When it comes to selling a home, it is more than advertising in the classifieds column of the local newspaper. Of course this is one of the ways you go about it but it should not be the only way.

There are many different ways to market your home, however there are less few ways of strategically marketing your home. No one would want anything less than the value of their home. Without a proper marketing strategy chances are very high that you will get a raw deal when selling your home.

The best ways to market your home are a few collective methods. Three of best methods are the most effective when used together that is Flat Fee MLS, Photography, Internet Advertising. Of course when you simply advertise a home with the description only, it will leave a prospective buyer trying to imagine how that particular home might look like. Photography can be on of the great ways to market your home as it gives the buyer what to expect when they come for the actual viewing. Using Flat Fee MLS will not only allow the Agents to see your home, it will also allow the public to see it on the internet. Using these methods will reduce the disappointment of having many buyers who come and fail to buy the home.

All the same the photographs should be done strategically. In order to accomplish this one needs to get a professional photographer. If one cannot get one due to unavoidable reasons there are a few tips on how to best photograph your home for sale. Simply take good photographs of the front of the home, interior and exterior. The photographs should be of high detail so as to accentuate the best qualities of the home. Also don’t forget to take good angles of the interior. You can take many photos of the home and then choose the best from them. Get a second opinion from a friend or someone who will not be a member of the home. They might give insight into something you might have overlooked. This will be one of the ways to market your home.

Flat Fee MLS and Internet Advertising is also one good way to market your home. Advertising through print media is not rocket science as anyone can do it. Get a detailed description of the home with the help of a real estate agent. Then get a family member or friend and put your heads together to give the advertisement the spice it needs to be captivating. That’s all it takes. When you combine these methods in advertising your home, you have come up with one of the best ways to market your home.

Is a property photo always worth a 1000 words, to a ‘for sale by owner’, an agent, or anyone else for that matter? Advertisers tend to forget that buyers need motivation to tour a property, that they should not be prejudging it based solely on the photo presentation or virtual tour. Photographs should pique a buyer’s curiosity, validate the opinion that has been formed from reading the text, then entice them to view the product.

One black and white exterior photo

As a real estate agent who launched his career in 1979, and now the publisher of a niche property, e-commerce website, I am amazed at how the use of photos in advertising properties for sale has evolved. Of course thirty years ago we didn’t have the luxury of the Internet to advertise a vendor’s property. The usual practice was to periodically place a newspaper classified ad in an effort to generate phone calls, and to add our property listing to the office display ad that usually was published every Saturday in the local newspaper. The ad, as a rule, amounted to a few lines of copy highlighting the most important features, and included an exterior black and white photo of the property.

With the launching of websites targeting ‘for sale by owners’ in the late nineties and early 2000, private sellers were enticed with offers of multiple photos to showcase their properties. The FSBO market was quick to react. That selling feature was not lost on organized real estate; after all, real estate agents had to compete and were not to be outdone by FSBO sites. Debate was endless about how real estate boards could best display property listings – and who was to do that.

Going overboard with multiple photos

Today, when we do a search query for properties listed for sale on the web, it’s not uncommon to have the opportunity to view 10 to 25 photos, on FSBO sites in particular. Over the last 5 or 6 years as an agent, I recall having several passionate discussions with vendors about the value of real estate photos for average priced properties used in either mls property data bases, or personal and company websites. My contention was that too many photos could cause prospects to eliminate listings as they might come to the wrong conclusion about the property. (I related how in the 80′s, buyers would respond to classified ads, usually a process they used to eliminate a property from their list, as opposed to confirming the property was a fit.) Moreover, an average condo of 800 sq. ft. or even a 2 story house up to 2000 sq. ft. often did not lend itself well to the presentation of professional-like photos.

From my perspective as an agent,the answer to the question is no, not necessarily, is a photo worth a 1000 words. There’s a variety of reasons for that. Many REALTOR association surveys have confirmed that consumers want to view listing photos, but indeed some find photos misleading, in the sense that they misrepresent the property, they are of poor quality, they have been manipulated, or that too few photos or the ‘wrong’ photos are used. An old adage in the real estate business is that ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’. Focusing on only the exterior photo often leads one to conclude, on the one hand the property lacks curb appeal, for example, and on the other that the property should be at the top of a tour list. But perhaps the house isn’t showing its ‘best side’, or conversely, does, but the photo doesn’t reflect the fact there’s a fixer upper one or two doors down, or that there’s multi-family housing across the street or a contaminated pond behind the house. You get the point. Another tendency is for agents and FSBOs alike to focus too much attention on photos, and less on well written, complete and accurate property copy.

