Here are 5 ways to make Facebook a brand building tool for your business.

1. Create a business page: You have your own profile page but don’t forget to create one for your business. Your business page is where you can share information about what is happening in the real estate market, what open houses are coming up, what the market data is for the area and so much more. When creating your business page you’ll want to invite as many people as possible to “Like” the page. Once you have 25 friends, you will be able to go to www.Facebook.com/username and create your own domain name for advertising. Try and name your Facebook page the name of your team or your website address so that way it’s easy for people to remember.
2. Carry your brand to your page: Once you know you have the domain name then you can create your own Welcome page on Facebook where you’ll have the look and feel of a “mini-website”. On this page, include calls to action and engagement points that allow them to link over to your website. This will power lead generation and additional traffic to your flagship website. Just check out: http://www.Facebook.com/LindaHallTeam for inspirational ideas!
3. Create A Town Page: Imagine having a town page that you have created and people in the town use it for learning about upcoming events, local news and more. This allows you to facilitate and bring this information to your market! Linda has done this as well. She created a page on Facebook called www.Facebook.com/FortMillSouthCarolina for people to visit and see what is happening in the area. This becomes a powerful way for her to bring credibility to the market area. Oh and most important, it’s like she can be the columnist for what’s happening in the real estate market in Fort Mill.
4. Add a share feature and a Facebook link off of your website. This will allow people to easily find you online and connect to you. By also adding the share feature this will allow them to share your link with other friends, family members and business colleagues.
5. Add your Facebook domain name to any and ALL print marketing your do. Drive people to your page by adding your Facebook link to your farming postcards, your business cards, email stationary and more. The more you advertise your Facebook location the easier it will be to have people find you. That’s what it’s all about!

Every home is unique or special in some way. Yet most ads are a generic list of features – 3 bed, 2 bath, garage, fireplace, deck, etc. There’s nothing in the ad that highlights why anyone should be interested in the home beyond the floor plan.

Instead of trying to write the “perfect” ad for a 3 bedroom/2 bathroom home that you can use for every home like that you list, a better approach is to think of advertising as story telling. It’s your job to highlight the home’s best features in a compelling way.

What Makes A Great Real Estate Ad?

Before I get into how to craft a great house ad, let’s take a look at the fundamentals of successful advertising. For any ad to work, it must have the following ingredients:

1. Compelling headline – Your headline must capture attention and get your prospect to read the rest of your ad. Think of your headline as the “ad” for your ad. Statistically, five times as many people will read the headline than will read your ad’s copy, so the better you make your headline, the greater the number of people who will keep reading.
2. Easy to read text – In general, longer copy outsells shorter copy because it presents the reader with more information about the product. However, this information must be presented in an easy-to-read format. For instance, don’t drastically reduce the font to cram in all the information you want to include. Also, break up big blocks of copy with sub-headlines, bullet points, and frequent paragraph breaks.
3. Use high-quality pictures – Your pictures should support the story your ad copy tells. With real estate ads, your readers will be drawn to the pictures, so make sure your house photos are staged with uncluttered rooms and well-lit space.

From Good to Great Advertising

A great ad not only generates interest in your product (the home for sale), but it also should filter out people who aren’t a good candidate for what you are selling. So how do you craft the perfect ad?

1. Make a list of all the positives and negatives characteristics. Brainstorm with your sellers – why did they enjoy living in this home? Does the home have a great view? Is it within walking distance to public transportation? Does it have a newly-built wine cellar? Has there been a price reduction? Write down as many features as you can think of until you come to one that is truly unique or special.
2. Craft your headline. Once you have that one unique characteristic, brainstorm different headlines that feature this characteristic. Focus on a key “benefit” of living in the home, not the street address.
3. Craft the body copy. Now, tell the story of this home and why this feature in your ad is so special. Why is it a “must see”? How will owning this home impress the buyer’s friends?
4. Select your pictures. What pictures can you use that will highlight this feature? How can you get the buyer to imagine themselves living in this home?
5. Close with your call to action. Finally, tell prospects exactly what they must do to learn more about this home, such as visiting your website for a virtual tour or attending your open house.

