MLS is an acronym for multiple listing service. Wikipedia describes it as a suite of services that (1) enables brokers to establish contractual offers of compensation (among brokers); (2) facilitates cooperation with other broker participants; (3) accumulates and disseminates information to enable appraisals; (4) is a facility for the orderly correlation and dissemination of listing information to better serve broker’s clients, customers and the public.

In layman’s terms the MLS is a central database that participating real estate brokers and agents use to share information about properties. Realtors primarily use it in their day to day operation to find properties for buyers and to help sellers arrive at a value for their properties based on sold and unsold like kind properties.

The MLS system is also the most important marketing tool that a Realtor or Broker can have. Participating members of the multiple listing system list their inventory of properties for sale in the database as a way to market them to other members who may have a potential buyer. These Realtors can sell other Realtors listing in return for compensation. If you are looking to sell your home make sure you choose a Realtor who can list your home in the MLS database. Essentially, your home will be accessible to thousands of Realtors and their potential buyers.

Other important facts about the MLS:

• There is no national single MLS.
• Local Realtor Associations oversee the MLS system.
• MLS is trademarked term owned by Major League Soccer
• Most MLS’s do not have an access for the general public
• IDX is known as internet data exchange. This allows a portion of MLS data to be displayed on Realtor websites. When you see “Search MLS” on a Realtors website most of the time you are not accessing the real MLS system.
• Realtors have to pay money to join a local Realtor association in order to access the MLS system.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re marketing your top-shelf real estate services or your latest listing, you want more eyeballs on your message.

The one thing that captures more eyeballs than any other response modifier is a headline. Here are twelve places to include a headline in your real estate marketing… and twelve places you’ll increase your response rates when you do.

1. Postcards - Instead of winding up in the trash like most, get your postcard read. A compelling headline peaks the interest of the recipient and pulls them in.
2. Blog Posts - You’ve labored to get an insightful blog post written but if visitors are never inspired to read the post, your real estate greatness goes unnoticed. Your post title is a headline.
3. Website - The average visitor gives a website 3 seconds to make an impression before leaving. Use a headline to break past the 3 second mark and engage.
4. Landing Pages - Landing pages are targeted towards specific groups of people (buyers, sellers, investors) taking a specific action. Use a headline to qualify and confirm to the visitor that the page relates directly to them.
5. Emails - The whole goal of your subject line is to encourage your subscriber to open the email. You guessed it, a headline that persuades is key to getting eyeballs onto your message.
6. Listing Kit - You’re a savvy agent, make sure your prospects know it. Use a headline with your listing kit and it will stand out, get read, and get you hired.
7. Articles - Every day people quickly sift through information, looking for the bit of data that they need. A compelling headline your article a diamond in the rough.
8. Twitter - Many Realtors are turning to the social network Twitter to make connections. If you want more click-throughs from Twitter, then you need to turn that tweet into a headline.
9. Reports - Special reports will always be a prime incentive in lead-generation but to increase response rates and keep that PDF from collecting digital dust, pack a powerful headline into the report title.
10. PPC Ads - Pay-per-click headlines can make or break an ad campaign. Make it a good one and Google will even reward you with a lower cost-per-click.
11. Classifieds - Too many classified start mentioning features. Instead, make room for a headline and you’ll catch more eyeballs.
12. Print Ads - A headline does more to increase ad response than anything else. Since you;re paying for the ad, make sure you get the best response you can.

You need mortgage marketing ideas to help you into the field and meet real estate agents, but you do not want to do cold calling. It does not need to be as difficult as some loan officers make it. Each time you leave your office and spend the day in the field, there is a plethora of opportunities waiting to be taken. Every time you talk with real estate agents there’s something to benefit.

And what is involved is to know where to look and the clues to uncover.

For example, in your next appointment with a real estate agent, tell them you are wanting to partner with one or 2 new real estate agents and you’d like to uncover other real estate agents just like them.

