I have also found another opportunity available to real estate agents just before the start of football season. An opportunity not often thought of is blogging about the upcoming season schedule for the local high school, college or professional team. Real estate blogs that offer more than just housing statistics will attract more readers. You will be surprised to discover how many people in your local community are searching online for the date and time of the next football game. Once they have discovered your blog and see all the great information available to them, it is very likely that they will subscribe or put your blog in their favorite places.

Kick off this football season with a blog post or two about the local season and watch your visitor count grow.

A real estate agent should have a balanced marketing plan that includes all the various forms of advertising media available in their area.  Local newspapers, especially the print version, may not be the prime source of news and information but newspapers still draw eyes and these eyes are potential buyers and sellers.  Advertising a listing in your local paper often provides double exposure, those who pick up the paper from their local newsstand or front porch and those who real the local paper online.

You may want to try running a new listings or weekend open house ad that is prominently displayed in the real estate section of the newspaper.  You should definitely consider enhancing your listings as they appear in the paper’s online version.  If you agree a real estate agents main job is in meeting people, being where 171 million are in one week is not a bad idea.

I recently completed the 14 hours of continuing education required by Florida law prior to renewing a real estate license and one of the chapters of the book I studied dealt with State and Federal laws affecting real estate.   The chapter discusses the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.  This law deals with requirements for sending commercial emails and penalties for spam.  According to the Florida Continuing Education For Florida Real Estate Professionals 9th Edition text book, real estate agents who make it a practice of emailing other agents and brokers information about their listings could be in violation of the law.

Make sure you check with your broker or manager prior to sending out a listing email to every real estate professional in your local board or area.  Fines for each incident can be up to $11,000!

Call the expired and FSBO’s. Having a large, well managed listing inventory has always translated into success in real estate sales. Expired listings of your competition most likely were never provided any more information about the current market except that it has “slowed down.” The sellers who really want to sell will appreciate you being truthful. Homes need to be priced at or below market depending on their condition. A seller looking to test the market at a higher price may be putting themselves in a “finding a needle in a needle stack” position with so many homes on the market at this time.

To continue the success or to get started if business has not yet improved for you, continue to do the things that will make you money. Put yourself in the way of buyers and sellers.

Until the REO listing floodgates open up, agents should be going after the second part of the REO equation, the buyer/investor. If you direct you marketing and prospecting towards picking up the buyers looking for foreclosures, bank owned and distressed properties you will realize just as many sales as you would if you listed these hotly sought after listings. How can you get REO buyers? These 3 methods have proven successful for picking up new customers and clients.

1) Your office marquee sign should be offering a free list of bank owned properties to those who stop in. Companies sell foreclosure lists online and in the newspaper that interested buyers willingly pay for so imagine the interest you will generate by offering these lists for free!
2) Blogging about the REO market for your specific area will attract online users searching for this type of real estate. Making sure your blog title, content and keywords are location specific will help to increase the visits of those looking to buy an REO property in your market area.
3) REO homes add to the attractiveness of this real estate market to first time home buyers. The low prices these properties are being offered for in some cases coupled with the tax credit and low interest rates available provide strong reasons why a renter or potentially new home owner would want to buy. Your job is letting them know. Make sure you have a direct mail or direct phone campaign in place directed to renters in your area.

You don’t have to be the listing agent to enjoy the success that selling REO properties are creating in this market. You just need to have the buyers that make up the second part of the deal.

All the while we keep tucked safely away in our pockets a simple business tool that if used this regularly, the return would no doubt be much better than any other marketing or prospecting source. 

The business card.

Too many agents only hand out their business card to a customer they have met through a different form of marketing or prospecting.  We give our card to our buyers when we first meet them at an open house or when we have them meet us for the first time in office to view houses.  We give our cards to sellers who have called us to list their home immediately upon entering the home as a way to introduce ourselves. 

An agent would increase his or her business if they just handed a business card to everyone they meet through the course of a day/week/month, REGULARLY.  Handing out your business card regularly is one of the most effective, inexpensive forms of marketing/prospecting available to any type of sales person and has been successfully used for years. 

Real estate sales is about meeting and talking to people.  We meet so many people during our day to day lives that if we only made a habit of handing each and everyone of them a business card it would surely result in more real estate referrals and more real estate closings.

Try it.  The suggestion we use in my company is for agents to start with passing out 10 cards a day.  When you think of all the people you come across while buying gas, buying bagels for breakfast, at lunch, at the doctor’s office, at the drugstore, at the post office, you will find that handing out 10 cards will not be that hard of a task. 

Start passing out cards today and continue to regularly pass them out and you will be on your way to a successful real estate career.

There are some agents, however, that do not believe that the wearing of a name badge is fitting of our profession.  They are quick to direct you to the fact that we are professionals and well, other professionals such as doctors and lawyers do not wear name badges, so we shouldn’t either.

That seem to be a valid reason, we do want to put on the best professional image we can, right?  If the professional doctor or lawyer believes wearing a name badge is “unprofessional”, who are we not to follow suit.

Right?

We-e-e-l-l-l-l-l-l, there is a bit of a difference between a doctor/lawyer and a real estate professional.  What is the difference?  WE ARE SALES PEOPLE!  They are not.  At the end of the day, we get paid for selling a product, the product being the home or property. 

Sure we provide consultation services, we act as a trusted advisor, yes, we provide information that allows the customer to make their own informed decision but when all is said and done they pay us because of a house or property we sell.

If you need help in seeing the value of wearing a name badge you might want to think of them in this regard.  Think of your name tag as nothing more than running adwords online.  The customer comes across your site (in this case, you in the flesh) and catches a glimpse of your adword (the badge), if  they are in the market they may do the real-time version of clicking on the ad which is approaching you and engaging you in a conversation.  Isn’t that what we want them to do?

Your name tag acts like an adword.  Wearing it when out an about on errands or shopping will put you in front of eyes that might never have met you otherwise.  If it results in one more deal a year, wasn’t it worth wearing?  Slap it on and wear it proudly.  If you are too embarrassed to wear a name badge you are probably in the wrong profession.

Marketing efforts rarely touch on the many concerns and interests of the customer and especially the customer who is not even close to being a customer.

The best marketing keeps your image, your brand, your success in the mind of the person you are attempting to reach and at the same time provided a message that the customer can use even want to receive. There is the skill to the best marketing efforts.