Fast food restaurants spend thousands of dollars just taking one picture of their new burger to make it look SOOOoooo yummy that you want to drop everything and get in the drive thru line and try one. How much time are you spending to make YOUR marketing get prospects’ attention? Probably not enough! One area you might need to focus on more is Copywriting. Simply put, it is writing what you’ll say in your ads, flyers, MLS listings, etc. So today I present:

Top 5 Tips to Amp Up Your Real Estate (and any other) Marketing… and Turn Your Phone Into a Money-Spewing ATM Machine!

#1 Tip: Know Your Audience!!! Spend a big chunk of your time narrowing down WHO is your most likely client IN THIS MARKETING CAMPAIGN. Women? Families? Business Owners? Golfers? Once you know who you’re writing FOR, pretend they’re sitting across the table from you and you’re TALKING to them about your listing or service… what would you say? Great! Write that down! If you can actually go after more than one niche, make it 2 different ads!

#2 Tip: Sell the Sizzle, not the Steak! Features vs. Benefits. A feature is a FACT about your product or service. A Benefit is what they’ll get from that feature. Remember this for benefits: WIIFM (What’s In It For ME?). Here’s some tips for headlines that will get your prospects attention:

• Ask a burning question: “How Many Termites is Too Many?”
• Tell “How To”: “How To Never Get a Tenant Call At 3 a.m. Again!”
• Use Catchy Words Like new, improved, more, better: “Get 25% more net income when you buy new construction duplexes for rentals”
• Use a Number: “Top 5 Things you Must Know Before Buying a Foreclosure” (odd numbers are better, except Top 10 list)
• Make a Statement or Exclamation: “Lowest Closing Cost. Guaranteed!”
• Use a produce, service, or business name - or create a new word or catch phrase: Think Google, Zillow, and other “made up names” some are even iconic. When I say “it’s scrumpdillyicious” what do you think of? Dairy Queen!

Tip #3: Keep a SWIPE File of other ads, flyers, etc that catch your attention. The next time you are writing an ad, turn to them for inspiration. I’ve gotten inspiration from everything from Car Dealer ads to Kentucky Fried Chicken (which now by the way is officially KFC). The great “No B.S.” Marketer, Dan Kennedy, calls it S&D, Swipe & Deploy!

Wow, this list got longer than I thought it would be… I’m going to break it up into 2 parts… watch next week for Part II!

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Wednesday I’m going to a luncheon at the Heathrow Country Club in Lake Mary to hear Sydney Biddle Barrows, better known as the “Mayflower Madam”, share some of her strategies about sales and marketing.

Now, before you go off the deep end, think about not what industry she was in (escort service) but rather the amazing business she was able to build with absolutely ZERO advertising! (she couldn’t exactly take out a TV ad now could she?) Many real estate professionals are working on VERY limited budgets right now, so I’ve decided that I’ll take good notes and share a few of her highlights with you in the next email.

Want to hear my personal history with the Mayflower Madam? (no, it’s NOT that!) When I was a kid, my sister and I would spend summers in Switzerland with a family friend. They lived in a little farming community that had: 1 bar/restaurant, 1 bakery, a post office, and 1 little general store (like a 7-11) That’s it! I worked in the bar serving beer & wine and got to keep my tips!

Anyway, when I was young I was a voracious reader, and I quickly went through all of the books I had brought with me. We went in to town one day and I found 2 used books in English (just 2, that’s it!) One was the Mayflower Madam’s biography and the other was David Niven’s biography (he was a famous actor back in his day, and I’ll tell you, he was NOT saint!) So those were the two books I read that summer, I was probably 11 or 12 at the time. No wonder I’m not “normal” these days, eh?

I don’t have that old ratty used paperback anymore… but if I get a chance I’ll tell Sydney my story!

bobsdad @ yahoo.com … realestateguy72 @ hotmail.com … sexychick @ Aol.com

What message are you sending every day as you email potential clients, hand out business cards, and pay good money for advertising? Everyone knows that they are free email services, so right off the bat they know you won’t invest in your own business, and the “sexychick” one speaks for itself…(what business ARE you trying to promote, anyway?)

I often mention this in my trainings, and I often get questions from you about HOW to set it up, and how expensive is it, anyways? So today’s tip is called…(drum roll please…)

Get a Real Email!

I’m going to share some quick, simple steps to getting a great, professional email address in just a matter of minutes!

The company I use is probably one of the least expensive AND easiest to use. Here’s the simple steps to getting YOUR professional email up and running:

1. Click on the link at the bottom of this article.
2. Choose your package/Product. You can choose from several, but starting out, these 2 are probably good enough:

A. For ONE domain name and 5 different email names on that account (no web hosting included) Click on “mail” and then select “continue” under “Instant Mail” then click “sign up” and then you will come to the screen to select your domain name. I would suggest starting with your name first, such as AndyTolbert.com (capitals don’t matter!) If it’s available, select it. Then follow the instructions for setting up your new account. Your total cost will be $18.87 per year, that’s a nickel a day! I find more than that on the floor of the vacant houses I go see!

B. For more than one domain and to have actual Web Hosting where you can post a website or a blog and get 600 email names instead of 5, instead of clicking “mail” click on “web hosting” and select the plan you want. Please note, don’t get a bigger plan JUST for the extra domains…it’s cheaper to just buy add-on domains for $6.99 each per year. It’s more about the extras. Probably the Beginner will be enough. It will run you $47.88/year. Once you’ve chosen, go through the same steps of choosing your domain name as above in “A”

Please Note, if you are a real estate agent, NAR has restrictions on using the word REALTOR in your domain name, please be careful with what you choose. I also would try to focus on YOU not your company, because you may not always be at the same place!

