Right now I’m going to share with you the most important marketing secret in the world. If you do this it will have a larger impact on your bank account than probably anything else you do. I’m not joking.

But guess what? When I tell you what it is you’re probably just going to shrug it off and not do it because it’s not “sexy” or new.

Here it is: Make marketing the first thing you do.

The first thing when you get up in the morning do at least one marketing activity. Don’t shower, don’t get dressed, don’t do anything else. Go directly to your computer and post some Craigslist ads. Address a letter or two. Or send out an email–but do it first thing before you get distracted. The only thing you can do before you start is go to the bathroom.

When you first wake up in the morning your mind is fresh.

You are alert and you’re on your “A” game. When I started implementing this a long time ago, not only did I make more money but I was also in a lot better mood.

You see, I used to be a night owl. I would do a lot of my marketing activities in the evening and I was staying up until 1am every night. When it came time to do my marketing, my mind wasn’t as sharp and I had less motivation to do all of the marketing activities which were on my daily TO DO list.

However, when I make marketing the very first thing I do in the morning I feel great, I feel motivated, and I feel like I can conquer the world. (This may sound strange but it’s true. Your mind is more fresh your batteries are recharged and your motivation level is at it’s high.)

Best of all, I can work just 1-2 hours some days and not feel guilty about it.

Last week I was in Palm Beach, FL. I did very little actual real estate work. However, I still did my marketing because I was utilizing the 80-20 rule (If you don’t know what the 80-20 rule is, learn it ASAP.)

Using the 80-20 rule I know that 20% of my real estate activities account for 80% of my results. I also know that for most people 80% of your day is wasted on activities, which will not make you money. So, by doing my marketing first thing in the morning, I know that I have done my most important activity and I won’t feel like a bum for being on vacation, or for not working the rest of the day.

Again, please don’t ignore this for its simplicity. I heard people tell me this for years, but once I started doing it, I couldn’t believe how much better my results were and how much better my marketing became. For example, I write all of my own marketing letters and postcards. When I write a new marketing letter first thing in the morning it is so much better, and tends to get a higher response rate, which of course makes me more money.

Another reason that waking up early and marketing will make you wealthy…

Is because it takes discipline! I know a lot of wealthy investors and other business people. I’ve never met a rich person who wasn’t highly disciplined. On the outside they might look lazy or it might look like success came easy to them. But I can guarantee you if you look at their personal lives they were disciplined and worked their tail off.

Just try this for 21 days and you’ll never go back to your old ways.

Photo: Freddy The Boy

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Early Bird Marketing Secret for Real Estate Investors and Professionals

In Part I of my “Power of Integrated Marketing” series I wrote about developing your website — the foundation of your online marketing strategy.  Once you’ve done that, it’s time to move on to Step 2 — staying in touch with the leads you’ve worked so hard to generate through your website.  And then to Step 3 — setting up a blog to establish yourself as an expert (a good way to convert leads to clients) and to drive additional traffic to your site where anonymous visitors can become leads.

Step 2: Stay in touch with your leads through e-mail marketing

Leads are like gold; once you’ve generated them, don’t let them slip away.  While you can – and should – develop your website to encourage leads to keep coming back (and to become clients) you should also more actively engage those leads.  One great way to do that is through e-mail marketing.

Set up an autoresponder system that automatically sends a “Welcome” e-mail to everyone who inputs their e-mail address on your website.  In that welcome e-mail, tell your lead why she should become a client (what are the benefits for her).

Develop an e-mail marketing campaign that automatically sends an e-mail to that lead every week (or twice a week, or every other week – whatever frequency you find works best).  In your e-mails, offer a mix of valuable information that will help your lead as she looks to buy or sell a home as well as information about how you can help her do that.  An easy way to develop relevant, fresh e-mail content is to use the articles you post on your website, or the content you post to your blog.

Step 3: Set up a blog to direct prospects to your website

Because the number of websites on the web is absolutely astronomical (Google’s index of unique URLs reached 1 trillion last year), you need a way to drive traffic to yours.  One good way to do that – and to generate additional leads and build your brand at the same time – is by creating a blog (and regularly posting interesting, valuable content).  Your blog should act as a conduit that funnels readers to your website (where they give you their contact information and become leads).

There are a number of ways you can set up your blog:

• Hosted on your own website. This is ideal because then all traffic – to your blog and to your main site – is going to the same root URL (so your blog URL would be www.yourwebsite.com/blog), which helps to strengthen your place in the search engines.  Many website hosting companies offer a blog add-on, or you can set it up through a service like WordPress or TypePad.
• Hosted through a free service like Google’s Blogger (WordPress also offers a free version) or BiggerPockets.

