4MySales - Viral Marketing with a Real Estate Twist

Aggressive Pricing to Move Short Sales

2011-03-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

I talked to a colleague who relies on the RedX Real Estate Lead System the other day and he told me that in general he expects, and gets an offer within 30 days of listing a short sale. In fact he is so confident in those results that he makes it part of his listing presentation. So after hearing that statement, I had to learn more.

Here is how he does it…

First and foremost he explains that because the owner is taking a bath on the property and that the bank will do their due diligence when an offer is received, it is best practice to price the property at and just below market comps.

After getting the owners agreement, he goes about listing the property on numerous online sites. He posts the property on Zillow, Trulia and even lists issues a dedicated URL through Listing Producer. The benefit of the dedicated URL is that he minimizes the nosy neighbors who generally can just go online to snoop. Here is an example of one of his recent listings: http://www.1059greenway.com/

Next he schedules an open house, always a great way to farm an area and expand your listing base. I think he has added six listings in that neighborhood in the past month.

Finally, as part of his approach, if after the first three weeks there has been no activity, he convinces the homeowner to reduce the listing price by $10,000. This is done every two to three weeks until a magic price and buyer is found.

Obviously with a short sale getting the offer is just the beginning of the process. However you can’t argue with getting an offer that may be accepted by the banks within 30 days of every short sale listing.

Mobile Optimize For More and Better Leads

2011-02-04T18:12:00.001-08:00

I was working with a colleague the other day and he showed me one of his new flyers. What was weird was that he had a two dimensional bar code printed next to his name. Being the technophile that I am, I grabbed my Iphone and scanned the code. Where I ended up was a great video of him introducing his services, the benefits that he offers and an exclusive invitation to join in one of his weekly conference calls. The video was an apple compatible .mov file so it was compatible with my phone.

Well, I have to tell you that I was blown away. What a great way to instantly create a personal relationship with prospective customers. Not only that, but by inviting them to call into an exclusive weekly event, prospects get engaged without feeling pressured to list or sell.

Apparently I was not the only one that was impressed. My colleague mentioned that his listings have doubled since he started putting this bar code on his cards and flyers.

This approach leverages new and novel technology to get prospective customers engaged with a REALTOR’s personal brand. Although the technology is relatively new, it is becoming more and more widely used which means more and more customers are turning to use it.

It will likely never replace real time listing lead services such as the RedX FSBO and Expired service, but it may be a great marketing tool to increase your reach and grow your number of active listings.

RedX and The National DNC Registry

2010-06-26T02:07:00.000-07:00

If you cold call as part of your sales process, especially if you are in real estate, you have to be conscious of, and in compliance with, the national Do Not Call registry. This registry was produced to care for consumers from aggressive telemarketers and sales people, and much like the CanSpam act, it has done its job plausibly well. However, for small business people such as REALTORS, and real estate brokers, persistently read-through this registry previous to making a telephone call costs time, money and assets that are in rare supply.

In spite of the cost, real estate pros must adhere to this law. Aside from being the ethical thing to do, violations of the do not call registry can result in swift and heavy fines as well as large lost business.

Luckily, for real estate broker that actively prospect on the phone, there is a simple solution. Real estate lead generation services such as the (Real Estate Data Exchange) include DNC verification as a fundamental part of their service offering. Services like the automatically scrub their listings against the countrywide Do Not Call registry before providing the information to the real estate agent. This added service protects the REALTOR from accidentally violating the registry and allows them to cold call prospective clients with the assurance that they are in full compliance with this law.

It is important to note that the RedX is only one numerous tools that include a DNC verification as a fundamental part of their service. Services vary and the quality of the various marketing and lead generation services are widely different. Therefore, as a real estate agent or small business professional, you should always look for services that include automated processes that address the legal limitation of prospecting such as the DNC registry or the CanSpam act.

The onus of compliance is on you, and the consequences of violating the law can be severe.

If you are a REALTOR and looking for a way to repeatedly enlarge your client list, then visit RedX realty. This great software provides you with the resources to beat out your competition. Have more leads, more listings and more free time with the Real Estate Data Exchange now.

My Gift To My Colleagues

2009-12-24T12:14:00.000-08:00

As a thank you for all of your support this holiday season, I would like to offer each of you a complimentary copy of my Residential and Retail-Commercial Investment Analysis Software. This software has been a great asset over the past few years and normally retails for $149.99. It is now my gift to you.

My friends at the RedX are also in a giving mood and wanted me to remind you all that their double discount special will only be going on for a few more days. Their Double Discount is an up-front $149.00 discount as well as a 15% discount off of the first three months of service. Overall, it is about a $185 savings. Here is the link to their offer: http://www.theredx.net

Here is the download link to the software: http://www.freetrainer.com/tem/IPWare.exe

Have a very happy holiday season.

Final Discount For A Full Lead Prospecting System

2009-12-20T21:02:00.000-08:00

I have been busy over the past few weeks looking at different marketing automation software program. As such, I forgot to let everybody know that the Real Estate Data Exchange (RedX) has EXTENDED THEIR DOUBLE HOLIDAY DISCOUT (15% off the first three months along with waiving the $149.00 start up fee) until December 31.

If you have read my previous posts, you know I hold their listing lead and FSBO products in the highest regard and am happy that they have chosen to maintain a commercial relationship with me. With that in mind, here is the link to their DOUBLE DISCOUNT PROMOTION: http://www.theredx.net

Now, the Real Estate Data Exchange aside, I have been fascinated by the potential application of some of these marketing automation programs for automating all of your lead generation and prospecting activities. Currently I have narrowed my evaluation down to two programs, InfusionSoft and Active Conversion. So far, InfusionSoft is in the lead simply because it is more applicable to BtoC marketing (as in Realtor to Client) and has a number of pre-designed forms that eliminate a lot of the design work that would otherwise be required.

So what does a marketing automation software do? Well, it allows you to create a long term relationship with a prospect or client without having to continually and personally follow up with a client. To give you an example, say you had a lead capture form on your website. Without a marketing automation and lead scoring system, you would typically just follow up with a call. Now, you may still choose to do that, but what if instead, the prospect received a personalized email from you during business hours within 20 minutes of them filling out the form?

Okay, that sounds like an autoresponder. However, what if your marketing automation system also automatically left a voicemail, sent an SMS text, or mailed out a hard copy of an appropriate market report. Now, what if you call the prospect and they say they are just keeping tabs on the market? Well, your automated marketing system can be set up so that once in a while it sends a personal email to “just check in” periodically invites your prospect to a seminar, webinar, or video that you are hosting. Essentially, the marketing automation system allows you to continually market to a prospect and warm them to the point that when you make the call, they are ready to give you the listing.

Take a look at InfusionSoft. Currently, they seem to be the best value with the most applicable features. Also, don’t forget to take advantage of the double discount on the listing lead and FSBO lead system from RedX

OMG, I Can't Believe It!

2009-11-06T13:15:00.000-08:00

If you have kids, or are under the age of 20, you know what that acronym stands for. For those of us who remember learning how to type on Electrolux typewriters, it may be foreign. For me, I had to look it up.

Regardless, that was the sentiment that I felt when my friends over at the RedX (Real Estate Data Exchange) gave me permission to offer huge discount on their listing lead, FSBO and Agent Website listing lead service.

As many of us can attest, they have a great product that includes a complete lead management system that interfaces with your MLS as well as multiple databases to give the correct listing contact for every expired and FSBO in your area. Their system then scrubs the data against the DNC registry to provide. Here is a link to a video demonstrating their product. http://www.theredx.net

So here is what they have agreed too. In addition to waiving the $149.00 start up fee, they are also offering a 15% discount for the first three months of membership if you choose either the quarterly or monthly package. You save about $184 with this package which is fantastic.

So anyway, to take advantage of the program, us promotion code 14610 or register through this rather long URL: http://www.theredx.com/signup/4mysalespromo.html

Linkconnector

2009-10-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

This is a temporary post to establish a linkconnector account.

-Barrett

Blogging For Real Estate Professionals

2009-10-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

If you are blogging to attract real estate leads, which many of us are, you know the value of having your content found on the internet. I have been working for some time to get the word out about the Real Estate Lead Generation Software provided through RedX and have learned a great deal about search engine optimization in the process. What I have learned is that if you want to successfully drive leads to your blog, the actual post is only the first step. The steps following your post will truly determine your level of success in attracting traffic and subsequent real estate leads to your blog.

Steps To Attract Real Estate Leads Through Your Blog

Let’s face it. Any time you spend creating a blog is an investment in marketing. However, your return on investment is determined primarily through how many people read your blog and visit your site. Fundamentally, the best way to get your blog read is if it shows up on a search engine. Therefore, getting a high ranking for a given search term is imperative. So what are the steps necessary to search engine optimize your blog post?

Before you even begin writing your post, you should determine what keyword phrase you are targeting. If you have a topic in mind, spend a few minutes on google to see how competitive the phrase you are focusing on will be. To see the level of competition, look next to the search box for the search results information. For example, the competitive information for the term “attract real estate leads” is “Results 1 - 10 of about 4,230,000 for attract real estate leads. (0.55 seconds)” Because this article is competing with over four million other entries, it is unlikely to rank high on the search term “attract real estate leads.” Therefore, optimizing it for that term may be relatively futile and I should probably optimize this post to a less competitive phrase such as “listing leads for realtors”, or even “GRAR” which only has one million competitors.

After you have chosen your search phrase, write your post to include that phrase one to three percent of the time. Be sure to include the phrase as part of your header tags <h1> as well as your subhead <h2>. Back to our example, the phrase Attract Real Estate Leads is in the <h2> tag of this article.

Now Start Your Real Estate Search Engine Optimization

Here is what I do to promote these posts as well as the RedX discount page.

* Ping your entry using a pinging tool to multiple sites. I use pingler.com

* Use an article rewriting tool to create multiple unique versions of your article. Unique versions are needed so that each syndicated site that posts your article is counted as a unique back link to your real estate blog. I now use Magic Article Rewriter as my tool of choice.

* Submit your unique article to as many article directories as possible. I use two tools concurrently for this. The first is UniqueArticleWizard, the second is Magic Article Submitter. Both tools allow you to syndicate your article across the web over time which gradually increases your links and your search engine rank. Their actual sales pages are pretty cheezy, but the tools work great.

* Bookmark the post to StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicous, and the rest of the bookmarking sites. If you are using a Wordpress, Orlywire has an interesting tool that allows you to automatically bookmark your post to your accounts.

* If you haven’t submitted your RSS feed to the multiple feed readers, then now is the time to do so.

* Update the post on your facebook, MySpace, ActiveRain and Broker Agent Social pages.

All of the above sounds like a lot of work, and it does take about an hour to complete all of the steps. However, where you may attract one or two real estate leads from the post alone, you can now expects a few hundred more people to find you from your search engine optimization activities.

Update On Real Estate SEO Tools

2009-09-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

This is an update to my previous post where I described my experiment where I used the automatic article directory submission system, Unique Article Wizard to make a single article unique and to submit it to over 600 directories.

If you read the previous post, what I had done as part of the experiment is to take the actual post and write two additional versions with similar syntax so that the Unique Article Wizard system would be able to randomize the paragraphs to make each article unique. I then submitted my three articles to the Unique Article Wizard system and measured the backlinks to our site that offers the discount on RedX REALTOR leads page. Because I used a pen name as part of the experiment, I included the unique word xyssion in the post so that it could be easily searched. As in the previous post, xyssion did not have any data associated with it on google when I published the first article.

Okay with that background, here are the results of the experiment. Within four days of publishing the article the term xyssion returned 16 entries on google that backlinked to our Agents Online and Lockbox websites. As of today, a search for the term on google returned 87 entries (60 on bing), all of which are links provided back from syndication of that one article. The actual number of links is much greater, but these are the sites that have been actively indexed and rank at an acceptable level.

From an SEO standpoint, the article and subsequent publication of it took about two hours. Eighty-seven active backlinks from two hours worth of work sure beats the thirty hours I spent submitting MLSNI.com to various directories to get fifty active links, so I think this experiment can be classified as a success. Now I’m looking for a tool to speed up that manual process of directory submission. I’ll let you know if I find a good one.

SEO Backlink Tools

2009-09-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a bit of article marketing lately to promote the RedX FSBO and Real Estate Lead service and have found two very effective tools to attract numerous backlinks without a lot of work. The first tool takes your article, walks you through a process to create multiple unique versions of each paragraph, the automatically submits a hundreds of unique versions to over six hundred directories. The service is the Unique Article Wizard, and I found it by reading about various backlink shortcuts on a few different internet marketing forums.

The service came highly rated, and I have been using it for a short time. So far I have published two articles with the identifier “randy xyllion” and one containing the word “xyssion.” In the past two days, I have 106 indexed links from google for the xyllion articles and 16 links from bing back to the xyssion. Overall, not bad for drafting three articles about internet marketing and sending them out to the world.

The other tool that I have recently had success with in building backlinks to increase the search engine position of my agents online website as well as the supra ekey and lockbox sites is a service called the LinkJuicer. Okay, not a great name, but an interesting service. If you recall how a link circle used to work with multiple participants sharing links back to other member’s websites, this service will be very familiar. Essentially, the LinkJuicer is the social network equivalent of a link circle. The beauty of the service however is that backlinks to your site grow slowly and naturally over time as the system places your link into the social accounts of other participants and places links to their site from yours. Because the system limits the addition of only three sites per day and includes fifteen of the popular online social networks, your backlinks grow slowly and reliable which the search engines just love.

New Supra Ekey Lockboxes

2009-08-07T22:59:00.000-07:00

I have been doing some searching recently and found that from an SEO standpoint, there are a few words that may be very easy to get highly ranked. The two words that seem to keep popping up in the real estate realm are lockbox and supra ekey and strangely enough Planet Realtor which is the florida MLS system.

As part of my ongoing learning curve with different types of site optimization and landing page creation, I secured the URL's lockbox.me and PLANETREALTOR.INFO and supraekey.org. I have loaded a temporary page on the lockbox site, but have not determined what I will eventually do with it. The same goes for the supra ekey lockbox and keysafe site as well as planet realtor.

Ten Twitter Tools Real Estate Agents Can't Live Without

2009-06-18T00:20:00.000-07:00

I have been working with Twitter quite a bit lately, and I thought I would list those that I have found most useful for real estate agents to attract leads. These tools have been great in helping me promote both the discounts on the RedX listing lead service, and single property sites.

Here are the top ten Twitter Tools

EasyTweets: Get notified if someone tweets you, your blog, or any brand you want to engage with

Twellow: If you haven’t registered your Real Estate Twitter account on Twollow, it is time to do so.

Twollow: Take some of the hassle out of searching for your prospects. Twollow automatically follows your prospects based upon your target keywords

Notify.me: Would’t you like to know the instant a prospect needs your services? Notify.me lets you know by chat, SMS, or email when a prospect raises their hand.

TweetLater: Would’t it be great if you had an autoresponder on your account, or could schedule your tweets in advance? Oh yeah, you can…. VacaTweet can be uses for an autoresponder as well

BubbleTweet: Add a personalized video to your twitter account.

PeopleBrowser: The only application that I have found where you can geo-target a keyword search

Twitter Karma: To bulk follow or unfollow your followers

TweetLister: Now you can post your full listings

TweetDeck: Useful desktop management of your twitter followers

http://bit.ly/Cxf6x

Create A Wordpress Blog

2009-06-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

I have been reading different posts on this and other real estate related sites for the past few years as I promote 4MySales and the RedX lead generation service. There has been a lot of discussion regarding the different blog technologies, but and a niche industry has grown up in helping real estate agents create their own custom blogs. I have been working in this medium for a while, and while this may be old information for many of you, I did wan to share the exact process to creating your own Real Estate Blog on your own URL, without the need to hire a consultant. The blog platform that I will be describing is Wordpress, and it is quite user friendly to use.

With that as the background information, let’s begin.

1) Register for your URL. Pick one that has contains your primary target keyword.

2) Register for a hosted account on a Linux platform. Choose a host that has a cPanel interface, which is just a type of control panel. I use resellerzoom’s budget hosting site. It is six bucks per month and you can host multiple sites in one account.

3) On your hosting confirmation, there will be two DNS (Nameserver) addresses that look something like ns1-fannin.nswebhost.com. These are the nameserver addresses that you need your URL to point to. You can update your nameserver with your domain name registrar, either through their website, or by requesting help from the.

4) Now that you have a hosted account with a URL pointing to it, login to the cPanel account that was set up through your host. One of the buttons on the cPanel control panel should be Fantastico or fantastico deluxe. This is a tool that automatically installs blogs, forums or sites to your account. Click it it, and off to the right site, click on Wordpress. Fantastico will ask you for the name you wish to call your blog, the username and the password that you wish to use to access it. Fill out the form and click install. It is just that easy!

5) Fantastic sets up your blog, so now you just need to login and start customizing. Login to your new blog’s adim page, it is usually your blog directory / wp-admin. From your login dashboard area, you can access all of the tools available to customize wordpress. If you are new to Wordpress, my recommendation would be to first choose a theme. Click Appearance area and choose themes. There should only be two on your first install, but at the bottom of the page is a link to the theme directory. Go down, click it and start looking for a theme that will best exemplify your brand. You can also jump on Google or Bing and start searching for wordpless templates.

