Killer Real Estate Videos That Won’t Kill Your Budget

Yesterday I put up a post on Marketing Videos and Real Estate.  My plea was for more creativity and less facts.  My point? An agent who gets creative and starts using video wisely might just take down the Goliath agent in their neck of the woods.  Later that day, in answer to a question by someone who read the post, I sat down and jotted out a half dozen video ideas, then put the pad down and walked away.  When working with creative ideas, I usually find it’s a good idea to let them breathe for a while and come back later.  Often times, after rereading them, you discover even fresher and better ideas.  No such luck today though… you get the original ideas and all their rough edges. 🙂

The goal here is to throw some ideas out.  If we’re lucky, this could turn into a “mini-library” of video marketing ideas for real estate agents temporarily running low in the creativity tank and staring at an empty screen.  For me, it’s all about latching onto an aspect of the house and then running a little wild.  Oh, and I love to steal already well-established ideas from the big boys.

VISA Take-Off #1 – there are a number of ways to shoot this.  Show aspects of the house that shine and do the voice-over: “View of the mountains, $10,000; Jacuzzi tub in your masterbath, $3000; and so on.  Then come in with the conclusion everyone knows: “Owning your own home, priceless.”  The key is what you show during that line: Young husband carrying beautiful bride across threshold.  Or, husband painting vertical, purple stripes in the living room while the kids nod approvingly. Or, an exterior evening shot of the house with every window warmly lit while we see the sights and sounds of a fantastic party going on inside.  Single site web address appears at the bottom of the screen.

VISA Take-Off #2 – Same idea, but a child’s perspective (especially designed for a family home in a family neighborhood).  Filmed from a child’s height, but the voice over is the same idea: “Putting new child-proof latches on these beautiful oak cabinets, $100,” while panning the awesome kitchen.  “Putting (say your plumber’s name here), the best plumber in (your town here) on retainer, $500,” while showing a child’s eye view of putting a toy soldier in the toilet and flushing.  (Might get your plumber to incur some of the costs…) Continue with carpets or whatever is great about the house and allows you to work a child into it.  Then, the close.  “Giving your child a world of his own, priceless,”  said over video of a little boy running to the tree house or swing or whatever in the backyard.  Or how about “First step to Olympic glory, priceless,” and show a 6 year old girl in a starting position with a determined look on her face at the edge of the home’s pool.

Super-Agent – if the home is located in a terrific neighborhood, reinforce the idea of you as super agent (costume? depends on you) and take your clients on a Superman’s view of the local town and neighborhood.  (Strap camera to top of car or stand up in a convertible.)  The key is to make it obvious.  Make fun of the Superman aspect while showing off the awesome coffee house and local school.

Historic Home – While doing a voice over of the historic nature of the home, walk through and keep bumping into people in period costumes who talk about how fantastic it is… or how odd the contraptions are (which you conveniently explain to them and the viewer, e.g. Viking Oven which of course leads to a quick shriek in obvious fear of Vikings).  Better still, if some of the competing homes in the neighborhood aren’t historic (best opportunity: built in the 70s) keep the theme.  After talking to your historic figures, show some hippies coming out of the 70’s home for sale down the street and ask the viewer where they want to live.

Beer Commercial – Video shows people going in the beautiful kitchen and coming out thinner.  Or the owner’s friend comes over alone and leaves with a gorgeous bikini babe from the pool in back.  The voice over says something like: “You know how those beer commercials imply that if you drink their beer you’ll lose weight, be the life of the party and date the best looking guys and gals… well, this house is spectacular and at $250,000 a great value.  But will it deliver everything a good beer does?”  Then walk out from behind the camera and win a lottery or have a beautiful woman offer to marry you or whatever, turn back to the camera and wink: “I’m not saying… I’m just saying…”

Large – if the house or yard is really large, talk about it while a small car pulls up and the new buyers get out and remove the sign from the front yard.  Then they turn back to the car and greet an endless stream of children, friends, local merchants, etc. all getting out of the “circus car.”  End with something clever about a big house or maybe about you, the agent.  “It may look like magic (a miracle, impossible, etc) to most people, but when you buy a home from (insert your own name here), we simply call it: doing our job.”

So, there’s a few ideas from the slightly off-center head of a Tin Foil Hat wearer.  Can you top ’em?  Let’s get this library started!