Describe some traits, and then ask who they know that fits it. After they’ve disclosed a agent or two, ask them if they would not mind getting authorization from the real estate agent for you to reach out to her or him or schedule a luncheon meeting. This simple mortgage marketing idea saves you tons of time because the real estate agent is doing the hard part.

More Mortgage Marketing Ideas

Marketing your services to the seller’s real estate agent is another. If you have not done it before, it’s stunningly simple. Just reach out to them and introduce yourself as the mortgage originator handling the buyer’s home financing.

There is no need to tell them of your services, just involve them each step of the way in the home financing process like you do with the buyer’s real estate agent. Instead of telling the listing agent about your service, they get to see it firsthand. The fact alone that you called and introduced yourself makes a wonderful first impression most seller agents find unbelievable.

Another mortgage marketing idea is to speak at sales meetings to real estate agents. Whenever you can get in front of a group of real estate agents, it is the best use of your time. You share the same amount of information to a group as you would to an individual, yet your chances of a real estate agent finding you so they can refer future clients is increased. Don’t bring donuts; let them feed their bellies while you feed their brains. It’s a fair exchange and if you can not do it at their office, do it offsite.

Several of my clients educate and their work always proves successful. Groups grow larger each time they conduct a class. You position yourself as an expert and real estate agents always want more information which helps you build a relationship. Whenever they have a future client you get the referral.

It applies to marketing flyers too. The bright thing to do is to use the advertising space to promote your expertise, not a solicitation. And tell it from another real estate agent’s viewpoint. It’s better that another person dotes about you, then you doing it yourself. Essentially, make your marketing flyers a sequence of success examples and real estate agents will look forward to receiving them if you employ a regular frequency.

Marketing to Realtors isn’t hard when you’re inspired with mortgage marketing ideas that make your job simpler. What’s urgent is you’re not procrastinating and being active. Nobody ever got real estate agents to refer future clients to them being invisible.

Just implement one mortgage marketing idea to begin. Use it, try it different ways until it works and then implement the next one. Before you know it, you have multiple mortgage marketing ideas working for you and your production is getting better giving you the income you desire.

Many real estate professionals create their websites with the goal of getting to the top of the search engines. While this is certainly a wonderful goal to have, we must not lose sight that the search engines can’t actually purchase any real estate. Creating a website that is a true destination for those looking for real estate help should certainly be a goal and to get those people the help they need we can strive for the top spots!

Getting the search engines to take notice of your website and increase your rankings is possible when you follow some basic steps. Remember, each of the search engines want to provide the MOST relevant information to those using their services so we need to let them know how good our websites can be.

Here are some methods to ensure that your real estate marketing efforts won’t be in vain:

• Quality Content - In order for the search engines to take notice of your real estate website you will need to pack it with some quality content. Create pages that are of real value to your visitors. Set the goal of creating pages with 400 or more words on each page. Pictures are of course an essential element, however, at this time the search engines can digest more of the text on each page so give them what they want. It doesn’t require that you be an extremely talented writer, just write some pages that provide real information that people can use and the search engines will certainly want to share it.
• Sitemaps - Your real estate website will grow by leaps and bounds and it may not always be possible for the different search engines to discover the many pages on your website. Creating a traditional Sitemap (along with an XML sitemap) will allow the search engine to keep tabs on the latest updates to your site.
• Spread the Word - Getting other people to link to your website will demonstrate the importance of your website to visitors and the search engines. Reach out to directories, related websites, and start making comments on related blogs to get links pointing to you.

Real estate internet marketing is about having a balanced strategy to gain maximum exposure and get leads for your real estate business. Starting with a foundation of high quality content will keep visitors flocking to your website to read more and keep the search engines aware of what they need to share with their users.

Most of us know that fishing is about much more than pulling in that 30-pound Muskie. It’s about being alone with nature, breathing fresh air, and taking some “me time” out of your busy schedule. But it’s hard to appreciate it as much when the fish just ain’t biting. It can be even more frustrating when you get a nibble every hour or so, but that dang fish just won’t take the worm.