Depending on where you find your template, you can add it one of two ways. The first is through an automatic install if it is available. The second is to download the template to your website. Use an unzip utility to unzip it to a folder, then use an ftp client (I use filezilla) to upload the template to your website. If you need to upload a template using this approach, save your unzipped template folder to the Themes folder which is a sub-folder of one of the three main folders.

6) Once you have chosen and loaded your theme, go back to the Appearances/ Themes link and your new theme should show up. Click on it and in the top right corner there should be a link to make the theme active.

7) Now that you have chosen your theme, you can add some plugins which add video, social tools, links, pictures, news feeds, and any other resource that you would ever want. Go to the plugins tab. At the bottom of the page are links to get more plugins. Just like the theme, click on the link and go shopping. Install the plugins using the same methods as you used to install the theme. Either use the auto install if it is present, or if not, download the zipped file, unzip it and upload it to the subdirectory entitled Plugins. There is a way to automatically unzip the files in your directory, but it is beyond the scope of this article.

8) Once you have chosen and uploaded your plugins, activate them on the plugins page. Most of the admin functions for these various plugins will be found under the Settings link. Also, once you have activated your plugins, you can make them show up on your blog by clicking the Appearance link and clicking Widgets. Adding them to your blog is simply a matter of choosing and saving them.

That’s about it. Now all that you need to do is add pictures, update text and make your blog look pretty. It is a very straightforward process if you are looking to host a blog on your own URL instead of relying on your Blogger or Wordpress.com account.

TAGS: Wordpress, blogs, fantastico, resellerzoom, web host, web registrar, URL, plugins, wordpress themes

Getting Real Estate Leads With Twitter

2009-06-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

I was looking at this approach to promote our discount offer for the RedX listing lead system, but it’s possibilities are so much greater. The advantage of Twitter for real estate and mortgage professionals is that prospective clients post their needs online all day long. Thanks to this fantastic new technology, you get instant visibility to a prospective client’s needs, the second that he mentions them. It is then just a matter of making contact, offering your services, and working the relationship.

So how would you use this new technology to attract listing or selling clients? Well, getting a new lead is a simple as using one of the many available Twitter mashups that notify you when someone posts a target keyphrase. Combine that with a basic geo-targeted mashup and you have a system that will tell you when someone in your area posts text that could be considered a lead.

In writing that paragraph, it sounds a bit more complicated then it really is. Therefore, I’ll use an example. Suppose you are an agent that specializes in short sales or foreclosure. You would set up a notification service like Easy Tweets to notify you when someone posts the terms “short sale” “list of foreclosures” “home shopping” “looking at neighborhoods” “bidding on foreclosure” “looking for realtor” etc. When any twitter user posts these terms, you will get notified. The next step is to simply Follow these prospects in your own Twitter account and use a geo-targeting twitter mashup (there are a number of them out there) to determine if the poster is local to you. For those posters that are in your vicinity, simply reply by direct message to their post and courting them as an active prospect.

I have been looking for a geo-targeted system that combines the easy tweet notification system with geo targeting so that you only get notified about people in your area. However, I have yet to find that service. Because of that, you may need to sift through potential leads from across the US. If you do know of a system that combines the geo targeting with the keyword notification, let us all know.

Maximize Your Social Real Estate Marketing Online

2009-06-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

I received an email this morning from a company that teaches best practices in marketing. The offer was your standard lead generation tool offering a complimentary e-book download in exchange for an email registration. I have been using a similar method to promote our discount offer on the listing lead and FSBO lead service. There was nothing exciting about the offer, but what was interesting was the use of Twitter and social marketing tools to expand the reach of the offer. Just under the call to action and download button were the following phrases with associated graphics and links:

(I have changed the original links to those of the RedX for demonstration purposes. Try them to see how they interact with each social site. I hope to share how to create each of these links in futue posts.)

Have a Twitter Account? Tweet about this download!

Follow Barrett On Twitter @Leads4Realtors

Follow (company name) On Twitter @(company name)

Read Barrett’s Blog

Share on Facebook

The value in including these types of links into any of your real estate agent online marketing campaigns is obvious. It allows the recipients not only to spread your message, but also create a closer relationship to you. The tweet about this download link actually has a script that inputs the text directly into your twitter text box so you just need to click update after logging in. Overall, this is a nice, unobtrusive way to expand the reach of your word of mouth marketing programs and generate a few more leads.

Real Estate Blog SEO

2009-06-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

If you are using a Wordpress blog, there are a number of steps that you can take to better optimize it for search engines. In fact, for those of you who host your own real estate blog using the wordpress scripts, these optimization steps can be very easy and yield great results. For those of you who are familiar with these techniques, I apologize for re-presenting the basics, but I have found that many real estate bloggers have not taken these step in their own blogs. With that in mind, here is and introduction wordpress blog SEO 101.

Step 1. Under your settings / permalinks tab, be sure to change the URL structure to “custom structure” and include only the string /%postname%/ in the text box. This essentially makes the extended URL of your post the title of the post. If you include keywords in your posts, they end up in the actual URL. For example, in posting on the topic of prenatal vitamin (my wife’s blog) and using the post title Prenatal Vitamins, the blog URL becomes http://www.bloomennutrition.org/prenatal-vitamins which is about as keyword targeted as you can get with sub-directories.

Step 2. Under your settings / general tab, update the Blog address and Wordpress Address URL to include the www as opposed to the straight http://webaddress.com

Step 3. Find the wordpress AutoSocialPoster plugin. This tool allows you to automatically post a link to your new blog entries to many of your online bookmaking accounts. The plugin is not free, but is well worth the money. However, please be sure to check that it is compatible with the version of Wordpress that you are using.

Step 4. For the next step, increase the number of sites that announce / ping your new entries when you add a new post. Go to the settings / writing tab. At the bottom there is a text box with the URL http://rpc.pingomatic.com/. In this area add any other pinging services that you can find. A good list, and a great pinging tool, can be found at pingler.com.

Hopefully for those of you who are actively blogging, this post provides a little help. Separately, to provide an update on our Agents Online lead system for realtors project, the site pops up as number eleven on Google for the Agents Online term and number four for the same term in quotations. The real time SEO demonstration is progressing.

Working on Real Estate SEO on Bing

2009-06-01T21:35:00.001-07:00

I haven’t quite formed my opinion about Microsoft’s new release of their Bing search engine. In reading the reviews, I am not alone. I have spent a little time this afternoon trying to get a feel for what where my real estate listing lead site and associated links lay in the ranking. What I found is that this “because it’s not google” search alternative has a completely different algorithm which will likely require a completely different SEO strategy for your real estate website.

I am not sure if this new search engine will give google a run for its money in search engine terms. As Seth Godin put it, “Bing is trying to be the new Google. Unfortunately Google is the new Google.” However, it does have some interesting features.

Now for those of us who are trying to get our real estate website to the top of the ranking, optimizing for bing may require a different strategy. In fact, in looking up the search terms that index my site well on google, I there is little success on bing. The Expired Listing Lead term did return back my link to the RedX as the top link, but the multitude of other sites that typically show up in reference to me did not. For my Agent Online experiment, the site was not even indexed, and similar to google, real estate country did not return a link to my page, even when I typed in the exact URL. Even my wife’s’ “prenatal vitamins” page did not get indexed.

From what I can determine with the very limited experience that I have had with the site, it uses an algorithm similar to google’s but puts a high weight on sites that have been around a while along with those that are well linked. Unfortunately from an SEO standpoint there is not much that you can do to age your real estate URL.

Real Estate SEO, Getting to the Top of Google

2009-05-27T10:26:00.001-07:00

Those of you that have been reading this blog know that I am using the search term Agents Online and the associated website AgentsOnline.Org to demonstrate in real time how to get your website to the top page of a search engine for a specific phrase. For this specific example, I have chosen the phrase “Agents Online” and I am slowly moving the site up to the first page of google for that respective phrase.

To provide an update on where we are on this experiment, I signed up the URL AgentsOnline.org less than a month ago and created a basic website optimized for the term. Next I added links from this blog and built a Squidoo page which in turn linked to the site. I also created a twitter account dedicated to Agents Online. Currently there are about 16 total sites that are indexed on the search engines and link to this site.

Now for our progress on Google. If you search for the term “Agents Online” in quotes, the page ranks as number seven among the entries on the first page of Google. Not bad for having a site established for less than a month. When you search on google for Agents Online without the quotes, the page pop up as number 21 on Google which is at the top of the third page. While this is not as significant, it does make the point that by building a page optimized to a specific term, and using your target term as part of your URL, you can capture a premium place on the ranks of google very quickly.

Now to move the site rank up from number 21 to within the top ten we just need to add some more high quality, high page rank links. The can be achieved simply by posting comments on real estate related blogs, associated websites and forums.

As you read through this post, you will no doubt realize that this is a very easy way to boost your web traffic without extensive Pay per click. However, as a word of caution, this process doesn’t always work. For example our Real Estate Country site has yet to show up at an acceptable level for the term Real Estate Country.

Lead Generation Program With Twitter

2009-05-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

When I began working with this new technology I was very skeptical. I have had access to my twitter account which I used to promote our discount to the RedX listing lead generation system, but until recently have not spent much time using it. As a result, I am a little late to the game. However, now that I have a good grasp on the technology, I can see how real estate agents online should be utilizing this tool to attract leads.

Now what are the steps to incorporate Twitter into a campaign? Before we get started you need to understand that Twitter is only a single touch point for your prospective clients and that multiple touches are usually needed to attract a client. Also, understand that Twitter etiquette implies that when you follow someone’s tweets, they may in turn follow you.

With that background, what are the steps? The first step is to link your twitter account to any online page where you can be found. If you have a site, blog or online presence, add a “Follow me on Twitter” badge with a hyperlink to your twitter site.

To start using Twitter as a marketing tool, create an auto-responder on your twitter account so that when someone chooses to follow you, they will automatically receive a thank you with a call to action. I useTweetLater.com for my autoresponders. The message should thank the user for following, and include a call to action. Your may choose to make your call to action an offer for a free report, data, or some other offer that allows you to capture more information about your target lead. For example, my call to action is “Thanks for the Follow! Want a discount on listing leads from RedX? Visit me here for more info.”

The next step is to start tweeting. You should routinely tweet, but also be aware that there is a shortcut that you can use when you can’t post directly. If you have a blog that you update often, you can post the feed directly to your twitter account using TwitterFeed.

The next step in your twitter marketing should be to add followers. You can find followers who live in your area simply by doing a keyword search on the twitter user directory Twellow. Just search the twellow list for active tweeters that live in your area and follow those that fit the bill.

There are numerous other ways that you can include twitter as part of your marketing, including mobile messaging and even video. We won’t get into those details for this post, but may address them lager.

Finally, I did want to mention that we are still SEO-ing the term, AgentsOnline but it has not yet been indexed on Google. It should be soon.

Agents Online- Real Time Update and Google SEO

2009-05-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

As previously stated, I am committed to demonstrating how you can use a long tail keyword and some very basic online tools to get your website, or at least its online landing page, to the top of google. To recap, I have chosen the search term Agents Online which receives about 11,000 searches per month according to google’s keyword tool. I have registered for the URL http://www.agentsonline.org and last evening I spent about two hours on Dreamweaver creating a multi-page website. I copied much of the data from the failed Real Estate Country site, but optimized it for the search term Agents Online.

Because the web page is basically an experiment and essentially promotes the RedX expired listing lead system, I didn’t spend a lot of time on the format so it is pretty basic. However, I did employ some very basic SEO techniques including having different descriptions and tags for each page, parsing the data on multiple pages within the site, and including a privacy policy. Anyway, here is the site for agents online.

As we all know, having a website does not mean that traffic will just show up; even if you do have an appropriate URL. Therefore, the next step is getting backlinks and doing some online promotion. In that vein, early this morning I created a squidoo lens focused on the term Agents Online and bookmarked the page on StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us, and registered for the Blogger Blog Real Estate Agents Online The reason for the lens and the blog on blogger is that both have a relatively high page rank out of the gate and both allow for “dofollow” links. Also, every time I post something to a blog, I run the URL through pingler.com so that the search engines know that new content is available.

So this was the preliminary work for this project. Over the next few days, I will be posting links to the Agents Online site wherever I can. It may take two or three weeks for the site to actually get indexed by google, but these links give it a head start. In about ten days, you should be able to google the term “agents online” and at least one, probably more, of the links described above will appear on the first page. Shortly after that, the actual agents online website should appear.

Real Time Update on Getting to the Fist Page of Google

2009-05-18T17:08:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned before, this blog thread is attempting to show you how you can get your site to the top of the search for a given long-tail keyword on google. I am little less confident in this post due to the challenges in getting realtestatecountry.net to show up on the first page of google for the term real estate country. However, I think I will have more success with the term “agents online.”

Anyway, to provide an update, I registered the URL agentsonline.org on Friday with godaddy.com. The URL cost $14.00 which is an insignificant cost in comparison to the traffic that should be seen if this process works out. I have spent two hours today drafting the text that will appear on the agents online website and will be posting it over the next few days. If I have the time and things actually go according to plan this time, the site should show up under the term agents online within the next two weeks.

Keep in mind that the process that I am describing, if it works, should be easily duplicated for whatever long tail keyword you are trying to optimize. For example, if you are trying to optimize for REALTORS in Naples, this methodology should be relatively successful.

It's Reat Estate SEO Time Again with Agents Online

2009-05-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, the fact of the matter is that sometimes your SEO plans work out and sometimes they don’t. For example, I published the real estate country website with intentions to get it on the first page of google for the search phrase “real estate country.” To date the page has not shown up in the top searches for Google, and is in fact very poorly ranked. I blame lack of planning on my part as United Country seems to have numerous high ranking pages that show up under the Real Estate Country Term.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This afternoon I registered for another term that I feel will be better suited to demonstrate the SEO strategy that I have been sharing for the past while. This new term, Agents Online, gets between 11,000 and 18,000 searches on Google per month. Obviously the term targets real estate agents, I have been a member of the site for eight years, but there are very few competitive sites optimized for that term.

With this new term, here is the strategy: Use XSite Pro to create a website optimized to the term Agents Online. After that, establish backlinks to the site by posting comments on the many social networks and blogs that cater to the real estate segment. I also plan to the site on the few blogs that I manage myself. In fact, wherever there is the ability to place a dofollow link on a website, do so.

After that, it is a matter of reporting on the success. Hopefully I will have better luck demonstrating how to use this technique to search engine optimize your real estate lead generation pages than I did with Real Estate Country.

REALTOR Marketing With Mobile Messaging

2009-05-14T12:23:00.001-07:00

I attended an online seminar today the topic of mobile messaging. My purpose for attending was to look for ways to promote our expired listing lead service. The data presented was pretty compelling; especially if you have a list of prospects that you are challenged to stay in contact with. The technology has moved to the point that you can now offer your prospects a way to stay continually in touch with you and the services that you provide. The technology is not completely new. There have been online companies that provide listing data in response to a specific mobile text numbers that you can post on your listing. Unfortunately, these systems usually provide a one-off communication with your prospect, and some rudimentary contact information from which to follow up.

This approach which is well known to most real estate agents is completely different than what was presented. The example that was provided was a communication that was sent out from during a concert to those who had registered to receive mobile updates. The communication included a coupon code and an invitation to forward that coupon on to each of the recipient’s friends which essentially made the message viral. Now I know that you are not putting on large rock concerts, and probably don’t have that big of a budget; also, real estate is a completely different animal. However, the strategy remains the same.

As a marketer, here is how I would recommend real estate agents use this technology:

1) Getting leads: contract with a SMS text service provider so that you can put different text codes on different listing signs and advertisements that you place. There are a number that serve the real estate industry, but make sure that they have an autoresponder system so that after the first text is sent, the textee is sent a follow up requesting permission to provide additional updates. You want your list of leads to opt in to the communication.

2) Sending a list of listings may be trite, let’s face it, we all do it as a standard of practice with little differentiation. Instead, send out data that is both useful to your prospective customer and unique to you. If you tie the text numbers to a specific advertisement, you can at least assume some things about the individual who requested the data. From there, you can create follow-on texts that may suite the prospect’s interest. These may include new listings that are similar to what originally prompted the text. For differentiation and the viral spin, you may want to send local updated on local events. You may also go as far as approaching some of the advertisers in the local clipper magazines and mailers and request permission to forward their offer to your target list. Let’s face it, when was the last time you received a free pizza or 20% off dinner at your local Chinese restaurant from your Realtor?

Improving Keyword Search Traffic

2009-05-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

My ideas building squeeze pages is not unique, and is in fact becoming a widely practiced technique for search engine optimization. As a reminder, a squeeze page is a search engine optimized keyword specific landing page to gather leads. An example of this would be my expired listing lead site, realestatecountry.net.

Here is a link to a Marketing Sherpa article on how Jelly Belly has used this technique to grow their online customer acquisition and conversion by 200%. Now for many REALTORs, using an enterprise system to create 500 keyword specific pages is just not economically viable. However, I can tell you that similar results can be achieved with a simple WordPress blog, templates and a godaddy account.

Just to keep score on which of my links are currently getting first page exposure for a search term on Google, “Real Estate country” is still low on Google, but gaining rank. Expired Listing lead and Expired Listing Lead software is dominated by my links. For my wife, “Chewable Prenatal Vitamin” shows up on Google twice with a link to Bloom’en Nutrition, and I just registered PregnancyVitamin.net so we shall see when it finally ranks after I get the pages loaded.