Writing a good real estate ad requires practice, but it’s a great long-term investment. Better advertisements mean attracting more interested prospects in a shorter time frame – and ideally, making a faster sale.

Before I answer your question, let me start with an example of the traditional approach to marketing (aka “interruption marketing”) and permission marketing. You walk into a store and a salesman immediately asks if he can help you. What’s your reaction? In many cases, it’s “No, thanks. I’m just looking.”

But, as you are browsing the store’s merchandise, perhaps something captures your attention. Maybe you find an item of clothing but can’t find your size. Maybe you spot an electronic device but aren’t sure of the technical specs. Suddenly, you are much more receptive to talking with someone who might help you make a more informed purchasing decision.

In the first case, you don’t care what the salesman has to say so you actively try to avoid a sales pitch. In the second case, something has captured your attention, so you give the salesman your permission to tell you more about the product and together, you hold a dialog about your wants, needs, and concerns.

What is Permission Marketing?

Permission marketing stems from the philosophy that your prospects’ attention is scarce and should be treated as a gift they are choosing to give you.

Your prospects suffer from a constant barrage of interruptions from phone calls, emails, text messages, direct mail, and advertising. Everyone wants their attention and they must decide to whom to give it. Once they give their attention, they can never get it back, so it’s an investment of time and energy on their part.

At the same time, it is difficult to figure out who or what to pay attention to. With so many choices, it’s easy to gather lots of information but still not know what to do to solve the problem. The more choices you have, the harder it is to decide which option is best.

That decision becomes more arduous when your prospect is evaluating a service rather than a product. With a product, they can see a physical item, try it out, and test the results before they buy. With a service, your prospects have no idea what to expect. They can’t see what “quality” or “professional” service is like before they buy.

How to Use Permission Marketing

If you’re proud of the services you offer and convinced they bring tremendous value to your clients’ lives, then your marketing should focus around helping people to understand that value.

How do you do that? First, you must convince your prospects to give you their attention. You have to give people a reason to interact with you so they’ll give you permission to talk with them. Yes, you still advertise. You still send mailings. You still network to meet people. You still market online. But the focus isn’t “I’m the most caring, professional, hardworking real estate agent, so you should hire me.” It’s about “Will my prospect find this information useful, even if they don’t hire me?”

The best way to do that is to provide samples of your services in bite-sized chunks. In your ads and promotions, you offer educational materials like a free report, audio program, DVD, or event invite and tell them how to take advantage of that offer (call your office, send for your free DVD, visit your website to download the report). In exchange for that information, your prospects give you their contact information.

At that time, you can ask them if they’d like to receive additional information. You can do so by providing a check box on your business reply card (“check this box to receive additional information about…”), a form on your website (“enter your name and email to receive our free report as well as our weekly newsletter on…”), or by phone (“would you like to be added to our monthly newsletter?”)

You approach follow up with the same philosophy. Each marketing piece you send them after the initial one should be valuable to them in some way, so they feel they haven’t wasted their time reading or listening to it. But now, you know you are communicating with people who have expressed interest in receiving your marketing messages.

It is a lot like dating. If you wanted to attract a spouse, you might place an ad in the personals or set up an online profile on a dating site (i.e. you advertise where you have a good chance of reaching interested prospects). Most people won’t read your ad. Some will read your ad but won’t respond. A handful may contact you. When someone responds (i.e. requests more information), you don’t automatically assume they are marriage material. Rather, you get to know one another gradually until you both decide if you are right for one another (i.e. establish trust and build rapport).

People do business with those they know, like, and trust. By using permission marketing, you establish yourself as a trusted adviser focused on building relationships with your prospects before the sale.

Any good website takes some planning to get set up and running. Let’s start with the basics:

Step 1 – What do you want your website to do?

This seemingly basic question is something that 99% of all webmasters never ask. If you don’t set goals for what you hope to accomplish, you’ll never achieve them.
In this case, your website has a number of goals, including:

• Impressing Your Sellers – The main reason you are creating these websites is to show sellers how much more value you provide over other agents out there. You’re not simply putting up a quick listing on your website. You’re giving them their own site that you will market in all the home’s promotional materials.
• Marketing The Home – Most means of home marketing are extremely limited by space and price. If you want to run a full-page advertisement including all the home details, it will cost you. The same is true for mailings and any printed materials. With a website, you can put up as much information as you want, without adding cost. And because 77% of home buyers search on the internet, you’re putting your listings out there for people to find.