Filed under: MARKETING, REALTORS, SELLERS, WORLD OF 2.0

Video Killed the Real Estate Star…

I love marketing.  I love the opportunity presented by a brand new marketing campaign to be creative and stand out from the day-to-day noise of everyone else.  Unfortunately, most agents don’t share my zeal for marketing.  At least, I assume they don’t; how else to explain the mind-numbing dreck I see every day.  Whether by email, on Twitter, over Facebook, online; even on flyers! (When there are flyers.)  Most agents seem to have attended the Detective Joe Friday school of marketing: “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Video affords us a new form of communication.  It includes multiple modalities that can reach – and interest – many more people than an equivalent, uni-dimensional form of communication.  Some people are predominantly visual, some auditory and some kinesthetic.  An email loses two of those groups, so does a radio spot.  But with video we can reach out to all three groups; we can create terrific visual, we can add sound and we can tell a story that creates emotion.  But even with all that going for it, there is still a limit on effectiveness: us.  In the computer world there is a maxim: garbage in, garbage out.  That can be true of video marketing too, but let’s give it a positive spin.  Here’s the maxim I suggest:

CREATIVITY IN, CASH OUT

I expect some might find that a little too crass, but never forget: the ultimate goal is skinnin’ cats.  In any case, my point is creativity.  Believe it or not, a marketing piece for a listing does NOT have to include all the details; that’s what the single site is for, right?  A marketing piece, and especially a video marketing piece, has as its purpose one real objective: TO STAND OUT FROM THE NOISE!  Be memorable, make someone laugh; if you’re really creative: go viral.  This serves the dual purpose of generating interest in what you’re marketing AND generating interest in you – the best damn agent that viewer has ever met.  Now that’s getting bang for your marketing buck.

Neither of the following two videos is about real estate.  Nor, really, are they much about their product.  But they are creative, they are memorable and they are viral.  Look at what they’re doing, steal some ideas for yourself, and think inside the box: the video box.

Filed under: MARKETING, REALTORS

When Can I Touch and Who Should I Contact?

Yesterday in a marketing Mastermind Group with a half dozen agents, a bit of confusion arose over two of the primary principles I use when developing their marketing campaigns. The question was new to me, which usually means there are more agents out there with the same question.

Earlier, we had discussed the parameters of an effective drip campaign on those we already know: friends, family, past clients, past prospects, and so on. I call this group your S.O.I.L (Source of Income List) because we want to grow a very robust referral business from it. Gary Keller, in his outstanding book Millionaire Real Estate Agent, refers to this group as METs and suggests you touch them or drip on them 33x per year. I have “adopted” this philosophy wholesale and – as with most of the concepts in that book – find it applicable to agents no matter where they work.

A little later, I mentioned that statistically speaking, 80% of all business happens after the fifth contact. This is not real estate specific. It’s more of a universal rule borrowed from the direct marketing world. (You may notice I do a lot of “borrowing” and “adopting”… most great marketing is based on ideas stolen from another industry or product. Take a look around outside the world of real estate. You’ll be amazed how many great ideas you find.) While discussing this idea, one of the agents asked why we need to touch our sphere 33x when most of the business is going to happen after the fifth contact. Great question because it illuminates one of the basic misunderstandings in marketing.

When you drip on your sphere – touch them regularly – you are practicing Epiphany Marketing. This is very similar to branding but, in my opinion, more effective. It’s designed to generate referrals and is on the very edge of what we can accurately call “marketing”. On the other hand a true, honest-to-God marketing campaign revolves around a specific concept (hopefully a USP) and is designed to carry people along a well-lit path until they inevitably reach the decision to BUY. It should go without saying if they reach this decision to buy the product or service but don’t use you, there’s some tweaking needed in your campaign… but that’s another post entirely.

The differences in the objective as well as the process between these two campaigns should now be obvious. Epiphany Marketing is designed to buy mind share by offering information that’s useful and interesting. An out and out marketing campaign, on the other hand, attempts to buy mind focus and decision by offering specific benefits amid repeated calls to action. The former is dominated by a 33 touch system of useful drips. To enjoy an 80% conversion on the latter, however, we need to contact the same target audience at least 5 times. The confusion brought up by the agent yesterday is cleared simply by remembering the difference between touches and contacts.

Filed under: LENDERS, MARKETING, REALTORS

Embarrassing Confessions & Marketing Muscle Memory

Two quick confessions:

I can’t throw a baseball.
I’m pretty sure I just scared a potential client away.