Once you’ve developed your blog, you’re only part of the way there, though; simply having a blog is not enough. You have to work hard to build a regular readership and to entice new readers.  You can do that by becoming active in the “blogosphere.”  Read other real estate blogs.  Comment on their posts.  While it’s not PC to put your URL in your comment, most bloggers will include your name and URL with your comment.  Getting engaged with other bloggers builds goodwill in the community and drives traffic back to your own blog.

Look for other sites where you can be a guest blogger.  Sites like Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow offer guest blog spots (or allow you to create your own blog) – which is a great way to access a huge audience, to show them what you have to offer, and to (implicitly) invite them to read your regular posts on your own blog.

Stay tuned for next week’s Step 4: Leverage social media.  Until then. . .

Onward and upward.

Molly Castelazo

Note From the Editor: We are always looking for guest blog posts here on The BiggerPockets Blog as well.

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Integrated Marketing – Part II: Maintaining Leads & Drawing New Prospects

I did a post a while back about my “Power of 100” concept. In case you missed it, here’s the deal. I have a rule of making 100 personal contacts a day. This is an old concept I learned years ago in direct sales. Now that I do internet marketing, I’ve found most every concept I learned in the field, selling person to person, can be adapted to internet marketing. The Power of 100 is no different.

It’s the Best Way of Getting Traffic to Your Site

The Power of 100, as simple as it is, will serve you well when it comes to building your brand online and getting traffic to your site. Not just “regular” traffic either…very high quality, targeted traffic! Personal branding and social marketing are becoming more and more mandatory by the day, and real estate is a perfect environment for using these tools and techniques.

When it comes to getting traffic to your site, I see many Realtors focusing on SEO (search engine optimization). I firmly believe this is a mistake, for many reasons. First of all, SEO is complicated and there is a large learning curve. Any busy real estate professional is not going to be well-served trying to double as a search engine optimization expert. It’s simply too much of a time investment. Second, the time and cost investment for going head to head with a giant like Trulia is simply nonsense. Don’t go this route! Focus on your strengths. If you’re in real estate, you’re already a strong networker.

For God’s sake, it’s called social NETWORKING! This should be a battle cry for real estate professionals. This technology is begging for us to get on board and dive in! All it takes to get great traffic to your site is online networking. In other words, talk to people!

SEO is Overrated

SEO is real, but I will show any real estate client everything they need to know about SEO in about 15 minutes. Good, clean SEO habits performed on a well-designed website is all that’s needed. Spending any more time or money than this for a real estate professional is cost prohibitive.

As real estate professionals, it’s our job to network and sell property. Networking is also, conveniently, the ultimate way to build targeted niche traffic to your site. That’s where the Power of 100 comes in. Make 100 personal contacts daily, and the traffic will come.

Here are the rules:

• Make contacts off site…not on your own website or blog
• Comment other blogs and forums
• Mass email doesn’t count. Remember, it’s PERSONAL contacts
• Phone calls count
• Personally written email counts
• Handwritten notes count
• Meeting people in person, exchanging business cards, etc…counts

The idea is to make personal contacts period. It’s about getting the word out about your brand, daily, consistently. It’s just networking. Hardly a foreign concept to Realtors!

How Does This Work?

The Power of 100 is about personal branding. It’s about doing the work necessary to build a presence and recognition for what you do within your niche. Leaving comments, returning calls and emails, etc…it’s all networking. The more contacts you make, the more you build your brand.

How does this translate into traffic to your site? That’s easy…you’re busy every day talking about topics relevant to your business, correct? People see your comments. They see you know what you’re talking about, and they head over to your site to learn more about you. Couldn’t be simpler.

Here’s the Problem

As soon as I started talking about the Power of 100, I started getting a lot of objections. It seems that although this is a proven technique for traffic generation and brand-building, many people believe 100 is simply too much work. That’s why I wanted to write this post. I think it’s time to change our paradigm.

You see, 100 isn’t too many. In fact, it may not even be enough. If you want big results, shoot for 1000. Seriously.

As I pay attention more and more to the changes we’re witnessing in marketing these days, it’s hard to ignore that making a contact doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to. The Power of 100 rule comes from old school sales. I know real estate brokers, some of the most successful in the US, who apply this principle religiously on a daily basis. They use the phone. Each phone call can take 3-4 minutes or so. Compare that to responding to someone on Twitter. How long does THAT take? 10 seconds? You telling me you don’t have time to make 100 contacts a day? Sorry, but I’m not buying it. Not any more.

