FINE TUNE YOUR MARKETING PLAN
Employ old-fashioned common sense to reach today’s consumers.
BY LESLIE CUMMINGS
What goes up must come down. And, indeed, economists are saying the slowing economy and growing unemployment will reduce the number of new- and existing-home sales in 2002. At the same time, the business has never been more competitive: Membership in the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® has jumped 12 percent since 1997 to more than 800,000.
The good news is that the movement of baby boomers and their children, immigration, and the growth in the percentage of households that own homes are on your side. And economists say they expect an uptick in the economy as early as the second quarter of 2002. So there’s still plenty of business out there for practitioners who understand how to read market conditions and fine- tune their message accordingly.
Being the market expert
Before you even start to market yourself, make sure you have a good handle on local conditions. Keep an eye on your own profit and loss statements, the number of homes on the market, and the number of days that homes are listed, says Char MacCullom of Char MacCullom Real Estate Group, Olathe, Kan. “I also read economic forecasts in the newspaper and from NAR, and I watch the MLS for new construction coming on the market.”
MacCullom, a 24-year real estate veteran, says the first sign of a slowdown sends her into marketing mode: “I usually budget 10 percent of my profits for marketing. In a good market, I often don’t use all the money I’ve allotted, because prospects find me. But when it slows down, I look at where I can invest to boost my business.”
Other practitioners who’ve been through business downturns echo MacCullom’s advice: A downturn is the time to make yourself known to the relatively smaller prospect base that’s out there.
Define your value
Of course, you don’t want to throw money into the wind. To get the most value from your marketing dollars, think through not only the best places in which to advertise but also the most effective message.
Start by realizing that you are a product, says Denver-based Will Craig, a national marketing strategist and personal coach. Make a list of what you have to offer. It should include your educational background, work experience, and knowledge of the business, among other things.
Your knowledge and experience don’t constitute your product, Craig says. It’s how you use them in helping the customer that’s the product.
“Think about what benefits or solutions you offer. Customers want solutions to problems and ways to reach their goals,” he says. “If you sell anything else, they won’t buy it.”
Turning that concept around, it means you must also identify the customers’ needs in order to determine the solutions, says Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Get What You Deserve: How to Guerrilla Market Yourself (Avon Books, 1997).
Identifying customers’ needs starts with knowing local demographics. Are your best prospects single people? Families? Retirees? What’s the income level?
“You should know your customers individually as well,” Levinson says. “Listen closely to them, and ask a lot of questions about the type of home and area they’re looking for.”
Once you have a keen understanding of your market, it’s much easier to craft a message that’ll draw business your way.
Expand your Web
Steve Chin, associate broker with Prudential Real Estate in the resort town of Park City, Utah, needs to reach out-of-town buyers with discretionary income to spend. His top medium is the Internet (www.deervalleyrealestate.com). “I have a lot of out-of-state buyers who are data gatherers, so my Web site is very important,” Chin says. “On the Web, I can deliver a lot of information, and it’s cheap and easy to make changes.”
Indeed, Chin’s message has changed in the past year, now that prospects are more skittish about spending. “In a hot market, I try to draw hits from both buyers and sellers, but in a slowdown, I stop marketing to sellers.”
He’s now working to grab buyers’ attention with home page headlines such as “Best buyer’s market in eight years” and “Lowest interest rates in five years.”
With buyers needing more convincing, Chin is increasing the amount of information he provides for customers. “I emphasize the proximity to major airports, maps to the city, and other information that has value, such as high telecommunications accessibility.”
In addition, in order to make a second-home purchase look more like a practicality than a luxury, Chin is changing some of the photos he uses at the site. Instead of featuring a freewheeling luxury lifestyle, he’s using photos of families vacationing.
If you’re also trying to attract prospects online, Diana Kokoszka has some advice for you: Don’t just focus on your own Web site. Kokoszka’s company, Kokoszka Group in Arvada, Colo. (www.kokohomes.com), was featured for a month, at no cost to her, in the homes section of a local television station’s Web site. Kokoszka was lucky enough to be approached by the station, but she suggests enterprising practitioners seek out similar cooperative arrangements.
In addition to her real estate Web site, Kokoszka runs her own community news site, www.thewestwood news.com, listing her company’s name as the sponsor. Kokoszka’s community site provides information about neighborhoods and schools, but the site is also interactive. It allows community members to place free ads about upcoming events as well as free classified ads. And there’s a page where residents can recommend plumbers, painters, and other service workers.
Kokoszka has upped the ante on her print campaign, too. She was sending out a quarterly newsletter, but when her market began to slide, she made it monthly. “I used to call past clients twice a year. Now I’ll call them four times a year. You want people to think of you and your company when they or someone they know is selling real estate.”
Kokoszka says she’s also doing more prospecting every morning. “I’ve increased my prospecting from two hours to three hours every day, as have my sales associates,” she says. “I’ve had to make a bigger effort to get appointments with customers.”
