And it doesn’t matter which market you find yourself in.  If it’s booming, you need to keep in constant contact with all your many clients and hit the pavement to get those FSBOs in your trusted hands.  When it’s a slow, dragging market, you need spend a lot of time building long lasting relationships with the few clients you have at the time so they think of you every time hear of a friend who wants to sell.  And you need to hit the pavement and gobble up those listings that have expired.  After all, who wants to be sitting at the office making cold calls all day?  Every agent’s dream is to be working completely by referral.  And this is done by keeping in constant communication with your clients and building new relationships with their referrals.

So what’s the best way to do this simple key thing? The answer is simple and FUN!  The most effective way to do the above is by quickly stopping by and bringing the client, or prospective client, a small personalized gift that can be left behind to remind them of who you are.   The main point is for this gift to be personalize with your contact information. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to purchase the minimum of 300 letter openers (as cool as they are) with your logo painted on them.  You can do this much more economically, creatively and with a lot more flexibility by creating your own tags or putting your business card with the gift.

So start a campaign!  Whether it’s gobbling up those expireds, getting the latest FSBOS to trust in you, or keeping your past clients within arms reach, you need to start a campaign that’s all your own. Use gifts that are small, inexpensive and something you can easily personalize by attaching a tag or business card.  Another key point to this style of gift is to add a smart, witty tag line so the client actually remembers what they read. You can make cookies and write “I’ve got the recipe to your success.”  This is a concept  advocated by some major business coaching companies here in the states.  www.harpoonmarketing.com focuses on creating these items for real estate agents who don’t have the time (or creativity) to create their own.

Are you going to focus on gobbling up those expired listings?  Search the MLS every morning to grab that listing that expired at 11:59pm last night.  Be at their door hours after it has expired and represent them before anyone else get’s the opportunity.  For expired you want to bring an item that’s not too pricy – you don’t want to invest too much in someone that might close the door on you.  But is definitely something to break the ice when you randomly show up on their door step.  Something that catches their attention and/or entertains them.  I have a client that gives little miniature flash lights to all her expireds and “Spot Lights” their home to get it sold.  Another clients using little tool shaped candies to say that she has “all the right tools to get the job done.”
Some key points:

• Have you already branded yourself? Pick gifts that highlight your brand.
• Use several different “levels” of gifts.  Have smaller, less expensive gifts for lower priority clients and nicer slightly more expensive gifts for your A clients.
• Bring gifts specifically for your clients children or pets.  When the clients sees that you have paid attention and know about their family and personal life, they are more willing to trust in you and take you in as part of that life.
• Specify it to the season or holidays.  Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas make this type of marketing great fun.
• Get creative and have fun!

Point being, spend some time building a brand and hitting the pavement to really get to know your clients.  Besides, sitting in the office simply calling to say hi get’s really boring.  So get creative, get out there, and get busy!

Author: Alissa Avolio

You can now send a text message or email directly to the sales agent right away and they’ll send you back more detailed information on the spot! This company is taking advantage that everyone now carries cell phones so why not connect buyers with sellers?

It has only been 10 years since www.realtor.com became the starting place for anyone looking to buy, sell, rent, and list properties; in those years the same people began carrying a cell phone with them eighty-plus percent of the time.  Now with text messaging growing faster than any other form of communication in the world, the opportunity to capitalize has presented itself.

XAP Realty, a Los Angeles based real estate marketing company has created a lead capture solution to utilize the fact that cell phones are now carried by all buyers.  The concept is extremely simple, www.xaprealty.com provides real estate agents, individual sellers, and property management companies with interactive yard and rider signs.  The signs allow prospects to request the listing information of a particular property by sending a text message.

The prospect is immediately sent the listing details including: address, price, beds, baths, acreage, MLS#, agent’s contact information, and more.  Simultaneously, the agent or property manager is sent an email that includes the prospects phone number and the listing that he/she is interested in viewing.  The service acts like an on-site assistant, reporting full property details and taking down new lead information 24 hours a day 7 days per week.

XAP Realty benefits realtors by capturing more leads using the non-invasive communication medium of text messaging.  XAP Realty saves realtors time and money by providing prospects with the relevant information they need, and reducing materials.  Last of all XAP Realty simplifies the process by providing prospects with an effective means of saving the listing information they require, thus making the job easier the realtor.

The question of whether realtors will stay on the cutting edge of technology remains unknown, however, with regards to cell phones XAP Realty interactive signs are already being used in a city near you.

The tools they are referring to are Google Base, AdWords, Maps, Earth, Local Business Center, Google Sketchup, and Google Apps. It’s actually a great idea and it shows how flexible Google’s products are that they can easily cater to specific industries like real estate. Their overall message is that Google can help generate real estate referrals and leads to help connect to home buyers and sellers since Google has more real estate searches than other search engines combined.