Squeeze Pages to Get to the Top of Google

2009-04-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

If you have read my previous blog, you know that I have been spending time lately developing landing sites for our expired listing lead software that quickly get to the first page of google for a given search term. The benefit of this technique is obvious in that five hours worth of work can result in a torrent of traffic that would have otherwise cost a fortune. Unfortunately, each of these sites takes about five hours worth of work to develop using Dreamweaver, or at least three hours using Xsite Pro.

However, recently I have found a tool that promises to shorten that time investment into about an hour from start to finish, not including the research into the keyword. The tool is simply a Wordpress Theme generator that quickly turns any Wordpress installation into an active and formatable landing page. The actual term for the sites that result from this Wordpress theme are Squeeze Pages (landing pages designed to attract leads online.)

So what is the advantage of this new tool?

Actually, there are a couple. The first is that Google loves Wordpress blogs which gives you a leg up when you get started. The second is that all that is required to create an effective lead generation page is to upload a wordpress blog, choose the theme, and type your keyword-optimized advertisement. As I said before, it is a lot quicker than creating a site from scratch, and once you have modified your template, you only need to make minor modifications to the text to optimize it for another keyword. As I said, this tool promises to save a lot of time.

So just to re-cap, what do you do in order to get a site to show up on the first page of google?

1) Use the google keyword tool to find a search term that your target client would typically search. Find keywords that have a large number of searches, but few sites that are directly optimized for that site.

2) Register for the URL of that keyword. If possible, get the .com version

3) Create a Wordpress Blog (many web hosts that offer the cPanel control panel have an automated installer built in.)

4) Upload your squeeze page theme.

5) Modify the text and images of the theme to meet the needs of your brand. I would recommend making these changes, then downloading the version to your hard drive so that you only need to make the formatting changes once.

6) Publish the blog, place the appropriate links back to your real estate home page.

7) Start placing backlinks.

What you will find is that your site will initially get indexed pretty far down the google ladder, and occasionally won’t get indexed at all. (this happened to me with realestatecountry.net.) Regardless, over the next few weeks, start adding links to the site from any real estate-related websites that you have access to. Place a link back to the site on your ActiveRain blog as well as any other blog you manage. Get as many links from real estate-related sites back to the page as these will ultimately determine where your site ends up on the search engine ladder.

After a few weeks, if you have sufficient links, your site should creep to the top of the search engine ladder. As an example of how this technique works, google expired listing leads. How many entries that link back to 4MySales or Barrett Niehus can you count?

Optimizing Your Page for Real Estate Leads

2009-04-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

I have used a number of them in getting my REALTOR lead system into the top listing on Google. One of the techniques that I have had some success in recently is creating squeeze pages for specific search terms. A queeze page simply being a landing site designed to generate leads that is optimized for a specific search term. To provide a basic example, let's say hypothetically that youwork in Orem Utah and specialize in executive homes. To date your website has not shown up under the search term “executive homes orem” or “orem realtor executive homes” but through your research you know that those terms are often searched and meet your target demographic. How you would develop and use a squeeze page would be as follows:

Register for the url of your given search terms. When registering these URL’s use the specific term that you are targeting. As a side note, I have found more success in not including hyphens, but instead having the word run together in the URL; i.e www.realtorexecutive. com instead of www.realtor-executive.com.

When creating the actual landing page, you have a number of choices. If you are versed in HTML, Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Front Page are good toolsl. If HTML is foreign to you, then there is a quick site development tool called XSite Pro that makes creating a keyword optimized site extremely easy with no programming involved. When you develop a squeeze page, create multiple sub pages. Generally the site needs to be more than a single page to get any attention from Google.

There are a few basic rules that you should consider following when developing your page. The first is that for google, multiple pages with good keyword content typically ranks better. The second is that a privacy policy is smiled upon by both your visitors and your search engines. The third is that you want the visitor to take action within seconds of hitting your landing page so have a strong call to action. Fourth, if your squeeze page is requesting contact information, keep the amount of information that you request limited, and offer value for that information. All too often I see REALTORS who have six or more qualifying questions on their lead generation pages. In order to optimize your leads, capture just name, email and possibly phone. You can qualify the lead at a later date and the more information you request up front, the fewer leads you will receive. The fifth and final rule is that you want to control your visitor’s experience. For these pages, you want to limit the visitor’s behavior to submitting their information, or learning a little bit more about the offer before submitting their information. Choices equal confusion which results in hesitation and inactivity. Create your squeeze page so that you have two or three good pages that are optimized to your target search term. Include your lead generating offer on each of the pages and be sure to include a privacy policy. Where applicable, also link to your home page so that your prospect can get back to your site. This may sound like a lot of work, but if you do this part correctly, you will likely get much more traffic at a lower cost than trying to PPC advertise for your target search term.

Once you have built your site, upload it to the web and start getting backlinks to it. It is important to know up front that backlinks directly impact the page rank of your site, and that they will be necessary to get to that first page for your given search term. Fortunately, creating the backlinks yourself are pretty easy. First and foremost, create a link to your new site from your blog. Also, it would behoove you to create a blogger blog using the same URL (executivehomesorem.blogspot.com for example) and post a link to the new squeeze page from that blog. (Pleasse note that if you create the blog, you will need to post content to it as well.) Post a link to your page from your ActiveRain account, any HubPages or Squidoo lenses that you may have. Essentially post a link on any real estate related site that you can. Remember that each additional link to the site improves the possibility that it will show up on the first page of google.

Now, as a real world example, I have been spending time trying to get traffic to my wife’s business, Bloomen Nutrition and have used this technique over the past few weeks for the terms “while pregnant”, “chewable prenatal vitamin”, and “what to expect when expecting.” She owns a prenatal nutrition company and I have been focusing my talents on getting her up and running instead of focusing on real estate. Regardless, here is the example. If you google those terms what you will find is that chewable prenatal vitamin results in www.chewableprenatalvitamin.com showing up halfway down the page. For the term while pregnant, the site still needs a few backlinks because the whilepregnant.net site is showing up as the 19^th link on page two of google, and I just completed the site for what to expect when expecting, so we will see where http://whattoexpectwhenexpecting.net/ ends up.

Attracting Real Estate Leads Through Twitter

2009-03-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

I have shifted my focus from getting front page links from google to our expired listing lead software and am instead working with Twitter to do some marketing.. The micro-blogging tool is getting popular and has finally hit mainstream media. With all of those individuals tweeting, how do you take advantage of it to attract new clients and listings? The best way is to garner as many followers that meet your target demographic as possible, and use their initial follow as well as your tweets to emphasize your brand. So how do get followers, and how do you automate the process?

Because effective Twitter marketing means attracting as many followers as possible, setting up an autofollow, auto-responder and auto-reciprocate tool is a great way to improve your reach and campaign effectiveness. The tools that help in this process are Tweetlater.com which allows you to autorespond followers with a direct message as well as automatically reciprocate follows. Combine Tweetlater.com with the keyword autofollow power of Twollow and you can automate most of the marketing with the exception of actually posting content. There are rss twitter autopostng services that allow you to post content as well, but we won’t go into them in this discussion.

As you begin posting to twitter, follow those that have your target keywords in either their conversation or profile. Roughly 30% of those that you follow will end up following you back. After a couple of days, unfollow any of those that have not followed you so that your ratio of followers to followees does not get too far out of whack.

Formalization of Growing the Visibility of Real Estate Country

2009-03-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I posted to my real time blog of getting my real estate pages to cover the first page of google for a given search word. So Freetrainer.com and associated links are in the first three listings on Google for the term Expired Listing Lead in addition, for my wife’s business, I have five of the first page listings on google for the term “prenatal vitamin chews” The challenge has been that I am still working toward getting the term “Real Estate Country” listed on the first page and it is proving to be more competitive than I had originally thought. Who knew that UnitedCountry would have such a strong presence online?

In evaluating the different strategies to get even more linked sites listed on google’s first page for the given word, I found an online e-book that formalized what I have been describing. I won’t go into details about the book, but the concept is simply that instead of creating a bunch of linked sites that all link together, create a site, add one link to your central page (www.freetrainer.com for example) and one or two links to the next page, blog, hub, squidoo, or other site that you create.

As an example, the Real Estate Country blog links to the home page and will be linking to a Squidoo page. The idea is to create a wheel of sites that have just one or two links to your critical pages as well as a consolidated link to your next creation so that the spiders can follow. By building out your wheel, you can have a very targeted group of sites that focus on your specific niche and keywords, but don’t get penalized for having a large number of outgoing links.

Overall, the link wheel should serve to improve your search ranking for a given site, and if done properly, those additional sites that you create will also show up under that search term on Google.

The Step by Step Domination of the First Page of Google, Continued

2009-03-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

I have been a bit lax in my activities of getting links to realestatecountry.net to cover the most of the first page of google for the search term “real estate country” This is primarily due to a lot of other activities going on such as helping my wire promote her chewable prenatal vitamin website. Anyway, I am making some small progress and thought I would update some of my real time activities to continue to demonstrate how to get your site and sites managed by you to the top of the search engine for a given search term.

When I last posted, I was mentioning creating a number of squidoo and hub pages for Real Estate Country. While these are still a priority as my next step, I decided to create a blogger blog for the topic instead. I posted my first article today which was a very basic introduction to the blog. As time goes by, I will continue to post real estate country related articles on that blog as well as the other real estate blogs that I manage in an effort to get that and other blogs to show up under this keyword. The strategy is to have this blog and the other related blogs show up in the top ten under the search term so regardless of where the searcher clicks, they end up connecting with me.

I chose to create the blogger blog before the sqidoo page because I recently read that both Squidoo and Hub pages provide nofollow links which means that the search engines don’t really count them for backlinks. I have also read that Google may disregard this feature for these sites, so the jury is out. With that in mind, I thought getting at least one of my real estate country sites onto the first page of google should be the priority.

So the next steps in this step by step strategy are to:

1) Create one or two keyword-specific blogs and start populating them with good content. Use blogger as it has a very high PR as part of the google platform.

2) When you have time, start creating squidoo lenses and hub pages on your specific topic and search term.

Step by Step Guide to Cover the First Page of Google, a Small Challenge

2009-03-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have been following along, I am using these posts to go through the step by step process of covering the first page of google with links back to your site. My first demonstration of this was the links to my RedX and 4MySales page under the search term “expired listing leads” The second is the multiple links to Bloomen Nutrition under the search “prenatal vitamin chews.”

Anyway, this newest project was to get as many links on the first page of Google as possible for the term “real estate country” However, I hit a bit of a snag. The site has yet to be indexed by google, and in further examination, I have found that it is an expired URL that was likely has a bad history with google. So here is what I am going to do. For the next while, I will work at the term and see if we can’t get a few of the linked pages indexed by google, even though the target page will likely not show up. This is a little off from the original strategy, but I think it will still work out.

So what are the steps for this week? Two things, bookmarks and sqidoo pages. The bookmarks are pretty self explanatory, add the real estate country link to as many of the social bookmarking sites as possible. The squidoo pages are a little more challenging. As time allows, create a squidoo lens that deals with the topic of real estate country. Make the lens useful so that it will attract traffic, and create a lens group around it. After creating the lens, make five or ten more. With each of these lenses, add content that people searching for the target real estate terms will find, read, and subsequently click back to the original site.

This activity is going to take me a couple of days, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Daily Steps to Cover the First Page of Google – Day 2

2009-02-26T13:07:00.001-08:00

This is a continuation of my real time description of how to get links to your site cover most of the first page of google for a specific search term. If you have been following along, I started this project yesterday and plan to describe each of the steps taken to cover the first page of google for the search term “real estate country.”

Yesterday I registered for the URL realestatecountry.net , and today I have uploaded the first page of the site. Because this is an experiment as opposed to a full website project, I have chosen a single page with an attached blog. In reality, it is much easier to get a larger site indexed and the search engines tend to like multiple pages that have content that routinely changes. For the purposes of this project, we are going with the one pager and associated blog.

I created the one page site featuring a link to the Redx Expired Listing Lead and FSBO service. I included the keyword a few times and even linked those keywords back to the site (see Ultimate Search Engine Loophole.) After uploading the site, I added it to a number of bookmark sites to try and get it indexed. As of now, it has not been found by our target search engine, but eventually it will.

These first steps are just to create a website that can accept traffic and appear on the search engines. It is pretty basic stuff, so I apologize for boring you with the details. After I get the site where I want it to be, I will start giving you the play by play on promotion. Just to repeate, this project is to get not only the realestatecountry.net site returned in the top ten on google, but to have many other links to that site returned as well. At the end of the project, I hope that the search term returns at least five sites that link to realestatecountry.net.

A Real Time Guide to Dominate the First Page of Google

2009-02-25T15:07:00.001-08:00

I had previously discussed an approach to get the many of the entries on the first page returned by google to point to your website for a given keyword. I used the keyword search “Expired Listing Leads” and the numerous entries on the first page of google that point to my sites promoting the savings that you can enjoy by registering for the RedX expired listing lead service through FreeTrainer.com.

As a teaching tool, I have decided to share with your in real time, or at least daily posts the step by step process to cover the first page of google for a given keyword. My approach is to choose a keyword and promote my links on the web such that at least five of the ten results on the first page of google return a link back to me.

With that in mind, step number one is to choose the keyword, I used Googles Adsense Keyword tool for this project and determine what keyword is going to give you the most amount of traffic with the lowest level of competition. For this project, I am promoting expired listing leads for real estate agents. When you use the keyword tool, you find that Real Estate is extremely competitive in online promotion so after some digging, I found the phrase “Real Estate Country” which returns about 1.2 million searches per month and is relatively sparse in the way of competition.

As a side note, if you are focusing on your own real estate business in a specific city, the number of monthly searches will be a lot less and much more targeted. Regardless, the same logic applies. Choose the term with the highest number of searches that will be made most often by your target clients.

With the above in mind, I have just finished registering for the URL realestatecountry.net and signed up for a hosting account with godaddy.com. Over the next few days I will place the website which will be simple two or three page site, most likely with a blog or rss feed.

In summary, here is step one: Choose a keyword that does not have a lot of competition, but does have a high number of searches. Register your url with that keyword. We will work on the the site in the next discussion.

By the way, I am still also doing this with the prenatal chew business as well and the entry returns Bloomen Nutriton at the top of the first three pages of google. Not quiet all over the first page, but we are making progress.

Appear Multiple Times on the First Page of Google

2009-02-19T13:05:00.001-08:00

Google “Expired Listing Leads,” Half of the page references me through 4MySales, Barrett Niehus, or through my relationship with the RedX Expired Listing Lead Service and its associated savings. Getting this type of rank can be a good amount of work, but it can also help you attract many many clients. So what is exactly do you need to do to dominate the first page of google to maximize your web traffic?

The approach simple, and just requires you to realize that you need to have relatively big presence online, with a keword-narrow focus. What does that mean? It’s simple really. I have lectured for a while that in order to be a successful Realtor you need to serve a niche and create a value proposition that differentiates you from your competition. That sentiment is reflected online, but with some SEO specific caveats.

So what are the steps to get your links listed on the first or ten results on google for a specific search word go back to you? It all starts with picking the right search words. Depending on the group and cities that you want to target, start creating a list of keywords that you feel that your clients will be searching for. With this list, use a keyword tool (I actually prefer the Adwords keyword manager for Google) and take a look at the relative number of searches that your target keywords get per month.

After choosing your keyword, optimize your website for that word. I won’t go into details on site optimization, but be sure to update your meta tags, description and the keyword frequency in the body copy of your site.

The next step is much more critical. Start increasing your online footprint to feature that keyword and link back to your site. Start a blog on blogger and choose that keyword as the URL (for some reason hyphens aren’t currently searching as well as run-on words so choose URL’s such as realtorleads.blogspot.com as opposed to realtor-leads.blogspot.com.) Post a few keyword-rich articles to that blog and add links back to your home page on the blog-roll. Add other links to your blog roll as well, but if possible add nofollow tags to those links as they do affect the pagerank of the blog. If you have a similar topic with a related keyword, you may choose to two or three related blogs. However, don’t overdo it as legitimately keeping these blogs up is a challenge and at certain levels it could be considered spam. For me I have just two blogger sites dedicated to real estate, the most active dealing with viral marketing for REALTORS.

After completing this work on blogger, you may choose to do something similar with Wordpress. The idea is to get five to ten quality blogs that you can legitimately maintain by posting just an entry per day. After you have created your sites, be sure to ping them to the various blog search networks so that they get indexed promptly.

Next, turn to social networks and for each netword, choose a username that is your keyword. Create your profile using keyword rich text, and use these pages as well as your blogs as selling opportunities. People in the network will find you and connect with you, so put your best face forward. Spend time getting to know the community and post information that will help the community grow.

After creating your presence in the communities, spend some time on Squidoo and Hubpages creating lenses and pages that feature your keyword and link back to your site. Once again, the idea is that when a person searches a specific phrase, multiple pages from different sites all linking to you show up.

Once you have done all of the above, it is a matter of maintaining the content on all the sites (I allocate an hour a day for the prospecting expireds system.) and adding content that serves your target search term.

It is a fair amount of work, but the system does work. My current project is Bloom’en Nutrition Prenatal Vitamin Chews. I just started last week with the search term “prenatal vitamin chews” so there are only two entries on the first page of google that go back to Bloom’en Nutrition.