Step 2 – Who is your target audience?

You might not know exactly who your target audience is, but it’s more specific than simply “a buyer” ready to buy within the next month.

Take a look around the neighborhood. Who else lives there? What are their income levels? What kinds of cars do they drive? How many kids do they have? Take note of the types of people that live in this particular neighborhood. Here are some things to get you started:

• Demographics – Where do they live? How much do they make? How old are they? Their gender? Their ethnicity? Their education?
• Geography – Where do they live? Why do they live there? What type of lifestyle do they have in their geographical area?
• Lifestyle – What do they do for a living? What motivates them? What types of interests and hobbies do they have? What type of car do they drive? Where do they go on holidays or vacations?
• Life Cycle – Where are they in their life cycle? Are they single, just married, expecting their first child, divorcees, empty nesters, retirees?
• Motives – What motivates them to buy? Are they emotional or rational buyers? What do they care about – the economy, investing, security, stability, the American dream?

You might ask, why does this matter? The answer is because your best prospects will probably share a number of these characteristics with the current neighborhood residents. Your marketing will work only when you understand who you are trying to target and why they might buy. The best way to understand their motivations for buying is to find out why others bought within this particular neighborhood.

And I mean “neighborhood” – not city or township or several square mile radius. I’m talking specifics. Who lives on this particular street? What about the adjacent streets? What can you learn about them just by their home decorations, landscaping, cars, kids toys, etc? Once you know this type of stuff, you can mention these specific characteristics within your home description on the website.

Step 3 – What is the competition like?

This might be difficult to answer, so here are two places to start:

1. Check the neighborhood – Are there any other homes on this street or on the adjacent streets that are currently up for sale? If so, what makes them distinctive? What advantages and disadvantages do they have over the home you are listing?
2. Check the MLS – What homes are in the MLS that have similar features and price to the home you are listing and are located nearby? What are their advantages and disadvantages? What makes them distinctive?

To effectively market a home, you must know what competition you have – and what unique features and benefits your listing brings to the table. Knowing this information helps you distinguish and differentiate your home from all the others on the market.

Think of it this way. Buyers are overwhelmed with choices. When they search through listing after listing, they are looking for something that stands out and grabs their attention. Something that says to them “go see this house!”

If your marketing can do this, you’re going to start attracting a lot more buyers who want to check out this “must see” house. And that means there’s a good chance you’ll close the deal faster- and get paid for your services sooner!

Step 4 – How can you differentiate this listing from others on the market?

At the bare minimum, your website should include the features of the home (price, location, the number of rooms, baths, and amenities) and lots of photographs, but if you want to really generate buzz about the home, tell the “story” of the home.

What’s special, unique or distinct about this home? Why did the current owners buy this home? What do they love about it? What amenities are nearby? What’s the best pizza place in the area? Are there any annual neighborhood picnics or special events? How do the kids like the schools they attend? What’s within walking distance? A 10 mile drive?

Why bother? Because people make decisions based on emotion, not logic. They want to fall in love with their new home – and they’ll justify their purchase with reasons later. People buy homes they can see themselves living in. They have to envision how they’ll arrange the rooms. How they’ll paint the walls. How they’ll set up the nursery. All of that stuff is emotional. That’s why your marketing needs to appeal to their emotions as well as give them the facts and features.

Step 5 – How can you market the website?

