Real Estate Marketing Strategies that Would Work on Me

How far has adoption of blogging and other conversational marketing tools come? Not nearly far enough based on my one industry: real estate. And here's why:

I live in a neighborhood of Minneapolis, MN called Longfellow that has around 20,000 residents. Here is how real estate agents market themselves:

1. Advertise on bus benches saying, "I know Longfellow" or a similar message.

2. Advertise on billboards saying, "I know Longfellow" or a similar message.

3. Sending "Just Listed" and "Just Sold" cards to my home.

4. Sending calendars to my house.

5. Sending magnets to my house.

6. Sending flower seeds to my house.

7. Sending key chains to my house.

8. Sending events calendars to my house.

9. Email me about properties outside my price range or geography.

10. Advertise listings in a paper I don't read.

Out of those ten marketing strategies, the only one that proves to me that they know something about my neighborhood is #3: just listed and just sold cards. This proves they're actively working in the neighborhood.

Here's none of them do:

1. Blog about the neighborhood. Explain how the local market is doing. Tell me what's up with the condo development that appears to have stalled.

2. Tell me about homes for sale and what makes them so special. It may help me understand what types of home improvements I could be making and inspire me to make them (which would lead to a larger commission for the agent when I sell).

3. Tell me about cool open houses. Is there a home with an awesome renovated kitchen? Tell me about it. I don't care if it's not your listing. This is the kind of thing that interests me and I'd appreciate hearing about.

4. Stats. tell me about how long homes are sitting on the market and in which price ranges. Help me set realistic expectations for when I get around to selling.

5. Pictures. supplement MLS listings with additional pictures of of homes you visit on your blog. Just because the listing agent does a crappy job listing a property doesn't mean your potential customers should have to suffer.

6. Use video. Drive around the neighborhood and PROVE to me that you really know the area. Have someone ride shotgun and film you while you point out neighborhood features and landmarks, parks and schools. Hang out at the local coffee shop with the camera person and have them film you until someone recognizes you and interrupts to say hello. That's the kind of thing that builds credibility and expertise.

An agent who follows those six steps can go from being an agent who works in Longfellow to "The Longfellow Real Estate Agent."

The sad thing is, there probably already is an agent that's the "The" agent in Longfellow, but based on their current marketing strategies, I just don't know about them.

I would definately use an RSS feed to look at houses. I don't really use them otherwise. My preferences for homes don't change that much, so the search criteria could remain unchanged for some time.
I think this is a much better use of technology than e-mail because home listings change frequently. I could choose to have profiles of homes that I liked on rss feed e-mailed to me pretty easily.
Rss also has more potential for sorting the information.

As a sales agent, I thought I was being lazy by not mailing out postcards, flyers, keychains and flower seeds.

I thought I was being lazy, but now I see I was actually being a brilliant market strategist!

Has blogging translated into business for you? It looks like you've been at it for quite a while, so I assume the answer is yes. Correct?

I try to do much many of the things you suggest in my blog, so if you ever consider a move to Michigan, I hope you will check us out. I have picked up some ideas from you too, so thank you.

I also happen to know two great St. Paul real estate bloggers should you ever need their services. StPaulRealEstateBlog.com and RealEstateSnippets.com are both run by fine local agents.

I'm a marketing strategist specializing in small businesses and I'd say about 75% of my clients are Realtors.

I can tell you from personal experience that the real estate world is almost entirely unequiped to deal with the modern world. They spend incredible sums just to "get their name out there." And what do they get for it? Well, they get ignored because all those "impressions" do nothing to establish relevance or credibility.

A blog, on the other hand, is one of the most powerful means of showing your relevance and proving your credibility. Your advice on how to blog is dead-on, too. Today, you can't market by taking (attention and time). You have to market by giving (information, expertise, etc).

And as a Realtor, there are so many ways to devleop your expertise. Of course, you could specialize in a neighborhood, but you could also specialze in people with disabilities, newlyweds, young professionals, union members, or any other group that shares real estate needs.

Greg, you raise a good point about the buy-side nature of the tactics. I'm a home owner, and my next home purchase in contingent on the sale of my current home, so someone could win my business for both transactions if they win the buy side.

There are certainly many sell side situations where this isn't the case including homes sold because of retirements, relocations, deaths, etc. Being front of mine and a proven expert is really the key regardless of what side of the sale we're talking about.

> Being front of mind and a proven expert is really the key regardless of what side of the sale we're talking about.

True enough. The interesting thing is that sellers tend to be a lot more probing, thoroughgoing, exacting, demanding and logical than buyers -- even when they're the same people or spouses in the same couple. In very many married couples, it is reasonable to argue that the wife buys the next house and leaves it up to the husband to sell the house they're in. It's not genetically-ordained, and it can work the opposite way -- and obviously unmarried people are on their own. But the very first thing almost every seller will say to a prospective Realtor is, "How much do you charge?" Buyers will bubble their way to, "C'mon, c'mon, where do I sign?" Even in the same one person, the style of mind can be radically different between buying and selling.

I think you're right that a real estate weblogger who is attractive to buyers may capture move-up sellers in the course of business. The trouble with this, from the seller's point of view, is that a good buyer's agent probably is not a very good listing agent. Working with buyers requires a ready smile. Learning to take listings and make them move takes years.

Take it the other way: What if a strong lister, in addition to other marketing efforts, makes a serious effort to target sellers with a real estate weblog? The buyers will come anyway. As the Nazarene said, the buyers will always be with us, and the under-qualified will inherit the headlines. A good lister either needs to be or needs to hire a good buyer's agent, but now the painstakingly logical inner seller gets the right kind of representation on both sides of the transaction.

This is what I'm writing about, and will be writing about over the next few months. And I just blew a post on you, so I'll probably steal it back. My thanks to you, in any case, for inducing me to lay it out like this.

wow! good, thanks for a nice article. but you should need Information before Building A

Comments

1. Posted by: Mark Eibner on January 22, 2007 9:33 PM:

Ah Ed, you are so very observant! The master! I will say, I am so glad that you are not a licensed broker! The tips you provide are just so tantalizing and would prove to be highly effective. One could go so much further. Think about mobloging right off of your phone/camera or aircard notebook right to the blog...of EVERY new listing that EVER was for sale in your specialized area-including FSBO's! I mean people would tune into the blog just to get your angle on it. In fact it's almost endless the story you could tell (not sell) that you know EVERYTHING about the area. But I will tell you this...it's easier to just get a free mail list from your title rep and hire some kids to mail a package of seeds (that your mortgage pays for) with your picture on it. To moblog on houses or to know what's up' in an area, you would have to get out and work! I think that the new technologies are allot harder to work. Transparency is the word...blogs and real life are "REAL". It's easy to hide behind all the company and individual (we are great, we just don't know why) marketing crap. Anyway great post and you will see it pushed to REZ.

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