There’s a downside: Prospects may think you’re being a pest. The solution, Kokoszka says, is to focus on what you can offer when you call: “I call past clients on their birthdays or the anniversary of their home purchase to tell them interest rates went down, so they may want to refinance. Or I tell them that if they have enough home equity, they may be ready to get rid of mortgage insurance. If you have nothing to say except ‘I need referrals,’ your calls will get bothersome.”
‘Ad’ it up
Judy Birch, broker-owner of RE/MAX Quality, Corning, N.Y., has been experiencing a downturn in her market since tech stocks tumbled. Corning Inc., a Fortune 500 company and the town’s namesake, lost its optical fiber business and laid off thousands of workers.
Birch has maintained her ad budget and actually increased the amount of ad space she buys at no additional cost. She was able to work out a deal with an ad rep at a local newspaper she’s been advertising with for years.
“You have to work on those relationships,” she says. “Talk to the local newspaper people, and tell them about your situation. They don’t want to lose advertisers, and you’re on a limited budget.”
Birch reduced the size of her Sunday newspaper ad, but she compensated by running ads every day in the paper’s special sections. In the “Food” section, her ad reads “Recipe for sale” and goes on to describe what the “recipe” entails. In the “Weekend” section, the ad reads “You’ve got a weekend. We’ve got a house.”
Verna Acker, broker-owner of Realty Executives, Lake & County, in Waterford, Wis., is getting more creative with her marketing, too.
“You have to kick up your ads during a slow market,” says Acker, a practitioner since 1978. “I try to be original, anything that will get me noticed.” Some of her ads feature limericks with matching cartoon characters. Other ads include visual puns. One ad with a cartoon vegetable figure reads “Ready to harvest the market?”
Other practitioners say they stand out by focusing on niche publications that reach a certain audience or by using media their competitors aren’t using.
Ellen Terry, founder of Ellen Terry, REALTORS®, in Dallas, places ads in magazines geared to buyers of high-end homes. “I have to be seen where the buyers are,” she says.
She’s spent 20 years getting to know buyers in her area and says selecting which magazines to advertise in and when to place ads is a matter of experience.
“I do a lot of advertising in the spring, when there are more potential buyers,” she says. “During summer a lot of people leave Dallas.”
Char MacCullom isn’t a movie star, but she has her face up on the big screen seven days a week. Her ad runs four times during each movie preview at a 16-theater complex in town, helping her to create a brand name in the community.
“It works great. People are already sitting there and can’t change the channel,” she says. “I’ve gotten good name recognition.” The ads cost her $375 a month, but she says it’s money well spent: “On my closing surveys, people often write that they heard about me at the theater, so I know it’s working.”
MacCullom also gets name recognition from a moving van with her company ad on the side. She leases the van from a truck rental company, On The Move Inc. (800/645-9949; www.onthemovetrucks.com), and lends it to buyers on a first-come, first-serve basis. She’s been leasing the van for four years at $750 a month, which includes insurance for the van’s drivers. MacCullom says the van is cheaper than paying for a billboard, and she recoups some of the cost by renting ad space on the van to mortgage and inspection companies. “It’s great. The old neighbors and the new neighbors know who sold the home,” she says.
A 24-year real estate veteran, Marty Rodriguez, associate broker-owner of Marty Rodriguez Century 21, Glendora, Calif., is considering bumping up her newspaper advertising since the market slowed. She also appears in ads five times a day, seven days a week, on a local cable station. Rodriguez decided to do the cable ads, which run about $2,000 a month, to reach more area residents.
“After being just in print for so many years, we thought cable would be a new avenue. We figured we’d be getting right into the home, right in their faces,” she says. “We just started the cable ads, but they’ve had a very positive impact. I’ve had quite a few people tell me they’ve seen my ad.”
On her Web site, Rodriguez tries to provide valuable information for prospective clients. Her son Sean, who runs the site, says he’ll be posting articles about how the economy is doing and what’s happening in the local market. “In a slow market particularly, you’re competing for fewer clients and customers,” he says, “so your information has to be fresh.”
A growing inventory
Practitioners who’ve grown weary of bidding wars and disappointed buyers may now find themselves in a different but equally tough bind: inventory that’s going nowhere fast.
To ensure your property marketing dollars are well spent, it’s essential to track what works and what doesn’t. “I don’t spend more money,” says Kokoszka, “but I now spend more time on money-generating activities: prospecting, calling other real estate practitioners, telling neighbors about available properties, and calling sold listings for referrals.”
Like Kokoszka, Terry is getting back to basics: “I really stay in touch with sellers and make sure my activity reports get to them on time.”
Terry also writes encouraging letters to sellers to keep them from getting discouraged. “I focus on the positive and suggest new marketing ideas we haven’t tried.”
In high-tech Seattle, Nada Sundermeyer is offering more virtual tours of her listings than ever before.