So are these tools actually helpful for you, the real estate professional? In short, yes but not all the tools in the suite are exactly easy to use. Here’s a quick rundown of what each tool is for and it’s ease of use.

Google Base – It’s essentially Google’s version of Craigslist.com which hasn’t quite caught on yet. It’s still another free marketing outlet so it wouldn’t hurt to post real estate for sale on it. Take a look at it here. Ease of use: Simple

Google AdWords – This is probably the best tool of the suite for driving targeted traffic and leads to your site. These are the ads you see on the right side of Google’s search results. If you aren’t already running a paid search program, I’d recommend you
(aff) now. Ease of use: Medium

Google Maps – This product is quite cool but requires a technical person to set it up on your website. I always use this product when I need to get from point A to point B. Plug in two addresses, and it creates step by step directions for you. For real estate professionals, you would display your listings on detailed maps and satellite imagery and give your users a visual, intuitive way to find the property that is right for them. You can see an example of this in the above image. Try it here. Ease of use: Difficult

Google Earth – An even cooler version of Google Maps, this product allows you to fly around the world using 3D satellite imagery. If you’ve got the technical resources and sophisticated audience, this would be a great differentiator for your website. You can download it here. Ease of use: Difficult

Google’s Local Business Center – This is Google’s version of the yellow pages but a more targeted version. When potential customers search Google Maps for local information, they’ll find your business information such as your address and hours of operation. You want your name and address to be displayed when they search, this is the tool for you. Only requires a one-time setup. Ease of use: Simple

Google SketchUp – Want to create 3D models of homes or other properties? Well then this is the tool for you. You can also enhance your website listing by using the animation capability of Google Sketchup Pro. It even allows your customers to freely explore the home, community and its surroundings in 3D. They claim it’s easy to use but if you’re not good with computers or have some experience with 3D modeling, I’d stay away from this. Download their free version here. Ease of use: Difficult

Google Apps – This is essentially MS office but an online Google version. You can collaborate on documents and spreadsheets more effectively, have shareable calendars, and even instant messaging capability. It’s a great product especially if you travel a lot and and need to share documents and spreadsheets across multiple real estate professionals. It’s all web-based so make sure you have an internet connection. The Google Apps Standard Edition is free but if you need more features you can pay $50/per user/per year for the Premier Edition. I recommend you
(aff) now. Ease of use: Medium

Overall, I’d say for the typical real estate professional you should be using Google Base, Google AdWords, and Google’s Local Business Center to increase your company awareness and drive new leads to your website. Using Google Apps would be an added bonus but not required if you aren’t ready to change your business processes. Google Maps, Earth, and Sketchup and for those with technical resources to handle the development required to make them work.

Just by those reasons alone, blogging has a huge potential for real estate agents. What strikes me odd is the fact that most real estate agents or real estate websites I’ve visited don’t have a blog and are losing out on such a powerful median. A blog should definitely be added to their real estate marketing mix.

This void offers a unique business opportunity for someone or a company to help develop and maximize a real estate agents ability to essentially generate more leads and close more business. Being an entrepreneur, I’ve actually thought about doing this myself since I’m very experienced in blogging, internet marketing, and real estate but I just don’t have the time with all the other projects I am working on.

So let’s get down to the 5 key reasons real estate agents should have a blog.

1. Direct Communications – Most real estate websites seem to contain static content which is usually more about the business and properties on the MLS the real estate agent is looking to sell. The beautiful thing about a blog is that they provide a way for realtors to speak directly and honestly with potential customers and prospects in an open way. Visitors to your blog can actually comment and reply to your posts which only adds value and creates a community-type environment. Here’s a great example of Luba, a real estate agent in San Francisco who started her own blog.
2. Positioning Yourself As The Expert – Blogs give you a way to express your viewpoints, demonstrate your knowledge, and provide your expertise on issues and topics pertaining to your industry or community. If you’re the only real estate agent in your city or coverage area that actually blogs, prospects and potential customers that find your website are going to view you as the expert in that area.
3. Lead Generation – You will find that having a blog is a low cost method of highly visible real estate marketing. It will provide you a consistent flow of leads at almost no cost. The best way to start building your potential client lists is by asking for their names. Having an offer like a free pdf or newsletter helps and then you can quickly add lead capture forms (without having to know coding) and even setup auto-responders within an hour. I use one of the best known hosted solutions out there called Aweber for all of my web sites. They even offer a free $1 trial. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo highly favor blog content in their search results so once you start publishing content you will be surprised to see the amount of traffic increasing to your website. You just have to make sure to capture these leads once they visit your site.
4. Competitive Differentiation – How is your business difference from the dozens of other real estate agents in your area? How can you make a prospective customer understand that you have something better to offer or that you have the expertise and experience to make the home buying and selling process easier and to their financial benefit? Having a blog gives your readers insight to who you are and what your business is all about.
5. Relationship Marketing – The beautiful thing about a blog is that it allows you to build personal relationships with your readers and customers that eventually creates trust. All real estate agents are familiar with the importance of “farming” as a way of generating activity. Blogs allow you to create a tight niche of potential customers who you can deliver messages to on a daily basis.

