You don’t want to focus the visual so much on yourself, however, marry the relationship of service and self. Also important is layout; you don’t want clutter. Many agents (out of desperation) will try and cram every bit of information about themself and service on one postcard. DON’T DO THIS. You make yourself out to be cheap and unprofessional. You’re no different than the place down the street that sells “Chinese Food & Donuts”. Get the point? Make your message clean and clear.

Also be direct on what you want to offer. Remember, your offer is the call to action.

What Realasponse has done is make it easier on you by implementing these strategies for you already. You can either try to design your own real estate postcards and think up an offer or use or direct mail postcards that do everything for you…including mailing.

Which ever way you decide, remember that visual appeal, layout, and offer are most important when compelling prospects.

They say the way to some peoples heart is “through their stomach”, however since when did this apply to real estate? A common misplaced belief when marketing with recipe postcards is that “perhaps the prospect will remember me by offering something useful.” When using recipe postcards this is far from being true for a number of reasons which I’ll shall.

The first flaw with recipe postcards are their natural ability to eliminate possible business via discrimination. For example, if you market a meat casserole recipe to 300 homes many will trash your postcard because they hate that particular dish. Many more will be watching they’re weight and pass on anything fattening or against their diet regimen. And lastly, many prospects will come from cultural backgrounds that mainly eat of dishes from back home.

The problem with recipe postcards are that they limit possible business by eliminating prospects based on taste. The best thing would be to address the concerns of prospects with information they deem valuable rather than something as useless as a recipe. After all, we live in times where anyone can jump online and grab a recipe from a website if they so desired to cook up chicken roast.

Real estate postcards, just listed postcards and just sold postcards are certainly valuable tools. However, as for recipe postcards…leave that to agents who still believe today’s market is the same as 1997.