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Personal marketing is easy to throw money at - just look at the thousands of real estate agents who waste millions of dollars a year in marketing that yields little to no results. We have all fallen into the same trap. We start spending money on an idea and then we feel a moral obligation to continue spending money until we see some kind of results - no matter how much money it cost us! So the question becomes is there a better way a way to ensure that our personal marketing will be the absolute best that it can be, and provide a steady stream of buyers and seller leads? Can we move up to results focused personal marketing? My answer is absolutely yes! Let's take a look at some simple strategies you can use to build your best personal marketing campaign ever! 1) Kill Your EGO When you look at most agents marketing you find a common mistake. Most agents market themselves, and not their business. This is sometimes called vanity marketing. The most common vanity marketing piece is one that I have created below. Ask yourself if you have seen this ad recently? This same ad can be seen in newspapers around the country. Newspaper publishers like to call these spot ads or image building. What a complete load of nonsense! This is nothing more than a waste of your money. Question - Does the client care about you? No! They only care about one person, you guessed it - themselves! These so-called image ads do not answer the age old WIFM question, otherwise known as - What's In It for ME? The client does not care about you, as selfish as it might sound, they only care about themselves. 2) Move towards Value Building Ask yourself other than your beautiful personality why should someone choose to work with you as opposed to anyone else in your town? Is there a compelling reason to jump towards your services or do you just offer the same old stuff that everyone else does? The key to creating a competitive advantage is to create unique value; services that you offer that your competitors don't offer. Until you take the time to build a platform of unique services you will forever be measured against the wall of mediocrity. What kinds of services can you create to become unique? Look at your niche or specialization, look at your background, or specialized skills. By studying your strengths there will be many areas that you can work on to create unique value. Examples:
3) Use the AIDA approach Marketing and sales students have been instructed for years in the concept of "AIDA" which is an acronym for: A - Attention I - Interest D - Desire A - Action When building your next advertising piece ask yourself does it meet the AIDA standard. Let's take a look Attention- Does your advertisement reach out and stop the prospect dead in their tracks, or it a boring we've all seen this before marketing piece? Headlines are read ten times more than the body of your advertising! So make your headline attention getting. One of the best ways is by asking a question. A question forces the reader to stop and at least for a second answer the question. Interest - The audience has to be interested in what you have to say. It's one thing to grab someone's attention; it's a whole other thing to keep it! What is the best way to hold someone's attention? By offering them something they have never seen before. Remember find ways to offer unique value! Desire - Now you've got their attention, and you've held their interest. What next? Now is the time to build desire! How can you build desire? One of the best ways is to show others enjoying the services you are offering. Some may call this the take away close. For instance provide testimonials from others on how they enjoyed your services and what you were able to do to help them with their needs. Action- The last but most important step is creating enough excitement that the client actually takes action! If you can't motivate your audience to take action that your entire marketing plan has failed. Ask yourself does this ad motivate me? Does this ad create excitement? 4) Know your Audience Where you place your advertising will have a major on impact on your effectiveness. You may want to ask yourself:
In addition before you place any marketing with any vendor ask to see a copy of their demographic package, sometimes known as their media kit. This media kit will break down the companies' audience, and will often reveal if in fact you will be reaching your intended audience. This can be crucial information when deciding where to invest your advertising dollars. 5) Track Your Responses As a business professional you have an obligation to track all of your marketing investments and measure them against their effectiveness. In fact one rule of thumb in business and a motto you should live by is this: If you can't track it don't do it! As an example I will use myself. For many years as a young agent I sent out thousand of pieces of mail each month. These mailing pieces were directed mainly to absentee property owners - folks that owned real estate in my county but did not actually live in the area. I found these people to be ripe prospects and so I focused my marketing efforts on this group. To increase my effectiveness I often would change my styles. For instance one month I might try postcards, another month a different colored paper, another month a different insert. But the key ingredient with all of these variations was a tracking system. My system for tracking my effectiveness was very simple. My assistant built in a three digit code on the bottom right hand corner of each mailing. When we would have a response to our mailings either by mail or by fax we could ask the responder to identify the code, and thus we could identify exactly what worked and what did not work. Take the time to track every response on your marketing and you will be able to vastly increase your profitability! About the Author Jim Remley is a speaker, author and active real estate broker with eight offices. He is also the owner of Pro Performer, the RealtyU® Affiliate in Southern Oregon. Jim won the RealtyU®, Rookie Instructor of the Year award in 2001 and the Pacesetter Award in 2002, 2003 and 2004. The RealtyU® network consists of 40 accredited real estate schools and colleges that serve 42 states and provinces in Northern America. Collectively RealtyU® has some 500 qualified and licensed educators that offer more than 6,000 different classes every year. RealtyU® is expected to once again educate over 250,000 real estate professionals in 2005, making it the largest real estate education and training network in the industry. |
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