Your bait needs to be more alluring. Such is the nature of real estate lead conversion.

Perhaps you’ve got a website and a drip e-mail system that’s generating tons of leads for you and your partners, but these leads don’t follow up. It could be you just need to entice them by jiggling the lure. Use your drip e-mail campaign to send your leads weekly updates on homes that match their criteria. Send them headlines that relate to real estate in their areas. Remind them to contact you if they need help with anything in the buying and selling process

There are a lot of reasons people don’t follow up. They might not really be interested in finding a home, or it’s not their top priority. Other times, they may be nervous about the process. So make sure to assuage their fears and concerns by focusing on the positive. Don’t say “Negotiating the right selling price takes a lot of work and commitment.” Say “Our professionals will take the hard work out of your hands while negotiating the best price possible.” Focus not on the hard-line details of the mortgage applications, but on the fact that they can get pre-approved for a mortgage right on your website. Parting the clouds of doom with rays of sunshine is a sure way to get on someone’s good side.

If after months of inactivity there’s still no bite, it may be time to check the bait. Send a more personalized e-mail, something like: “I noticed you haven’t followed up with any of the properties I’ve been sending you. I hope the home hunting process is coming along smoothly. Please contact me if you have any questions or need help finding the right property. If you’ve already found a home and no longer need my services, you can click the link below to stop receiving my e-mails. Thanks, and good luck!”

If nothing else, they will appreciate your checking up on them and your honest offer to remove them from the mailing list. On the other hand, they might see how serious you are about helping them and decide to take the bait.

In keeping with the metaphor, make sure to take care of that fish, give it a good home, and nourish it, even if it ends up in your belly. Okay, maybe that’s a little too far. But don’t make promises you can’t follow up on. Otherwise you’ll be sitting at the bar telling your fellow Realtors stories about the one that got away.

Are you tired of getting names cartoon character names filled out in your real estate forms on your website? How about when someone gives you a phone number of a local restaurant? One has to laugh when you get that kind of information because if you don’t it may just drive you crazy. There is a way to increase the validity of your data and not decrease the number of leads that you get from your real estate website.

Make your data 85% valid

85% valid data is the number to aim for when working with real estate leads. After testing this on over 6,500 opt-ins over a 6 month period we found that there are steps you can take to make sure that the information you get on your forms is the kind of people you want to work with.

Steps to Making Your Registration Forms as Friendly As Possible

The overall theme with registration forms on your real estate website is to make them as friendly as possible. Now since you can’t put a big happy smiley face on the form (you can but I wouldn’t recommend it) you need to follow a few steps to make sure people want to fill in their real information.

1. Make sure the forms take 30 seconds or less to fill out - Long forms have never tested well and the more that people get on the Internet the worse it gets for long forms. The best forms take only 30 seconds or less to fill out. They require only the most basic of information and the user knows they only need to put their real information to get what they want.

2. Make phone number optional - nothing is worse than requiring phone number as it will lead to many 555-555-5555 numbers and you will turn into a data checker instead of a real estate agent.

3. Let them know they will get what they came for - That’s right on the form page make sure you let them know when and what they are signing up for. If you are going to set them up with a custom website with ALL the listings make sure you let them know that. Let them know in bullet point format if at all possible so they can’t help but read it.

4. Have a privacy policy - make it easy for your visitors to know what will happen with their data. It doesn’t have to be right in front of them and in your face or even long but have one so they know who they are giving their data too.

Most of all with all of your forms make sure that your visitor knows when they will get a response and stick so that promise so you have happy visitors and customers.

Danger is something to be avoided at all costs. A sign that says “Danger-Unexploded Ordinance” means keep away. Rational individuals do not trespass. Risk needs to be embraced by investors because without risk there is little, if any, return. All forms of investment are risky.

Risk and danger are not the same.Avoiding risk is not the issue. Getting compensated adequately for bearing risk is the issue. All commercial real estate opportunities have risk, just as all other investments have risk.