I used to be able to throw a baseball. I played little league and pony league with some success. There weren’t any pro scouts putting radar guns on me or anything, but I played right up until high school and I was regularly elected to the all-star team. (Although looking back, it probably helped that I was much bigger than all the other kids and threatened to show them my Bruce-Lee-super-fist-of-temporary-death if they didn’t vote for me… Nah, I’m sure it was my prowess inside the foul lines.)

Anyway, in high school I discovered my true calling: shot-put. After that, I didn’t have occasion to pick up another baseball until my boys started playing just a year or two ago. That’s when I discovered that I now had all the throwing grace and accuracy of a little girl. You see, by my estimate I probably threw the shot – over the course of my competitive career – 15-20,000 times. That pretty much wiped out any skill I ever had for throwing a baseball. On the other hand, it created a near perfect shot-put technique that I can still demonstrate even now… as I enter my peak “mid 40s” athletic years. (These are a lot like my peak “mid 20s” athletic years, only everything is now done while carrying around the extra weight of a small child. It’s actually quite impressive if you think about it…) Think about it or not, I can still summon dynamic and purposeful form because of a powerful adaptation called muscle memory.

Earlier this week, as I was parking my truck, I noticed a car stopped in the middle of the street. The driver was craning her neck to jot down information from an agent’s For Sale sign. She then pulled up two houses and stopped again to take down information from another agent’s For Sale sign. By this time I was walking down the sidewalk; I veered in toward the middle of the street and approached her on the drivers’ side. “Hi,” I said, trying like hell to flash my I’m a big, cuddly polar bear smile rather than my (way too similar) I’m a big, psychotic black bear smile. Pointing back toward the two signs she had just copied down I continued, “I work with both of those agents and they’re very good. My name is Sean and I’m the best damn lender in San Diego.” Then I stuck out my business card. I had to reach pretty far through her open window because at this point she had recoiled almost to the passenger’s seat. I’m guessing I frightened her.

Will she call me for a loan? Very doubtful, but then I never expected her to call me. That’s not why I did it in the first place. This was an opportunity to perform rep #7,487. Every chance we get – as agents, as lenders, as vendors… as salesmen and women – we must practice our marketing form. We must ingrain our Marketing Memory. You may lose the ability to throw a baseball, you might even scare away a prospective client. But eventually, you’ll end up with a near perfect marketing technique and be on your way to world class producer.

Filed under: LENDERS, MARKETING, REALTORS, MARKETING, Success

Real Estate Marketing: Making the Numbers Add Up

In a recent Bloodhound post about Twitter (only Brian Brady could write the third post in just over a week on the same subject and generate so many comments!) there was a comment on marketing numbers that so intrigued me I felt compelled to respond in a post rather than a comment.  It’s been my experience that many of us do not accurately calculate the numbers when it comes to our marketing.  This should really come as no surprise – numbers and especially statistics can be beguiling and even misleading.  But if we’re not tracking and calculating our marketing efforts correctly, we’re just shooting into a dark room hoping we’ll hit the target.

The numbers quoted (or maybe it was just the idea) are credited to Larry Kendall, but they provide an interesting opportunity to work a real world example of marketing in general and Twitter specifically.  For this exercise I am pulling some examples from the actual comment, but just about every one of us has made this type of calculation before.  I follow each with a slightly different view.

I want 50 local people that I can really connect with (on Twitter).  If I have 50 people and they each know 50 people, I have a pool of 2,500 people.  Not quite.  It means you have the potential to reach 2500 people, but it’s unlikely.  For the purpose of calculating marketing numbers… you’re reaching 50.  This is akin to speaking at a seminar filled with 50 people from the neighborhood and assuming you’ve reached all 2500 people in the neighborhood – you haven’t.  If, on the other hand, you send a direct mail piece to all 2500 people in the neighborhood, then we say you’re working from a pool of 2500 potential clients.  Is it realistic to think all 2500 read that mailing?  Of course not.  But our expected conversion numbers take that into account.   The expected conversion numbers are simply based on a pool of 2500.  A pool of 50 will generate no usable statistical model from which to base a marketing campaign.

