If you need more inspiration for your blog, be sure to review our blog archive too.  Happy blog posting!

Buyers topic for your blog:

Before buyers start looking for a home, encourage them to get preapproved for a mortgage.  This way, they — and you — know exactly how much home they can afford.  Suggest local lenders as well as directing blog readers to online calculators to help them predict how much they can afford.  With interest rates at historical lows, buyers may even be surprised at how much house they can afford in today’s market!

Sellers topic for your blog:

Sometimes sellers might overlook one area of their home in preparation to sell it.  The garage, shed, basement, cellar or other prime storage areas are often left to the last minute and it shows.  Encourage sellers to spend a little time addressing these spaces before they list their home for sale.  Since these spaces provide storage for so much — cars, tools, toys, gardening equipment, patio furniture, etc. — buyers are inspecting these spaces to make sure that they’ll work for them too.  If they’re too cluttered or dirty, they may dismiss a home as unworkable for them.  Encourage sellers to declutter storage spaces and even sweep and power wash cement floors to make that area really shine.

How long have you been blogging?  Share your blogging experiences with us!

Here are the top things in your marketing that are prone to slip through and can drastically affect your response rate:

• Phone numbers with a couple digits transposed.
• Email address that is missing a letter or two.
• Text that is cut off mid-sentence.
• Longer words that appear correct, but if you examine them closely are missing a vital letter or have a typo.
• Old return address from your last office location. (Or former phone number….)
• Wrong year or day/date listed. (Double- and triple-check any calendar references.)
• Typo in the website address.

While the world won’t stop with any of these errors, some of your recipients will see the mistake and take pause. Typos can be very polarizing for some. Take the time to careful read and re-read all your written materials whether they are printed or online.

Find a trusted reader or two to review them before they go live. You know that the author never sees his or her mistakes and our eyes can play tricks on us and see what we want to be there — not what is actually there.

What is your tried and true method to proof and edit your written materials?

When you’re marketing a home for sale, you might have a different emphasis depending upon whether you want buyers to focus on the home’s affordability, its elegance, its modern style, its proximity to action (city center) or its retreat possibility (secluded, rural).  Whatever accent colors you add to your marketing can assist you in conveying that message.

You’ve probably seen many comments on colors and what feelings they convey.  Different sources say different things, but here are some general guidelines regarding color:

A rich, blue-based red is often associated with luxury and expensive elements.  To downplay price, yellow-based reds such as tomato red is often used.  No matter what, red attracts attention and encourages action.

Orange can help you point out affordability.  It also works to gets attention!

Yellow gets attention and when used with a dark contrast is easy to read.

Green can convey environmental aspects along with possibility and hope.  It is reflective of nature and a calming color.  It can convey clean and healthy too.

If you’re looking to stay safe and confident, blue is your color.  Blue is often associated with stability, calmness and can inspire a sense of commitment.  (Think about a lot of banks and what colors they often use in their logo.)

Purple is a complex color that is often used for food products (chocolate) and hair care.  It can convey sensuality.

Brown is earthy and conveys a tone of sensibility, practicality, security and durability.

Black conveys a strong sense of power.  It can be elegant or basic depending upon its use.  (Think formal invitations versus the old generic packaging to convey inexpensiveness.)

Gray, similar to blue, can convey stability and practicality.  It can also suggest plainness.

White, especially on its own, can be quite sophisticated, formal and elegant, portraying expense.

Remember that different colors can also have different meanings in different cultures and other countries.  If you’re marketing to a specific group who may not be American, do a little research as well before choosing colors for your marketing.

Color, when used appropriately, can help set the correct tone for your marketing.  What have you learned about colors in your marketing?

When appropriate, point out the green practices that you do to make clients and would-be clients aware of your concern for our limited resources.