Yet another Way To Increase Your Search Ranking

2009-02-18T09:43:00.001-08:00

I spent a fair amount of time reading message boards a few nights ago trying to find new ideas to get backlinks to the RedX expired listing lead service when, after a lot of reading, I ended up on Yahoo Answers. As an individual with a background in real estate, marketing, and strangely enough nutrition, I started answering questions about short sales, foreclosures, bank owned properties, etc. On every answer, I put a link back to my 4MySales.com site and a keyword-rich description of my area of expertise as part of the source box. After about two hours of answering questions, I went to bed.

Anyway, I checked my backinks yesterday, and a number of my answers showed up as indexed by google. These indexed pages were short lived, but they may have had an effect on my overall rank.

With that in mind, here’s the approach and possible benefit. If you do not yet have a yahoo answers account get one. Spend some time with your profile as it is an extension of your professional bran. Do a search for a real estate topic that serves both your area of expertise as well as your local geography. Start posting answers to questions, and in the resource box make sure to include a link back to your site, with a keyword rich description of your qualifications.

The benefits are that many people read the questions and answers so you may get quite a bit of traffic from the post. In addition, it looks to me like the links do get indexed which should help with your overall search engine ranking.

Finally, if you want an application that runs on your desktop that will notify you when a question that you can answer is asked, answersniper or answereye may be something to look at. Both can also be configured to be abused, BUT DON’T USE THEM THAT WAY.

Automated Directory Submitting, Fast and Easy

2009-02-16T11:33:00.000-08:00

Previously, I suggested a quicker way to submit your URL to the multitude of internet directories to grow your backlinks. I did this for a few hours on Friday to grow the links to the discount page of the RedX expired listing lead software and system. Fortunately for me, in my search for an even better approach to directory submission I found a website that automates almost all of the process. I spent another four hours on Saturday submitting 4MySales.com to promote my relationship with the Real Estate Data Exchange (Red X) to the list of directoris and received about 400 backlinks by the end of the process..

The website that I found is http://www.availablescript.com/submiter/index.php?menu=join with the corresponding password of hallo. What the system does is uses a script similar to that of directory submitter to populate all of the fields of your target directory. The only think that you need to do is enter the captcha (human identifier string) and choose the best subdirectory for your particular URL. It is a pretty cool tool and the number of link confirmations that I received in my email confirms that it does work.

An Easier Way to Get Backlinks

2009-02-12T17:07:00.000-08:00

There are many tools that I have found to promote the RedX real time listing lead service, and although many of them have been found on discussion areas and groups that focus on the more seedy approach to online marketing, some of these tools do have an application in the white hat world of online marketing.

One approach that has potential is simply what I have been doing manually for the past ten years. Searching for lists of directories with high Page Rank, going to those sites and submitting my link manually. The frustration that I run into is that it takes a whole lot of time to search each directly and after page ten or so in Google, many of the links repeat.

So turning to the black hat guys and their discussions, I think I have found a faster and still white hat approach to get backlinks from directories. I have been using Article Submitter to automatically submit my articles to the various e-zine article directories on the web. The tool shows the link to the website in the top window and the actual website in the lower window. When used to submit articles, the software automatically (more or less) accesses your account for each site and automatically (once again more or less) posts the article. However, there is an purpose application for the software, specifically because it does show the website in the bottom window. That application is to speed up the subscription to hundreds of online directories.

This is the approach. Article Submitter allows you to upload your own list of URL’s. To use it for directory submission, search online for a list of good directories, or Google online directories and start copying web addresses. You can also use what is known as a URL scraper and search for directories to expedite the collection of directory sites, but these are typically tools for spammers so use at your own risk.

Once you have collected your list of URL’s, upload them into Article Submitter. Add your link information into the software and start manually clicking (you won’t be able to use the auto-submit feature for this) each of the links on your list. Because the URL’s show the website in the bottom window in the software, you can manually go through the registration process for each directory. Your progress is expedited because the software automatically populates forms within the site.

Now I am not saying that adding your link to directories is not still going to take some time, especially if you are doing it legitimately. However, just by having a single list with the ability to automatically insert your links into forms is going to save a great deal of time which adds efficiency and will hopefully result in a lot more backlinks.

Online Marketing Resource; The Best That I Could Find

2009-02-11T10:21:00.000-08:00

It is obvious to most of you reading this post that online marketing is going to be the most cost effective way to attract new business. You have the farthest reach, can touch the most people and it is the only advertising that you can do to get prospective clients when they are sitting at their desk at work during the day. This is no shortage of places to learn about marketing your site online, and making the conversion process more streamlined, but I have to tell you that the information taught by MarketingExperiments in their bi-weekly webinars is by far the best. I attend their online marketing optimization webinars every other week and have a lot of success in growing the conversion and even the page rank of 4MySales.com and leveraging the benefits of the RedX real estate lead attraction system.

Marketing Experiments is owned by Marketing Sherpa, which is one of the most best known online marketing resources around. Their entire approach is to take the websites of small businesses and organizations, and run optimization experiments on those sites to increase lead capture by focusing on various aspects of the website and the steps that the prospect goes through as they convert to clients. The online webinars are hosted by a well respected team of researchers whose only job is to find out what best practices actually result in additional sales for a given website. The link to their site is above, and if you want a great resource to learn how to improve the effectiveness of your website and online marketing I would recommend Marketng Experiments.

Increase Your Online Traffic Using Two Simple Methods

2009-02-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

I am learning about to promote the RedX REALTOR Lead generation service so I have spent time on the SEO blogs, am a regular attendee of online marketing webinars, which by the way I am applying to Bloom’en, and spent hundreds of hours reading and watching videos on online promotion.

So what have I learned? The answer is quite a bit, but to simplify my learning, there are two basic approaches to increasing links to your site and increasing the site’s visibility on the main search engines. The first approach is to attract organic backlinks from the trillions of websites that are out there. The second approach is to generate your very own websites that you administer and place links on those sites to your own. Both approaches can be accomplished legitimately, or through black hat methods, but using both approaches together is very effective at generating the links that results in higher search engine placement.

We are all very familiar with the first approach, so I will spend my time on the second. The second approach is what I want to talk about because we are talking about creating decent page rank links to your site from other sites that you control. So what do I suggest? I have the following list to help get you started:

1) Online social networks rank really well. Odly enough, pageflakes and not so strangely facebook show up well on search engines as does Linked In links. If you don’t have accounts with links to your primary site, it is time to step up your online footprint.

2) Squiddo and Hub pages: If you have not created a lens in sqiddo or a hub page, consider doing so. By creating and administratin these pages, you can create some great links to your site from a page that has a relatively high page rank.

3) Create your own directory, forums and management websites. There is a lot of software available in the open source community that you can use to create unique sites that cater to your area of specialization or your neighborhood. Create them and sponsor them from your home page with anchor links.

4) Multiple blogs. I know it is time consuming, but as a google product, Blogger has a very high page rank; which means any links from a blogger site will have a high weight. Create a number of blogs, (don’t link them together) and add backlinks to your primary site. Recruit guest bloggers or pay per article ghost writers to create content. There are software programs out there that will actually scrape content from other sites, but these will get you banned from blogger. Unique original and legitimate content is best.

The intention with this program and what I have described is simply to expand your online footprint wherever possible. If you can create single page websites, or sites that have a lot of content, use them to drive traffic to your primary website. I know that time is valuable and what I have discussed above can initially take a lot of time, but the real estate market is becoming extremely cutthroat and your success may ultimately rely on how many people can find you online.

Grow Links to With a Black Hat Tool

2009-02-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

I am learning about the sneaky world of black hat marketing, and there are a number of tools that can be used to ethically promote links and traffic of your own website. As before, this is all in an effort to promote my relationship with the RedX expired listing lead system and the discounts. I am also saving money with some of this software by promoting my wife’s prenatal vitamin company, Bloom’en Nutrition as well.

Anyway, a few posts ago I mentioned an interesting software that automatically submits your entry to a couple hundred article and e-zine websites. Using the software quite a bite over the past few weeks and have found that duplicate content is a major hindrance to increasing my rank on the search engines. In doing some reading on the SEO and black hat forums I learned that Google may actually penalize your site for having duplicate content spread across the web. This leads to a conundrum, on the one hand you have at least hundreds of backlinks per article of various page rank, but on the other hand the penalty for duplicate content may bring your ranking down.

The solution, interestingly enough is another black hat tool designed specifically to increase SE rank. The product is known as a word spinner and what it does is takes your article posted on blog and randomly modifies the text to make is unique enough to make the resulting text 40 to 80 percent different than the original. The specific product that I found was WP Spinnner and it is a simple Wordpress plugin. To use it, you simply add an article and some alternative text or sentences to your article and post it to your wordpress blog. Each time you refresh your blog the WP Spinnner will change the article to read differently enough to appear as a new article. This is great for search engines because it makes the spiders think that there is new content on the blog each time it spiders the site, regardless of your posting schedule.

The real power of the spinner however is the ability to create multiple unique articles that can be submitted to the 300 plus article directories. It adds a little bit more time to the submission process, but instead of having 300 submissions that count as one link on google, I now have over 300 quality backlinks from unique articles every time I sit down to write and post.

Now if I can only find a software that combines the article submitter with a spinner, I will be set.

Increasing Traffic via YouTube

2009-01-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

Understand that the software that I am about to describe is considered black hat, and as such carries the risk of having your IP address banned from YouTube. However, for those of you that are interested, here we go.

Before I begin, let me tell you that this is a software that I have not used and don’t plan to, but have read extensively about. My approach for my discount offer on the RedX expired listing lead system it to remain above board so this YouTube software doesn’t quite fit my model. However, it keeps popping up on the black hat promotion groups as a way to explode site traffic through YouTube so I thought it may be interesting.

The software is TubeIncreaser and what is does is takes any video on YouTube and adds thousands of fake page views over a set period. As I understand it, after videos have been posted a while, those videos with few views naturally fall to the bottom of the categories. However, those with a large number of views, or those with rapidly increasing viewership actually increase in visibility on the site and subsequently get more and more traffic. Apparently the TubeIncreaser software tricks the YouTube algorithm into thinking that more and more people are viewing your video over time. Subsequently, real viewership of the video rises as does the corresponding web traffic.

Authority Black Book for Better Backlinks

2009-01-26T14:45:00.000-08:00

I was trying to update myself on the latest social marketing technology on Mashable.com when I found a link to an interesting e-book that I could use in my ever evolving online viral promotion strategy for my discount site of the RedX expired listing lead service.

The e-book is names the Authority Black Book and it explains the numerous approaches to increase the visibility and web traffic of your website. The e-book is fairly comprehensive, and with over 67 pages of data contains a great deal of data that can help to better understand the need and overall effectiveness of linking and membership programs with the myriad of online social networks. I know you have an Active Rain account, but do you have a facebook, twitter, stumbleupon, digg, reddit, etc.? Much of the information in the book can be considered common sense, but overall it is a good learning tool to help you grow your backlinks and increase your online presence.

Leveraging What the Profiteers Can Teach Us

2009-01-19T14:39:00.000-08:00

There are a few approaches that stand out as completely applicable to the white hat world. An approach that more nefarious online marketers use to garner ad revenue from pay per click adversities is to find a set of keywords that are underserved by advertisers and highly trafficked by the public users. The black hat marketers capitalize on these niches by creating thousands of pages of content to penetrate each corner of that niche. These marketers use a variety of tools such as those described in the Micro Niche Tool to locate search terms with opportunity and then a myriad of other software products to penetrate the niche.

As I have discussed previously, I am doing this research to find new ways to increase webtraffic to 4MySales.com and my discount offer for the Expired Listing Lead System from RedX. As such I am learning about the blue, black and white hat world of internet marketing. We have all talked about finding a niche in your own market and leveraging it to differentiate yourself. We have also discussed creating single page websites to service our long tail of keywords that we believe are applicable. However, I don’t believe anybody has suggested that we use tools like those discussed above to locate high volume low competition search terms, the create unique individual sites to specifically service those keywords.

My thoughts would be the following: Instead of trying to compete on the term real estate, or even Salt Lake City Real Estate, use the tools to find specific terms that are underserved such as Lease to Own Houses in Salt Lake City. After identifying the desired search terms, buy a URLs with those terms as part of the name, “leasttoownhousesinsaltlake” Finally, create a keyword specific sites that services that niche (see my previous entry on the Ultimate Search Engine Loophole) Finally, make sure that my blogs link to those pages and start alternating my signature pages with the different links. If necessary, create a few new blogs that specifically service and target those sites.

I know that it sounds like a lot of work because you are now managing multiple sites, or at least multiple blogs, but the concept is simply to create a bigger print on the web which may translate into more people being able to find you.

Increasing SEO With Automated Article Submission

2009-01-12T10:15:00.000-08:00

This week I was focused on finding a few new techniques that could be used to increase search ranking and web traffic. What I found in my research was that there are a number of affordable tools that are designed to automate the backlink process.

I am one for occasionally writing an article and then submitting it across the web (google Barrett Niehus) as part of my linking and web promotion strategy. I generally end up manually submitting my articles to around twelve article directories for republishing. This works great for me because the resource box for the article is always included which gets my name and links top the discount for the RedX Expired Listing Lead System in multiple places.

In my reading this weekend, I found a great new tool that is really going to streamline the process for me. The tool is a software package that automatically submits your article to over 350 different article directories. The software, Article Submitter, has a video that walks through the submission process, but essentially once you enter your article, author information and category data, the software goes to each directory website and populates the required forms and automatically submits the entire article. There are a few directories that require you to enter the captcha verification codes as part of the process, but it is pretty straightforward. Overall, the Article Submitter software allows me to increase the number of directory submission from around 15 to over 350!

Tags: SEO, Article Submitter, RedX, Expired Listnig Software, Automated Article Submission, Black Hat, White Hat, Blue Hat

Working With a Search Engine Loophole for MSN Live

2009-01-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

I am still exploring and learning about the world of blue hat to promote my 4MySales Site and the $149.00 discount to the RedX expired listing leads system and discovered a few new tools that look promising. I recently learned about a loophole that a black hat group claims to in MSN Live’s search algorithm. I found an pdf e-book that details exactly how to exploit loophole and went ahead and bought it. The e-book “The Ultimate Search Engine Loophole” describes in great detail how to create a single landing page that funnels visitors into your main site and uses blog multiple blog links to increase the page rank of that landing page in the MSN Live search engine to a high level.

The approach that the e-book describes is straight forward, but does require a single landing page that is light on text, a keyword specific URL, and a number of blogs, preferably Wordpress, that you can update with a linking algorithm or plugin. This weekend I put up two landing pages for two targeted keywords and started updating my blogs as well as convinced a few of my friends to add the plugins with my links to their blogs. It is probably too early to tell if I have been successful, but hopefully the approach recommended by the Ultimate Search Engine Loophole will result in a huge increase in traffic.

If you are thinking about using this approach yourself, I do feel that I need to mention that the loophole e-book was designed for the web group that exploits these loopholes for black hat programs, so the actual e-book does make reference to other more nefarious approaches to SEO.

A New Apporoach to Creating Backlinks

2009-01-02T14:40:00.000-08:00

In looking at the various web promotion techniquest that are out there, I have come across a few that seem to save a lot of time. I have been spending time posting bookmarks to the various social bookmark sites and I found a software, Bookmark Demon that has saved me hours of work.

Bookmark Demon is the one tool that I found that is actually very useful and completely automates the process of posting your real estate blog to all of the social bookmarking sites is Bookmark Demon the software is relatively simple to use and shows results within hours. For the social bookmarking sites, and there are a lot of them, it creates a user account, or use those that you have established, on the myriad of social bookmarking pages, then post the blog, website, or URL that you are working with on that site. For example, the tool will create a reddit.com and furl.com and del.icio.us, and stumbleupon account etc.and bookmark your site to each of those accounts.

I was trying to do this manually to get some attention to my site that features a discount for the RedX expired listing lead service. However, this is a far more simple way to save time and complete the task.

Let’s face it, in 2009 we need to save as much time as possible while increasing our real estate lead generation.

Expanded Expired Listing Lead Service

2008-07-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

My friends at the Real Estate Lead Generation Service, REDX have just launched their FSOB service into Canada! The number of services that they provide and the number of MLS’s that they cover has certainly expanded in recent years. Recently, they have added FSBO leads in addition to their expired listing leads, and are now actively expanding their coverage to include more of North America. Below is the press release announcing their new expansion.

As always, you can waive the $149.00 start up fee by signing up here: http://www.theredx.com/signup/4mysales.html

The RedX Launches Expansion Into Canada

Real Estate Data X-Change (RedX), the industry leading provider of
Expired and For-Sale-by-Owner (FSBO) lead generation and management solutions, today announced the expansion of its services into Canada, with the opening of 35 areas of its low-cost FSBO service.

The RedX launched the FSBO product to meet the specific needs of the
Canadian real estate professional. RedX FSBO leads service is very unique from other FSBO providers because we the FSBO leads are delivered directly into a very user friendly lead manager system, which is included with a subscription to the RedX FSBO service. The lead manager system gives the subscribers a tool for more than just prospecting FSBOs. The lead manager gives the subscribers the ability to write notes, set tasks, create marketing campaigns and flag leads, and much more.