If the *normal* turnover rate in my local area is every 5 years, that means that 20% of the market is up for grabs. Each house has 2 possible transaction sides and that would mean that 40% of the marketplace has a commission attached to it.  Again, not quite.  Let’s assume for now that the average turnover is once every five years (which I believe has actually expanded to more like once every seven years), that still does not translate to 40% of the marketplace having a commission attached to it.  Twenty percent of the marketplace has a commission attached to it and that commission (for sake of argument) is 6%.  Whether that commission is split between two brokers or (unethically) double-ended by one broker doesn’t matter; for purposes of your marketing campaign twenty percent of the market is available at any one time.  Why is this important?  Again, if you don’t know the actual number of targets in the room, you might as well go back to shooting in the dark.

2500 people in my Twitter network = as many as 1,000 transactions.  Not to put too fine a point on this, but there are 500 transactions (20% of 2500).  If you are calculating your business – and more especially if you are creating your yearly business plan – you need to know the number of potential transactions as well as your expected capture or conversion relative to that number of transactions.

5% of the potential = 50 transactions.  As we now know, 5% would be 25 transactions (5% of 500 transactions).  More importantly though, we have arrived at the most integral question of all: What is my conversion rate? Owning 5% of the transactions in a marketplace, while a laudable and maybe even attainable goal, is quite an achievement.  The aforementioned 5% would most definitely NOT be my starting place.  There are plenty of very successful agents who have never achieved a 5% saturation in their marketplace.  The best way to calculate this would be to look back over at least the last five years and discern your actual conversion rate.  You can take into account whether or not that rate is growing, slowing or erratic when coming up with the final number you use for calculations going forward.  Absent a five year history, or in the case of entering a new marketplace, I would calculate my numbers this way:

From your Title Co. get an accurate count of transactions in your marketplace for the past twelve months.  Through the local board, Department of Real Estate or whatever source you can find, try and ascertain a relatively accurate count of the number of agents located within your marketplace.  (For now, we’ll discount agents from out of the neighborhood who are working a one-off deal in your farm.)  Divide number of deals by number of agents to get an average per agent, then divide that number by total number of transactions to get the average conversion rate per agent.  Now, the 80/20 rule is pretty universal (although my take on real estate is that it’s more like 90/10!).  If you want to be conservative go with 80/20.  Calculate 80% of the total number of transactions and divide that by 20% of the total number of agents.  Finally, take that new number (which is equal to total number of transactions per “top producing” agent) and divide by the total number of transactions in your marketplace.

EX:
500 total transactions
200 total agents
500/200 = 2.5 and 2.5/500 = .005 or .5% avg conversion per agent

400 transactions (80% of total transactions)
40 agents (20% of total agents)
400/40 = 10 and 10/500 = .02 or 2% avg conversion per top-producing agent
(incidentally, these numbers –  if scaled up – are not far off from San Diego’s actual numbers)

Now you know the conversion rate of an experienced, top-producing agent in your area.  Assume you are not one yet and set your conversion rate at somewhere between the average of all agents and that of the 20% who are producing.  From there, go forward with your marketing plan.

The point of this exercise is not to isolate the comment of any one person.  The point is this: if we want success in a commission based career, we must track our numbers and follow an intelligently thought out marketing plan.  Armed in this way, we can achieve our dreams.

Filed under: LENDERS, MARKETING, REALTORS, MARKETING

The Heart of Unchained

Three days later and my head’s still not right.  Have you ever returned home from a few days away and felt like you needed another vacation in order to recover from your vacation?  You might say the Unchained Conference was like that… but you’d be off by a factor of 10.  Unchained was roughly 32 hours of fast-paced information downloaded without filter or pause in a two and a half day schedule.  Vacation?  I need an I.V. drip.

You might also think, based on what I just wrote, it would be difficult to name the #1 highlight of the entire three days.  But you’d be wrong again. (You’re really not very good at this game. )  There were hundreds of moments to choose from and I’m gonna list a few, but there was a definite highlight – an apogee if you will.  It was during that moment I realized I was experiencing everything it means when we say the bloodhound way.

In the kick-off class of the conference, yours truly was the instructor and I didn’t know what to expect.  The feel of this conference – the expectation – was very high-tech.  Yet I’m using terms like “old school” marketing and making a point of saying that all the shiny gizmos and gadgets handed out over the next three days  were just so much dust gatherers without a framework rooted in old fashioned sales and marketing.  To say I was a little anxious about kicking off an online conference with my offline message is like saying the Christians felt a little concerned about entering the lion’s den wearing nothing but butter-flavored bikinis.  I’ve never been so glad to be wrong.  Highlight of the class: we had two attendees benefit from the scenius of the group and nail down their niche, then go online to PURCHASE THEIR DOMAIN NAME AND LAUNCH THEMSELVES right there in class.  God bless people of action.

