e-flyers

Introducing Alberta

October 1, 2009

Occasionally I come across a question that I just don’t know how to answer without writing an e-book. My friend Alberta thinks it’s because I’m a typical insensitive male whose empathetic tendencies were dulled long ago…but she likes me anyway! She’s agreed to tackle some of these questions for me when they come up. To [...]

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Ten Ways to Make Your Listing “Product” Competitive

September 12, 2009

The 4 P’s are all about the marketing mix but in home marketing the Product is king. And the product is not just shelter. Buyers are also choosing a community and a lifestyle. It’s the whole package you are marketing… not just the house. Here are ten tactics than can make your listing more competitive. [...]

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A Dirty Little Secret…

August 18, 2009

Suhh…don’t tell anybody else…but most agents have never learned to market homes. “What!” you say, “But that’s what they get paid for!” When I talk about things like this, especially to people in the industry, I get these blank stares that say “What the hell is he talking about…we’ve been selling homes for decades.” And [...]

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One Profession, Two Jobs

August 3, 2009

The picture is of Annette Bening in the “glamorous” role of a listing agent preparing for an open house in a vacant property in one of my favorite movies, American Beauty, where she starred with Kevin Spacey. Almost everywhere, whether it is explicit or simply the practice, real estate agents represent either a buyer or [...]

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The Chicken or the Egg in Real Estate Marketing

July 29, 2009

In the ebook that I’m offering for free here in the sidebar, our heroine, Marty Maven confronts the chicken or egg question all newbie agents, no matter how well they are trained, must ask themselves, “Do I promote myself to get experience or get experience that I can promote?” I can remember vividly as a [...]

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Playing Your Marketing Cards

July 28, 2009

To me the concept of the “marketing mix” has always conjured up an image of a mixing bowl where a bunch of different ingredients are combined synergistically to produce something tasty. The problem with that analogy is that it implies that when you follow the recipe things will turn out fine. Marketing homes may more [...]

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The Science of Pricing

July 22, 2009

Four Key Questions for Pricing Pricing a listing can be complicated but the pricing of real estate services could get complicated too. In fact, it probably will. This will be partly driven by sellers demanding more marketing services and partly driven by agents wanting sellers to share the risk. It will also be driven by [...]

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Staging in the Marketing Mix

July 18, 2009

Before I was a real estate agent or even knew what staging was I had a hand in trying to get a company started that wanted to compete in the collectible figurine business somewhere between Precious Moments and Tom Clark’s Gnomes. The business never really got off the ground but all of us involved in [...]

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Promoting the Whole Experience

July 16, 2009

This guy gets it. To really do a good job representing our listing clients we need to promote the entire experience of living in a community and not just a home. In this blog post on Real Central VA, Jim Duncan doesn’t even mention a home.

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Photography in Real Estate

July 6, 2009

Used to be one photograph of the front of a home was taken to put in the MLS book and possibly use in a one inch square space in a newspaper ad. In many cases next to a one inch square photo of the listing agent inspiring the phrase “little houses little heads.” Because space [...]

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