Early in my career I showed and sold as much property utilizing one or two exterior black and white photos as I did in ‘ought’ years when a dozen photos were displayed in the listing. The property sales ratio of agents to FSBOs today is about the same, if not higher, in some markets. We can all relate to how evolving technology has changed society, and in real estate influenced how agents conduct their business. Many parties to a real estate transaction over recent years seem to overlook the legitimate role of a buyer’s agent. Isn’t it one of the agent competently qualifying the prospect, learning about wants and needs, establishing rapport and trust and earning the buyer’s confidence? The result? “Go find us a property!” The photos could then be used for validation.

I have heard of buyers, consumed by the greed factor, purchasing property sight unseen during the boom years. Whether they were relying totally on listing photos, video, and data, remains to be seen; but I can tell you a lot of them will live to regret the decision. There is NO substitute for a thorough hands on tour and a bout of due diligence.

Another way to find private lenders who will be interested in investing in your real estate deal is to market real estate investment services to accountants and financial advisors. Due to the current economic downturn, you will find that most accountant and financial advisors would be interested in offering their clients an investment with the highest rate of return. If you can be competitive in offering a high rate of return on investment, this will open up a host of opportunities for finding private lenders.

How Can I Find Accountants and Financial Advisors? You can find a lot of accountants and financial advisors by using techniques from the direct response marketing component of your real estate investment marketing plan.

* Obtain a Mailing List: Go out and obtain a mailing list of every accountant and financial advisor in your area just as you would obtain a mailing list for a direct response marketing campaign for real estate investments. You can use list brokers such as InfoUSA and MelissaData which are fairly inexpensive and will cost you about 10 cents per name.
* Create a Postcard: Write a letter or create a postcard that contains an offer for clients to invest and receive a higher rate of return on their investment than what they are receiving through current investments. Your offer should be a higher rate of return than an ROI on the current market. Create a line on the postcard that prompts a call to action for the client to get in touch with you.
* Create a Letter: Create a letter with an attention grabbing headline and then present your offer. Talk about news in the current marketplace and how your offer could provide the solution for clients that are currently receiving a low rate of return on investment. Offer some information from your profile and some of the past successful investments you have accomplished with other clients.

Include suggestions to the accountant and financial planner as to how they can present the opportunity to their client. This also demonstrates your knowledge and expertise in real estate investment and how your offer can specifically benefit the client. Perhaps also include information about an upcoming seminar you are providing and invite the potential client to contact you directly for further information on the investment opportunity.

* Make a Phone Call: Once you obtain a list of accountant and financial advisors, start making phone calls to them. Do not waste their time and go on and on about the history of your real estate investment business. Simply provide them with the information about what you do and what you have accomplished, almost similar to what you do with an elevator speech.

Include some events such as a seminar you will be doing that is coming up soon or offer some free information. Who knows, if you are professional and charismatic on the telephone, perhaps the accountant or financial planner themselves may be interested in investing in your real estate deal.

* Offer to Do A Free Presentation: If you have a group of accountants and financial advisors who have multiple clients interested, offer to do a free presentation to encourage people to invest with you. Even if it is only a few people, remember that it is a numbers game and that word of mouth advertising can be very powerful.

Social media advertising is currently taking the Internet by storm and social media sites are no longer for just the younger people. Social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are for professionals and business people. Along with social media advertising has emerged the trend of social bookmarking which is a great way to attract the attention of private lenders.

What is Social Bookmarking? Social bookmarking allows you to share your expertise and save a series of bookmarks for your own personal use and to share with others. You can also take bookmarks that have been saved by others, add them to your bookmarks, and subscribe to the list of bookmarks saved by others. Social bookmarks are capable of being shared and reciprocated with specific groups of people inside a specific network or through public and private domains. They can be viewed by tags or through the use of a search engine. Although social bookmarking sounds complicated it is a relatively easy and resourceful tool for getting the word out about your real estate investment business. How Does Social Bookmarking Work? Social bookmarking is provided by websites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Redd-It, OnlyWire, and others. These sites provide useful content for your real estate investment business by storing blogs, articles, websites, videos, and other types of content for the purpose of expanding your knowledge and providing you with a tremendous opportunity to network with other real estate prospects.

How to Use Social Bookmarking

* Find a Site: Find a site such as Digg, StumbleUpon, or OnlyWire and register for an account with the site.
* Investigate the Site: Become familiar with the site and look around to make sure that there are other people involved who will be interested in your real estate content. It is important to note that different social bookmarking sites will consist of a variety of users. It is very important to find a site that works with the real estate information you are offering.