Once the moments began to roll, they just never let up for three days:

• Mark Green and his brilliant CRM class experienced one technical difficulty after another due to hotel bandwidth limitations, yet they never stopped finding ways to continue and learn.
• Dave Smith shared his Tucson Real Estate WordPress blog secrets and opened our eyes to the near perfection blog site marketing can achieve.  Just mention “images” to the students in that class and watch a knowing smile grow across their face.
• Greg Swann rapped (yes, I mean “rapped”) his own translation of Odes 3,26 by Horace and that wasn’t even the high point of his presentation!  The blessing of Greg is his absolute lack of secrecy or fear of competition.  He freely gave away so much code and single site knowledge that we had to mentally double-bag everything just to make it home.
• If you were to ask him his niche, Brian Brady would tell you VA loans and that’s true enough.  He is, after all, America’s #1 Mortgage Broker.  But what he gave all of us was a hunting scope and the ability to hit targets in our own niches.  Duck season?  Rabbit season?  No, it’s New Client season… and there’s no limits.

The great stuff just kept coming.  How does one even begin to describe Ryan Hartman?  I’ll tell you the truth: his ideas are so many steps ahead, the true gift was just getting to know the guy in person and discovering how cool he is.  Kelly Koehler once again dropped jaws with her system for catching a lot of fish using very small, very accurate ad bait.  And I haven’t even mentioned Brad Coy, Mark Madsen, Scott Cowan, Don Reedy and all the other scenius contributors.  It’s no exaggeration to say every time I sat down next to someone, another nugget of gold rolled into my lap.  Never mind that I finally met Geno Petro in person… he’s a walking, talking highlight reel all by himself!

A lot of great stuff to choose from right?  But as I said in the beginning there was one moment, for me, that completely captured the bloodhound way.  It came during Eric Blackwell’s class.  “No surprise,” you say?  You’re right, shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody.  Eric is the star of this event.  His SEO knowledge makes him the high priest of online marketing, the Elvis Presley of Google’s rock and roll world.  From 8:00 in the morning till often times midnight Eric was surrounded by people looking for answers.  The only moments Eric had to himself were when he was on stage talking to the entire class.  Make no mistake about it: the room was full of online marketing real estate agents and when Eric spoke pencils flew.  (That’s not true actually.  When Eric spoke keypads on laptops flew… or whatever it is keypads do.  I’m guessing mine was the only pencil in the room.  I’m old school; did I mention that yet?)

Eric did not disappoint and we all came away with cutting edge ideas on how to increase our SEO and thereby increase our business.  But the highpoint for me had nothing to do with “google juice” or “link love” or “ranking in the serps”.  The highlight came at the end of Eric’s class; when he shared a story with us.  I won’t retell the story here because it’s Eric’s story and I could never do it justice.  Besides, these experiences rightfully belong to those who’ve spent the money and made the effort to improve their business.  What I will tell you is this: there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.  Eric reached out and connected with us on a very personal level.  He was passionate and in turn touched the passion in our own hearts.  It had nothing to do with SEO… and everything.  In the end it was the high-tech guru – the SEO rock star – who exemplified everything you ever needed to know about skinnin’ cats.  It was Eric who connected with us on that personal, belly-to-belly level and in doing so revealed the heart of the bloodhound way.

Filed under: MARKETING, REALTORS, Unchained

Facebook Advice… Straight From the Buck’s Mouth

One of the interesting things about reading cutting edge, real estate thinkers here and elsewhere is how, every now and then, we miss the forest for all the trees.  I think you know what I’m saying: someone will post about a new technology or share an idea or reveal a new twist or just plain inspire and the conversation will take off.  Pretty soon, an ol’ balloon-popper like Jeff Brown will wander by and yell through the ivory-framed window: “Hey!  Skinned any cats lately?”  Then he’ll pick up his pelt bag and head down to the bank.