The RedX utilizes advanced web and database technologies to deliver the highest quality and quantity FSBO lead in the market. The RedX scours local and national newspapers, real estate publications, and other public online sources to extracts the lead in its entirety.
In addition to interfacing with the lead manager, RedX FSBOs include:

• Real time FSBO lead delivery seven (7) days per week
• Customizable FSBO database search tool
• Reverse phone look ups performed on each FSBO lead
• No duplicate leads
• Free online training and scripts

“RedX FSBOs is a powerful enhancement to any real estate
professional prospecting, by providing them a tool that delivers new leads every day” said Curtis Fenn, Vice President of Sales for Real Estate Data X-Change.

About Real Estate Data X-Change, Inc.
Real Estate Data X-Change, Inc is a leading software technology and leads service provider for real estate professionals. The RedX assists real estate professionals in accomplishing their professional goals by providing them with accurate, timely and reliable data to aid them in building their business. We have designed powerful technology-based tools to help them access, manage, and utilize their real estate leads. Simply stated, the RedX's products and services help real estate professionals sell more homes while saving both time and money. http://www.theredx.com/

For more information about the RedX or to purchase RedX FSBO lead service, please visit http://www.theredx.com/signup/4mysales.html, or contact a RedX sales representative at
800-731-7339.

Viral Video Marketing

2008-01-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

Dan Ackerman Greenberg , of the The Comotion Group posted an interesting guest blog on TechCrunch a while ago on how to make your video go viral. Although some of his recommendations are a little too nefarious for my tastes, I do plan to implement some of the more direct approaches into my promotion of the RedX expired listing and FSBO lead generation system for real estate agents.

Overall, Ackerman claims to be successful in turning a video viral in just a few days, and shoots for at least 50,000 downloads. His techniques are as follows:
“Content is NOT King”

Make it short: 15-30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips

Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others. Ex: “Dramatic Hamster”

Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia

Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: “UFO Haiti”

Use attention-grabbing headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy xxxx, did that actually happen?!” Ex: “Stolen Nascar”

Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video. Ex: “Yoga 4 Dudes” "

Title Optimization
Post the video with a title that will grab attention and periodically change it if you are not getting enough traction.

Thumbnail Optimization
YouTube grabs the thumbnail from the middle of the video. Try to make the thumbnail contain a face, preferably a pretty female.

Commenting: Having a conversation with your circle
Make sure that all of your friends and colleagues are aware of the video and have a chance to comment, post. Ask them not to hold back on their opinions, a heated dialog creates attention.

Releasing all videos simultaneously
If you have a campaign, why make people wait to see the next installment?

Tag Strategically
I did not realize this, but YouTube uses the tags that you use to describe your video to populate the related content video block. If you have multiple videos, you can choose and obscure tag to make sure that all of your videos pop up when one is being viewed.

Metrics and Tracking
Dan recommended TubeMogul and VidMetrix both have the ability to submit your video to multiple online video networks with just one submission, and both have decent traffic tracking. TubeMogul seems to track with a couple more networks, but both are great tools.

Dan received a lot of negative feedback regarding his post, and has a much better description of his intention which he posted on his follow-up. Both the original post and the follow up are worth a read. Regardless, when the video marketing component of our RedX promotion comes online, I will be working to make the content viral.

TAGS: Redx, Dan Ackerman Greenberg, TechCrunch, Viral Video Marketing, Most Viewed YouTube, secrets of viral marketing, 20 million clicks, clandestine marketing

Great Post From Joes Journal About Prospecting Expireds

2008-01-02T22:18:00.000-08:00

I found a great blog from Joes Journal this evening that shares some great approaches to overcoming common objections from potential real estate clients. I have excerpted his approach to using expired listing leads below. He details a complete system on how to effectively prospect expired listing leads for real estate on his marketing system blog

“What an expired listing client says:

This is just not a good time to sell my home because of the current market conditions.

What a skilled consultant would say:

Mr. and Mrs. Client, you sound very certain that the market conditions are not
right to sell your home. May I ask what is your source for that data and how
reliable has that source been for you in the past?

Here are several mindful questions you might ask a person whose listing has
expired.

What do you suppose will happen if you choose not to sell your home now?

If you do put your home back on the market with the same agent, what do you suppose will be the result of that choice?

Because marketing, conditions and price positioning are the three reasons a homes sells or does not sell, what do you imagine you will do differently when you re-list your home?

Imagine if you could create the perfect scenario – what would it look like, sound like and feel like for you?

How can you use what you have learned in the last six months to improve the chances of selling your home the next time you re-list?

Given what you have learned, what is the most obvious change you would make first, the next time you re-list your home?

As you think about whom you will re-list your home with, what are some things that will be important to you in your next relationship with an agent?

How do you know the characteristics you’re looking for in an agent are the right ones to achieve your goals?

What is Reframing?
When reframing a belief or idea, it is important to change the context so the listener has more choices and options regarding how to look at things. It’s like using a different lens to get a wider perspective on the picture before you.
Reframing Client Objections

You should anticipate client objections. Below are different ways you can reframe a client’s objections using dialogues containing magic words and mindful questions.
Client Objection: This is not the right time to sell a home.

We want to wait until prices go up!

Example #1
YOU: Are you saying in general it is not the right time to sell a home or are you saying it’s not the right time to sell your home?

CLIENT: I’m saying the market is slow; it is not a good time for anyone to sell.

YOU: Well, it’s more accurate to say that people who are clearly focused on what is important about selling will be successful in selling a home in today’s market. May I ask you what is important about selling your home to you?

(Now go seven levels deep.)

Client Objection: This is not the right time to sell a home. We want to wait until prices go up!

Example #2
YOU: That could be true for some people without certain goals. Now for those who have a goal like your five, six, and seven, this may be the perfect time to go for it.

Example #3
YOU: Every coin has two sides to it. For example, in the price range of $250,000, prices have dropped about 10 percent and in the $400,000 range, they have dropped 10 percent. So now, when you sell your $250,000 home you get $25,000 less but when you buy the $400,000 house you pay $40,000 less, so that is a net gain of $15,000.

Example #4
YOU: If I said that it is a good time to go for your five, six, and seven, and if I could show you that in the last 60 days, 49 people within five square miles of your home have sold their home, would that mean I’m lying to you?
Specifically, what proof would you need to know that your thoughts that you can’t sell right now are just not true and it is the right time for you to go for your five, six, and seven?

Example #5
YOU: Wow, you sound so confident in your information! Did you actually try to sell your home within the last 60 days to arrive at that conclusion, or are you repeating something you heard from the TV, newspaper or a neighbor?

Example #6
YOU: Well, if you really want to know who should not be selling their home, it’s the people who are either not serious about moving or the ones who owe more on it than it’s worth. Which category do you fit into?

Example #7
YOU: So, are you saying that every seller who is listed now should just quit and take it off the market?

Example #8
YOU: I know the current market situation really seems like a big deal today…and maybe that’s the problem. Just for the fun of it, imagine you and your family twenty years down the road. You look back to this day when you had the opportunity to sell your house and make your next investment. Within this context is the current market situation the most important factor in making your decision to re-list now?

Example #9
YOU: I know you believe that this is not the right time to sell your home, but not everybody thinks this way. Many homeowners in your neighborhood have benefited from my skills as a consultant, negotiator, and overseer of transactional details during their home sale -- especially now. Why don’t you call this number and listen to what your neighbors have to say about selling their home under these market conditions?

Here is another example of an objection you may hear from a prospective client with several ways to reframe their perspective using magic words and mindful questions.

Client: Will you cut your commission or reduce your fees?

Example # 1
YOU: That is a good question. And before I could make that big of a decision, I would have to ask you a few thought-provoking questions, listen intently to your answers, and only after I clearly know what is important about selling to you, could I then better suggest how you can compensate me for my consulting, negotiating, and organizing of the details.

Example # 2
YOU: That is an interesting question. What it means to me is that you don’t think my skills of consulting, negotiating and organizing of all the transactional details are worth what I would charge you to make your five, six, and seven come true.

Example # 3
YOU: Mr. and Mrs. Seller, my goal is to make your five, six, and seven come true. Since we haven’t worked together before, how did you determine that my skills as a consultant, negotiator, and organizer of the transactional details are not worth making your making your five, six, and seven come true?

Example # 4
YOU: Your question reveals what you may not know about this current marketplace. What you really should be asking is ‘what bonus can we offer to get local agents more interested in showing my home to their best clients’. That way, we can make certain your five, six, and seven come true?

Example # 5
YOU: I’m glad you brought that up because it seems you really do care about getting the proper value from the services I offer. So I’m wondering, for what I’m asking you to compensate me, how much value do you want from me for making your five, six, and seven come true?”

Four more ways to attract real estate buyers in this down market

2008-01-01T15:25:00.000-08:00

I have posted the new rules of real estate survival a couple of times in this blog, and the basic rule is to secure as many listings as possible. However, I have not yet touched on the demand side of the equation. Sure, if you prospect effectively for expired listings you will have a selection of properties to offer the new demanding client, but where do you find that New Demanding Client?

1) Opportunistic investors: Although many feel that we have not yet hit bottom, the investment market is starting heat up again. Many real estate investors (including me) are looking for that next great deal, foreclosure, or short sale. For real estate agents that can help investors with the minutia of buying a property with less than full equity, there may still be business to be had. Consider marketing your services and expertise to the investment market, either for direct real estate services, or even consultation and guidance.

2) Movers looking for a deal: It is true that it is now a buyers market, but that does not mean that there are no more buyers. The truth is that in contrast to three years ago, buyers today have their choice of what to buy and who to buy it through. To capture the attention of these clients, position yourself as an aggressive savings manager with expertise in helping buyers get the best possible deal and the home of their dreams. As for attracting these clients, place ads, co-op market with your local coffee shop, fitness club and small businesses, and host how to buy foreclosure webinars and seminars.

3) Business relocation: If you haven’t explored the opportunities with relocation specialists that service the companies in your area, now may be the time to strike up a conversation. The internet, yellow pages, or HR department of your closest multinational may be able to connect you with the right people.

4) REO Specialist: Both on the buying and selling side, the agents that deal with the banks have a ready-made inventory on discountable properties. Loss mitigation departments may be able to help you out with a listing or two. Also, if you are familiar with the requirements of the banks to purchase REO, you can position yourself as a specialist for both the investor and the movers looking for a deal.

Finally, don’t forget about the 30% discount on Expireds from RedX.

30% Off Expired Listing Leads, and a Few Marketing Ideas

2007-12-21T23:41:00.000-08:00

My friends over at the RedX Expired Listing Lead Service have been doing a great job in some recent marketing endeavors, and I think I can leverage their activities to share some quick recommendations on how to better attract survival listings in this challenging market. Some of the ideas will translate to direct marketing, but a few may not. However, I thought I would list them out.

1) Discounted service (in this case 30%) in exchange for a larger commitment.
More and more we hear clients asking for a discounted commission in exchange for your dedication and hard work. If you are negotiating a discount in commission, get a bigger commitment for up-front expenses. If the client is taking your money on the back end, let them pay up-front for some of the marketing expenses.

2) If you are promoting yourself online, go where the traffic is.
I posted this on my Realtor Leads Blog, but if you see a politician making commentary on the recent sub-prime meltdown, comment on their site and be sure to include backlinks. They get plenty of traffic and may even improve you page rank.

3) Use multiple media.
If you don’t have a YouTube channel, a MySpace page and a presence on Facebook, it is time to register. Once again, be where your clients can find you.

4) Touch a prospect or partner many times.
RedX sent me a promotional flyer and sales PowerPoint to me today detailing their products and reiterating their promotion. This is part of a larger touch system where every time I take the time to touch them (call, respond to an email, click on a promotion) I receive one or two additional touches with appropriate calls to action. A REALTOR analog would be presenting to a local business group, getting the contact information for all of the attendees and sending out thank you cards with a referral request. Follow that up with an email reminding them of the specific takeaways of your presentation and an additional offer to do business.

5) Add a call to action on your email.
What’s the difference between an email signature that says “Barrett Niehus, REALTOR” and a signature that says “Barrett Niehus, REALTOR, Learn how I can save you $10,000.” A call to action can do a lot for a communication.

Viral Idea and A Deal on Real Estate Leads

2007-12-21T22:59:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that next year is an election year and almost every candidate is trying to leverage the internet to gain attention and push their political platform. Most of the tools that they are using leverage Web 2.0 social technology which means there are plenty of high traffic areas to post. If I were me, which I am…. I would start posting comments around the candidates blogs. The sites likely rank high on the search engines, they have tons of traffic, and backlinks from these sites just might be useful.

On a completely separate note, RedX has authorized a 30% discount off of their expired listing real estate lead service through the end of the month. This is a huge offer to save money and have those all important listings flowing through your door.

Leads, Listings and New Activities

2007-12-20T22:45:00.000-08:00

My friends at RedX are busy for the holidays and they have sent some great tools to help educate REALTORS about how to attract clients and listings through the RedX expired listing lead service. Personally, I am glad that they now include FSBO listings as a component of their service because it does expand the pool of potential new clients. After all, in today's market, you need as many active listings as possible, just to survive.
On the viral marketing front, I am implementing a number of touch programs to hit contacts multiple times through multiple media. For example, I am in the process of setting up auto-responders so that those REALTORS that attend a webinar receive three follow up communications with additional information, discounts and calls to action. I am going to start fully leveraging the signature function of my email with an active call to action, as well as begin posting educational videos on the 4MySales section of YouTube. Finally, the webinars themselves are going to be better utilized to educate real estate agents about how to attract leads and convert them to listings.

Back Online and Expired Listing Leads

2007-12-06T22:24:00.000-08:00

I received a call today from the expired lead listing company that I have been working with for some time. They offered me a great promotion to share with all of the readers of this blog; a complete waiver of the $150 startup fee for anybody that signs up through this link: http://www.theredx.com/signup/4mysales.html Not a bad offer considering that the only way to survive right now as a Realtor is to attract as many listings as possible.

I’ll talk about viral marketing at a later date. I gave a seminar this evening and used the YouTube video entitled “Cool Wedding Dance” that is making the rounds on the mainstream media (Today Show, daily news, CN?N, etc.) Either way, there is a big world of marketing out there to explore…..

Marry Spenders and Sellers for a Viral Response

2007-08-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

I can across this promotion this morning and I think it has the potential to be a great idea with a little additional directed promotion. The idea is the “Damn Receipt Project” and essentially it is an attempt to create a link between people who have receipts in their pocket and advertisers that want to target their specific brand to the owners of those receipts. The concept as described in the Damn Receipt Blog is

“Damn Receipt is a brand new original and buzzy project where advertisers from
all horizons catch attention and promote themselves by refunding people's
shopping receipts (rather than spending large amounts in impersonal
advertising)!”

The creator of this project is trying to create a link between advertisers and those individuals who have receipts in their pockets (it doesn’t mention what types of receipts.) The concept is that the advertisers will reimburse the receipt owners the amount on the receipt in a direct marketing approach instead of spending their cash on mass media.

There are a number of holes in the idea, specifically because it does not specify the types of receipts, and therefore provides no targeted demographic for the prospective marketing company’s advertising spend. However, overall, it could be a great campaign idea for individuals or companies that want to really target their prospective clients.

So how would you adopt this idea for your own use?

There are three components that I would put into place before launching this type of campaign.

1) Identify and create a cooperative marketing partnership with a company that wants to use this type of marketing. It may be difficult to get a national chain to participate, but you could get local businesses to participate and take the campaign online and offline. To save on the ad spend, arrange the promotion so that one receipt per day will be selected for reimbursement.

2) Identify exactly what type of client you are looking for and what receipts they are likely to have. Reimburse only those and spell that out explicitly in your campaign materials; once again, online and off-line.

3) Launch the campaign both online and off-line by letting local media and press know. Co-opt with your marketing partner to print cards, flyers and collateral. Announce the campaign in your local and online newspapers, and let some local bloggers know about the campaign. When you launch, go off with a rocket using multiple promotional mediums.

Finally, before you begin on this type of promotion, make sure that you explicitly spell out the rules of the promotion and have written agreement with your marketing partner.

TAGS: WOM, buzzy, co-operative marketing, damn receipt, word of mouth, promotional campaign, promotional idea, online newspaper advertising, local wom

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Be Everywhere For Word of Mouth

2007-08-10T10:33:00.000-07:00

As a little experiment this afternoon, I googled 4MySales to see where the site and this blog were popping up. The search returned what I expected, about 22,000 references, but it also provided a unique insight into where to leverage your highest potential online. In addition to this blog and associated website, the highest ranking google returns were for the multitude of online social networks where 4MySales has registered.

The top returned searches for 4mysales were:
4MySales - MyBlogLog
digg / 4MySales / news / dugg
4mysales · 2k Bloggers - The Face of the Blogosphere (a blog of ...
4mysales's Participation » Netscape.com
4MySales Real Estate Agent Success - Feeds - Netvibes ecosystem ...
Barrett Niehus (4MySales and Expired Listing Leads) - Real Estate ...
4MySales REALTOR Marketing Blog
User:4MySales - InmanWiki

So what does this mean? Essentially, it means that as you work on promoting your blog and expanding your presence online, register for all of the online social networks that you can. After registration, identity those that naturally rise to the top of the search engines and spend your time syndicating content on those sites. Social networks are generally very search engine friendly, and in addition to creating social links (and traffic) within the community, you increase your search engine visibility.

