Realtor marketing efforts can come in many forms. Realtors can benefit from using direct marketing techniques that are time-tested and have been around since the turn of the century. These methods work and increase your clientel and sales.
Unfortunately, most real estate businesses tend to market their "name" and leave their marketing efforts with just that, getting their name out there and hoping to get clients. Direct marketing is a direction they don't even attempt. Realtor marketing should include this valuable means of increasing business and profits.
Direct marketing's focus is to illicit a response. Either a new client is gained, a sales is made, or it's not. Simple as that. But to gain this response, the direct marketer relies on the reader's emotions to lead them to the point where they make the decision. And for the realtor that should be a positive result: a new client or a property sales.
Direct marketing in real estate can be accomplished through written advertisements in the Yellow Pages, newpapers, or even with flyers and postcards. It also utilizes a close integration with a personal, business website. You're saying to yourself, "I already use those media to advertise my realty business". But are you applying direct marketing methods to your advertising?
If you're copying your competitors, chances are you're using "name" or "brand" advertising as your basic technique to get your name out there and gain new clients. You're stating your business name, what type of real estate you specialize in, and maybe stating how long you've been in business or displaying a catchy logo. You're hoping people relate and remember your name or business brand name.
The realtor that markets with direct methods seeks new clients and sales first, and if there is any "branding" of their name, it is a secondary by-product of the immediate objective: increasing business and sales.
Clients are gained and sales are made by appealing to the potential customer's emotional needs. Their wants, desires, and dreams. Through this means, the realtor captures the names, email addresses, and phone numbers of potential clients. This is used to contact and follow up with the customer, supplying information and more emotional appeals until the client has been secured or the sale is made.
You've most likely seen this before in the form of direct mail advertising. Or maybe in newspaper advertisments that are so news story-looking that the papers have to place them in a box with the word "advertisment" at the top so you can distinguish them from the actual news.
The realtor that uses direct marketing relies heavily on the integration of websites into their business. Their real estate website isn't the corporate-looking website of most realtors. No, it uses information to attract visitors, opt-in pages to capture the personal information of prospective clients, sales copy to pre-sell potential clients on using their real estate agency, and emotional sales pages for their listings.
Any realtor that wants to increase their clientel, sales, and increase their profits can learn much from direct marketing techniques. Realtor marketing doesn't have to be the same old ho-hum that your competitors make it. It can be the key to realizing your business dreams.
It will pay handsomely for you, as a realtor, to learn these marketing methods. The pay off is what you dreamed of when you started your real estate career. The realtor that uses direct marketing will see an increase in business and profits.