As long as there have been top producers, there have been those of us who simply don’t have time for excuses. They just do what needs to be done, period. I encourage you to give this some serious thought, because the results you want really are there for you. But you have to grab it, and that means the work needs to be done. If you’re not willing to do it…who’s gonna?

From Now On…No Excuses

There are many of my readers who have suggested that they really like the idea of this Power of 100 but just don’t have time to do it. Perhaps, so the line goes, they’ll start with 10 or 20. So far, I have been sympathetic and conceded that anything is better than nothing. Start small, and work your way up, etc. But by doing this I feel I’ve shortchanged you by not being honest. I want to reiterate and change my stance a bit. I’ve become a little bit more of a hard ass lately.

Look, 100 a day IS hard work. But consider why you’re in this business. Do you want big results? Almost no one starts a business and says “I’d just like to make a few bucks every once in a while”. If you want a small paycheck, just get a regular job! So many people come face to face with the price of success and decide it’s not worth it. My message for today is simple…kick it in gear, or quit. Don’t settle! Please don’t settle.

Business = Hard Work, Period

Business involves risk and lots of hard work, period. Those two elements cannot be divorced from entrepreneurship, so if you’re taking a risk and working hard, then demand good results. Don’t tell yourself 100 contacts a day is too many! Look at dudes like Gary Vaynerchuk who regularly answer several hundred emails a day. Get used to this paradigm, because it’s here to stay! 100 a day is no longer the limit. Far from it. I’ve seen video of Gary talking about how he’ll respond to 700 or more messages in a day. Does he work late? Yes. Is he living his mission and loving every minute of it? Sure seems like it! And of course, Gary is just one example.

Hustle and hard work have been the game changer for eons. It’s what works. And if you want to differentiate yourself, if you want to engage your audience and prove to them that you deserve their business, be there. Make the contacts! Hope you don’t mind my candor

Photo Credit: Clinton Steeds

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Use the Power of 100 to Achieve Your Business Goals

Despite what you learned in kindergarten, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 doesn’t always equal 4.  If you leverage the power of integrated marketing, it can equal 7 – or more.  It’s not funny math, I promise; it’s reflective of the greater power your marketing efforts will have as an integrated group rather than on their own.

If you buy in to the concept, even to humor me for a few minutes, read on to learn about the essential pieces of a basic* online marketing campaign and how to integrate those pieces:

Step 1: Develop your website

Ten years ago, having a website made you really stand out from the crowd — you were “cutting edge.”  Today, it’s the foundation of your online marketing strategy – a necessary but not sufficient component of your success.

As you work to develop your site, answer this critical question: What are the goals of my website?  Do you want to:

• Brand yourself in the marketplace?
• Generate additional leads?
• Convert leads into clients?
• Add value for your current clients?

How you answer that question will determine how you should best develop your site.  For example, if your goal is to brand yourself, then you’ll want to pay special attention to design elements, colors, your logo, and copy that tells people who you are and what you’re about – and you’ll want to ensure the consistency of those throughout the web.

If your goal is to generate leads, you’ll need to have a way to capture web visitors’ contact information (at least names and e-mail addresses) to turn anonymous visitors into leads you can market to.  A good way to entice visitors to leave their contact information is to offer something valuable in exchange.  Free home value estimates and MLS searches are popular and tend to work well to capture leads.

If your goal is to convert leads to clients you need to have regularly-updated, valuable information that will keep your leads coming back to your website.  Frequently posting articles that reflect the latest developments and trends in your real estate market can be a great way to keep visitors coming back to your site on a regular basis.  Also, property listings with detailed information, photos, and virtual tours work well to keep leads engaged.

Certainly, those lead-converting tools can be a way to add value for your current clients, but you may also need to develop some slightly more sophisticated web applications – such as a portal through which your clients can access information about the sale of their home (details of offers received, lists of visitors, comments from other real estate agents and visitors, updated information on how you’ve been marketing the home).

Clearly, these goals are not mutually exclusive.  You can certainly develop your website to meet all of the goals at the same time.  The sky’s the limit in terms of your site’s potential.

Stay tuned for next week’s Step 2: Stay in touch with your leads through e-mail marketing and Step 3: Set up a blog to direct prospects to your website.  Until then. . .

Onward and upward.