I saw this last week on a great post by Mark Green, who wrote a piece called Please Get Out of My Face(book) that touched on some good rules of thumb for the best use of social media tools like Facebook.  There were some pretty interesting comments and the conversation expanded on some of the ideas in Mark’s post.  Then, a couple days after the comments ended, a new comment went up.  It was late and it was overlooked and it reminded me how often we resemble less a cat skinner and more Elmer Fudd in the cartoon where he’s so busy getting ready to go deer hunting – talking about how great it’s going to be with Porky Pig and sharing his newest, shiniest gizmo – that he doesn’t notice the 12 point buck meander right past the cabin.

Laura Evans wrote the comment.  For purposes of full disclosure: I’ve known Laura in the real world for some time.  Here’s her comment (I’ve edited for length & the emphasis is mine):

Mark makes some great points about how to use Social Networking tools.  I’m not in the Facebook game for marketing purposes, purely social for me.  However if I were, I think my strategy for this powerful tool would be slightly different.

First, I would establish a goal.  In your world, I presume it would be to build your sphere of influence to sell.  So, if the majority of your FB “friends” are in your industry (isn’t LinkedIn a better tool for this?), you need to expand your group of friends.  Start with your high school or college classmates and let it grow.  You can’t be shy or too selective.

…

I think the points made (in Mark’s post) are important, but not the real power in the relationship-building model of sales.  The point of FB as a sales tool is to check in with your contacts, not to assume they are checking in with you.

In addition, although I agree that current events (some) and sports are great conversational topics (I would avoid politics), the Number One conversational topic is family and children.  Matter of fact, this is how I would prioritize conversational topics:

• Family and children
• Interest and hobbies
• Sport teams
• College or high school
• Where they grew up or live
• Vacations
• Weekends
• Pets

I presume that most of your clientele have families…just a thought.  So, when you check in with your “friends”, you should always look at their photos and never let a status update about a child’s success go without at least a thumbs up “like”.  Over time, you may even be able to get birthdays, anniversaries – those all important DATES that are the key to relationship-building sales.  Heck, FB already has tools for remembering birthdays…you are halfway home!

I think there’s a lot of gold in Laura’s words, especially when she prioritizes the conversational topics, but that’s not why I’m reprinting them.  I imagine when Laura wrote this she said to herself: “If I were an agent, how would I go about using these tools.”  But that statement’s not complete; there’s something missing.  Something we (those of us in sales and specifically in real estate sales) need to instantly recognize and add.  So, let me try that last line again: When Laura wrote this she said to us: “If I were an agent, how would I go about using these tools to attract me as a client.”

If you listen long enough, your clients will tell you how to hunt them.  Don’t look now, but I think a 12 point trophy buck just walked by the window.

Filed under: MARKETING, Facebook

Epiphany Marketing

The basic premise of generating referral business, according to the theory of Mayoral Marketing, is to focus your efforts on building a base of contacts – a community – that know you and like you enough to continually reelect you mayor within your field.  Understanding this concept broadens our understanding of how we should go about referral marketing.  For instance, it leads us to the fact that marketing is a campaign.   But understanding the how is only half the battle.  We also need to understand the why.  “I know why I market,” you might say.  “I market in order to generate potential clients and closed transactions, right?”  Wrong.  That’s the objective of your marketing; the desired result.  But the question of “why” is a question of purpose – of GOALS.  Does each step of my campaign lead to my objective?

The goal of this type of marketing is to place us with the potential client at the moment of epiphany.  Let’s call this Epiphany Marketing.  What am I talking about?  Most people kind of warm up to the idea of buying or selling a house over time.  Often the final decision follows some other event; they’re walking along when all of a sudden:

• They hear that cousin Bernard just bought a house.  BAM! (moment of epiphany)  “If my dopey cousin Bernard can buy a house, I certainly can.”  At which point the good marketer wants to figuratively (if not literally) be standing right there in front of them.
• They meet with their CPA and find out how big their tax liability is for the year.  BAM! (moment of epiphany)  “I need to buy a property and get some deductions… right now.”  Again, a good marketing campaign puts you there in their mind even as they have the epiphany.
• They’re walking along and the beautiful, young wife says, “honey, you know I love you.  That’s why I’m so excited to be pregnant” … (wait for it) … BAM!!  “I need a bigger house!”  The goal of any good marketer, when that tender and touching moment arrives, is to be standing right there between the both of them. 🙂

