This week's strongest links to interesting media | The Real Estate Book Blog

This week's strongest links to interesting media The Real Estate Book Blog Dan McCarthy's recent post -- interesting for you REALTOR's.

73 Ways to Become a Better Writer | Copyblogger

73 Ways to Become a Better Writer Copyblogger
CopyBlogger 101 with Johnny B. Truant (not his real name)

I keep promising myself to set up a blog just for things I'd like to have on file, but then I don't and drop them into Karen's Corner where they aren't entirely appropriate. But this one works - if you've been thinking about starting a blog and want to study up on it - here ya go.

You're welcome.

Advertising As Part of Your Marketing Plan

What do you want to accomplish with your ad?

Print advertising serves more than one purpose. The days of using print to fling a few listings into the marketplace are over. How can you use your ad to accomplish more than one objective?

by Karen D. McCall

Why Do You Advertise?

Branding
Impressions
Attract Buyers
Attract Sellers
Drive Web Traffic
Generate Leads

Branding. The purpose of branding is to make you, and or, your company stand out. We want you to be memorable. Certainly everyone who knows you will recognize you in your ad, they might mention that they saw your ad, and they might tell a friend about you. The point of branding is to be remembered: you can brand yourself as a real estate expert, brand yourself to a community, brand yourself to a firm.
Here’s a very good article about Branding Basics by Laura Lake:
http://marketing.about.com/od/brandstrategy/u/brandbasics.htm

Impressions: Print advertising is an inexpensive way to deliver impressions. If you buy a box of business cards, let’s say you get a deal: 1,000 for $25.00, you still have to hand them out. We do that for you. We’re going to print ~20,000 books and deliver them to more than 500 locations in 4 counties where your potential clients will pick them up in what’s known as permission based target marketing. This is different from other forms of print advertising where your ad is distributed to all of their subscribers who may or may not be interested in real estate. When advertising in the newspaper, for example, as much as 90% of your advertising is directed to people who aren’t potential home buyers or sellers. Our books are picked up by the target market, the end user, the consumer. Your customer.


Buyers will pick up a book; they’ll see you in print. Your ad must convey to them “Here’s a knowledgeable, successful agent.” Buyers want to work with agents who can afford to advertise and who can blame them? Buyers want information and they want a real estate agent who can help them find and buy a home.

Sellers will pick up a book, they’ll flip through it. Who do they want to list with? What about your ad will appeal to them? Can they readily imagine seeing their home advertised under your header?
The point of advertising to buyers and sellers is to “find a need and fill it” as Zig Zieglar said so often. Use your advertising to make the phone to ring. Get some leads coming in and work those leads. Advertisements are your introduction to Buyers and Sellers: your ad goes out ahead of the handshake.

Driving Web Traffic: When I went to Atlanta for TREB (The Real Estate Book) training they gave me a homework assignment. I had to select a client for a case study. One of my firms was experimenting with ads at the time which made them a perfect test case. In class, I was challenged to Google what I thought would be a potential buyer’s search phrase, I typed: Rutherford County real estate for sale. Google returned 98,000 hits and my client was not on the first three pages. Today, I ran the same search, Google returned 152,000 results, my client is not in the first 5 pages.
At TREB we not only host your listing in our system, we send your listing to 30 online partners. Each of those partners has their own SEO (Search Engine Optimization) engineers. They’re all chasing web traffic, they have their own marketing plans, and they all drive internet leads to agents. Your specialty is real estate. Why spend hours typing your listings into multiple search engines? Why spend hours trying to come up with your own tags and key words, when you can optimize your time and effort by focusing on your specialty and letting the SEO staff work for you?
Hands down, the best way for a prospect to find your website is to type your address into their web-browser. And if you’re watching your analytics you’ll know what’s driving your web traffic. You have to get your web-site’s address into your prospect’s browser window. An ad can do that for you.