Molly Castelazo

*I stress the word “basic” because there’s so much more you can do to market yourself online, but there’s simply not space here to talk in detail about all of the options – so I set out a simple integrated marketing strategy, one that can serve as an excellent foundation for you to build on.

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

1 + 1 + 1 = 4: The Power of Integrated Marketing, Part I

I was driving around Baltimore City earlier this week. At a stoplight I got stuck behind an SUV with a sticker on its back window that read “lose 10 pounds in 10 minutes, call XXX”.

I immediately laughed and thought to myself, “yeah right.”

Why did I think this? Because it wasn’t honest and it wasn’t believable. If you surfed the Internet right now you would come across a lot of hyped up ads like “look 20 years younger in 5 minutes”, or “become a real estate millionaire in the next 30 days,” or “build huge bulging muscles in one week.” All of those ads sound way too fake.

So the question you need to ask yourself is “do my marketing materials sound fake and over-hyped?” If they do, you’re probably losing a ton of deals.

You see, we are already in a business where people are skeptical. It’s no secret that real estate investing draws a lot of crooks and con artists out of the woodwork. So the last thing you want to do is sound like one of these fly-by-night company’s.

So how do you fix this?

I saw an excellent example last week from one of my partners who showed me his new business cards. On the back of card reads the following message. “Although I cannot guarantee I will buy your house, I can promise you I will do everything possible to provide you with a solution that will meet your needs.” That my friends, is a brilliant line because he comes across as honest and friendly. He doesn’t say “I’ll buy your house within 24 hours no matter what, guaranteed.” That sounds more fake and unbelievable and people will be skeptical and want to know what the catch is.

Let me show you another good example of this and how it has helped me close many deals: Occasionally I will have a seller ask me if I’ve ever backed out of a deal, or what would happen if I didn’t close as promised. And I tell the seller that I’ve always honored all aspects of an agreement. But that I have had deals not close when a seller backed out and did not hold up their end of the agreement. Then, I show them a testimonial where a lady backed out of a contract and then later sent me an email saying she wished she had sold her house to me because other people were dishonest and she ended up losing the property.

That testimonial is golden and shows multiple things:

First, that I’m not going to force her to sell her house and sue her if she doesn’t sell once we have a signed agreement (it’s not worth my time.) Second, that someone who backed out on me wished they would have worked with me and ended up losing their home. So… if this seller ever had second thoughts they would think back to that testimonial and think “I don’t want to back out and lose my home and money like that other person did.”

Here are a few other examples of how to be more honest and believable:

In your marketing pieces put key phrases such as, “now I can’t guarantee we can buy your house, but if you take advantage of our free 10 minute consultation I’ll give you the best solution for your property-even if it doesn’t involve our company.” Or, when you’re meeting with a seller and they ask you a question don’t sound hypey or fake. Say “yes Mr. Seller I have had deals not close. One time it was because a seller didn’t want to sell. The other time is was because the property had a lien against it and we couldn’t get a clear title.”

Needless to say, I can’t guarantee the above will help you make more money this year… but I can promise that if you come across more friendly and honest there’s a darn good chance you’ll become more successful.

Photo Credit: wwarby

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The “Unusual” Way to Boost Your Real Estate Marketing Results

I’m a marketing director at a real estate firm.  If I had to sum up what I do every day in three words it would be, “I generate leads.”  It’s both much easier and much harder than you would think.  Confused?  Let me take you inside and show you why everyone in the real estate industry seems to have it wrong… including me.

What’s a lead?

Gosh.  That seems like a simple question to answer.  A lead turns into a sale in some form or another which makes you income right?  Maybe, possibly, well… probably not.  A lead is simply a bit of information about someone that might want something from you.  In our case, property.  Leads range from no name with a single email address all the way to your next door neighbor who gave you his social security number “just in case you need it.”

Most people say a lead is only as good as the information you have.  I say phooey.  A lead has only two variables…

• The intent (read seriousness) of the potential client/prospect/sale
• The ability of the professional to convert that lead into business

If a lead has no urge or facility to buy a home, they won’t.  If they are serious buyers or sellers then a followup stud of an Agent will convert a higher percentage of email only leads into sales than a newbie Agent ever will, whether they have a phone number, address, mother’s maiden name, and vaccination history, or not.

Many companies and products dub themselves lead generation powerhouses.  Market Leader has RealtyGenerator.  There’s 1parkplace, homegain, just listed, real estate webmasters, point2agent, along with many more and a myriad of e-book style or PPC landing page lead systems.