For investors the risk they are exposed to is not simply the sum of the riskiness of all their individual investments. Rather, it is the risk inherent in their entire portfolio. The risk of individual investments is not the same thing as the risk in the portfolio. This is because the risks of the different investments in your portfolio are more or less correlated with the risks of other investments in your portfolio.

The effect of diversification among different types of investments is generally to reduce the risk of the overall portfolio without necessarily reducing return. This happens because the individual risk on one element in the portfolio may be largely independent of the risk of another element in your portfolio, so the risk of the portfolio itself declines.

There are a lot of highly technical and mathematical ways to measure risk. All of them suffer from a variety of imperfections. Indeed, they are so mind numbing in their complexity, that the best approach to evaluating risk for the individual investor is common sense.

An important implication of this concept is that investors should not evaluate the risk and return on an individual investment in terms of the riskiness of that particular investment alone.

Instead, the risk should be judged by the impact of that investment on the riskiness of the overall portfolio itself. This means that it is possible to add a relatively risky investment to a portfolio and have the total riskiness of the portfolio go down. This reflects the way in which the riskiness of that investment is correlated with the riskiness of the existing investments in the portfolio.

Starting in real estate with the concept of lead generation will put you miles ahead of your competition. Most real estate professionals start with the idea that if you just have a few key relationships in place you will experience tremendous success. While relationships certainly are important a solid lead generation plan is essential when you want to close business each and every month.

Getting high quality real estate leads isn’t something that will happen with only 10 minutes of work, but when you put just a little bit of planning in you can have a consistent flow of people contacting you each and every day. Here are some tips to focus on for generating leads every day.

1. Focus on Lead Generation - When you focus on lead generation you won’t send any marketing out that is just “branding”. Branding ads waste money and won’t generate leads. Keeping your focus on leads will ensure that any marketing you do (online, print, etc) will have the focus on generating calls and leads. This focus may seem odd to those around you in the real estate community and that’s OK. Many times in real estate it is suggested that you have to “introduce yourself to the community” or “get the word out” but that just wastes money. Keep the focus on what will generate leads each and every day.
2. Investing - Leads will rarely come free. Investing some capital into your real estate business will help you to get leads at a much faster rate. A good rule of thumb to stick to is spending no more than 7% of a standard commission on your advertising. Every 7% you spend should generate 1 transaction.   Sticking to the 7% rule will keep more money in your pocket and make your marketing work harder for you. Anything that isn’t generating leads for just 7% of a commission will have to be cut.
3. Marketing Strategy - I am a big fan of an online real estate marketing strategy, but it’s not for every agent.   Having a plan in place for your real estate lead generation activities will make it easier. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just know what steps you are going to take to generate leads. This may mean having more than 1 system to generate leads for you. Top real estate coaches around the country recommend having 4 marketing systems to generate leads for you.   Each system must adhere to the 7% rule and must generate at least 2 transactions a month. The systems involved with your marketing strategy can be varied (i.e. websites, blog, postcards, magazine ads, etc.) but just ensure that each of them are generating enough leads for you to close 2 transactions per month, per system.

With just the above three steps you will be able to start getting real estate leads. Remember, your plan doesn’t have to be complicated; it just has to have enough steps so you can see where you need to take action. Keeping your focus on generating real estate leads (and making sure it’s cheap) will have you closing transactions each and every month.

A primary reason that FSBO sellers choose not to select real estate agents is that they don’t want to be stuck in a long term contract. They have heard all of the horror stories by many of their friends, relatives, and coworkers on what it was like to be with a real estate agent for 6,9, or 12 months and not be able to get out of the contract.

They have also heard of agents promising everything and not delivering. When working with FSBO prospects you need to let them know that working with you is absolutely risk free. In fact the best thing to do is ask them the following question:

“Would you work with a real estate agent if it was absolutely no risk to you and you had the power to fire the real estate agent at any time for absolutely any reason?”