TAGS: viral, wom, seo, online social networks, real estate references, viral traffic, returned search

Differentiate Your Closing Gift

2007-07-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

Instead of giving your clients the same old “just moved” or “our new home” change of address cards, why not create a photo-collage (photomoasic) of their new home made up of pictures of the new residents, the various rooms of their home, as well as your picture, logo, and offices? The photomosaic can be embedded into your standard change of address post card, or if you are feeling unique, you can have a copy of it framed as a personalized closing gift for your clients. Personally, I would recommend you do both.

So how do you create a photomosaic closing gift? Actually, it is really easy. Purchase of download a dedicated photomosaic software. (Here is a list of them) and when you are ready, take a picture of the property in question (preferably with the new residents posing in front) and a number of other “family” pictures of the house and the new residents in it. Apply all of these photos to the software and send the output to a professional printer for conversion into postcards and farmable art.

As a follow-on, email your client a copy of the graphic with a thank you note. They will likely send it to their friends and family. Separately, ask if you can do it for them and get a list of email and mailing addresses. This is a great tool for referral marketing.

TAGS: photomosaic, photo collage, closing gift, referral tool, referral marketing, list of photomosaic software, just moved postcards, change of address cards, framed closing gift, unique closing gift

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A Little Fun with Photomosaics

2007-07-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

Here's a fun little site where you can take your picture, apply a number of flickr photos to it and turn it into a photomosaic.

TAGS: Flickr, mozaiq

Viral Marketing and Making Use of Recent Media

2007-07-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

I’m still gathering data for the Viral Book Project, but as I continue to surf, I come across more and more great sites that catalog different viral marketing techniques. One of the most recent is a site called the Adverblog which reviews a number of cool commercial viral campaigns.

So as I was perusing through the list of interesting viral marketing campaigns that the bigger corporations are launching; (check out the BMW promotion) it occurred to me that you can garner a lot of traffic by attaching your message to these other promotions. Now I’m not advocating literally attaching your URL to any of the forwards that you receive; although that in itself is an interesting idea. I am however advocating spoofing current media, and actively participating in online conversations about a campaign at the root of the campaign by leaving comments on the blogs that are sponsored by the company.

Here’s my idea for the day….
Aleve has just launched a viral marketing campaign using a number of Web 2.0 tools. Leave comments on each of the tools about the campaign. Do the same thing for the recent Viragra and Transformer campaigns.

Choose a hot local topic for the week, (for my area, the Orange County courts are having all of their traffic tickets processed in a small office in Mexico and there is no end to the discussion about identity theft and security risks to blog about.) Blog about the topic, post reader polls and create a widget or badge to express your opinion that like-mined visitors can also display. Also, express your opinion in the comments sections of the local online newspapers.

TAGS: viral, orange county mexico, widget, badge, viral idea, local newspapers, transformers, bmw campaign, Adverblog, viral opinion, online campaign

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A Little Friday Afternoon Fun

2007-07-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

It’s Friday and I have reading about viral promotion all week. I’m a little burned out and it is time for a distraction. Therefore, it is time for a Friday afternoon meme with a twist; it’s all about your peers and online activity. Instead of tagging bloggers, the tags are part of the meme. The rules are simply that if you get tagged by the meme, complete the questions with one word answers on your own blog. For an added level of interest, hyperlink each of your answers.

The questions are:

What blog do you read most? Bloodhound

What’s your best source of online news? Digg

Which blogger do you ping most often? Tomato

Which blogger would you like to be? Seth

Which blog do you look to for inspiration? RSS

What’s your favorite online network? ActiveRain

What’s your favorite widget? Mybloglog

What’s your middle name? Alan

Who do you “see” online most often? Brian Brady

Who do your friends talk about? Zillow

Where do you post your tags most often? Technorati

Your favorite blog software? Wordpress

The blog software that you started with? Blogger

What is your first daily read? Mashable

What Web 2.0 tool are you least impressed with? Twitter

When do you blog? Day

What’s your industry? Marketing

Last book you read: Thunderstruck

What do you do when you are not blogging? Sail

Looking for a Few Good Viral Marketing Ideas

2007-07-27T14:12:00.001-07:00

Collection of Viral Articles

2007-07-26T23:14:00.000-07:00

Still working on finding applicable ideas for great viral marketing campaigns. In this search, I did come across a great list of viral articles and ideas at Wilson Web. The article catalogs 105 viral marketing articles and data from some of the great online marketers. I’ll be doing some reading this evening to find some great suggestions.

On a completely unrelated note, you can now view the 150 top marketing blogs at Todd And’s blog. If you are looking to learn about online marketing, the top 150 is a good place to start. I’m going to overwhelm my feed reader.

Tags: Todd and, top 150, Advertising Age, viral campaign, Wilson web, vox

Five Components of Word of Mouth Marketing

2007-07-26T15:22:00.000-07:00

The Five Steps in Word of Mouth Marketing

In my search to find some great new content for the Viral Book Project (keep submitting ideas to me, I need more contributing authors) I came across Andy Sernovitz book

Word of Mouth Marketing which, just happens to be on the very topic that I am creating this e-book about. Anyway, there is a lot that you can learn about going viral from Andy’s book, but it amazed me that his Five Steps for a Word of Mouth program was reprinted in the blog space everywhere. I’m not usually a lemming, but some content deserves to be repeated. Here are the steps; taken from an article by Andy on Marketing Profs:

1. Talkers: People who are more likely to relay your word of mouth message

2. Topics: Portable concepts for people to talk about, simple ideas that are word-of-mouth friendly

3. Tools: Techniques and technology that make it easier for word of mouth conversations to take place

4. Taking part: Participating in the word of mouth conversation and engaging in a genuine two-way dialog

5. Tracking: Measuring the online conversation

TAGS: WOM, Andy Sernovitz, five steps word of mouth, mouth of word, topics, tools, taking part, tracking, talkers, evangelists, e-book, viral book, project

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A Few Viral Marketing Ideas

2007-07-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

This is just a short list of different ideas to create a viral buzz. Let me know if you have others that I could include in the Viral Book Project.

Ideas for YouTube Videos

Drunk Lindsey Lohan trying to find a REALTOR to purchase the rehab facility
Create a video that shows listing clients receiving their checks over and over. Nothing is more enviable than watching people receive checks for $400,000.
A video collection of exploding buildings is always fun.

Flickr Viral Photo Ideas

Pictures that have hidden messages for viewers to locate: Find the word (fill in the blank) in nature… Does that cloud say REALTOR?
Submit your picture with my name written on your body part. The submitter with the most pictures wins an I-Phone.
How about a collection of cars falling off of cliffs?
I was forwarded a collage of poorly placed billboards recently that I had to forward to friends; the leader was a Big Mack advertisement right under a stop childhood obesity sign.

If you have ideas on different viral tools or campaigns, please let me known.

TAGS: viral ideas, viral marketing, viral campaign, youtube viral, flickr viral, Lindsey Lohan, I-phone giveaway, viral book, viral blogging

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Viral Book Project

2007-07-22T23:09:00.001-07:00

So here’s the deal. Every time I search for great ideas on different viral marketing campaigns, I come up with the same old, create a video, comment on blogs, and create your own posts. Well, there has to be more out there and I am going to find it. Therefore, I am pleased to announce the viral book project.

Essentially, my goal is to get input from the best bloggers on the net on the best and hopefully easiest viral campaigns for you to create yourself. I plan to work with these great Web 2.0 thinkers to create an e-book that anybody can download as a source guide to crease effective viral marketing campaigns that drive traffic and increase notoriety.

Here’s what I am asking of you. If you have an idea, write it in your own blog and let me know where to find it by commenting on this blog I will link to the article on this blog and capture the article in the e-book. I may summarize parts of it on this blog as well. After I get fifty or more of the best viral marketing ideas and articles, I will aggregate them into an e-book which will contain the original articles, links back to the original authors and credit to that author.

After the ebook is complete, I will distribute a copy to all of the contributing authors so that they may distribute the book however they see fit.

The way I see it, there are a lot of general viral marketing ideas out there, but not much that is specific enough to be effective. Let’s create a tool that teaches the most effective techniques that will in itself be viral.

Submit comments to this blog linking back to your viral suggestions and I’ll do the rest.

TAGS: viral, marketing, web 2.0, viral blog project, e-book, marketing ebook, bloglog, blogger, viral project, wom, word of mouth

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Ten Ways to Piss Off You Readers, Kill Your Blog, and Get Banned From the Internet!

2007-07-20T14:37:00.000-07:00

Everywhere I look there is blogging advice on how to increase your traffic, pagerank, and readership on the net. There’s syndication, RSS feeds, and any type of social topic you would ever need. However, nobody tells you how to stop the traffic, alienate your fan base; so I thought I should try.

1. Active in blogging? Why not put as many popups on your page as humanly possible? Make it as difficult as possible for a reader to navigate away from your page and ensure that he will never come back! If you are not comfortable with popups, AdSense ads after every post and every type of widget that you can find will do the trick.

2. Too many comments? Turn them off, don’t respond when they are posted, and return fire with fire. People like to feel engaged when they read your content. Don’t let ‘em!

3. Got an RSS feed? Get rid of it, or better yet, find a blog that you absolutely hate and offer it as the feed through your site. It all looks like XML code until you plug it into a reader anyway. Your readers won’t know what hit them.

4. You have a bookmarking widget; Digg, del.icio.us, News Vine, Reddit? Aren’t there equivalent bookmarking tools for adult sites? Couldn’t you use the same graphic and just replace the hyperlink? Hmmm, if you want to get some hate mail, this may be the way to do it. When responding to the hate mail, please refer to item 2 above.

5. Member of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Xanga, LinkedIn, MyBloglog and other networks that syndicate your content? This one’s easy, don’t complete your profile, syndicate content that is not yours, be un-genuine, and do not respond to comments. We keep going back to step 2 for some reason.

6. Overload your readers with useless bookmarks. Stop writing content and go hog wild with your Sumble Upon and del.icio.us bookmarking Wordpress widgets. Nobody likes going to a blog that has nothing other than a collection of non-related bookmarks. No content, just bookmarks; nothing slows down traffic like a great link farm.

7. DUMP THE TAGS!!!! Nobody will read your blog if nobody can find it. If you have a search term that inadvertently shows up under a Google search, repeat it in the text as many times as possible. A black-hat trick or two will also work to get you banned from Google.

8. All text and no pictures makes for a very boring and unpleasant blog. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and people love to look at and share video. Why do you think YouTube sold for a billion dollars? If you don’t want traffic, do not use flickr, youtube, or other multi-media sharing service.

9. Whatever you do, do not reference blog posts that you had writer earlier. This would entice readers to go further into your blog and spend more time there. Why would you want that?

10. This one I had to think long and hard about. How do you get blacklisted from as many sites as possible, kicked off search engines and banned from the internet? One word….SPAM!!!

TAGS: spam, banned, rss, ugly, kicked off, no readers, bad blog, bookmark widgets, digg, anti-comments, popups, tricks, reference, readers, ugly blog, mybloglog, wordpress, blogger, stumble upon

Marketing Idea: Viral Scavenger Hunt

2007-07-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

A small and controversial buzz has been growing in the blogspace about Bayer’s new online promotion to expand the Aleve brand online. The new site, http://aleviator.com/ is an online scavenger hunt to track down the fictional Dr. Albert Brigg and Eve Bloom who are actively fighting PAIN and have disappeared in No Name USA. The marketing campaign utilizes a number of online social networking sites, blogspot, ning, WetPaint and videos (I haven’t found them on YouTube, but the night is still young.)

Now there is controversy because the campaign is very contrived, but it is entertaining. My take on it however, is why not utilize their idea and create your own viral campaign? Anybody up for a viral scavenger hunt? Get a group of bloggers together, have them create profiles and posts across as many online social tools as possible, and have a wikki scavenger hunt. The first person to locate each profile, post a specific message to it, and document that you did it on your blog (hyperlinks, videos, pictures, etc.) wins!!!!

TAGS: viral scavenger hunt, wikki, aleviator, albert brigg, eve bloom, ning, wetpaint, video viral, wins

Periodic table of viral elements.

2007-07-18T13:28:00.000-07:00

This is a creative approach to identify the current leaders in Web 2.0 The actual page has hyperlinks to each page on the"periodic table.

http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2007-06-23--periodic-table-of-the-internet.html

Viral Marketing Ideas and the Bloggers that Shared Them

2007-07-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

I have been searching the blog-sphere for great ideas to become more viral and I have to tell you that good ideas are actually pretty scarce. However, I found a great definition, the elements of, and seven ways to create a viral response.

WHAT IS VIRAL MARKETING?
By George Torok:

Viral marketing is apply named because, when done right, it spreads like a virus. The term viral marketing might be too graphic for some because it brings to mind the viral spread of disease such as the bubonic plague, typhoid, and AIDS.None of those viral diseases are nice things. But a virus in your marketing is powerful and can be hugely profitable.Viral marketing is about spreading your message through networks. Some networks are more efficient than others. Meetings, family gatherings, community groups, religion, phone calls, peer pressure, media, email and blogs. Viral marketing is by persistence, passion and purpose.The growth of almost every religion was the result of viral marketing. Every social change is the result of viral marketing.
http://georgetorok.blogspot.com/2007/07/viral-marketing.html

ELEMENTS OF A VIRAL STRATEGY
By Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

Gives away products of services

Provides for effortless transfer to others

Scales easily from small to very large

Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Utilizes existing communication networks

Takes advantage of others' resources

http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles.htm

SEVEN STEPS TO VIRAL MARKETING
By Dean Hunt
http://www.deanhunt.com/

Trick 1: A Global Appeal
Trick 2: The Negativity Slant
Trick 3: The Killer Headline
VIRAL GOLD HEADLINE: “10 Step Guide to Thinking Like a Loser”
Trick 4: 10 Steps to Viral Heaven
Anything in list format is a surefire winner with the Digg and blogger crowds.
Trick 5: Stand out from the crowd
If you are struggling to think of ways to be creative with your
content, then grab a pen and paper and just start writing as many wacky ideas as
possible. Be creative, controversial, edgy, wacky, unique… try it all.
Trick 6: Curiosity Killed The Cat
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but with buzz
marketing it is a killer technique.
Trick 7: Image Is Everything
This is one of the easiest tricks. All you have to do is simply add an interesting
photo/image to your story. It is that simple!

http://fadtastic.net/2007/07/13/buzz-marketing-exposed-a-step-by-step-guide/

TAGS: Dean Hunt, Front Page of Digg, Viral Marketing, Viral Buzz, Viral Techniques, definition of viral marketing, Dr. Wilson, George Torok, viral ideas

The Blogs I Look to For Inspiration

2007-07-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

In this industry, news, opinions and research changes frequently and it is tough to stay on top of the newest methods to attract clients and customers. Thankfully, there are a number of peer leaders in the real estate blog space that consolidate the wealth of data that streams through the real estate industry. Here are a few of those blogs that I look to for guidance and answers:

Jim Cronin as the Real Estate Tomato:
If you are looking for updates and some great ways to promote yourself online, Jim and the crew that he runs with (Sellsius, Bloodhound, and Zillow can’t be beat.)

Sellsuis and Bloodhound Blog
You can pretty much stay up to date on what’s happening in the real estate
world just by reading the Tomato, Sellsius and Bloodhound.

Zillow Blog:
Obviously the blog is slanted to provide updates on the Zillow platform, but it is also a great source of real estate news and opinion.

Ardell, Dustin and the Rainy City Guide
Let’s face it, the real estate technology revolution started in Seattle. I was told that this was due to the presence of Microsoft millionaires. Regardless, Dustin, Ardell and her associates are in the thick of the technology revolution and provide great insight into how to fully leverage web 2.0 technology for real estate.

Brian Brady
This guy is prolific. If you are looking for market insight and updates in Southern California (that’s right, I live in So. Cal.) then Brian is your man.

RSS Pieces
Despite some recent criticism from a controversial marketing program, Mary, Jessica and the Fairy Blog Mother provide continual wisdom on how to attract traffic and promote your blog.

Mashable
New technology is realeased every day to help get us closer to our friends, colleagues, clients and sales leads. Mashable catalogs and details every last one of them and is a great resource for the newest online network, instant messaging tool, or gizmo to connect you with your clients.

TAGS: real estate blogs, real estate market data, real estate marketing, mashable, real estate tomato, sellsius, zillow, jim cronin, brian brady, rss pieces, bloodhound blog, activerain

Surveys, the Underutilized Marketing Tool

2007-07-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

In the world of leads for REALTORS, farming letters, and the ever-popular real estate flyer, many agents overlook the great benefit of a simple user-response survey as a great marketing tool. A simple survey has a number of benefits as is the only marketing tool that has the potential to provide you with direct feedback about you and the real estate products that you represent.

If you do not currently use surveys as part of your marketing system, consider that former and existing clients are going to be the best source of data on how to improve your service offering and the value of your brand. In addition, using a survey to prospect new clients is a great way to tailor your current offering to suite the needs of your market. Finally, regardless of who you touch with your survey, it is a non-intrusive way to remind your prospects about the services that you offer.

TAGS: survey, marketing tool, survey monkey, sales scout, drip marketing

Servicing Your Long Tail For Better Blog Searches

2007-07-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

Our friend Jim Cronin over at the Real Estate Tomato has re-published a great list from Teresa Boardman that provides 101 ideas on what to blog about in the real estate blogsphere. I have included part of the list below, but I did want to add that whatever topic you choose, you should use targeted keywords as part of your text.

