Thoughts on Real Estate Marketing…

Your marketing copy represents you to hundreds or even thousands of people who will form their opinion of you and the value of your service – without ever meeting you in person.

That copy is the first impression, and it could be the only one. Its quality will dictate whether those people begin to build an interest in you – or whether they toss you aside as not deserving of their attention.

Even when the message is good, it may need to be tidied up and polished a bit before it’s ready to greet the world. If you don’t take the time for this step, two things can happen:

1. Your readers will think you’re sloppy and pay no attention to detail.
2. The stop signs caused by errors will interrupt and destroy your message.

So write your message, then let it sit for at least a few hours. Then come back and read it with a critical eye. Here’s what to look for:

• Typographical errors and spelling mistakes
• Words doubled or left out
• Improper word choices (their for there, hear for here, etc.)
• Misplaced modifiers

When I write I’m thankful for the automatic spell checker in word – because when I get going I tend to write words backwards. For instance, I write “teh” for “the” and “adn” for “and.” And I know I’m not the only one – I see both of those errors quite often. In fact, I saw just such a mistake in the newspaper this morning. So look for words with the letters out of order.

An extra letter in a word can also cause confusion. Take this excerpt from an article about salesmanship that I read this morning: “…no different than a used care salesman.” Well, we know she meant “used car salesman,” but that little error makes the reader stop and look twice, destroying the flow of the message.

Doubling or omitting words happens easily when you change what you’ve written or get interrupted as you work. Usually it’s a small word like “the,” or “to,” or “of.”

Improper word choices are a huge problem – especially in real estate marketing. I don’t know why, but real estate blogs, blog comments, letters, and even web pages are often filled with misused words. In addition to the pairs mentioned above, writers often confuse “are” with “our,” “your” with “you’re,” “loose” with “lose”, and “to” with “too.”

The tough part of this is, if you don’t know the difference you can’t correct the errors. So if you aren’t sure that you do know, find a friend who loves words and word usage and ask them to edit your work. Getting them right will make a huge difference in how strangers view you.

Finally, misplaced modifiers can throw your whole message out of alignment. So read your work carefully to make sure it really says what you want to say. When your readers are forced to stop and try to understand what you meant, the flow is lost. And often your message is lost with it.

Phrases added to clarify who, what, when, and where have the opposite effect when you add them to your sentence in the wrong place.

Think about this sentence: “That man in the red shirt just listed his home.” Then read it when the modifier is misplaced: “That man just listed his home in the red shirt.” You know what it means after you stop and look twice – but you don’t want readers to stop and look twice in the middle of your message.

It can get worse, however. If I say: “The man from Kentucky listed his home,” the meaning is clear. But if I say: “The man listed his home from Kentucky,” it could mean that he’s from Kentucky, or that he is in Kentucky and signed the listing long-distance.

If you read a lot, you’ll see this kind of error almost every day.

So proofread, edit, and find a friend to give your copy a second look before you send it out into the world.

The truth is, when we write we know what we mean, so we don’t always spot our own errors.

And as always, when you don’t want to do this yourself, get in touch.