I talk to a lot of REALTORS®, and just about all of them have a problem marketing themselves. Most of the people I talk to know they’re good at what they do. They just don’t know how to explain that to others without thinking that they’re being rude and boastful.
The reason that you’ll hate yourself later if you don’t market yourself now is because you’re running a business. You can’t be competitive in the marketplace if you don’t find a way to market yourself without feeling bad about it.
Think about it. Would you buy a Coke if their ads said that they tried really hard? Would you buy Geico insurance if it weren’t for that cute little gecko telling you how great the company is? What if their only claim to fame was that they wanted to be your insurance company for life? Would you really care about what they wanted? And, I could go on, but I think you get the idea. So, how can you get out of this corner?
Clarify What You Are Selling
The first thing you need to be very clear about is what you’re selling. You aren’t selling houses. As a REALTOR®, you’ve got all the same inventory as everyone else. So, that’s not a point of differentiation.
You’re not selling yourself. No one is going to take you home, pay your bills, raise your kids or plan for your retirement. So, what’s left?
You’re selling the service you provide. When you’re in real estate, you’re providing real estate consulting services. You’re working with a buyer or seller to guide them through the process, anticipate and head off problems and make sure that they have a successful transation. Those are professional services of the real estate variety.
Figure Out What Differentiates You in the Marketplace
If you’re selling real estate services, it’s much easier to market yourself. Mainly because you’re not marketing yourself. You’re selling what you can do for buyers and sellers.
From that perspective, you don’t have to convince people of how wonderful you are. You can back away from all the industry awards you’ve won, or talking to people about how smart you are or how hard you work. You can focus on the benefits buyers and sellers will receive when they work with you.
You’ll find the task of marketing yourself gets a lot easier when you focus on marketing your business and the benefits of the services you provide. There’s a tool you should check out: the We We Calculator. That calculator tests copy for customer focus. You can run the calculator on a web page or just text and ad copy.
When your marketing copy is focused on what you can do for your customer, you’re definitely on the right track!
Code Validators - Don’t Get Caught Up
By · Comments
A client recently got pretty upset because he talked to someone from an “SEO” firm who told him his rankings would never improve until he got a better review from the W3C Code Validator. Wrong!
Don’t get caught up in all that mumbo jumbo. Code validators, like the one at Validator.W3.org, are great if you’re a web designer whose code isn’t working, or whose main goal is to ensure that his/her websites all conform to the latest W3C standards. And, that could be a big job because those standards change, you know.
I don’t dispute that your goal should be to have the cleanest code possible. But, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. And, I’d never recommend that you accept that explanation from someone who is supposed to be increasing your ranking as to why your ranking is staying where it is or falling.
It’s an easy way out for someone to explain a shift in rankings without needing to get involved.
Saying that your site is no good unless it meets W3C standards is like saying your computer is no good unless it has the latest Intel processor in it. We all know that our computers are obsolete just about the time they hit our desks. And, none of us are going to go out and buy a new computer every week.
In the same light, no web designer is going to rewrite all the code for all of their websites to stay up with the standards.
After all, according to the W3C validator, Amazon.com has 1184 errors and 89 warnings. Dell.com has 217 errors and 52 warnings. Realtor.org has 246 errors and 132 warnings.
And, those sites are managing to limp along and get found in search engines. So, everybody can relax now.
Short Sales. In many parts of the country, you’d better be getting good at short sales, or you won’t have any business! In some places, short sales aren’t that popular, and I know agents in those areas who just won’t get involved in a short sale.
If you’re in an area where short sales are becoming a normal part of the real estate process, it is critical that you have the training and experience to handle a short sale without self-destructing. And, even if you’re not looking to become a short sale expert, knowing about the process can’t hurt.
Not Sure If You Know What You Need to Know About Short Sales?
There’s an article on BrokerAgentSocial (I was much more comfortable when they called it BrokerAgentNews) you should read. It is the best article I’ve read that really hits home in terms of the issues involved in a short sale.
It’s not a training course, but I think you’ll know if you need a training course after reading the article!
Wednesday: Haiti
By · CommentsI know the situation in Haiti isn’t news to anyone. But, for me, it is the most destruction I’ve ever seen. I just can’t imagine the pain, grief and hopelessness that must be almost palpable for those poor people.
Now, they’re talking about scammers coming out in full force to get people’s money - and NOT send it to Haiti. I made a donation to Bill Clinton’s organization before he and the last President Bush joined forces. The reason? Mainly because 100% of the money collected will go directly to the Haitians. And, it’s getting there now, not someday - see the email I received below.
Click on the email below to get to President Clinton’s donation page. And, look in the right column of this blog for other ways to donate.
The people of Haiti will remain in my prayers.
Make It Easy for Website Visitors to Share Your Content
By · Comments
If you’re using a blogging platform like Wordpress, you may be like me. I added the plugin Sociable to make it easy for visitors to bookmark pages and share the blog’s content on social networking sites.
However, I never really got around to adding that capability to our regular websites - until now. Today, if you visit our main real estate marketing website, or our Point2 Agent real estate website, you’ll see an “Add This” widget right under the menu on each site.
You can get one, too. It’s easy. . . and free!
AddThis.com
All you need to do is visit www.AddThis.com. You’ll find a pretty smart little widget available for free. The widget works well to let your visitors share your page with a very large collection of services. Beyond the basic functionality, here’s why this is a smart widget:
- The widget is automatically updated when new services are added to the AddThis Directory. You don’t have to worry about updating the code.
- The widget is automatically translated into the language of the visitor’s browser, and it currently supports over 50 languages.
- The widget customizes itself to your visitor’s preferences. If a visitor has two favorite places to share information, those two choices will be shown to them first!
- Analytics are available. You can choose to receive weekly reports showing the activity of visitors using the widgets. The reports will tell you things like which content is shared most often, which services are used most often, and some geographic information about the users.
I created two accounts at AddThis to track each of our websites separately. The widgets haven’t been active long enough to have any information yet, but if there’s anything interesting to tell, I’ll include it in a future post.
If you choose to, you can also customize the look of the widget. I didn’t do that because I think people are familiar with the default image, and I didn’t want to do anything to confuse them!
Have you been using this type of a widget? If so, let us know what your experience has been. In theory, it should increase traffic to your website as others find the content your visitors have shared.