3. Once your new account is set up, you will log in to your “control panel” where there are 2 main tabs at the top, go to “administration” then click on the “email” icon then click “new”

4. Type in the email name that you want, such as “listings” @ and then select your domain name from the dropdown list (if you have more than one). you are now setting up an email called “listings @ yourdomain.com”

5. Select “type” either “mailbox” which will create a mailbox for you or “forward” which will just forward it to another email that you already have (like your aol.com email, but remember, if you need to ever REPLY to a client they will see your aol if you use it as a forward) then create and verify your password. You can also select an additional forward, for example, every email you receive at “listings@” will also copy to your assistant. This can be very handy for followup.

6. Now hit “OK” and you’re done! Your new email, “listings @ yourdomain.com” is ready to go!

7. To check your email, you can use their built in web-email login OR you can use the Pop3/imap/smtp servers to set up in outlook, gmail, and other email servers. (can’t help you with that part, it all depends on how you have your computer set up, but there is some great customer support online in your control panel, or you can call for support, they’ve always helped me when I called!)

It’s not even really 7 steps, but if you knew just how easy it is, you’d kick yourself for not doing it sooner! (Thanks to Lee for giving me the idea for this weeks lesson!)

Click Here to go to the site where I buy my domains and run MY emails.

*If your name is not available, try for something that tells about your business (or an extra domain name) for example, besides AndyTolbert.com, I also own AndiTolbert, AndreaTolbert, Realestateinvesting123, REOdomination, turbohousebuyers, and many more. Maybe you would like something like Orlandowaterfronthomes.com, Miamicondos.com or something that spells out your niche. You can even buy a street address for one of your properties and put up a simple one page site for each. it only costs $6.99 per year per domain, and when you sell the house you can cancel it, or better yet, transfer it to the new homeowners!

Hope you have fun with all of your new domains and emails…but don’t get bogged down, just pick one and go out and sell something.

The other day I stopped in to KFC for lunch when Tim & I were out looking at some properties to put offers on. I don’t know about you, but when I go to a fast food restaurant (which isn’t very often anymore) I usually tend to order the same thing, so I don’t need to look at the menu. But this day was different…Tim was outside on the cell phone, and I stood for about 10 minutes staring at the menu board…it wasn’t because I was trying to decide what I wanted, it was because I was enthralled by the fancy new LCD TV screen menu boards. Yep! They were actual big-screen TV’s up on the wall that were changing images and scrolling through the different menu items. I was in a trance, and I didn’t even know why!

Then it hit me…the bucket of chicken on the TV actually had hot, tasty steam coming off it! The graphics were amazing, and there was actually a little puff of moving steam on the chicken! I wanted to order the bucket because it LOOKED so amazing, even though there were only 2 of us! It was almost like subliminal advertising…I wasn’t even in the market for a bucket, but I was actually craving it because they made it look so yummy!

Are your buyers experiencing the same thing when they look at your houses and listings?
Does the house look SOOOOOO Yummy that they want to buy it even if they weren’t in the market to buy a house? If not, maybe that’s why it’s not selling. Let’s look at some little things to see if you’re “yummy” enough…

Curb Appeal: When they pull up to your house (or look at pictures) does their mouth start to water and they WANT IT! If you don’t see anything wrong with the curb appeal, invite a disinterested 3rd party over to give you a review. When I was a “regular” buyer, I remember not even getting out of the car with our Realtor if I didn’t like the looks of it from the outside.

Tickle all of their senses: at KFC, I was already hungry, then I smelled the fried chicken, then they visually showed me the food in an appealing manner. Are YOU prepping your houses to hit all of your buyer’s senses? Plush carpet that they sink into, vanilla-scented air fresheners in several parts of the house (avoid florals, some people are allergic), a beach ball floating in the pool, nice music playing, a romantic fireplace, an (empty) bottle of wine and 2 glasses on the counter…are you getting the picture?

Make it easy to do business with you: Isn’t it easy to just order a #5? Make it that easy to buy your house too. Some ways you can do that are:
Have the house pre-inspected- this assures them that what they’re buying will not cause them problems in the future
Refer them to a GOOD mortgage broker if they don’t already have one
Offer owner financing to make their lives easier (in their eyes)
Make it easy to track you down if they need further info
Have the house ready to move into (is your whole punch-list finished?)

And here’s the thing to remember…you DON’T need to be the lowest price in the market to sell, you need to be the BEST for the money that you’re asking.

Happy Selling!

In my 12+ years in this crazy real estate business, I have seen many deals fall apart at the last minute due to the buyers doing something really crazy right before the closing.
It was such a costly problem that I designed a flyer for my loan officers to give their clients spelling out what NOT to do during the financing process and risk losing the deal.

I was reminded of this fact this morning as Tim has just had a “challenge” come up on a really big loan he’s working on. The lender pulled another credit report and the client’s score has dropped 30 points! This puts him in a different pricing bracket and means his interest will be 1% higher leading to a $625 a MONTH higher payment! There is a chance that this loan will not close.

I also remember a guy years ago that we had all ready to go on a purchase loan, then the lender pulled a last-minute “credit update” which showed a brand new $900 Corvette Payment! Needless to say, he no longer qualified for the house and was not able to close.

Right now, you may be having a challenge FINDING buyers, so I want to make sure when you find them, you can KEEP them!

Here’s a link to the flyer in PDF form. I hope you get a chuckle out of it and are able to use it with your clients. If you’d like a version that you can give to your buyers, just email Tim@Compass123.com