For most of us, blogging is a great past time, but also a way to appear in high ranks in search engines as part of an overall promotion strategy. In addition, by blogging about topics and including search phrases that are more targeted to your niche (your long tail) you can increase your search ranking in the odd phrases that would not otherwise be obvious.

A great tool to help in this strategy is hittail.com which shows you the key phrases that are sending traffic to your site so that you can leverage these terms in future posts to get an even better ranking. My personal strategy in using this tool is to cast as wide a net as possible to service all aspects of the real estate industry. In that vein, I write about leads, expired listings, topics covering real estate heavy states such as Florida, California, Texas, New Jersey, New York, Utah (because I am from Salt Lake,) Washington, and any many other areas. In addition, my strategy is to cover topics that serve REALTORS, brokers and investors. Anyway, back to the point, service your long tail and make it wide.

Here is part of the list re-printed from Jim’s post.

Read the blogs and look for ideas to build on or spin a new idea from..
Take
a picture write a post.
Home maintenance
Take a walk
Senior housing
Pet friendly housing
Staging ideas
local events
Your hobby
A closing
A lender who did a great job
Things that go wrong with
real estate sales
Home owners insurance
Gardening and landscaping
Your city council
A new development
Lofts
Decorating ideas
Real estate industry news - with your own unique commentary
Mortgages
news
Interest Rates
Credit scores
Consumer hoaxes and scams
First time home buyer programs
Working with seniors

TAGS: Real Estate Tomato, Jim Cronin, Long Tail, Blog Topics, expired listings in Florida, Texas, blog brokers, blog strategy, blog marketing, keyword blogging, keyworks

Expired Listings in California

2007-07-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

I have been working with expired listings in California for some time as part of my own training and my relationship with RedX expired listing lead service, and it is becoming quite apparent that as the market has softened, clients are looking for and expecting much more from the REALTORS that they employ as agents. In my area of San Diego, California, listings are expiring at a rapid rate as houses spend much more time on the market. These expired listings in San Diego as well as the rest of California are presenting a great opportunity for enterprising REALTORS who have the skills necessary to close these listings and sell their properties.

Currently, I am seeing a lot of agents that are trying to use direct mail and introduction letters to prospect expired listings. My feeling toward this approach is that the prospects that are receiving the message are already disillusioned with real estate agents. Therefore, you need to be very careful about your value proposition and speak to the needs and expectations of your prospect in any form of communication. If you choose to use a letter of introduction to prospect expireds in any market, I would recommend that you use an approach that does not dismiss or diminish their current agent, but solicits them to think about, or learn new information that could help them overcome the difficulties that they may currently be experiencing. For this group, webcasts, podcasts, mailed reports, and learning programs work well to place you ahead of your competition. If you are up for the risk, a sell-by guarantee does wonders as well.

Personally, I would bypass the canned introduction letters for expired mls listings and make a personal introduction instead.

TAGS: expired listings, expireds, expired listings California, mls listings, letters of introduction expired listings, solicit, direct mail

Sales and Marketing Lessons from Jack Daly

2007-07-01T00:15:00.000-07:00

I attended a seminar put on by sales coach Jack Daly today, and I must tell you that it was a great experience. Jack frames his techniques for his sales trainees as tools to help differentiate yourself from the competition. However, if you look at his system, it is direct marketing at its finest.

He described a number of techniques that I found very interesting and potentially very useful in helping REALTORS differentiate from the competition. The first technique was simply to change and update your voicemail with something interesting every day. I have a number of colleagues do this, and add news, market data, or simply the weather in their voicemail. The consistency with which they change their message has paid off for a couple of them with increased client referrals.

The other technique that I found specifically beneficial to real estate professionals was his technique of immediate follow up after a sales presentation. As soon as his meeting with a prospect is completed, he goes to his car and drafts an action item email on his blackberry. The email, which he sends to the prospect that he just met with, includes specific data on the agreed next steps that both he and his prospect are to take in preparation for the next meeting. In his email, he also includes dates by which each of the action items will be completed.

As an additional step, he immediately (while still in his care) drafts a hand-written thank you letter, puts it in an envelope with a stamp that has his picture on it (see stamps.com) and writes “Personal” next to the hand-written address. He drops the letter into the mail slot as he leaves the premises.

As I said before, spending the morning learning from Mr. Daly was a great experience. If you have the chance to get a copy of his books, or the privilege of seeing him in person, I highly recommend it.

TAGS: Jack Daly, Daily, Sales Speakers, Marketing Speakers, REALTOR Differentiate From Competition, immediate follow up, books on selling , closing tools

Interesting approach

2007-06-23T01:07:00.000-07:00

Calling real estate investors

Real estate investment bubble

2007-06-23T00:55:00.000-07:00

The bubble has burst, but that doesn’t mean that there is no longer money to be made in real estate. It simply means that you need to be much more careful in your investment choice, and you may need to change your investment strategy.

Currently, foreclosures, real estate owned and bank property inventories are on the rise. This is simply due to the fact that for the short term, in many markets, the annual appreciation that we have enjoyed over the last nine years has stalled. However, because of this shift in the inventory status of banks and lending institutions, they are becoming more willing to negotiate and deal on their inventory than they have been in many years. If you are in a real estate market or area that has stalled, but still provides the fundamental economic drivers of property appreciation (job growth, education centers, industry, etc.) then buying short sale investments and negotiation pre-foreclosure purchases may be a great way to maintain and grow your portfolio.

For REALTOR investors, this is a great time to leverage those expired mls listings and those properties that are facing repossession as well. It all depends on your real estate investment strategy. Oh, yeah, don’t forget to use the IP Ware software to help evaluate your investments.

TAGS: real estate bubble, appreciation, short sale, real estate owned, economic fundamentals, expired mls listings, bank owned, real estate has stalled

Expired listing leads and FSBO

2007-06-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

As you may be aware, I have been working with the REDX and their expired listing lead service for some years. Originally we included their service offering in our 4MySales REALTOR marketing service, but logistically, it was better to keep the two services separate. As a result, we have been working separate from them for some time.

Recently, they approached us with a great offer to share with 4MySales members and readers of this blog. They have rolled out a new for sale by owner lead service and are including it with their current expired listing service. In order to get people started with the service, they are offering to waive the startup costs for readers of this blog and members of 4MySales. As a REALTOR, this should save you about $150 and give you access to a multitude of expired and fsbo leads. Also, I have heard a lot of good things about this new FSBO service, and it should prove to be better than the service that we currently include in 4MySales.

With that in mind, check out their service, and let me know your thoughts. Also, if you need help crafting introduction letters to expired listings, let me know.

TAGS: expired listings, fsbo, for sale by owner real estate, FSBO leads, real estate lead letters, REDX, THEREDX, 4MySales.com,

Finding real estate investment opportunities

2007-06-20T14:34:00.000-07:00

Let’s face it, inventing in real estate is all about timing and finding the right investment opportunity. If done right, you can potentially make millions. However, if the wrong investment is made, you stand to lose a lot of money. So I ask the question, where do you find a good investment property?

First and foremost, you almost never find a great deal if the property for sale is listed by a sales agent. The reason is simply that the property will likely be priced appropriately, and the sales price includes commissions that are payable to the agent. As a result, you will pay close to the fair market value for an investment property listed through a real estate agent.

With that in mind, where are the local investment opportunities? There are a few, but you need to know where to look. Personally, I like the for sale by owners, pre-foreclosures, bank REO’s and the ever popular divorce attorneys. Generally these groups represent a section of sellers that are motivated and ready to negotiate and sell.

TAGS: REO, foreclosures, pre-foreclosures, divorce attorneys, investment opportunity

Back into the investment and marketing game

2007-06-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

I have decided to shift my focus in real estate a bit and spend more time talking about the great opportunities available in the investment community. As a result, I am revamping the 4MySales.com website as well as FreeTrainer.com and updating the IP Ware real estate investment analysis software.

The truth is that the real estate “land rush” of the late 90’s is over. As a result, the buy on speculation approach is no longer an acceptable way to invest in real estate. So instead, it is back to the fundamentals; which are simply stated as follows:

1) Make sure that your investment returns a positive cash flow. I have attended a lot of seminars over the past few years that preach buying income property with financing that returns a negative monthly cash flow. Usually the seminars teach that monthly net revenue of negative $200 or less is acceptable and that the investor should focus on appreciation. My personal position is that if you have a negative cash on cash return you should not do the deal.

2) Factor in vacancy rates. I cannot tell you how many associates, and even family members, that only focus on gross rents. As a real estate investor, you need to accurately estimate your costs.

3) Use other people’s money. Arrange your financing so that the bank, your backers, or partners with the deepest pockets supply the bulk of the funds. If you structure the deal properly, you and they will get the desired return on investment, and you will have the cash to do other things.

TAGS: real estate investment, seminar, basics of real estate investing, vacancy rates, vacancy factor, negative cash flow, cash on cash return, other peoples money

Attended Jeff Adams Webinar last night

2007-06-11T22:08:00.000-07:00

Last night I attended Jeff Adams webinar. Overall, his message was what I had heard before from many of the GURU's that promote systems to streamline the investment process. In his webinar, he presented a contact management tool, a direct mail resource and proposes to provide a "lead generation website" that you can use as a turnkey promotion tool. He also went into detail on how to use Google.com Adwords to promote the site that he provides.

I must tell you that as a marketing person, I am skeptical about how effective his system will be. So far I haven't spoken to anybody who has purchased his system, so I cannot relay whether or not it is successful.

Cold Calling? Time to Warm Up the List

2007-03-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t spent time manning the phones recently trying to scare up new clients, you may have forgotten how utterly frustrating the process of cold calling client lists can actually be. The act of sitting down in front of that brilliant piece of communication technology can be daunting, and the rejection received on the other end can be wholly disheartening. This is especially true if this is to be your first point of contact for these prospective new clients.

With this level of frustration, you need to ask yourself, is this really worth it? The answer is actually more complex than yes or no, and actually hovers around the place of “it depends.”

Cold calling can be a great way to find new business and secure new clients. However, you should never waste your time calling a completely cold lead. If you look at your investment in time and the return that you receive, there are much more productive ways to spend your time.

Instead of trying to prospect cold leads, spend your time and resources developing cold leads into at least moderately warm leads before picking up the phone. My personal rule of thumb is that I never call an unsolicited cold lead until they have been exposed to my personal brand at least five times. In that vein, I use the 4MySales prospecting system to touch these cold leads with email, direct mail, new announcements, market updates and other bits of information. I make sure that each lead gets exposed to my message in some form or other at least five times before picking up the phone. After at least five exposures, the prospect is much less likely to just hang up on me, and may be familiar enough with me and my services to offer a good conversation, and even a possible referral.

Cold calling can be a difficult task and a daunting waste of time if the lead list is entirely cold. Take the time to warm up the list by sending out your message in a couple of different formats before taking the time to pick up the phone.

It’s notice of default time again

2007-03-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

I just received an email from an agent friend of mine letting me know about a notice of default workshop that is coming up. I do not know if I will attend or not as it has been a while since I have dabbled in the field of pre-foreclosures and creative finance investing. However, it does raise the question, how can real estate agent capitalize on this new surge in NOD’s from “liar loans” coming due?

Many real estate agents actively prospect notice of default recipients. However, the pitch is typically the same. List with me, I can get your house sold before the bank takes it away. Unfortunately, many of these homes have larger amounts due on the loan than they are currently worth.

My recommended approach is to prospect to these people with the voice of help and reason. If you are not familiar with the process, learn about the process of forbearance to help the homeowner fend off the bank while he/she sells her home. Depending on local regulations, you may be able to charge for this service as a value add; in addition to giving the home owner more time to sell the home. Also, make friends with a few investors in the area who may be able to buy a property quick for the right deal. Regardless, when approaching a homeowner who is in the throws of foreclosure, approach them with the voice of honest reason and an offer to help.

Untapped source of new clients looking for a home

2007-03-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest changes in a person’s life that almost always involves a move is a marriage to another person. Two people join in matrimony, and at least one of the parties needs to move. More importantly, for a bright-eyed young couple, it is now time to find their dream home.

I posed the following question the other day to a group that I was addressing: “How many of you currently prospect newlyweds and engaged couples as part of your marketing?” Although it was a small group, nobody volunteered that this was part of their target market. One person did volunteer that they have an active client that is in fact a newlywed, but none of the agents currently made this group part of their target market.

So what’s the takeaway?

This may be an un-tapped market to attract a fair number of prospective home buyers.

I haven’t worked out the details on how one would market to these groups, but there are a number of bridal fairs, boutiques, websites (theknot.com) and other resources where an enterprising real estate agent may prospect for the newlywed couple that is ready to start their lives together and move into their new dream home.

How to get more FSBO listings

2007-02-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article that I found particularly applicable in Broker Agent News. The article, How to Get More FSBO Listings, Without Pressure covers a basic approach to FSBO prospecting that will generally lead to a listing. The article review a few of the techniques that you should use when speaking to prospective FSBO’s, but it all comes down to a very basic premise; be nice, sincere, and offer benefit.

Many real estate agents aggressively prospect For Sale By Owner leads to get new listings. As a result, most FSBO prospects hear from multiple agents with the same pitch on a daily basis. Unfortunately the pitch is usually “Let me list your home and I will get it sold for you.” Now we all know that this is where the prospect usually ends up, but most FSBO prospects want to legitimately try to sell their home before they shift to using the services of a REALTOR.

Instead of starting your relationship with your prospect the same way all of your competitors do, start your relationship with your prospect under the premise “Let me help you sell your home.” There are a number of tools that a REALTOR can offer a FSBO prospect to help them market their home. These tools are generally well appreciated by the prospects who still eventually still end up giving an agent their listing. An example is a simple FSBO website that the prospect can use to create a presence on the internet.

Regardless of the tool, differentiate yourself from your competition when prospecting FSBO leads. Approach your prospects with a sincere offer to help them reach their goals. Statistics say that they will list with a REALTOR. Odds are they will list with the one that has tried to help them most.

How does the local agent cover the cost of their marketing?

2007-02-20T23:49:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague the other day regarding the calculation of their return on investment for their marketing activities. The conversation started because of the observation that one of the most media present agents in the area has ads appearing on every sign post, bus stop and street corner. Both my friend and I are doubtful that the agent is making a decent return on investment, but it was worth some time to do a few rough calculations.

This may or may not apply to you own investment in marketing, but here is my rough assumptions and calculation.

Assumptions:
- Average take home per sale $10,000 (hey, it’s San Diego County)
- Monthly rent for space on a bus stop: $700
- Monthly mailing of postcards or letters: $2000
- Monthly cost of local media advertising: $1200
- Monthly online marketing: $200
- Area farming: $600
- Miscellaneous marketing activities: $2500
Total monthly marketing costs $7200

Now in general your marketing cost should be between 10% and 20% of your revenue; with some businesses investing as much as 50% of their income in marketing their real estate businesses. If we assume that due to the new shift in the market the agent has more listings than sales and is pushing around 40% of his revenue into attracting new clients; the agent should be collecting about $18,000 per month. Given the average commission of around $10,000, it should just take the sale of two homes to cover that agent’s investment in marketing. The agent has a lot of listings in the area so I have no doubt that they are at least selling two homes per month.

My math is most likely wrong, but it was an interesting conversation and analysis.

Human communication is key to REALTOR Marketing

2007-02-07T22:18:00.000-08:00

Jen Blackert posted an interesting article this week on Broker Agent News on ten easy ways to attract clients with your email newsletter. The article points out a very basic tentant of online advertising that is well worth repeating…. Humanize your communication. Whether it is online through podcasts and email REALTOR marketing tools, or off-line through flyers and introduction letters, humanize your communication to your target client. In this world of instant and anonymous communication, your most successful real estate marketing endeavors will be those that help you create a human connection to your target clients.

For Jen, her advice follows the basics of relationship building. Tell your client about yourself and educate them about who you are and the value that you offer. Share your interests with them (can anybody say real estate blog) and show that you care by asking for and responding to feedback. Clarify your communication and use terms that most lay-people would understand. Be genuine (first rule of blogging and online communities) and relate to your client’s interest, fears and concerns. Finally…. And this goes back to prospecting engines…. Stay in touch. Once you have a prospect, keep your brand equity high. Here’s the link to Jen’s article.

Real Estate Flyers and Organic Search Traffic

2007-02-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

It’s amazing where organic online traffic comes from. I have been doing a fair amount of analysis lately and the highest traffic key word for the 4MySales blog is actually free real estate flyers The second keyword that drives most of my non-long tail traffic is free real estate letters. I, much like most in the blogsphere, am not sure why these specific terms are showing up in the first few pages of google and yahoo. I have tried to gear this blog toward exploring marketing tools for REALTORS and have spent a great deal of time discussing more abstract concepts such as prospecting engines, online social networks, and really using your computer to attract real estate sales leads. Well, I think it is safe to say that SEO is still an enigma.

Increasing search engine ranking using real estate flyers

2007-02-06T23:17:00.000-08:00

I am trying a little experiment in search engine optimization to evaluate how blogging and different blog topics and entries show up on search engines. I am using popular search terms such as real estate Arizona and broker leads to evaluate search engine traffic. Here’s an overview of the experiment.