This is alternatively known as Mind Share or Top of Mind Status – but I like Epiphany Marketing.  It’s a fun word: epiphany.  Try it and see what I mean.  Say: “BAM!…  Epiphany Moment” out loud a few times.  It’s fun, right?  Now here’s the tricky part: you can’t just talk about real estate if you want to be there during the real estate epiphany moment.  Sound counter-intuitive?  Think of ice cream.  Everyone loves ice cream.  But if your marketing campaign consisted of you walking along with your potential clients doing your best Forrest Gump ice cream routine (”There’s chocolate, and there’s chocolate chip, and there’s chocolate fudge, and there’s…) pretty soon one of them is going to look at you funny.  “It’s 6:00 in the morning and I’m on my way to the gym.  I don’t care about ice cream!” After that they don’t listen to you any more.  Pretty soon you see them walking with some other ice cream guy; only that other guy isn’t boring them to death with butter brickle’s latest “days on market” stats.  He’s talking about getting in shape or the traffic or whatever else interests the potential client.  Oh sure, he still works ice cream in there somewhere:  “Boy, this traffic is flowing real smooth this morning… like a vanilla soft serve.”  But he’s patient.  Eventually, the potential clients are walking along and the pregnant one gets a sudden craving for Cherry Garcia and BAM! there’s the epiphany.  Guess who’s standing there with their 97 Flavors of Real Estate name badge on and a Listing Agreement for a cone?  See what I mean?  That’s how you end up seeing the neighbor’s house listed without you.  Too much talk of ice cream.

So, your objective is business.  But your GOAL is to be engaging and to be  interesting and most importantly: to be THERE when they have their Epiphany Moment.  When it hits them BAM! they need to buy or sell a home… you want them to have a taste for you.

Filed under: MARKETING, Epiphany Marketing

Pay Yourself to be Motivated

I don’t know about everyone else, but I love marketing.  I love figuring out a theme and creating the copy and running a campaign.  What I have a lot more difficulty with is prospecting.  The daily grind of converting people who haven’t met me into people who want to elect me mayor.  I get all fired up some days, like when I was a stock broker: 200 calls a day and all the throat lozengers you can swallow.  Other days I’m speeding down the 2.0 path toward Social Media Marketing Mecca.  But at the end of the day (actually the beginning of the day for me), I still need to do the basics: phone calls, emails, letters and so on.  It’s a whole lot to do on an agent’s salary… Oh yeah, we’re not paid a salary.  We’ve got to keep all those balls in the air AND wait for the big pay days when an escrow finally does close.  Come on… admit it: sometimes a little daily motivation would help.

Lately, I’ve been monetizing my efforts.  Nothing ground breaking here; just some good old fashioned methods for spicing up the day.  If you’re looking for a little more excitement, give this a try.  (Warning: involves a little bit of math.  If you don’t DO math, or you’re already sufficiently motivated by the repo guy outside the door… skip this post now and save yourself the headache.)

One for the Money
Know your dollar figures.  There are two dollar figures I care about: What is my average Gross Commission Income (GCI) per transaction? and What monthly  income do I expect? (This can be found in the business plan you create and update each year… right?)  I work with lots of investors, so my expected GCI is $7500 per transaction.  I live in San Diego and pay a hefty “sun tax” so my income expectation is $75,000 per month.  (Go Big or Go Home!)

Two for the Show
Know your basic numbers.  What do I mean by that?  I mean, on average, how many clients lead to a transaction and what type of prospecting campaign is going to yield those numbers.  Personally, I subscribe to the basic numbers in Gary Keller’s tremendous book:  The Millionaire Real Estate Agent.  That means my data base is divided into two groups:

• the people I’ve met (called, surprisingly,  METs) are dripped on 33 times annually with an expectation of 1 repeat piece of business and 1 referral piece of business for every 12 METs in the database (#METs / 12 x 2)

• and those I am prospecting to blindly (often called a Farm), with 1 monthly contact each and an expectation of 1 transaction a year for every 50 people in the database (#Farm / 50 x 1)

Three to Get Ready
Know your average percentages.  Let’s make it easy on ourselves and say that your NET – meaning after your split, any splits you pay out, market expenses are covered and you’ve paid your business expenses – is 50%.  For every dollar of GCI, you put 2 quarters in your pocket.  Not bad.

Four to Go!  (look out… here comes the math)
I need 12 METs, each touched 33 times, to generate 2 transactions.  In other words: I must complete 396 activities (12 x 33) in order to gross $15,000 (2 x $7500).  If I divide my gross by my activities I find that each MET activity earns me roughly $38.

