Marketing Advice from the GURU's...? Brand Recognition ?

Although what I'm going to show you below is targeted at sellers rather than buyers perhaps you can get some inspiration from the copy.

There is always a ton of direct mail and just EDDM material relating to real estate in my letterbox.

This one stood out to me recently which is why I added it to my swipe file.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions from it but it peaked my attention amidst the usual clutter.



Best regards,

Ozi

At this point you don't know what you don't know. So you have to enter more info into your head to figure out a solution.

Your market research of asking people if they would like money is useless. It proves nothing. OF course people want more money but there is a lot more that goes into business than being the cheapest.

If all the customer is hearing is a one percent rebate than why not sell the house theirselves and keep the whole rebate? You are not adding any value.

A good agent will ask a listing if they would rather have their lousy 1% and deal with a crummy agent who has to give 1% to get business or would they rather deal with a top agent and buy their house for 5% less?

As to what medium to use you are thinking all wrong. It's not the media so much as the message and the recipeint. A crummy FB campaign, a crummy Google campaign and a lousy direct mail letter will all yield crummy results.

Warning: My advice is biased.

You're trying to reach a local market, and you want people to know you and realize how you are different.

Become a published author.

You can use the book as a publicity piece, get free press, do book signings, hand them out at networking meetings, offer them as a gift for people who are "just looking" in your ads, etc.

Run an ad offering a copy of your book, not just using your services.You get a targeted list of leads.

Don't want to write? Have someone ghostwrite it for you or use a recorded interview. (That's what I do for people. They're too busy to be hunting and pecking on a laptop, and they don't want to write it anyway.)

Hope this helps.

The rebate is for buyers not sellers.... They never pay for Realtors anyway. Its not a matter of selling themselves and saving money. In my market, houses are selling fast and at asking price or above. Most buyers are doing a significant portion of the house searching online anyway....

My question is not so much related to market research,I feel confident in that. My question is related to the best way to reach the local masses for brand recognition.

I do like the mailer? Any other ideas?

Direct mail is not dead Tyler!

Understandably FB ads may have not payed off if you didn't split test, which can be frustrating and expensive. No worries.

If you can get your hands on Dan Kennedy's "plant the farm" real estate sequence from Magnetic Marketing then you may have a winner. If some good-willing WF member has a digital version to share, you're all set. Sorry, I only have the print version.

Yes it will cost money to implement, but the results will more than justify the investment.

Keep with it mate.

Hope this helps,

Jack

P.S. Unless you have a boatload of money to burn, don't even think about radio ad's unless you prefer sticking hot coals in your undies.

There are a lot of things going on here... In terms of your online efforts... I would ask you do some pretty simple math... how many people live in the communities you serve.. and how many homes are there for sale RIGHT NOW?

I looked at my local extended community as an example.. there are roughly 100,000 people and 270 homes for sale. Give or take a bit, 1/5 of 1%. Throw in the added variable of population shift ( people moving in, and those moving out ) and your local efforts mathematically are not very sound.

In marketing when you are trying to reach the 100,000, and only 300 maybe are interested in your message... well your response rate is going to be piss poor. A GOOD advertising effort with these numbers should produce 3 to 9 PROSPECTS, and maybe MAYBE 1 close.

You bring up an interesting term "Brand Recognition". Branding in general is a L O N G term play.. we are not talking a one week campaign.. we are talking YEARS of consistent effort and message. In terms of brand recognition you have to try and remember the tortoise wins the race.. slow and steady!

I am pretty sure you want / need slightly quicker results. Generally speaking there is an interesting dynamic in Real Estate. In order to buy.. you must sell first. Generally speaking clients tend to sell and buy using the same agent. You are targeting the back side of the process.

IF you are specializing in BUYING homes.. your BRAND is not sitting there on signs quietly doing work in front yards. Your brand is in the shadows, behind the scene at some lawyers office.

What you need to do is determine what separates YOU from every other real estate agency in your market space... if 9 out of 10 people would TRULY prefer 1% back.. you would not have left this post. You are missing something.

To be honest is sounds scammy.. Buy a home from us get 1% back... in the mind of your potential clients, there simply has to be a catch.. not to mention the contracts they sign in the selling process. You need to develop some amount of trust in your message.

So what separates you? Basic basic; We are a Real Estate Broker that Specializes in the home purchase process. We are so confident in our ability to find YOUR dream home, we offer a 1% purchase rebate to all of our clients. <Insert Brokerage name here> a better way to buy.

That takes the cheese out of the offer... it sets the rebate as a guarantee of sorts... It simply lifts the offer to creditable.

So where to advertise.... I would be on craigslist, I WOULD retry facebook, I would spend a bit and do home shows ( spend a bit and get a proper show display - not a table and table cloth ) I would probably start with billboards in terms of offline media. I would make sure there is a vehicle wrapped with your branded logo and message.. that parks at your office ( dependent on location of course ) and maybe sits at the mal of Walmart on the frontage side of the parking lot a few days a week.

Justsome ideas

What do most buyers do before and while looking for a house?

In my area, they deal with mortgage, insurance and home inspector professionals. I'd add co-marketing to some of those to what Savidge suggested.

Your offer, I give you $2000 if you buy a $200,000 through me... Why are you giving me $2000? Where's the $2000 coming from? Are you going to be pushing me to buy a $200k house when the one at $185k is perfect, so you can get the $2k you're going to give me?

Who's on your team? What real estate attorney do you know? Home inspector? Insurance agent? Loan officer? Title company? It's a team effort... Your team should be talking you up too!

For a while, I used to get a post card every time this lady sold a house. (She sent one to every house in the neighborhood). At first, it was a card every 2 months or so. After about half a year, it was something like one post card every 2 or 3 weeks (she worked alone, 1 person office; don't know why she didn't go bigger but).

After 2 years of getting her cards, had I not had a family member in the business, I'd have hired her... She was, as far as I and my neighbors could tell, THE AGENT TO GO TO IF YOU WANTED TO BUY OR SELL IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.

She might have gotten there faster had she sent a card when she got a house under contract and one when the sale closed.