Marketing, the Necessary Evil?

So, how did we decide to start marketing to motivated sellers instead of scowering the MLS, you ask??  We spent a year and a half looking for a house on the MLS and that produced an amazing outcome of 0 HOUSES!!  So my options are looking like, 1. Give up on the dream of being our own boss, taking control of our lives and putting in our resignation to The Man.  or…  2.  Kick my relationship with the MLS to the curb like it’s a bad deadbeat boyfriend and start marketing.  So I look at my precious kids and with tears in my eyes decide I want a better life for all of us…  Well, actually, I imagined my life continuing day in and day out in a constant insanity of screaming children, sleepless nights, tearing my hair out and having NO HELP. I chose the marketing.

I didn’t start out so much a fan of this whole marketing idea, btw.  Sending a bunch of mail to a bunch of people who don’t want it, posting signs all over my town and then running away from mysterious sign police (really, these people exist??), leaving business cards, like everywhere.  Weird, annoying, cheesy.  I didn’t want to be “that person”.  That weird sales guy with a permasmile and fake manipulative words that aren’t really that creative.  Once I went to a timeshare presentation to get that “free trip” to Las Vegas and somehow ended up in a back room with the "hardseller".  I felt like I survived an actual battle by the time I left.

But then I started thinking about connecting with people and I’m starting to get more excited.  I like people, I like helping people and I’m actually kinda excited to connect with people and help them make a decision about what to do with their houses. So I’m in, pretty much all in, with the marketing.  And it sure beats changing poopy diapers by myself for the next 3 years…