Yet another Way To Increase Your Search Ranking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.