One of the big keys to this question is that you have to wait for an answer. You aren’t trying to sell them anything you just need to know where their mindset is. The answer to this question should obviously be yes and then you can inform them that it is always risk free to work with you and that you put that in writing for 100% of your clients.

After you get the seller to agree that risk free is good let them know that the information they will receive from you in the next couple of days will give them more information on it. Again there is no selling with FSBO owners just provide information that leads them to their own logical conclusion.

In the case of being risk free you need to have a policy for sellers that outlines what it is like working for you.

Your policy should state:

• The risk in working with you is 100% on you and that is the confidence that you have in your level of service and the work that you do.
• The ability to fire you rests with the seller and that it can happen at any time regardless of how long the contract they sign is.
• That they need to give you a chance to change just in case any misunderstandings arise during the process.

You want to make sure that your policy is clear and in plain English. Many agents have a tendency to make their documents long and have them written by lawyers and unless required to by your state or broker it has never tested well. You still want your wording to be clear and to the point but avoid unnecessary wording.

LET’S BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
An artist once said, “To paint the perfect painting, first live the perfect life, and then just paint naturally.” The message here in your new found career as a real estate investor might be translated like this: “In order to make the perfect real estate investments, first live the perfect real estate investor’s life, and then just invest naturally.”

Notice the emphasis here is on living the kind of life, if not perfect, then at least the kind that is most appropriate to the activity you intend to pursue. Another way to look at this is to say those who are most successful are those who already are living most successfully. Success breeds success. If you’re going to play the part, you should already be living the part. A lot of how successful you’re going to become is based on how successful you already appear to be. There’s still a lot of truth in the old-fashioned idea that, to get a new job, first go out and buy yourself a new suit.

If you don’t communicate to the world that you’re already successful (even if you’re not there yet), then you at least need to communicate to the world that you’re already in business. How you do that is outlined in my text entitled “100% Financing When Buying Real Estate.”

BE A SEASONED REAL ESTATE INVESTOR RIGHT FROM THE START
At the moment you may very well be working full-time (40-50 hours per week) for somebody else. You may be working overtime, or even two jobs, just to be able to pay all your bills. So right from the beginning you don’t have much time to spend as a real estate investor. Believe it or not, this puts you in exactly the same “shape” as the most successful investors! As you can well believe, the whole idea of becoming emmensely successful is to be able to spend most of your time (40-50 hours per week) doing something else. Like enjoying yourself, partaking more in family life, or traveling extensively for pleasure. So your task at hand is to replace your current full-time job with forthcoming full-time pleasure, and in the meantime live just like a successful real estate investor does.

The successful, or seasoned, investor in real estate spends his or her minimum investing time in the most productive ways possible-just like you should. This seasoned professional has all the knowledge, all the tools, and all the experience needed to invest profitably and successfully. The very reason why you’re reading this text is to acquire the same knowledge that most of these others have only gained through experience. Hence, this is a shortcut to success as a real estate investor. You’ll acquire the knowledge you need in just a few weeks, instead of several years. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll easily be able to acquire the right tools, and your first experience should be positive. After that, it should become even more so, building your confidence as you experience continued success based on the knowledge you acquire right here, right now.

The first thing to do then is to act the part of a seasoned real estate investor. An important part of that is having the knowledge-which you are acquiring-about creative real estate financing, as, say for example, “100% Financing When Buying Real Estate.” My real estate investment course teaches you many ways to do exactly that, and you should review this material often as you begin and continue to invest in income producing real estate.

One of the most important parts of this material that you should begin immediately to absorb, and review continuously until you’ve mastered all the terms, in the glossary of my text, “100% Financing When Buying Real Estate.” The first thing anyone needs to learn when taking on a new role in life is the language of that role and/or that career. Ask any Shakespearean actor, for example. Thus the sooner you learn the lingo of real estate investing, the sooner you can present yourself as a seasoned real estate investor. So please be sure to purchase my text entitled, “100% Financing When Buying Real Estate.”