1) I have gone to Google Adwords to find the most well searched search terms that are related to broker leads and real estate marketing tools. According to google, real estate agents that are searching for leads, flyers and marketing tools search most often under the following search terms: real estate leads and leads real estate, marketing for real estate, real estate agent marketing, real estate internet marketing, direct mail leads, leads for realtors, realtor promotion, realtor promotional items and realtors leads.

2) Now that I have identified these highly visible search terms for real estate marketing, I simply add these terms to the vernacular of various blog posts. Over the next few months, look for these strategically placed realtor marketing terms. I will gradually be placing the terms and measuring traffic results through hittail and mybloglog.

I’ll let you know how it turns out. If the experiment is successful, there will be a bit more organic search traffic to the 4MySales blog

Real estate farming letters are just the beginning

2007-02-06T22:20:00.000-08:00

Real estate farming letters have been the mainstay of most agent’s marketing programs since the industry began. These, coupled with other online and off-line initiatives can be a great resource in the continual fight to differentiate yourself from the competition.
A lot of agents search for free real estate farming letters, or templates that they can modify to suite their own needs. This approach may have some benefit, but if you are trying to differentiate yourself from every other agent out there, I would recommend approaching your farming letters and your entire marketing plan from a completely different direction.

Most agents do not realize that it takes more than five exposures to their name and offer before a mail recipient will even recognize their name. If you don’t believe me, just think about how you answer most of your junk mail. In order to stand out from the crowd, take a much more strategic approach to your direct mail and incorporate it into a much larger marketing campaign. If you have an area that you are farming, try to find a way to expose every target client to your message at least five times in a relative short period. A simple way to do this is to send everybody on your list a direct mail message in an envelope. I recommend including a piece of candy or something in the envelope to ensure that it gets opened. The next week send out a postcard with an offer or raffle as your call to action. Next place signs at the entrances of the communities that you are farming (be sure to get the proper permits, or plan to have you signs taken down by the city.) For the next week, send out another round of envelopes and place your flyers on the bulletin boards of the local grocery and library. Follow that week with door hangers that have another call to action and offer.

This is a very basic approach to marketing, but it will start the ball rolling. The goal is to get everyone in the community that you are farming with your letters to recognize your name. After that, you just need to remain active enough in the area to maintain your brand awareness in the minds of your target client. By maintaining a top of the mind awareness with your prospects, you will ensure that you will be their first phone call when it is time to call upon the resources of a REALTOR.

Ten steps to a great podcast

2007-02-06T16:50:00.000-08:00

So back to blogging and making posts. I still am struggling with getting enough time to pen something meaningful, but I did find a great article on how to create a great podcast. This article http://www.marketingprofs.com/7/collier6.asp was of specific interest to me since we are having great success with the 4MySales.com podcasting tool and helping real estate agents podcast their message to their waiting clients.

Stop in and create your own podmail in under five munites at http://www.4mysales.com/record_a_podcast.php

Okay, back to the article. It was posted on Marketing Profs and details the top ten steps to creating a great podcasts. I have repeated them below in an extremely abbreviated format, but read the entire article to get a better idea of the rationale behind each step.

So um…. Step 1:
DO RESEARCH – I am sure that we are acutely aware of topics that turn us on and topics that turn us off. Make sure that the topics that you choose to broadcast are of interest to your listening public. As an example, very few people are excited about hearing a list of current homes available for viewing. However many people are interested to hear about the current market, any planned buildings or re-zoning activity in their community, school updates, etc. Before creating a podcast, spend some time at Starbucks listening to what people in your community are talking about.

Step 2
Determine the format of your show: Is it a talk show, interview, general commentary. Will it be raucous or generally subdued. Plan the format of your podcast the same way you plan the format of your blog. Make it real and make it genuine, but make it entertaining.

Step 3
Determine what equipment you will need. Seriously, just try the 4MySales.com podcasting system. We put a pretty heavy investment in place to make it easy and user friendly.

Step 4
Select the program that you will use to create your podcast. See step 3 above.

Step 5
Write the layout of the show and begin rehearsing. Rarely will you be able to pull off a podcast in one take. For me, even voicemail is a challenge.

Step 6
Record the main body of the show: My take on this is break it up into specific segments for ease of editing and recording.

Step 7
If applicable, select beginning and closing music.
Step 8
Select a podcast host.. So the article makes this point number nine, but step 8 in the article is related to step 7. With regard to a podcast host, dare I say 4MySales.com?

Step 9
Promote your podcast. I recommend announcement emails (included in 4MySales) along with other means of direct promotion.

Overall, my advice is to read the article and learn about the value of podcasting. When you are ready to get your feet wet, visit us at 4MySales.com. Podcasting is only one of the many features that are included for less that $20.00 per month.

The hittail is getting longer

2007-02-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

I’ll be the first to admit that I have not had a great deal of time to make posts this year. However, previous blog entries and other, less time intensive, marketing activities have managed to carry 4MySales through this period of inactivity. In looking at my hittail report this morning, I am pleased to announce that long tail keywords such as free real estate flyers, real estate marketing tools, real estate follow up letters as well as real estate agent online have contributed to over 62.6% of all of the generic search traffic to this real estate blog and the 4MySales.com Real Estate Marketing website. Hopefully I will have time over the next few weeks to start posting about real estate marketing again, however, it is still nice to see that blogging works as a marketing tool.

Repetition & Marketing Metrics, Are You Measuring Up?

2007-01-28T16:03:00.000-08:00

What is known by all marketers, but not realized by many small business owners is repetition and measurement are the keys to running a successful marketing campaign. The primary focus of any marketing program is to get your target customer to purchase your product. However, many small business owners do not effectively utilize repetition to brand their product, and very rarely do they utilize any form of metric to measure the success rate of a program.

Statistics vary, but it takes the average person at least five exposures to a brand name or product before he or she will make the commitment to purchase it. In addition, it usually takes more than thirty exposures to a marketing piece before the customer can remember it at will. The simple lesson from these facts are that you must run advertisements multiple times, and consistently use the same or similar images to market your product. Run the same advertisement in multiple mediums, with the same logos, images, and themes as it has been proven to be the best mass media approach to marketing your product.

Repetition is the key to creating a successful marketing program, but how exactly do you measure the success? A successful marketing campaign develops awareness of your product which translate into larger sales volumes, but what part of the campaign has had the greatest effect on awareness and increased sales? To answer these questions, you must approach your marketing program with some pre-defined ideas on how you are going to measure results, and how you are going to differentiate the results of one marketing medium from another.

To define exactly how you are going to measure the results of a specific marketing program, you must evaluate the message of your campaign. You must determine exactly what is going to close your customer, and if anything in the message can be echoed back to you in a quantifiable form. Many times, you can include an offer, coupon, or discount in the advertisement which can be documented at the time of sale. This provides an easy metric for tracing the effectiveness of an advertisement. If a traceable coupon or discount is not available, you may need to rely on measurements of increased sales and statistical analysis to quantify the results of your program.
The two fundamental themes in marketing are repetition and measurement. A marketing program will be ineffective if it does not provide sufficient repetition and exposure. In addition, the program will be useless unless it can provide a quantifiable response. Both provide the foundation with which to build an effective marketing campaign.

FSBO Leads are Available Now

2007-01-24T13:15:00.000-08:00

It’s been a month full of challenges and I have been asking all of my colleagues for a do-over for 2007. So far nobody has taken me up on the offer. In spite of the challenges, we do have some great news to share. Our FSBO system has been upgraded and expanded to provide even more leads. In addition we have set our new FSBO lead system up so that all our visitors need to do is request that the For Sales by Owner leads be emailed directly to them on a weekly basis.

The new tool is pretty slick. Just sign up for your weekly FSBO emails on the home page of http://www.4mysales.com/ Now on our home page you can create your own podcast to email to your clients and get a weekly list of FSBO leads.

Expired Listing Leads… Everything Must Go Regardless of Loss, Cost, or Value

2007-01-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

It’s the new year and everybody is having a sales. In real estate this applies to many of the vendors of different services; including those that help identify expired listing leads. I am of course speaking of the RedX expired listing lead service that interfaces with your MLS to provide a daily list of expireds that have been screened through the do not call registry. My friends at the RedX contacted me with a great offer and an invitation to let everybody know. For the time being… (February 15 to be exact) They are waiving both the setup fee (this saves you $150 right off of the bat) and providing a 30% discount off of the first three months worth of service. Essentially this means that their existing service which is usually priced at $150 startup plus $56.99 per month can now be enjoyed for only $39.99 per month with no setup fee. Not a bad new years sale with over $200 in savings for trying out their service.

If you are interested in signing up, here is the link to their offer: http://www.theredx.com/signup/4mysalesexpiredsale.html
It’s branded with the 4MySales logo as part of my agreement with them.

No what do I know about The RedX? I have worked with them for about two years and used to include their product in the 4MySales service offering. Logistically it was a nightmare getting customers signed up and serviced through both 4MySales and RedX so we eventually ended that arrangement. Anyway, their system consists of a contact management software that interfaces with your MLS. I believe that their system is set up so that you login to your local MLS, specify the search parameters and the returned data is uploaded into the RedX software where it is screened by the Do Not Call list and then compared to previous versions of the listing. Those listings that have had the information changed (telephone number modified so that the listing agent can protect his listing) are restored.

In essence the remaining call list is a clean list of expired listing prospects with the CORRECT contact information.

I am sure that there are many nuances that are included in their system, but I have not delved that deep into their software.

On a final commercial disclaimer note: I do have a commercial and affiliate relationship with these guys. They have a great product, but please do your own due diligence.

Does this worry anybody?

2006-12-29T12:19:00.000-08:00

I was over on mashable.com this morning reading their predictions for 2007, and it is amazing how rapidly online social networks are taking over the online and mobile communication space. The site has reviewed hundreds of online social sites over the past year and the number of online social properties is growing at a phenominal rate. Online social networking is the newest .com boom. The only question is, how does the average real estate agent effectively leverage the phenomina to maximize their business?

Optimize Your Real Estate Blog for Google

2006-12-29T11:28:00.000-08:00

I recently had a conversation with a gentleman who claims to be a specialist in viral marketing. We discussed the benefits of the new online social networks, but he pointed out one of the biggest mistakes most professionals make when they launch a blog is that they start writing, but never take time to optimize their blogs tags, title and descriptions in the html code. This often results in a poor ranking and index on Google, Yahoo and other engines because the basic title and phrases are missing.

It seems like a minor point, but I am sure that it is one that most of us overlook. When you create a new blog, please be sure to enter the proper meta tags into the HTML so that they can be indexed properly. This may require a small amount of additional text in the template, depending on who is hosting your blog. I am not sure how to do it for WordPress, but for blogger, you simply need to add the tag directly into the template html. To give you an example, this blog has the following HTML tags that are indexed by different engines (I pulled out the > and the < to allow blogger to publish the code):

title>Real estate marketing tools from 4MySales.commeta name="robots" content="index,follow" /
meta name="googlebot" content="index, follow" /
meta name="description" content="Real Estate Blog Marketing and Lead Generation" /
meta name="keywords" content="real estate blogs, realtor leads, real estate marketing letters, flyers, real estate marketing tools, real estate farming, realtor license, automated, podcasts, capture leads" /
meta name="author" content="Real estate marketing blogs for REALTORS" /
meta name="language" content="English" /
meta name="country" content="United States" /

A usesfull tool to see how effectively your blog is tagged is the Meta Tag Analyzer found at Widexl which evaluates your URL and gives you a green, orange, or red statement regarding how well your title, description and keyword tags are optimized. The tool is a great starting point to optimize your real estate blog.

13 Biggest Wastes of Your Real Estate Marketing Dollars

2006-12-29T09:50:00.000-08:00

I’ve been a little lax in the real estate blog this week…. But hey, it’s the holidays.

I was reading this article in Marketing Profs this week on the 13 biggest wastes of money in your budget. The article is for general marketing purposes, but there are two specific points that bear mentioning as they apply to most real estate agents. The points that the article brings up are:

1) Marketing Waste No. 3: Failing to follow up on leads
2) Marketing Waste No. 4: Killing the conversation
3) Marketing Waste No. 5: Overemphasizing new leads

There are a number of other great points that are made in the article, but I feel that the three that I mentioned are some of the most important. I’m too lax to look up the specific NAR statistic, but I believe that between 70-80 percent of new leads received by REALTORS do not receive timely follow up. My only response to that is create a prospecting engine to automate the follow up. Use autoresponders and click to call features and take advantage of the latest technology to make sure that when a lead is captured that it receives the attention that it deserves.

In conjunction with the follow up statement, I feel that the topic of killing the conversation needs to be mentioned. When a prospect (some people call it a lead, but my version of a lead is a qualified target client) contacts a real estate agent, the conversation should revolve around serving the needs of the prospect as well as qualifying them as a lead. We all love to tell people about what we are selling, and you can quickly kill a conversation with a prospect by jumping right into the features of your most current listings. Use your first conversation to identify the needs and wants of the prospect as well as ask questions that will help you to qualify them as a client. Save the detailed list of properties for when you have them face to face.

As I said before, the article has a number of great pearls of wisdom… 13 to be exact.. but the third plays right into the explanation about the need for a prospecting engine. As I have said many times; out of 100 current home owners, 1 needs your help right now, 20 will need your help within the next two years, and an additional 50 will need your help within the next seven years. Instead of spending all of your money trying to find that one new lead, use your prospecting engine to convert those leads that you have into ready and waiting clients.

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On a completely separate note, my hittail says I need to write more about free real estate flyers. I’m not sure how to effectively incorporate the text into my real estate marketing blog. However, I’m up for the challenge.
4MySales.com

Back to Real Estate Marketing Basics

2006-12-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

I have been babbling about social networks and abstract marketing ideas for the past month, and it is time to get back to my real estate marketing roots. For the next few posts, I will be talking less about the use on flickr, youtube, and other Mashups and focus more on the basics of marketing that every real estate agent can use; tools such as real estate flyers, real estate signage, realty advertising, and the basics of marketing your small business.

This holiday season has been great because I have had some time to catch up on my reading. I got caught up on reading Ardell’s SeachingSeattle as well as The Real Estate Tomato and Sellsius all of whom are prolific real estate writers (I think Jim is on the same technology kick as I was with his recent posts about new comment bookmarking.)

After catching up with the commentary of my peers, I spent a great deal of time reviewing the most recent articles in Marketing Profs and found some great advice that I would like to share. The specific article is entitled Ten Key Questions for Your Web Copy and it details a number of questions that you should keep in mind when developing your online presence. Click the title to read the full article, but if you don’t have time, here are the items that the article discusses:

1. Is your homepage empathetic to your visitors?

2. Is your site organized on your customer's terms?

3. Are your offers easily accessible?

4. Is your content distributed properly?
Use testimonials and reports across all of the pages of your real estate website instead of having a single dedicated page.

5. Do you offer print-friendly pages?

6. Is your contact information complete and easy to find?
I can’t tell you how important this one is. Many realtors buy websites that have contact forms as part of the offering. However, when you visit their website, there is no telephone number, not address, and the only way that you can get hold of the agent is filling out a form and sending it into the web abyss. Please make sure that your phone number and contact information is on your home page and make it as easy as possible for your clients to contact you.

8. Does your homepage have a place for timely announcements or news?
Can anybody say Blog?

9. Do you have a retention device?
We all know the value of real estate newsletters and auto-responders. Use them continually.

10. Do you regularly check your Web stats?
I would have finished at nine, but the point on the article is well stated.

More marketing commentary to come…. Viva Real Estate!

A Sense of Community and Opportunity

2006-12-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

I have been involved in the real estate and online industries for about six years now and I must tell you that over and over I see the most traffic online invariably comes from the communities. Chat rooms and forums used to rule the online traffic, and if you wanted to find a group of active target customers, you would simply search for a forum, Yahoo Group or chat room that served your client’s niche. With the advent of the new online social networks this truism is becoming more and more pronounced.

So as a marketer and real estate agent, how do you capitalize on this phenomena to drive people in your community into your office?

Thanks to the proliferation of standardized community tools you can create your own online network to serve your local community. As the host of this network, you can drive a lot of traffic through your front door. In addition, because of the new and emerging networking platforms, the cost is minimal, and the opportunity for customization is immense.

I have been researching the different platforms that you can use to create your network, and there are a variety of platforms to suit your needs. If you have no access to a programmer, there are a few such as Me.com, CommunityServer and Bryght.com which are primarily turnkey networks. If you do have access to a programmer, there are a lot of open source packages that can be customized to serve the needs of your community. The few that I have looked at are: http://www.joomla.org/, http://www.drupal.org/, http://www.plone.org/, http://www.phpfox.com/, AROUNDMe and DZIOC which I will most likely use for my new online project. Finally, if you want to go big, there are a number of platform providers and integrators that you can use to create a completely customized platform. In addition to Pluck Sitelife and Select Minds, here are the Google Picks.

With the advent of all of these online tools and the adoption of MySpace by individuals over the age of 35, people are moving online to find ways to connect. We all lead such busy lives that many of us miss the day to day interaction with friends and have given up social outlets in favor of longer work days and too many demands on our time. For the real estate agent or firm that can capitailize on this movement and connect with their neighbors online there is great opportunity. By extension, for those agents that can connect with others online and bring those connections into the brick and mortar world, through the use of meetings, mixers, and social events, the opportunity to become a fixture in your community is immense.