One way to discover what type of audience is on the site is to watch and navigate the blogs, website, and articles to see which ones attract the most traffic and have the highest ranking. Then review what type of audience is participating and their specific interests. Like any other form of marketing, it is important to know your audience before you offer any information.

* Use Indexing: Once you have found a site that has an audience who will take an interest in your real estate investment product or service, submit the link to your information. This is one of the fastest ways of getting the search engines to index your site. You can also develop your own page right on the social bookmarking site.

What NOT to Do with Social Bookmarking

* Do NOT Advertise for Private Lenders: Offer quality information on a social bookmarking site that clearly demonstrates your expertise and offers the reader sound advice and a solution to a problem. Do NOT advertise that you are seeking private lenders. Not only will this turn off your audience but it will also get you into a heap of trouble with the SEC.
* Do NOT Submit Inferior Quality Content: Submitting high quality content and advice on real estate is what will attract traffic to your real estate investment product or service and eventually lead you to private lenders. Submitting inferior quality content will not only destroy your credibility but you will be passed over on the social bookmarking site, the search engine bots will not like you, and your marketing efforts will be wasted.

Where do people, who eventually purchase a house, find that home? That is probably the single most important question facing a seller and their listing agent. And while there are several answers, the question seems to get easier to answer with every passing year. The National Association of Realtors surveys home buyers every year. The undeniable conclusion is more and more buyers are becoming informed through the Internet. Below are “must know” facts about today’s buyer:

* 33% of all buyers looked on-line for property as the first step in the home buying process.
* ONLY 4% visited an open house first.
* 87% of all buyers used the Internet as part of their home search.
* 94% of 25-44 years old buyers used the Internet as part of their home search.
* 81% of buyers fount the Internet “Very Useful” in their search
* 29% found newspaper or magazine ads “Very Useful.”
* 99% of buyers found the Internet “Useful” or Very Useful”
* 98% found their agent “Useful” or “Very Useful”
* 34% of buyers found the home they purchased through an agent.
* 32% found the home they purchased through the Internet
* ONLY 3% found the home they purchased through a newspaper or magazine ad.

The facts seem to speak for themselves. The Internet is where home buyers are now turning for housing information. So why is this information so very important to a seller in the market? If your home cannot be found easily on the Internet, you have potentially eliminated the 87% of buyers using the web for housing information.

As this trending continues, it becomes all that more important that the seller’s agent be on top of Internet technology. When choosing an agent, make sure they have a heavily trafficked website so your home gets the most exposure possible. Anything less and they are not doing their job.

If you’re new to real estate sales you probably want to go after every listing and every buyer you can possibly find, but think twice about that.

Unless you live in a miniscule town, you can’t possibly learn all you need to know about the entire spectrum of real estate available. And there is a difference between fixer-upper rentals and 5,000 square foot homes on the waterfront. Not only is the real property different, your potential buyers and sellers are different.

By choosing a niche, either by geography or type of real estate, you can quickly become the expert – the one people turn to because you know everything about that segment of the market.

When you focus all your attention on your own niche, here’s what will happen:

You will be able to answer questions from both buyers and sellers – easily and with confidence.

You’ll have a far easier time finding comps for sellers and locating just the right home for buyers

You’ll know about things going on in the area that can affect real estate sales

You’ll become a welcome and recognized part of the community

You’ll be respected for your market knowledge

You’ll spend less time earning more commissions

That’s the bottom line – when you really know your market you’ll shave hours off your work day – enabling you to either go out and get more buyers and sellers, or take a little time off for yourself.

Everything from preparing a comparative analysis to choosing which homes to show a buyer is easier when you really do know the market. Not only that, your sellers will have more confidence in your figures when they know you’ve actually seen the homes in question or taken part in their sales.

So how should you decide which niche to choose?

You might want to focus on your own neighborhood – after all, you already know a great deal about it. But if not, you should choose by considering what kind of real property you like the most. Perhaps it won’t even be homes – you might prefer commercial buildings and businesses, or you might enjoy undeveloped land.

Take some time to look around and pay attention to your feelings. Which properties excite your imagination? Which do you fall in love with? Which are you still thinking about after you’ve moved on to look at something else?

Then consider the buyers and sellers of that kind of property. Are they the kind of people whose company you enjoy? Make the effort to meet and talk with a few of them.