Lead Generation: In 1978, The Real Estate Book founders committed to generating the most leads for the least amount of money than any other kind of advertising media. In print and online we drive traffic to our customers. We are committed to helping our firms and agents use their advertising to accomplish their objectives.
We do that by having the best distribution. We create the largest audience for our customers both in print and online. We rank higher in the search engines, than any of our competition, we get more hits and route more web traffic. The http://www.realestatebook.com/ is on the front cover of ~9 million books every month. We direct 45,000 internet leads every month. Our SEO team drives traffic directly to our clients. A larger audience equals more exposure for you..

If you aren’t getting calls your ad isn’t working. If your marketing program is not generating leads you need to find out why. When you’re advertising you should expect a return on your investment. See the, Income Marketing Approach.
http://blog.realestatebook.com/2009/11/11/income-targeted-goals-set/ The Income Marketing Approach shows you the relationship between your ad and your business. It gives you the formulas you need to use your ad to generate leads and return your investment.

Remember the adage “If you don’t plan to win, you’re planning to fail”. If your marketing plan isn’t working as well as you’d like, if you don’t have a marketing plan, I hope I’ve convinced you to give it some thought.

Perhaps it is better to try and fail, than never to have tried at all, and maybe it is better to advertise by flinging listings into the marketplace, than not to advertise at all. “Cast thy bread onto the waters” the Good Book says. If you’re not sowing you can’t expect to reap, but sow at the right time and place. “Right Now, millions of home shoppers are searching online. Will They Find Your Listings?

THE END




Resources:

The Power of Print by Rebecca Chandler
http://blog.realestatebook.com/2010/04/20/the-power-of-print/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRealEstateBookBlog+%28The+Real+Estate+Book+Blog%29

Attention Listing Agents: Steve Jobs offers some pointers:
http://kdmccall.blogspot.com/2010/05/presentation-pointers-from-worlds.html

What’s the difference in advertising and marketing, Advertising vs. Marketing, by Laura Lake
http://marketing.about.com/cs/advertising/a/marketvsad.htm

Branding Basics, By Laura Lake, About.com Guide to Marketing
http://marketing.about.com/od/brandstrategy/u/brandbasics.htm

$$$ Expect to see a return on your investment. $$$
Income Based Approach to Real Estate Marketing.
http://blog.realestatebook.com/2009/11/11/income-targeted-goals-set/


Advertising is only part of your marketing plan.
Your real estate marketing plan will contain everything from soup to nuts: Pictures, Flyers, Postcards, Talking Houses, Virtual Tours, Name Badges. Magnetic Signs, Business Cards, Stationery, Blogs, Social Media, Email Marketing, Signs, Magazines, Telephone Books, (in print and online), SOI, Professional Groups: Linked In, MLS, Website, Newspaper and Print Advertising…

Income Targeted. Goals Set.

Income Targeted. Goals Set.

Why do your own spreadsheet when you can get it here?

Scroll down to the bottom of the above link, when you get there, and sign up for your own media kit. I mean it, Excel worksheets and all. Everything you need in one spot. Take advantage of the professionals and designers at corporate.

Presentation Pointers From the World’s Greatest Presenter- Steve Jobs

Presentation Pointers From the World’s Greatest Presenter- Steve Jobs


Listing Agents take heed. Here are five tips from the World's Greatest Presenter, so look sharp and pay attention, sharpen your pencil... copy and paste this into your word processor, print it, you'll want to memorize this.

REALTOR® Magazine-Daily News-5 Fixes to Gain More Clients

REALTOR® Magazine-Daily News-5 Fixes to Gain More Clients

It's not unusual to hear me say, Marketing is Marketing I don't care what business you're in. And it's true, for the most part. Real estate practitioners do need a little different approach to marketing. This REALTOR Magazine article, in case you didn't read it in this month's issue, was written for REALTORS.