They all do it the same way… more or less.  Some systems are slick and nearly seamless… some are sloppy and ghastly.  Choose one at your own risk.  Good system or not, they all generate some form of a ‘lead.’  Now what??  Give it to an Agent or keep it to yourself but you better convert it into a sale or you’ll end up with smaller pockets; maybe no pants at all.  Most agents have MAJOR trouble contacting, converting, and following up with leads.  So now you just took that precious lead you paid $5-$20 bucks for and threw it out the window.  I do it too.  That’s what I’m paid to do.

Decipher from my rambling two points…

A.  Serious lookers or those in serious need of assistance will convert into $$.  Whether you convert them or not.  Be where they can find you and have a system in place to immediately contact, convert, close, follow-up.  Properly executing those four simple steps will make you a big old pile of money.

2.  Our industry is one of the most poorly run, bass-ackwards (see, I’m from Arkansas), sad-sack profession that exists on the face of the planet.  That doesn’t mean I don’t like it, there’s just room for improvement.  It’s exactly the reason that 6% of the agents make 94% of the money.  Those are the only ones that know what they are doing.  The rest are just hoping to make enough to pay their fees for the year.  I used to work with a great commercial guy that said:

If an MLS membership cost $5,000 per agent, we wouldn’t have any of the problems we have in this industry.

I tend to agree with him.  The real problem is that there’s no barrier to entry, no hurdles.  The problem is the independent contractor.  Consider what a corporate or systemic real estate system would look like.  What if every agent was accountable to meet a certain level of production, training, knowledge, and professionalism?  What if every lead belonged to the agency and agents worked together to prospect, obtain, and close deals?  What if you were a professional or got fired?  What if…

It would be quite a different industry would it not?  Take a look at some thoughts on systemic brokerage or some form of it.  What do you think?

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Who Does Lead Generation Work For Anyway?

In the last weeks, I wrote part 2 of my short series on 7 different internet marketing strategies for driving a lot of traffic to a real estate website without relying on search engines.  Dozens of people re-tweeted that post and several commented on it.  I wanted to thank you for your support here — I really appreciate it.

In today’s post, I want to expand on one of those strategies and tell you how you can make some extra profit using a marketing strategy called “integration marketing.”  In short, integration marketing takes places when 2 different people/businesses work together to help each other by placing the first person’s business’ offer at a specific point during a transactional process between a customer and the second business. You may be saying, “What does that mean” — don’t worry, I’ll explain.

I bet you have been exposed to this type of marketing before.   Online stores do it all the time and even some offline stores do it as well.  Let’s say you buy a computer . . . if the integration marketing process is in place, you are immediately presented with an offer that will make your computer purchase even better.  For instance, you can get a discount on technical support, insurance, software, a printer, a digital camera and/or a video camera.  Why?  Because if you are buying a computer, there is a big chance that you would be interested in complementary services or products.

Applying Integration Marketing to Real Estate

How could you do this in real estate?  Let’s look at an example:

You sell your investment property to a retail buyer.  That retail buyer might be either living in an apartment or in a house.  What is the first thing they need to do?  They need to move, right?  What you can do is create a partnership with a local moving company, where for every person you send them, they give you something in return.

Once the buyers move in, they need to get home insurance, maybe landscaping or snow removal services.  What if you ended up partnering with all of those different types of companies?  Your buyer wouldn’t have to waste time looking for all of those different services. 

But why would that retail buyer want to buy through you?

They will want to buy those services through you because you offer them one heck of a deal.  You can negotiate in your agreement with the company lower rates for their services for your buyers along with a referral fee for you.  In today’s economy, there will be many companies who will do that for you.  Why?  Because a new customer is better than no customer.

How would they track the sale to make sure that you get credited for it? 

If you are doing it online, it’s very easy to track it.  There are many software companies that specialize in creating special links just for you.  Or the company could build a web page just for you and anyone who buys their service through that page would end up being credited to you.

However, if you are dealing in an offline market, the company can create coupons with a special code just for you.  Now, when the customer contacts the company, they will need to either show them the coupon or give them the special code in order to get the special rate. It is that easy!

As I already mentioned, there are plenty of local companies who need extra business.  Think about what business in your area could offer their service to help your customers. Tell them what you want to do, what you have to offer, and what they would need to do to make it work.  Be friendly and compromise.  In the end, all three parties — you, the buyer/seller and the company — need to win.  Remember, it needs to be a win-win-win situation.

That’s all for today.  I hope you enjoyed this article.  If you have any comments or questions, let me know below.

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How Helping Other Companies Can Make Your Real Estate Business More Money