Whatever you do, don’t choose based on the size of the commission checks. If you really don’t enjoy the company of wealthy people, you’ll work six times as long and hard to list or sell one of their homes as you will if you choose the niche you love. Plus, you’ll be under a mental strain that can wreck your time with friends and family.

Real estate can be the best career in the world – or the worst. Give yourself the best chance of loving it by choosing your niche carefully.

Getting to the top of the search engines with your real estate website is known as the practice of real estate SEO. Dominating the organic results feels great, especially when you can see your website in those coveted top locations for the most competitive keywords. Sometimes the focus on getting to the top leads to a focus that is more on rankings than getting clicks. Getting to the top is only a part of the battle as you want to make sure that users are compelled to click on your website.

When you want users to click on your result in the search engines this is considered search engine marketing. Search engine marketing means taking into consideration, not just rankings, but what a user sees when your rankings appear in the results. It takes just a bit of attention to details that most miss and it can improve your clicks by more than 50% so it’s worth your attention.

Here are key areas to focus on to improve the clicks you receive no matter what your rankings are.

1. Page Title – Your page title is something that should be unique on each and every page. Being unique is only part of the battle. Your page title should have the keyword your page focuses on and be a call to action. For example consider the following page title “Find San Diego Homes with Free MLS Search”. This page title is short, includes a big keyword, and encourages the user to click to search the MLS.
2. Your snippet text – The snippet text is the summary text that displays below your page title. You can’t always control this text but you can give yourself the best odds to have the copy you want show up by filling out your description meta tag and having your strongest copy closest to the top of your page.
3. Domain name – Your domain name, just as in your pay per click ads, can improve your click rates by 10% or more. Instead of having a domain that is your name, consider a domain name that is related to the city or neighborhoods that you operate in and it will give users the confidence to click your result.
4. Page names – Just like your domain name it helps to name your web pages names that are related to what the page is all about. For example instead of a page named “neighborhood_page1.asp” consider the page name of “spring_valley_homes.asp” as it is more descriptive to both the search engine and the user who will be making the click!

Just concentrating on these four items will help you to see more clicks from your search engine results quickly. These same four methods will even help increase your rankings at the same time. When you focus on both the experience of your next customer and the search engine you will have traffic coming to your website every day.

The impression you make with potential listing clients has always been important – and in this market, it is vital. Your letters need to convey the message that you are the top agent who will make things happen.

One way to show them how you can market their homes well is by marketing yourself well.

Write a good, concise letter that demonstrates your expertise. Then proofread and edit that letter before it goes in the mail.

One important step is to switch to gender-neutral pronouns, so that you don’t offend anyone by assuming your reader is male or female. Today with so many names that could be either, guessing is not a good idea. People don’t think “Oh, they just didn’t know.” They think “This person has no idea who I am.” And then they toss the letter.

I speak from experience on that one, because my name is often mistaken for a man’s name, and I have a son named Chris – who gets letters addressed to Ms. So avoid saying something like “An informed woman like you knows…” And of course, don’t address a letter to Mr., Mrs. or Ms unless you know you’re correct.

Next, tighten your message. Use your software’s “find” function to ferret out all words you tend to over-use – such as there or just. Most of the time you can delete them with no change in your meaning. So do it.

As you write, do away with generalities and get specific. If you’re a top agent, show them why. If you’re a new agent, show them why your attention and enthusiasm will get the job done.

Instead of “I sold more homes in October than any other agent,” say “During the month of October I closed transactions on 6 homes, while the average number of closings for agents in our MLS was 2.5.”

You can do that to emphasize any part of your service. For instance, you can tell them how many photos of their home you’ll put on your website or how many various websites will show their ads. These desperate sellers are looking for some concrete indication that you can pull off the miracle that their last agent (or 4 agents) could not. Generalities won’t convey that message.

Avoid industry jargon – especially the “designation alphabet.” Clients don’t know or care about GRI or ABR or any of the others. If you want to mention your designations, talk about why you took the trouble to get them and what that extra education means to them.

Now… you’ve written a message that conveys why you’re the agent to choose. You’ve tightened it up by getting rid of overused words, The next step is to proofread in search of typos, misspellings, misused words, and sentences that don’t flow.

If you can, get a new set of eyes to read your letter. If that won’t work, read it aloud to yourself. Then read it backwards. When you “know” what a sentence says it’s easy to miss errors such as missing or doubled words – or missing letters. (There’s a big difference in meaning between know and now.)