The final step is getting the word out. Here are some ideas for marketing your new website:

• On your blog and website
• In your ads and mailings
• On house fliers
• In your newsletters
• On riders for your signs.
• In your online classified ads (Craigslist, Trulia, Zillow, Oodle, etc)
• In your social media profiles like MySpace and Facebook
• Twitter (or tweet, if you like) the URL
• Add to social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us
• In your email signature
• In blog comments you leave (don’t spam blogs, but most software asks for your URL – use your listing URL instead of your blog or website)
• In listing presentations (to show other sellers what you can do for them)

Get Started Today

You don’t have to be a technology genius or pay a web developer lots of money to set up a page for you. It’s relatively easy to set these types of sites up

1. Set up a free Blogger.com account. You’ll be able to create a new blog for each listing and the process takes about 3 minutes. Watch a video tutorial on how to do this.
2. Once you have your blog set up, go to the Settings tab and then click on the “Publishing” link. You’ll see something that says “You’re publishing on blogspot.com.” Underneath, it will say “Switch to: Custom Domain” Click on the “Custom Domain” link. Go through Google’s easy step-by-step system to buy a domain for your blog for $10/year. Watch a video tutorial on how to do this.

Easy, right? Alternatively, you can set up a free account on Postlets.com – or pay $5 to upgrade to a premium listing.

Setting up single property listings for each of your clients’ homes can be a great way to demonstrate how marketing and technology savvy you are to potential sellers – and they’re simple, fast and affordable to set up.

Most small-business owners (myself included) are guilty of not following up with all leads they generate. When leads pour in, it’s tempting to cherry pick the low hanging fruit while ignoring all the others who aren’t quite ready to hire you yet.

In yesterday’s post, I discussed how to create education-based marketing materials that your prospects will want to read. The purpose of creating those types of marketing materials is to get prospects to self-identify themselves as interested in what you have to offer by giving you their contact information and permission to follow up.

Let me be clear: Just because someone provides you with contact information in exchange for information doesn’t necessarily make them a lead – yet. (The same is true for most lead-generation services that charge you big bucks per “lead.”) Inquiries and registrations are not the same as “qualified leads.”

Yet what do people think to do? Call all those people who downloaded their free report and pitch their services. And often, those calls are a waste of time – worth just slightly more than cold calls.

So how can you weed out the low hanging fruit from those that aren’t yet ripe? One option is to ask them their timeframe for buying and provide a checkbox that states “Please contact me for a free consultation.” Those who say their timeframe is immediate or within 1-2 months and who request a free consultation are good candidates for “leads.” Everyone else probably falls into the category of “not yet ready to buy” and should go into your lead-nurturing system rather than tossed aside and forgotten.

What is Lead Nurturing?

Simply put, lead nurturing is what you do to keep in touch with people once they’ve given you permission to market to them. The best types of lead nurturing are systematized, automated or fall under your regularly scheduled marketing activities.

What does that mean? Well, if someone downloads a free report from your website, several things should happen:

• They are added to your email newsletter mailing list
• They receive a series of follow-up emails from you (generally these are autoresponders that are triggered when someone adds their email address to your mailing list).
• They receive offline follow-up such as sales letters, thank you notes, or other correspondence.

These follow-up emails, newsletters, and correspondence should be written in an informative way with the intent to get readers to engage with you. In other words, you don’t want them to just passively read it – you want to get them to do something because of it: like provide feedback, ask you a question, request other freebies, register for a seminar or workshop, visit a blog post, buy a product from you, give a testimonial or referral, or request a consultation with you.

The more people interact with the content you provide them, the more likely they are to see you as a trusted advisor who is a local real estate expert.

Why Bother with Lead Nurturing and Follow-Up?

There are a few reasons why you should put a lead-nurturing system into place:

• Nurturing leads is cheaper than prospecting – You spend considerable amounts of money trying to acquire leads – why throw them away because they aren’t quite yet ready to buy? Many will buy at some future time – and since you’ve already gotten their attention, gotten them to respond, and gotten them to allow you to follow up with them, why wouldn’t you spend a few cents each month sending them your email newsletter, your series of follow-up reports, and maybe invite them to a seminar down the road? That sure beats advertising or sending direct mail to people who have never heard of you and have no interest in what you offer in the hopes that someone, somewhere, might need a real estate agent.
  
  
• Nurturing reduces risk. When you sell a service, you’re selling something intangible. People don’t understand the value they’ll get until you’re actually working for them – and they’re hesitant to hire because it requires they make a decision. Which should they choose? What if they make a mistake? What if they can’t sell their house or can’t find a home in their price range? What if something goes wrong? What if they get ripped off?
  
