Real Estate Foreclosure Marketing Secrets

Archive for September, 2009

Ah!  Now we’ve come to a vital concept in your direct-mail postcard campaign.  In order to write the most effective copy for your real estate investing firm, you must know your customer.

Oh, I could tell you in general terms about his desires . . . his needs . . . and even his motivations.  Or you can sit back in your chair, staring at your computer screen and idly construct your typical customer.  But in the long run neither of these helps you much.

Oh, sure with enough trial and error you may end up getting pretty close to targeting him.  But what I’m about to suggest is a little . . . well . . . unconventional.

If you’ve already sent several mailings out and have received some interest, perhaps you’ve already met with some potential customers face to face.  And no doubt discussed business.

But the next time that telephone rings with a potential client on the phone, don’t visit him with the intention of making a sale.  Knock on his door with the intent of learning what he really wants.  That’s right!

Toss the sales script out of the car window on the way over to his home.  Sit down with him one on one and discuss why he wants to sell . . .also discuss why he resists selling. Get to know this one customer as a person.

Yes, perhaps this is a revolutionary approach.  And perhaps you won’t make a sale in this particular instance.  But that doesn’t mean that your time hasn’t been invested wisely. Because as you’re about to discover, it has.

When you return to your office after finding out everything you can from this indivdiual – including how he found himself in this position, what he intends to do after the sale and, if he’s willing to share, how this situation is affecting his life and that of his family – write it all down. (And don’t worry, the odds are great he’ll share this information with you.  Especially if you express a sincere interest in him.  He’s probably been waiting for someone to talk to.)

You see, you’ve just discovered “his problem.”  Your job is to offer him a solution.  And that should be the major focus of your next postcard campaign.  Write your copy to solve this person’s problems.  Don’t worry that your card isn’t going to just him.  Rest assured that his concerns, emotions and intentions are echoed throughout your territory by many others.

Take a good look at the mailing list you’re intending to use for this mailing.  It’s not a list of names.  It’s a list of people.  People whose lives are in transition.  What can your firm offer them that will eventually not only take the burden of the house off their backs, but start them on a new road to success?

If you can write copy that conveys this message, then you’ll have people ringing your phone like crazy.  And isn’t that the bottom line of your postcard campaign after all?

By Mark Bradley

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Do you know the significance of a Ping List for real estate social marketing?
With the development of computer technology and boom of the Internet, the concept of real estate social marketing has undergone a sea change. The invention of the Web 2.0 has given the real estate enterprise a further boost. Blogging has also become a useful tool for real estate professionals. A ping list becomes significant here. Whenever you publish any new post on your blog, there is an automatic process called pinging. The ping list entails a list of search engines and blog directories that get an automatic notification whenever you publish a blog.

As a real estate professional who wants to utilize the Internet for social marketing, you can consider starting a blog for your business. In this case you must update your ping list. You must always keep in mind that the bigger is your ping list, the greater will be the chances of generating traffic to your real estate site.

Blogging is always a beneficial tool for social marketing. This is because most blogs generally have the facility to “ping” the servers whenever you post any new content. This, in turn, enables the blog search engines to supply fresh and new information by essentially indexing the updates of fresh content. Having a ping list can thus be very useful.

If you want to locate a ping list, you will be surprised to find innumerable ping lists that simply float around in the World Wide Web. There are many such lists that even have more than fifty ping services. Thus, you can easily utilize such ping lists for your real estate social marketing.

When you are looking for a ping list, you must keep certain things in mind. There are many such lists that contain servers of individual pinging as well as those services that can ping numerous servers. This signifies that if you implement such lengthy lists then you might end up pinging the very same server more than three times. This will make you appear as a ping spammer which is not appreciable.

In order to deal with the menace of ping spams, there has been a development in ping-o-matic. Currently it has the ability to submit in more places and spots than they were able to do so in the last year. A shorter and more effective ping list will considerably cut down on the odds of getting the label of a ping spammer accidentally.

Many experts of real estate ping list owners and users recommend the usage of the Smart Update Pinger plugin. This plugin will typically ping specific services only if you post an article and not when you are editing it. With the help of this tool you can also find out if there are any services that refuse requests for pinging for your website.

Thus, in such situations, you can easily remove them from such a ping list and you will not waste any time by pinging them uselessly. Therefore, using a ping list can be very beneficial for your real estate venture if you know sufficiently about it. These lists can become useful tools for the purpose of online real estate social marketing.
By Mark Bradley

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Is there anything more stifling to a good real estate postcard mailing than a blank computer screen?

Consider this scenario (not an uncommon one for many a direct marketer in any area):  Your mailing list has been carefully chosen.  Your printer is waiting for your postcard copy.  And there you sit staring at a blank screen.  You haven’t written a single sentence yet.

Your first instinct is to panic.  (At least that would be mine!)  But don’t. Because you’re about to learn how to turn your competitors ideas and words to inspire you.  And in the process learn the one of the reasons crafting a sales letter is often called “copy” writing.

No doubt you’ve got a stack of postcards that you’ve sent out in the past or from your competitors’ mailings.  Now’s the time to go through them.  Go, ahead.  Gather them in one place and start reading through these.  This, you’re about to learn, is more than an exercise in idle reading.

Pick out the words, phrases, ideas that strike you as particularly good. Use these as your inspiration.  Recreate a headline idea.  Grab a good idea for a lead paragraph.  What you don’t want to do, though, is to plagiarize.  Don’t grab any sentence, paragraph or all the copy from another mailing wholesale and try to pass it off as your own.