Be on the lookout for places where you made incomplete changes. It’s easy to delete most, but not all, of a sentence – and end up with a word combination that makes no sense.

Misused words can also trip you up. Even when you know that you intended to say meet – not meat – sometimes your mind wanders while your fingers are working. And errors like that tell your prospects that you don’t pay attention to details. Be sure to watch for errors in usage of words like there, their, and they’re; here and hear; your and you’re; and our and are. If you aren’t sure which to use, look it up or ask someone who loves words.

Flow is important if you want your prospect to read and understand your whole message. Any spot that makes him or her stumble can send your letter to the round file. So read it, and read it again. Read it aloud and read it to someone. If there’s a “stumbling spot,” re-write it.

Since you know what you mean, your message may make sense to you even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else – so do try to get another person or two to read the letter. Ask them to tell you if anything is unclear. Then watch their faces as they read – if you see a frown or a puzzled look, find out what caused it. Then correct it.

Include a call to action in your letter. Ask for a phone call, an e-mail, or a visit to your website to get a complimentary report. And make it easy for your prospect to take that action. Rather than expecting readers to search for your phone number, say “Call me at 123-4567 today.” Direct them to your website or email in a similar fashion.

Finally, once you have that phone number or email address, follow-up regularly. These folks may have been with an agent who ignored them during the listing period, so show them that you won’t ignore them!

You can prosper in a down market – but it does require more effort!

Postcards are effective. Not only do they reach a tightly focused audience, but they get read. Different from sales letters and brochures, a postcard doesn’t need to be opened, making them that much easier to read. A well designed, professionally printed card will magnetize the eye with an appealing image and make a simple and direct offer. This approach enables you to make a strong first impression, and makes a good postcard impossible to ignore.

The purpose of postcards is simple – speak directly to your potential clients, offer a service or product, and provide contact information with a call to action.

Postcard marketing is a form of direct mail. Direct mail marketing campaigns send individuals advertisements in the mail. These advertisements may take the form of sales circulars, coupons, sign-up forms, brochures, or anything else that can be sent in the mail. Not like most traditional methods of marketing, direct mail allows you to target the people that are more fitted for your services.

Marketing plans love affordable options. Costing only pennies each, postcards provide you with an effective, targeted promotional tool for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. On top of their low price, they are also cheap to mail – in fact it’s cheaper to mail your advertisement as a postcard than it is to send a letter.

Postcards are easy to test. It is easy to estimate the response you’ll get by using a postcard ROI calculator. Postcard marketing can be easy to test on a small scale, but use at a higher level. You can test small batches of a hundred or two hundred cards. Once you find a formula that works well, that same design can be mailed to thousands.

Marketing is the most important thing that you can do if you are an investor in the real estate business. Many of the things that you need to consider with your marketing tactics include differentiating yourself, being creative, generating leads, and much more.

As an investor you must have the ability to think outside of the box. You have a lot of competition and other people that you are up against so you need to be different and stand out as an investor. Don’t use the same methods and techniques that everyone else is. Show people that you are willing to be a little different and make this a part of your branding. You must brand yourself to be recognizable and well known in the real estate market. When you do this you can be extremely successful as an investor.

Online marketing provides many ways for you to advertise yourself and your business. There are many techniques that you might practice to get the word out that you exist and you are an investor. The important thing is that you are original and creative. In order to dominate the market you must use techniques and methods that are creative that make you stand out from the rest. You are up against a lot of competition and you must be noticeable and recognizable.

Because you need to stand out from the rest you will need to find ways to dominate the market. The market is saturated with other real estate investors so making yourself different means you need to build credibility above and beyond everyone else. Credibility doesn’t come easy and is acquired over time. The best thing you can do is be responsive, accurate, timely, trustworthy, and much more. You need to show the customers why you are better than the rest and point out what things about you make you the best. Prove to the customers that you are the best person for the investment and you will be considered over the competitors.

Generating leads is very important to your business. You want to have the ability to get the cherry picking deals and if you don’t have a lot of leads then you will not see the smoking deals that are rock bottom and the best investments. You need to generate as many leads as possible with your marketing campaign so you can find the deals you cannot pass up around the world. Not only will you find the best properties but you will make so much more money even faster.

As a real estate investor you must be practicing marketing methods online. Your marketing campaign must include ways that will set you apart from the rest of the competition, prove you to be the best point man, build credibility, and much more. You need to have the ability to dominate the market but this cannot be done without a marketing campaign that will be informative and build credibility for you. In a competitive market like this you have to be on top of the technologies and practice as much marketing as you can.