  

  Prospects have a laundry list of fears they must overcome before they’ll hire someone and, to justify their decision, they’ll pick and choose evidence around them. They’ll look at how you sell your services, the quality of the information you provide, what your office looks like, how you dress, whether you tell them information that contradicts what they think they already know.
  
  

  When you continually follow up with them by offering them new information and interact with them via your newsletter, blogs, sales letters and other marketing materials, you start to build a relationship with them. As they get to know and trust you, working with you seems much less risky.
  
  

• Nurturing builds relationships and trust – The more people interact with you and your content, the more likely they are to get to know, like and trust you. People prefer to do business with those who understand their business needs and express a genuine concern for their well being rather than those who are looking to make a quick buck at their expense. As you follow up, show your personality, and continue to offer great advice, you become a trusted advisor – the person they will turn to for their real estate needs.
  
  
• Nurturing educates prospects – When prospects call you, you are at a disadvantage. Often these prospects have certain expectations about what a real estate agent should do for them – and in many cases, those expectations are misguided and run counter to what it takes to actually buy or sell a home. They might hear negative things from the media, or watch HGTV programs designed more to entertain than sell a home, or hear stories (good and bad) from their friends and family about what real estate agents did or didn’t do. When a prospect is in your nurturing system, you can re-educate them about what to expect. You can bring up issues they probably haven’t thought of and guide them through the process so when they’re ready to buy or sell, they already know the right way to go about it.
  
  

Your client list is your business’ most valuable asset. Your prospecting list is probably its second most valuable asset, as these people have a much greater potential to evolve into clients than the average person on the street.

Tomorrow I’ll conclude this series by addressing how you can generate leads with referral partners.

Yesterday, I discussed why agents should focus on creating education-based marketing materials that address prospects’ key problems and concerns rather than focusing on “getting their name out there.” In today’s article, I’ll talk about the best ways to generate leads using those education-based marketing materials – but first, let me again stress why education-based marketing is so important.

Marketing in the Attention Economy

Irrelevant advertising no longer works. Sure, back in the ’50s when there were only a handful of magazines, TV and radio channels, it was fairly easy to reach a broad audience and tell them virtually anything you wanted them to know. If you repeated your message enough or had a cute jingle accompanying your commercial, prospects would remember it and, hopefully, they’d buy because of it.

Unless you have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend, those tactics don’t work in today’s marketplace. Consumers are so bombarded with information they have to filter out things that aren’t relevant to survive. We live in an “always on” society, often called the attention economy, where there’s always something demanding our attention. If it’s not advertising from companies wanting us to pay attention, it’s our colleagues, family, and customers who want us to always be available for their call, email or instant message. Or the magazine, blog, and ezine publishers who want us to read more. Or the info-marketers who put out more books, audio, and video programs. Or the speakers who want us to come to their seminars. Or … you get the point.

There are so many things competing for our attention that many of us live in a continual state of information overload. We don’t need more information. We don’t need people telling us how wonderful they are or why we should buy their services. We don’t need more junk mail or spam or commercial breaks. Rather, we need ways to organize and make sense of information so that we can base our decisions on the good stuff and toss out the bad stuff. This is what people look for – and this is the type of advertising that grabs people’s attention enough for them to say “tell me more.”

Lead Generation Made Simple

OK, so now you’ve got a few articles, free reports or other goodies that contain valuable information that will help your prospects make sense of their chaotic world – how do you let them know about these gems? The answer is simple: Advertise in the publications that your target market is likely to engage with regularly.

This is common sense, yet so many agents are lured into advertising in publications that will be delivered to hundreds of thousands of readers or on billboards by the side of major highways or on the backs of shopping carts or in free circulars that have nothing to do with real estate. This is the equivalent of a hope-and-pray strategy: If they “get their name out” into enough places, eventually, someone looking for an agent will notice their ad while they’re out doing their day-to-day activities, write down their number or website, and contact them.