These 5 key reasons alone should be enough justification for you as a real estate agent to start a blog tomorrow. Now your next question is probably going to be, “How do I start a blog?” and “How much will it cost?”. The good news is most blogging software is free and depending on your skill set and depth of features, I would recommend wordpress.com, typepad.com, or blogger.com. All are great platforms and each has their positives and negatives.

For me, I use WordPress software for all my blogs and Aweber to capture and manage leads. WordPress is by far the best if you’re looking for something extremely flexible and you have some technical knowledge and experience with the internet. There is a learning curve and all blogs require some time to configure and setup, but that’s where someone with technical and business experience comes in. I also highly recommend getting a professional Real Estate WordPress theme and then building your site.

What do you have to lose in trying anyhow? This gorilla marketing approach gets your name out there and begins your lead generation campaign and gives you on the job experience.

1. Make cold calls – pick up your local paper and read through the classified section and look for ads that say “for sale”. Make several calls and see if you can find any motivated sellers.
2. Place your own classified ad – you’re essentially putting out some bait in hopes that strong motivated sellers will respond to your ad. You want your ad to be titled “I buy houses”.
3. Tack up “I buy houses” signs all around your targeted neighborhood – yeah this method might seem silly but it’s one of the best lead sources you can get working for you.
4. Spread the word – let your friends family and anyone else you know understand what you’re doing. Who knows who might be looking to sell the property and could potentially come to you directly.
5. Call top realtors in your area – this is actually my favorite method because you make great contacts and establish yourself as a real estate investor. These real estate agents will then contact you when they feel a good deal is available for you.

After you go through this list and try at least one method, let me know how it worked. If you got frustrated and/or nobody was interested or returned your call, don’t give up. Not all real estate investors are sales people so it’s not a natural approach.

The old school methods I listed above can and will work but if you don’t feel it’s right for you that’s ok. With the effectiveness of the internet, you can place ads online, email your friends/family, and fill out a “contact me” form on your top realtor’s websites. This in essence accomplishes the same 5 tactics I described above but in a different more hands off way. Good luck and don’t give up!

Dustin Luther over at www.raincityguide.com impressed me with one of his posts about how important inbound links are to a site. It’s a very helpful article and I urge you to read it if you’d like to better understand how SEO works.

For those of you who do not know much about SEO or inbound links let me quickly clarify.

Inbound Links – links that point to your site from sites other than your own. Inbound links are an important asset that will improve your site’s ranking in search engines like Google and Yahoo.

The more relevant inbound links you have, the better your site will rank and ultimately drive more traffic and leads/prospects. For example: Seattle Real Estate Blog . What did I just do? I just created a keyword rich link to Dustin’s site which will send him additional traffic and hopefully raise his search engine ranking for anyone who searches for “Seattle Real Estate Blog”.

If you continue to write good content and work on building inbound links, you will start to notice an increase in search engine traffic. It’s a slow process which sometimes takes months to do, but will eventually pay off in the long run.

How powerful would it be for a real estate agent in a city like Las Vegas to set up their own web site explaining the current industry trends, home values, local neighborhoods, or other information of interest? Sites like zillow.com are great for providing you with high-level information about home prices but still lack the “bird dog” like information that a local Realtor would have great insider information about.

All this is in the power of a blog which is an easy way for brokers and/or agents to set up a medium for them to demonstrate their expertise, knowledge, viewpoints, and experience with clients and prospects. Not only that, but their blog would be a lead generation machine and can also produce additional advertising income from local lenders, home developers, property management companies, moving companies, and more.

A blog helps you demonstrate your expertise and boosts your credibility in a certain field. Most real estate agents don’t realize the power they are to have and are failing to use it because they don’t understand current technologies and the blogging world. If you are able to demonstrate that you’re an expert, home buyers will seek you out when they need advice regarding a home purchase or sale.

In addition, real estate investors like myself are always looking for local insiders to provide current economic and real estate information since that information is very hard to come by. I urge all real estate agents to start their own blog to not only prove that they are an expert in their field and area of business, but also to drive new prospects and leads which will ultimately help their business grow.

If you’re a real estate agent where do you get started? First start reading about blogging and sign up for a free blog account on sites like WordPress or Typepad. They are very easy blogging platforms and allow you to get up and running within minutes. I also provide real estate blog consulting services and could setup, design, and train your staff for a reasonable rate. Please contact me directly from my about page.