“You need to make sure your listings are easily accessible online so they’re at the front of a potential customer’s mind,” says the 17-year-veteran with John L. Scott. She also advertises online. When a prospect clicks on the “Homes” section of the local newspaper’s Web site, Sundermeyer’s ad appears. “If out-of-town buyers look at the newspaper site, the first real estate person they see is me,” she says.
When Acker needs to rustle up buyers, she uses a time-honored method: face -to-face contact.
She resorts to open houses, which she normally doesn’t do. She’s even gone door-to-door delivering mini pumpkins and statuettes, with notes about her listings attached.
“Keeping in touch is imperative,” she says. “You have to use old-fashioned shoe leather if need be.”
Be heard above the din
Turn up the volume on your self promotion without breaking your budget.
You know you’re a great salesperson who really cares about your clients and customers—but do your prospects know that? There are many practitioners of various greatness vying for your prospects’ attention. How do you make it known to customers you’re the expert they need?
Even if you’re tightening your financial belt, you can find creative, inexpensive ways to market yourself, says Jay Conrad Levinson, author of How to Guerrilla Market Yourself (Avon Books, 1997). Here are some ideas to get you started.
Dare be different. Originality is king, says Denver-based Will Craig a national marketing strategist and personal coach for a number of self-employed professionals.
Being different from other salespeople in your area means you must know how others in your market are selling—and do the something else. You may want to call other salespeople to see how they answer the phone and what questions they’re asking.
“You have to dare be outrageous,” Craig says. “Try to raise the eyebrows of your prospects. Use language such as ‘Three things you MUST know about buying a home.’”
Pique prospects’ interest during conversation at social events. If people ask what you do, don’t just answer, “I sell real estate,” Craig says. Instead, describe what you do. “Tell them you help families realize the American Dream or tell them you help families find their dream home,” he says. “That will intrigue them.”
Wow ’em with your know-how. “Sharing expert advice establishes you as an authority and gives you exposure,” Levinson says.
Some salespeople think that if they tell customers what they know, the customers won’t need them, Craig says. “But that’s not true. It shows you’re unselfish and have valuable information that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Levinson suggests that salespeople share their expertise by speaking at community clubs. “Don’t market yourself. Talk about what’s going on in the real estate market in your community. You’ll make yourself the expert in your market.”
Other ways to share expertise include offering free consultations or comparative market analyses or writing an article for a local newspaper. When the article appears, make it part of your future presentations or put it on your Web site. (Even though you wrote it, you may need the newspaper’s permission to reprint it.) Better yet, become a regular columnist, and prospects will see your name every time they look at the real estate section. That involves a lot of time, however, and perhaps the help of a professional writer or editor, so make sure you’re prepared to deliver what you promise.
Don’t forget to share your expertise in your ads, or better yet, put a teaser in your ads that leads to your Web site. Your teaser might say, “For 10 things you need to know about selling a house, go to www.tabbysmith.com.”
Share your solutions and expertise in your newsletter, on your Web site, and with timely responses to e-mail requests, all of which will also help you create an image of authority on the subject of buying and selling real estate.
Won’t you be their neighbor? A great way to get community members to know you as a friendly, familiar face is to spend time with them. Volunteering regularly for a local cause you feel is worthwhile is one way to meet a lot of people in your community.
“Area residents will realize they have something in common with you, and actions speak louder than words,” Levinson says.
Make sure your contact is personal. Listen closely to what people say, and in a little notebook, jot down notes. Later send prospects a note, mentioning something they said in the conversation. “People will think, ‘Wow, he must think I’m important if he’s taking notes,’ and when they get the follow-up note, they’ll be impressed that you were listening,” Levinson says.
When you meet people, tell them you’d like to get to know more about them and what they do, Craig suggests. “You’ll be building rapport and familiarity, and you’ll be creating a network—if they aren’t interested in selling or buying, maybe someone they know is.”
Enticing ads
When the market fizzles, your ads need to sizzle, says Ed Lawler, author of Copy Chasers on Creating Business to Business Ads (NTC Business Books, 1994). “The sell is not what it was a year ago—it’s tougher now,” he says. Here are his tips on writing a great ad.
Appeal to a need. Know your potential customers and their hot buttons. Are they looking for a dream home, savings, or a quick sell? Find out, and use it in the images and the text of your ad.
Make your headline about them, not you. Now’s not the time to write boasting headlines about how you’re No. 1, the best, or the fastest. “In slow times, customers want to know not about you but what you’ll do for them to improve their situation,” Lawler says. Write headlines that let the customers know how you can help them sell or buy a home.
Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Promise a reward you can deliver on: that dream home, selling in 60 days, or an incentive. Show readers what’s in it for them and what you can do that the other guys can’t. Use numbers, statistics, and words like you, we, and our. And be unique. “Clearly show what makes you different from other salespeople,” Lawler says.
realtormag.com
For more marketing tips and a detailed guide to creating a marketing plan, visit the Sales and Marketing Tool Kit at realtormag.com. Tool Kits are for registered users of REALTOR.org.