Rather than interrupt people while they’re engaged with other activities – and therefore, their No. 1 priority isn’t finding a real estate agent – why not put yourself in front of people already looking? For instance you could:

• Advertise in real estate circulars and classifieds (offline and online). – Most agent advertising looks very similar. For instance, imagine how your content-rich ad offering free reports would stand out prominently in free house ad circulars.
  
  
• Create a pay-per-click campaign on Google to specifically target searchers looking for homes in your area. – Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to test your offers and headlines quickly and cheaply before you run your ad in offline publications. For instance, you can run two ads that differ only by the headline and see which ad gets more clicks. The one that does better is your winner.

In addition, you can get plenty of free (or cheap) advertising if you’re willing to put in a bit more time and effort by:

• Writing a real estate column for a local publication your target audience reads.
• Creating an informative website about your local real estate market or writing for a popular local blog or online publication.
• Giving talks about the local real estate marketing or aspects of buying or selling a home to local organizations that are likely to include members of your target audience. If you don’t like public speaking, offer free reports or recorded CDs for them to distribute to their members.
• Sending press releases to local newspaper writers describing local market conditions or announcing your new free report that would be beneficial to their readers.
• Networking at events your target audience or potential referral partners are likely to attend. When you have education-based marketing materials, you always have a reason to follow up with “Here’s the guide I mentioned I’d send you. Let me know what you think or if you have questions.”

With each of these options, you should get a brief author byline to explain who you are and what you do, how interested prospects can get your free report, and how they can contact you.

So, what’s the point of all of this? The point is to get prospects to raise their hand and tell you they’re interested by giving you permission to continue contacting them in exchange for the valuable information and advice you provide. In other words, attention is the currency and over the course of several exchanges, you start to build a relationship with prospects. Your goal is to give content to get attention, which leads to prospects getting to know, like and trust you, which leads to more educated, easy-to-work-with clients and more referrals.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about how following up is the secret to closing more sales.

General common sense dictates that your marketing materials should tell prospects who you are, what you do and what you’ve accomplished. If you pick up any ad, mailer, or other promotional material, chances are you’ll read about the agent’s accomplishments, sales background and history, or awards they’ve won. Yet this is exactly the opposite of what works in advertising.

The problem with this approach is that it focuses on boosting the agent’s ego rather than addressing their prospects’ problems, fears and concerns. Agents love to see their name and picture on billboards around town, or create a glossy, full-color brochure they can hand out, or design a website with lots of bells and whistles.

Yet, the truth is, much of these types of marketing materials are a waste of money. Your prospects don’t wake up in the morning and wonder who will give them a beautiful brochure or clever postcard today. They don’t start their day wishing they could learn more about the multitude of vendors competing for their attention. Rather, they are focused on their own problems and concerns and tend to notice things that speak directly to those issues.

The best marketing materials are written by putting yourself in your prospect’s shoes and asking: “If I was this person, what, specifically, would I be going through? Where would my biggest problem or pain lie? What would I be feeling?” The marketing piece would then be written to that person, describing in detail the problems he faces, the frustrations he feels, and finally, how to solve or alleviate those problems.

Marketing isn’t about being creative, but understanding your prospects’ psychology. If your marketing materials can describe their problems better than they can, show that you understand their pain, demonstrate that you’ve helped people just like them and offer them step-by-step solutions to those problems, you’ll have a much greater chance of winning their trust and building credibility with them.

So, how do you create these types of marketing materials?

Step 1: Identify your target audience. It’s impossible to write a letter, ad, or promotion that appeals to everyone, so pick the types of people who are most likely to need your services and write directly to them.

Step 2: Learn what issues are most important to your target audience. What questions come up repeatedly when you talk with prospects? What do they feel are their biggest problems and concerns? Put yourself in your prospect’s head and empathize with them – what are they going through right now? What do they think (maybe erroneously or irrationally)? How do they feel?

Step 3: Create marketing materials that educate prospects about their problems rather than who you are and what you do. If you were looking to sell your home, which offer would be more appealing to you?

• Offer A: Call now for your free home evaluation.
• Offer B: Visit our website to download our free 25-page report on the “Top 21 Ways to Sell Your Philadelphia Condo Fast for Top Dollar in a Down Market.”