I'm working on an article about why REALTORS advertise and about how to approach each ad with a target in mind. A tailored approach has always worked better than the shotgun approach. But when you read that 48% of buyers bought houses their agents found for them last year, and that - that figure is down 36 percent from year before last because buyers are bringing houses they're interested in to the attention of their agent.... Well, seems like you'd want to know about that.

Mail Merge by Email Using Word and Outlook

And here's how to mail merge a Word Document with Outlook. All sorts of useful videos are turning up today.

Word 2003 Tutorial Merging Labels Microsoft Training Lesson 23.1

What to do when you have Word 2003 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEveYvPR-2w

Microsoft Word : How to Create Labels From Excel

Note to self: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWIbkxl8oLE

How to Use Excel, to Word to create mailing labels.

Free File Hosting, Free Video Hosting, Online File Hosting. Large Files and Images up to 5GB - YourFileLink.com

Free File Hosting, Free Video Hosting, Online File Hosting. Large Files and Images up to 5GB - YourFileLink.com This is a fast way to save a file, they say.... I don't know about saving one, but I just downloaded a huge file and it was pretty fast. Need to share a large file, perhaps this is your ticket. Don't you just love free web 2.0?

Seth's Blog: How to send a personal email

Seth's Blog: How to send a personal email Writer, speaker, marketing genius, entrepreneur, inventor of the Squidoo Lens, and more, Seth Godin, spells it out in no uncertain terms. This could have appeared under the title 14 Things You Need To Know About Email, but it doesn't. That's marketing.

Mike Klingler Leading the Internet Marketing Revolution 5/10/2010 - Kevin Mastaw on Blog Talk Radio

Mike Klingler Leading the Internet Marketing Revolution 5/10/2010 - Kevin Mastaw on Blog Talk Radio Founder of Renegade Pro and Marketing Merge tells his story. Mike built a MLM downline for 14 years, and then he found a better way. 2500 people have registered for his latest webinar.

'Lessons from the animal kingdom'

'Lessons from the animal kingdom'

Harvey Mackay sends lovely newsletters to my inbox and this one is absolutely the "Cat's Pajamas" as my mom would have said. Love it, love it and you will, too.

Just think what an oyster can do with a grain of sand.

Are You Missing Out On A Valuable Social Marketing Platform? « Renegade Professional News

Are You Missing Out On A Valuable Social Marketing Platform? « Renegade Professional News What makes someone want to do business with you and not your competitor?

Renegade Professional has articles that address this topic - read it here.

Using HP Recovery Manager in Windows 7 - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

Using HP Recovery Manager in Windows 7 - HP Customer Care (United States - English) OK I'm caught - I tried to email this link to myself on a different computer, since my endeavor was unsuccessful I am now attempting to add a link to Blogger. Now I can get to this link on another machine and the link will remain as long as my Blog is online.

Blogger can be a really awesome way of saving information so you can access said information from anywhere.

But another reason to run a blog.

And now, to the business of creating a Recovery Disc for my new laptop.

17 Easy Steps to Brilliant Blog Posts | Copyblogger

Build it and they will come.

Isn't that a greaat line? It's from the movie, Field of Dreams.

And that's where it's going to stay, in a movie, in a made-up pretend world because, as any blogger knows, you can build it to the sky, and have no audience.

So, here's a lovely blog for you from Jill at Copyblogger 101.


17 Easy Steps to Brilliant Blog Posts | Copyblogger

Jill reminds me that there has to be a point to all your blogging - I've been collecting free stuff for REALTORS and sharing it - but without a call to action.

And what is it I want you to do?

Well, I want you to stay in business. If you stay in business and need to advertise your business, and you'd do business with me, or at least let me tell you about my business, unless you tell me to mind my own business, which is my businss cause my business IS keeping you in business. You see?

In a nutshell, I'd love to help you with your ads, which I am quite good at.

How to connect your PC to TV with HDMI

Lets Hook our PC to our TV with an HDMI cable from Amazon! see Woot.com for the best deals on things like HDMI cables. Thanks Joe.