But you can – and should – get some really good ideas for your own mailing.  Soon, you’ll discover that blank computer screen you’re staring at is taking shape as a sure-fire direct-mail campaign.

I learned this trick many years ago when I first started working for a direct mail firm.  The owner told me about his very first mailing.  It was several pages long.  He had never written copy before, but he didn’t have the money to hire a professional copywriter.  He wasn’t about to let the lack of funds stop him.

He gathered up all the direct sales material he had been collecting, pulled out his trusty portable typewriter (yes, it was that long ago!) and started assimilating ideas, phrases and other inspirational copy from these various other sources.

It took him several hours to write a couple pages, but finally he had a sales letter that had his distinct imprint.  And original document to call his own.  And he mailed it.

And do you know what?  It produced very good results for him.  And some 30 years later, he’s still enjoying outstanding success in the business.

And just for your information, he still has a hand in writing all his copy.  And he still gets some of his best inspiration from the advertising material that lands in his mail box.

So the next time you’re sitting at the computer screen wishing that a form of direct-marketing inspiration would strike you, gather up all the marketing material you can find.  It’s time to kick start that inspiration into high gear with a little help from your . . . uh, competitors.
By Mark Bradley

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Optimization of the web page is something that most real estate professionals fail to succeed in. The Web 2.0 has gained a lot of significance in recent times. Blogging also has become an efficient tool for real estate social marketing. It has also become important to tag your blogs. Blog tagging has many benefits. Blog tagging will give your blog an extra edge over those that are not tagged.

You must always ensure that your blog on real estate is convenient to use and provides a visual experience that is pleasing. You can consider implementing clear titles and spaced out paragraphs to make it attractive for spiders of search engines and human web surfers. Blog tagging will further enhance its value.

Blog tagging will allow you to categorize every blog post that you write. You simply need to add tags to it. These tags will enable you as well as other members to understand the content of the post very easily and even locate related posts. You can also include tags to your real estate even when you are writing it. After you publish a blog post, you can add tags to it. You will have to only click on the link that says, “Edit Your Tags” beside it.

Another aspect related to blog tagging is a Tag Cloud. This can assist you and the subscribers of your blog to locate what they want to find on your blog. If you have a Tag Cloud on your blog, it can further help you with Search Engine Optimization. This is because the tags will automatically popup in the form of content on your web pages as crawlers will search through them.

A Tag Cloud with respect to blog tagging is a very common occurrence. You must have seen numerous without even realizing what they are. If you notice the lower corner in the right of a blog, you will find a section named, “Label Cloud”. Below this title, you will see a group of words appearing in different font sizes. Usually, the more popular words are written in larger fonts.

If you click on any word, you can search for blogs having the specific word as keywords that are assigned to every blog entry. Thus, with the tags, labels and keywords users can locate your blogs very easily through searches on specific sites such as technorati or by carrying out organic searches with the help of search engines. These aspects are essential to blog tagging.

Another significant feature of blog tagging is the use of TwitScoop. It works very similarly to the Tag Cloud. It will basically provide you with a group or cloud of words that are popular and mostly used on Tweets in the current situation. These are the ones that occur most commonly on Twitter.com. The bigger any word appears in terms of its font, the more popularly used it is.

With respect to blog tagging, TwitScoop will provide you with a gadget if you are a Vista user. You can add it to the bar of your gadget and instantly a window will pop out displaying you the keywords that have been currently discussed. You can note them and follow them closely. In this way, blog tagging can help you to get new subjects to write about on real estate.
By Mark Bradley

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Want to power up your next postcard mailing?

Then go one step beyond merely telling your audience what your real investment business has done for others in the past – have your customers tell them.

No you don’t have to enlist your former customers to telephone prospects.  Instead use the powerful direct-marketing tool called the testimonial.  If you’ve been in business long enough, it’s easy enough to ask a satisfied customer to write a couple sentences (it really doesn’t need to be any long than this) about how they benefited from your services.

A true, honest and compelling testimonial from a satisfied customer is much like a picture – it’s worth a thousand words.

You can try to convince  your audience till your pen runs out of ink that your service is well worth their time and energy.  But, face it, you’ve got a vested interested in telling people that – you want to make money.

On the other hand, a person who is volunteering their very positive experience is much more persuasive.  I’ve seen some direct-mail for products that is nothing but two page or more of testimonials.

You can give this testimonial a clever headline. “Let our customers speak for us.”  “Our customers say it much better than we can ever!”

The point is that your message will have a more powerful impact when you add a testimonial that praises your services.

Your next question, no doubt, is just where do you place these testimonials.  You may truly believe that one area of your postcard is simply better than another.  Well, as far as direct marketers can tell right now from research, no single area is really any more effective than another.

If you feel you don’t have space on the message side of your postcard, look to the front.  That’s right the area that’s reserved for the address.  Why not put a short testimonial or two on the front.

When I worked as a copywriter for a nutritional supplement company, we routinely placed to testimonials on the front side of any postcard mailing we’d create.  And I must tell you that our postcards received an absolutely outstanding response rate!
Of course, if you can place them any where on the other side as well it only increases the potency of your marketing campaign.

Testimonials tell your audience that you’ve already done business in a professional manner.  More than that, they show your audience that you’re just not generating hype. Anyone can send a postcard telling you they can buy your house in 48 hours.  But not everyone can actually do that.  If you have a customer – or two or three – you can tell them for you, then you’ve overcome their initial, innate hesitancy.

So, be sure to include one or more testimonials in your next postcard mailing.  If you’ve never used them before, just be prepared for an increased response in your real estate investment campaign.
By Mark Bradley

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