real estate marketing

Real Estate Marketing

By Dolores Pepper

Real Estate Marketing

Are you a real estate agent or broker new to the online marketing scene? An excellent place to learn to market your real estate business is through quality marketing forums and real estate blogs; you’ll get a steady stream of content and ideas to help you sell yourself and more homes.

Be Internet savvy more and more future home buyers are going online to look for homes. This can be a blessing and a curse all the same time; if you don’t have a web presence now would be a good time to get one. Future homebuyers are researching the internet and choosing houses by the process of elimination.

Another way to use the internet other than showing listings is lead generation, offering reports and advice to persons looking for a new home. New home buyers need money! They need a report explaining mortgages in English and not in banker or lawyer this would be a must have for a first time buyer.

Offer the report in exchange for their name, email and address so you can follow up with an email and a post card. If the thought of writing a report terrifies you there are several prewritten articles you can use and edit out some content and add your own in.

If you like a more personal approach another way to market your real estate business is to offer workshops that explain home buying or investing.

One of the biggest decisions you will need to make is will you work with everyone or just the people who can afford to buy a home. At a real estate forum I read a story about a woman who started showing homes only to pre-qualified buyers. She spent less time showing homes and made more money she was running all over.

This determination can only be made by you. Yes, some people are looking and some are seriously looking and can buy. But for those who aren’t quite ready who do you think they will come back too, the agent that would or wouldn’t show them a home. Besides the more you show homes the more comfortable you’ll be at showing homes.

Once you’ve sold a home don’t just say see ya’ the new owners will need movers; they’ll need to hook up utilities, if they are not from a neighboring city they need to know where to grocery shop and bank. A small town directory that is easy to edit will help out tremendously.

How about a gift certificate to a restaurant in town? That would be much appreciated by people who may not be able to find their pots and pans yet, heck, all the fast food places take gift cards if they don’t want anything fancy.

You can’t be all things to all people but you can cover the basics, throwing them a phone book is not very personable, remember every client you meet is a potential home buyer or knows someone who will be looking soon, they will think of you one way or another, make a good lasting impression.

I’m saving the best advice for last never; ever show a house with dirty underwear in the closet. There is only so much a person can overlook. Real Estate Marketing doesn’t have to be difficult treat people with the respect you’d want to be treated with. Shake a hand, give a smile and a card to everyone you meet. Tell them you are in the business of helping people find homes not the business of selling houses.

Article written by Dolores Pepper of realestate-bd.com