Chances are, prospects would be much more likely to choose Offer B because:

• It’s highly targeted. It talks specifically to Philadelphia condo owners who are thinking of selling.
  
  
• It’s specific. It tells people exactly what they’ll get – a free 25-page report with 21 tips for selling a condo in Philadelphia.
  
  
• It’s focused on your prospect, not you. It speaks directly to a problem prospects are having right now – they want to sell their condo in a down market and still get as much money as possible for it – rather than appealing to the agent’s ego.
  
  
• It offers something unique. Many agents offer a “free home evaluation” – so that offer has become somewhat of a commodity. It’s not unique or special. When you offer a unique report with specific information, they must order it from you if they want that information, and by default, if they find the information you offer valuable, you’ll build credibility in their eyes because you’re the only one providing this great information.
  
  
• It provides a sample of your service. Services are intangible, so it’s difficult for prospects to evaluate which agent will provide them with the best services over the course of the next few months. When you offer a free report with great content, you’re giving them a sample of the advice they’ll receive if they hire you. The better the content in your report, the more credibility you’ll build because prospects will think, “If this agent is providing this great content to me for free, I wonder what great advice they’ll give me when I hire them.”
  
  
• It allows prospects to interact with you at their pace. “Call now” immediately invokes thoughts of sitting through a high pressure sales pitch where the salesman will say and do anything to get their business. Asking prospects to “visit our website” is much less risky because it allows prospects to research you and your solutions on their time and at their pace.

By providing education-based marketing materials, you give people a reason to raise their hands and tell you they’re interested. You also demonstrate you understand their problems and concerns, while giving them a way to learn more about you and your services at their leisure and in a less-risky way than a sales call.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss cost-effective ways to generate leads using these education-based marketing materials.

Building credibility and expertise as a new agent is somewhat of a chicken or egg dilemma. You need clients to gain credibility and expertise, yet clients won’t hire you unless you already have that credibility and expertise. What is a new agent to do?

When your prospects analyze which agent to hire, they also weigh in risk – and hiring a brand new real estate agent who has only worked with one or two people is incredibly risky, especially in a down market. What if problems come up or you make a mistake that prevents them from buying the house they want? What if you don’t know about marketing techniques other agents are using? What if you fill out the forms wrong or any number of things that might possibly go wrong?

There are a couple of ways to overcome these fears:

1. Get testimonials – If you have worked with some clients, ask them for a testimonial. Testimonials act as social proof that you can do your job – and that you’ve successfully helped others with similar concerns.
   
   
2. Use client stories and case studies – Along with testimonials, use client stories to further boost your credibility. When prospects ask you a specific question, tell them a story of how your previous client had that similar problem and the steps you took to solve it.
   
   

These two techniques should be fundamental components of any marketing campaign, and as you work with more people, you should always look to collect testimonials and case studies to demonstrate your credibility.

But what if you haven’t gotten your first client yet?

You can still start gaining experience by partnering with more-experienced agents:

1. Apprentice with an experienced agent – Ask the busier agents in your office (or your broker) if you can go along with them on appointments for a period of time so you can learn the ropes. Keep in mind – if they agree to this, they are doing you a favor, so make it worth their time. Negotiate tasks you can do for them in exchange for the hours they mentor you – or even offer to pay them for their time. The hands-on experience you’ll receive is invaluable and one of the best ways to start learning the tricks of the business. It will also provide you with a few client stories you can use when marketing your services.
   
   
2. Partner with an experienced agent – Most agents are always looking for new business opportunities, so many may be open to partnering with you for your first few clients. Again, they are doing you a favor, so make this worth the agent’s time. Offer to do all the grunt work – generating leads, driving buyers around to show houses, etc. – as well as a portion of your commission if they can help you with the logistics of the transaction like negotiations, paperwork, and any problems that come up. In other words, you’ll do virtually all of the work and still pay them a nice fee to back you up and offer their credibility and expertise. This can go a long way to help reduce risk in the eyes of your prospect.
   
   

The goal with both of these options is to get you up-to-speed on your local real estate market and how real estate transactions are done as quickly as possible. These are the basics that you need to know cold to stay in business and compete in today’s real estate market. Without this fundamental knowledge, any advertising and marketing you might do to promote yourself is pretty much a waste of money because you won’t be able to close the sale.

