Thoughts on Real Estate Marketing…

Hopefully, your real estate website has a capture page for buyers to tell you what they’re looking for, and another capture page where sellers can get an idea of their home’s worth in the current market.

If you’ve taken it a step further, you also offer a special report to buyers or sellers or one for each.

That means you have the opportunity to follow up with a “drip campaign” to stay in touch with those leads. If you do, and if you do it well, you’ll be the agent they call when they’re ready to take action.

It’s a fantastic opportunity, but too many agents are wasting it by sending letters that repel rather than attract.

Their letters say things like “If you’d like to look at homes, call me.” Or “I’m a really wonderful real estate agent, so if you’re ready to list, call me.”

Some agents send those same letters over and over and over. And what do consumers do? Most merely hit the delete button.

Instead, you need to be sending information they’ll be glad to get – so that when they see your name in their in-box, they’ll open your message and actually read it.

What can you send instead? Market information, for one thing. People who are interested in buying or selling are interested in what goes on with the local market.

So give them statistics:

• How many homes have sold in the past month?
• Is this more or fewer than the month before, or this month last year?
• What has been the average price?
• Is this average higher or lower than the previous month, or this month last year?
• How does this compare to national trends?

Unless you’re writing to people who responded to a specific special report – such as one for FSBO’s, Expired Listings, Short Sales, or First time buyers – then your information has to be generic.

You can do that and still offer useful information. But you do need to separate buyers from sellers.

You can give general tips on buying – such as paperwork to take along when meeting with a lender, getting ready to view homes by narrowing your “want” list, etc.

And you can give general tips on selling. That opens you up to everything from proper pricing to staging the house, to the reason why sellers should be absent during showings.

This is a time to avoid specifics. Don’t assume that your reader is a first time buyer or a newlywed or a retiree. Doing so shows that you don’t know who they are and many will see it as insulting.

Finally, unless you know you are proficient in grammar and spelling, get someone to check your work before you send it. Misused words, misspellings, and garbled sentence structure will do you more harm than sending no letter at all.

Remember, everything you send represents you and your professionalism. Make it good!

You can write these letters yourself… but if you’re short on time, short on writing ability, or just don’t like to write… use mine.

Visit Copy by Marte for a wide assortment of letters, all ready to personalize and send.