My Farm requires 50 people to be touched 12 times in order to gross 1 transaction of $7500.  In other words: I must complete 600 activities (50 x 12) in order to gross $7500.  If I divide my gross by my activities I find that each Farm activity earns me roughly $12.50.

Rock & Roll
First of all, it’s interesting to note that the METs return three times as much per activity; they also cost more in mailings and time.  You’ll have to check your own ROI and decide what mixture is best for you.  Once I have these numbers, I can use them to motivate myself financially; here’s how:

Go to whatever accounting software you are using right now.  Create a new account called Future Earnings.  At the end of each day total up all the activities you tracked (you do track all your activities… right?) and deposit $38 for every MET activity and $12.50 for every Farm activity.  Emailed 200 Mets?  That’s 200 x $38 which means you made $7600.  Not a bad day.  Watch your Future Earnings account grow.  Every time you get an actual commission check, deduct your average (in this case $7500) from the account.

Voila, you can now watch your “bank account” grow EVERY DAY.  More importantly, you can see at a glance how your business is doing.  What’s in the Future Earnings account this month?  You can be fairly sure that’s what will be in your real account in 60 – 90 days.  Did I make any money today?  Well let’s see: wrote two blog posts… don’t get paid for those, read lots of interesting stories about real estate marketing… don’t get paid for those, called 10 of my METs… Yes!  Made $380 today.  Hmmm, that’s a long way from $75,000 in a month.  Better get my arse in gear.

It’s not that all those other activities aren’t important.  It’s just that now we can prioritize our day a little better (e.g. no reading until I’ve made $2000 in deposits).  Plus, it keeps us focused on what’s important (you get paid for that which makes you money – everything else is secondary).  Best of all: you get “paid” daily to help keep you motivated!  (Now, if I could just find the checkbook that goes with my Future Earnings account…)

Filed under: LENDERS, MARKETING, REALTORS, Farm, future earnings account, METs

Listen for the Music

It has been over two years since the Washington Post decided to have a little fun with people going to work.  In January of 2007, they asked Joshua Bell, an internationally acclaimed virtuoso, to play his violin at an entrance to the D.C. metro during rush hour.  It was conceived as a social experiment regarding the appreciation of art.  You can read the full story here.  I bring this up, not as a lover of classical music (I am woefully ignorant), but as a lover of people.  What we do and how we do it – the way we interact with actual life – this I find incredably interesting.  I also find a great deal of practical use.  Take this story for instance:

Joshua Bell is considered one of the greatest musical artists living today.  His violin, hand made by Antonio Stradivari himself in 1713, is a musical masterpiece worth over $3 million.  For his “subway” performance he chose Bach’s Chaconne, said by those who should know to be one of the greatest pieces ever written: emotionally powerful and structurally perfect… it is also considered one of the most difficult pieces anyone can play.  So there’s Joshua Bell, who a few nights before had sold out Boston’s Symphony Hall (where tickets in the parking lot start at $100),  playing possibly the most difficult and most powerful piece of violin music ever written on one of the rarest and most perfect violins ever made.  What do you think happened?  He earned about $100 in tips, a few people slowed down to listen, one gentleman stopped for almost 3 full minutes and over a thousand people rushed by without a glance or a moment to listen.

Actually, that’s not entirely true.  Some listened… some listened intently.  But they could not stop.  They were pulled along against their will even as they craned their little necks.  Children “heard” the music.  Children “saw” the man.  Children “knew” they were in the presence of something.  They knew this because they themselves were present.  Watch the video (did I mention the whole “experiment” was videotaped?) and you’ll see lots of people caught up in their past worries and future fears hurrying along.  But then notice the children – happily living in the present – try and stop; try and go back; try and hear what the man in the Levi’s with the funny instrument is playing.  They recognized the awesome beauty of what they were hearing.  They may not have been able to express it, but they knew they were in the presence of something transcendent.

I share this, not because it is so unique, but because it isn’t.  Opportunities similar to the violin player in this story are more abundant than you might think.  They are magical and they are transforming and they surround us.  As you go through your busy, busy day try to be a little more present.  Not only does this lead to lower stress and greater enjoyment, but you’ll begin to appreciate the miracles that play all around you.  Just slow down… and listen for the music.

Filed under: LENDERS, LIFE THAT POPs, MARKETING, REALTORS, Joshua Bell, MARKETING, present