ForumsAdvertising, Sales and Marketing

I visited "Great Advertising and Marketing Ideas for Real Estate Agents" and it was great. I agree with Jay who provided a comment that you have a great site and offer great information for small business. I'm going to do some thinking about how I can offer some "surprising" premiums to our services and properties. Thanks so much for the response...

Do you stay in touch with your past clients? A couple of years down the road, would your past clients remember who they did business with? Have you given them a reason to do repeat business with you?

There is an way to create a greeting card campaign that will send out real greeting cards through the mail for as little as 62 cents. You can set the campaign to send cards on birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc. You could ask for referrals too. Everything is done from your computer online, but the greeting cards are sent through the postal service. You can even use your own handwriting font and upload your picture and/or a scanned image of your business card

With this same system, you could take a picture of a family in front of their new home that they just purchased from you and upload it and have it printed on the cover of the card. You then offer to send the card out to your client's contacts to let them know about the new house and the change of address. Of course your business would be mentioned inside the card.

Greeting cards are more likely to be read than postcards. Many realtors are using this system, you should try it out.

David Simons
www.cardsguy.com

Hi,

I love this question. I'm a freelance marketing consultant for small businesses and the most fun I've had in this job was for a real estate company.

Everyone has a different opinion of radio and print. Personally, I almost never recommend either to my clients. Typically the business owners I work with have a tight marketing budget and can't afford a mis-step.

Let me tell you what has proven successful for me and hopefully it'll work for you.

• A 24 hour property hotline advertised on the real estate signs with a rider.
• An optimized website that is designed to grab email addresses in exchange for free reports.
• Event marketing advertised with press releases.
• Purchased a used moving van and had the sides logo'd. Offered it for free to every client.

Some quick explanations of these:

• The 24 hour hotline is something I set up using the client's phone system. We bought another line with a catchy number (used the last four S-A-L-E). When a client drives past a home, they see the hotline number on a rider that essentially tells them for more info, they can call 24 hours a day. When they call, they press the extension number for the property where they'll hear all sorts of info as well as receive the cell number of the listing agent. They also have the opportunity to listen to info about more houses, leave a message for the listing agent, request free reports, etc.

• Websites should offer free reports (bullets are the best - "10 Things to look for....) in exchange for joining the email list.

• By far, event marketing is the crown jewel. Partner with local charities and create an event around their needs. Write a compelling press release and blast newspapers, TV and radio. I've done everything from collecting food for the food bank to handing out free school supplies to offering free 5x7 photos of kids at Halloween. I've not only NEVER had a press release rejected when working in conjunction with a charity, I've been picked up for free TV exposure and every single event has been a huge success and lots of fun.

I wish you luck!