• For any email you send, consider adding phrasing in your signature that reads “please consider the environment before printing this email.”
• For all printed mail you send, investigate if you’re using recycled papers and soy inks and indicate that on the mail piece somewhere.
• Try to convert suitable paper documents to electronic — scan in items to save and send via email.
• Give the option to buyers and sellers when they request a copy of something — do they want it paper or electronic?
• Seek out and use recycled paper for your printer.

These are just some quick and easy tips you can implement easily and inexpensively.

Let us know what green tips you use in your day-to-day operations and marketing.

Include ALL the Details!
Be sure that your invite (whether it be an email, flyer, on a blog, in a tweet, etc.) includes all the pertinent information — what is the title of the program, who is presenting, when it’s taking place (including time and time zone), how to sign up, for in-person seminars include a physical address including city, state and zip.

What’s In It for Them?
Include a brief bio of the speaker (you!) and outline what attendees will take away with them after attending. (Think benefits and not features of the event.)

Don’t Lose An Opportunity!
Make sure registration captures all the important contact information for your attendees including their real estate timeline for buying or selling.

Keep in Touch
After the event, be sure to follow up with your attendees. And, if there were registered guests who didn’t show, be sure to contact them and provide them with information from the event.

Keeping all the details in order for a webinar or seminar takes some organization. How do you handle your marketing pre- and post- event?

There is no cost and no obligation to create a new group or event page on Facebook. On YouTube you can set up a new profile page. Either way, you can use these new outlets to try out new marketing ideas and see if they gather steam (new leads and new business) for you.

A community-based approach can reach the home buyers and sellers you’re looking to help. If there isn’t a group already dedicated to your town, neighborhood or area, consider being the first to begin the page to gather the good will and insights that the residents there will share online. Make short videos for YouTube showing all the reasons why your area is a desirable place to live; invite others to do the same and share them on your channel.

What have you done on Facebook or YouTube that you did as a test that turned out to be a great marketing tool?

Start out with the first step…today. Every slight improvement you make is a step in the right direction to getting your leads under your control…and eventually closing more business!

Set realistic goals about your leads. What do you want from the leads you have now? Where would you like to be in six weeks? In three months? In half a year? (Make sure the source of your leads continues to work for you effectively too!) If you have goals for different time spans, you can realistically measure your progress and analyze where your lead management program is.

A good goal to start with is encouraging more click-throughs on your email marketing campaigns. If you get more interest and readers, you’re likely to capture their attention and be able to move them along the home buying and selling process.

Let us know how you set goals for lead management.

If you aren’t connecting with lead or prospect who showed interest long ago, but hasn’t been heard from since, you might want to send them a personal message or call them. Are they still deciding what move to make? Has their situation completely changed and they aren’t making any move for the foreseeable future?

Your emails might be just going to a spam folder or delete file. But, that extra phone call or personal message could be the little push to make that home buyer or seller make a move — with you. And, if they’ve already made a move, perhaps they might be ready to make another or refer you to someone who is. Move them to a homeowner email list — with their permission if you’ve made contact.

Check your email list every once in a while. See who has been on the list “forever” that you haven’t heard from. Make a motion to connect with these consumers in another way and find out what their real estate needs truly are. It’s a source of business that is waiting for you if you tackle it.

Share your methods for cleaning your email mailing lists.

If you are working to engage consumers in a conversation, inform and educate them, and establish a relationship, you may want to supplement any email marketing you do with good old fashioned postal mail too. You might be surprised at the response you get!

Share your direct mail response rates. We’d love to see if direct mail is working for you!

When you visit a website that asks you to register before you can read anything of value on the site, what do you do?

When you visit a website that asks you to register after you’ve started to read an article, but won’t let you read more until you register, what do you do?

When you visit a website that never asks you to register, but has an option off to the side to get more info, what do you do?

It depends. However, think about your experiences as a consumer on various websites. What makes you leave a site? What makes you feel good about a site? What makes you desire to get more details and share your contact info even when you aren’t prompted?

Take those cues and put them into practice on your own website. Keep consumers happy on your website and they’ll reward you with more business.

Share with us what you’ve discovered with asking for registration on your website.