On Monday, I’ll talk of another way you can demonstrate your credibility by creating education-based marketing materials that prospects will want to read.

Thanks for your question, Mike. It’s a question I get pretty regularly from new agents who are trying to break into real estate, so I wanted to take a few minutes to answer the question.

Unfortunately, while I wish I could give you the one trick that will bring a flood of clients and cash in the door, marketing just doesn’t work that way. There is no magic bullet when it comes to growing your business. I wish there was, but the reality is that you are entering a difficult market and need to overcome quite a few obstacles before your marketing will start to work.

1. You have a minimal budget. When it comes to advertising, $2500 is a drop in the bucket. It’s incredibly easy to blow through that running a few ads, sending a few postcards, or putting up and marketing a website – and even if you do those things, there’s no guarantee you’ll get results.
   
   
2. You mention the purpose of advertising is to “get your name out.” As long as this is your purpose, you’ll most likely blow through your marketing budget and not get the results you are looking for. The fundamental secret most agents miss is that your marketing should not be about you, the services you provide, or all the things you will do to help your prospect. Instead, you must focus on your prospect and your prospect’s problem. In other words, it’s not about what you do, but what your prospect gets – what are their biggest concerns and how can you address those concerns in your marketing?
   
   
3. You have minimal experience and, therefore, credibility. Even if you were to create a highly successful advertising campaign, you will still have a difficult time getting clients because they’ll perceive you as a risky choice. Why should they choose a brand new agent with little or no experience when there are many other more-experienced agents out there who are hungry for their business?
   
   
4. What makes you the best choice? Even if you had years of experience, the question every prospect has on their mind is, “why should I hire you over all the other agents out there?” In other words, “what makes you uniquely qualified to handle my specific problems?”
   
   

Now, I’m not saying these things to get you down or imply that you can’t break into the business and have a successful real estate career. You absolutely can, but to do so, you’ll need to be strategic – and thrifty – with how you prospect for clients and make sure you adequately address points three and four.

There are five fundamental principles you’ll need to include in your marketing campaign so that you start getting prospects to call you then have the follow through to turn those prospects into paying clients. I’ll go into a bit more detail over the course of the next few days but for now, those five principles are:

1. Build trust and credibility
2. Create education-based marketing materials
3. Promote those educational marketing materials, not yourself
4. Build a database of prospects and follow up
5. Create a network of referral partners
6. Bonus: How To Get The Most Bang for Your $2500 Marketing Budget – aka how I’d spend a $2500 marketing budget

Tomorrow I’ll address how to build trust and credibility as a new agent.

• It’s cheaper. Because you’re not asking prospects to take a leap of faith and hire you in your ad, they’re more likely to take action and request your free report (or something else of value). That means you generate more leads for every ad you run or mailing you send out.
  
  
• It’s less risky to prospects. Doing business with you is risky to prospects. How do they know you’ll do what you say? When you offer something of value for free, you build trust and give them a sampling of your services. It also gives them control of their buying process instead of feeling pressured. They can make decisions on their time and at their comfort level.
  
  
• Prospects contact you. No longer will you need to cold call and beg for new clients. With this system, they contact you – and as statistics show, that means you’re virtually in the door. 87% of all people call either one or two agents when they’re ready to buy or sell! And prospects who have received your communications for a period of time will be far less skeptical about hiring you. They’ll feel they already know you just from your marketing materials.
  
  
• It’s more targeted. Prospects that request your free report are raising their hands to let you know that they’re potentially interested – and therefore are more qualified than the average person.
  
  
• It’s less time consuming. Once you have a list of people who are interested, you can add them to your automated marketing system to follow up with them regularly. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every month because you’ve set up the system in advance.

I can’t stress enough that you should learn and use the principles of direct response advertising and permission marketing in all your marketing rather than doing what everyone else is doing. Once you learn these basic principles, test them in your market, and focus on conversion rates, you’ll stop bleeding advertising money and start to see why marketing is one of the most lucrative investments you’ll ever make.