Focus About Benefits to Dramatically Increase Your Advertising Response Rates

By Patrick Luck, Editor and Publisher Selling Success Magazines
People buy based on emotion and justify their decision with logic. If you would like to increase your advertisements’ response rates, try using the FAB Five - direct response advertising elements that Focus About Benefits. These are the only things that need to be in your ad if you are trying to create immediate responses.

What do people who buy from you really want? What is the end result of them doing business with you? This is the “what it does” (your product or service), not the “what it is.” Ask yourself these questions: What would cause them to respond to my offer? What do my readers really want? What gets them excited? What turns them on? What are their hot buttons? To create an effective direct response advertisement, use these five elements:

1. Attention grabbing headline. This will stop the reader in their tracks. This could be a benefit the reader is seeking (“Sell Your House Tomorrow!”).
2. After you have their attention, you must get them interested in what you are selling. Some ways to do this are asking “yes” questions around benefits the reader is seeking. Tell a short story about someone. Make agreement statements.
3. Once they are interested, you have to create conviction that what you are saying is true, and the best way to do this is with a testimonial from one of your best customers. Use their picture.
4. The next step is getting the reader to want to contact your company. Do this by creating a sense of urgency and/or fear of loss (“Get a FREE…,” “a limited time offer,” “exclusive market area,” “the first X amount of callers get…,” and so on).
5. The last thing is to make it easy for customers to contact you. Always use a toll-free number. People are 15 times more likely to call an ad with a toll-free number vs. an area code and number. By using specific toll-free numbers for each advertisement, you can track the effectiveness and know exactly how well the ad is performing.

These are the only things that need to be in a direct-response advertisement. Things like how long you’ve been in business or the size of your company are logical reasons to do business with you. With the advertisement, you are only trying to sell the reader to contact your company ASAP.

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This article is courtesy of Selling Success Magazines, the #1 Sales-Improvement Magazines for the Selling Professional. To order a subscription or to find out more about Selling Success Magazines, please call 866-269-8604 or visit them online at http://www.sellingsuccessonline.com.

Commentary By Sean Whaling

Receiving advance payment of a real estate commission is not a new concept. Before companies like eCommission began offering the service on a national scale, agents would typically go to their broker to request money from a pending escrow. Or, in a lot of cases, they would wait for their commissions to close even if it meant paying late on their monthly bills. The nature of earning an income based on commission is truly a Catch 22. You’ve got the money–just not right now.

I’ve worked the last decade in the business of financing real estate commissions and have heard the stereotypes associated with our service. For example, brokers who refuse to allow their agents to advance commissions often say, “It de-motivates my agents and they won’t produce. I want to keep them hungry.” Others will say, “If one of my agents needs an advance, they’re just not working hard enough.”

It occurred to me that the real estate industry as a whole does not know the profile of agents who actually use this service. So we decided to hire an independent market research company called Zoomerang to dispel the myth of who really advances their commissions. By the way, Zoomerang is an online service that the NAR recently used to conduct its Safety Report Survey.

Here are the results: A total of 1,158 eCommission customers responded to the Zoomerang survey. In terms of income, 41% of eCommission customers earn over $80,000 per year, with 25% making over $100,000 per year. These income levels are well above the industry average, according to the NAR study on income and expenses. Regarding sales productivity, 52% close more than 21 home sales per year. I think this would surprise brokers who believe advancing commissions de-motivates their agents or implies they are not working hard enough.

Another common misconception about agents who use this service is that they must be desperate for money. Furthermore, the industry at large tends to assume only newer or inexperienced agents advance their commissions.

The average eCommission customer has been selling real estate for nine years. When asked what the main benefit of using eCommission is, 70% responded they valued the ability to remove the peaks and valleys from a seasonal, commission-based industry. Regarding the cost of the service, 77% rated eCommission’s “value for the price” as being either good or excellent, with 96% saying they would recommend eCommission to a colleague.

So, do only desperate agents advance their commissions? I would be misleading you if I said it was never the case. But on balance, the vast majority are seasoned professionals, earning and producing more than the industry averages. As our customers state repeatedly, receiving an advance is an issue of timing, not productivity.

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Sean Whaling is president of eCommission Financial Services, Inc. This article is courtesy of eCommission. For more information about eCommission and their commission advance services, please call 877-882-9416 or visit their website at http://www.ecommission.com/INDPC.

Sponsored by Exeter 1031 Exchange
When people first talk about blogs, they go off of what they see in the media which is usually blogs as places for political ranting or for really personal stuff like MySpace. Stuff that really has nothing to do with business. A blog does look like a diary, but the importance for business is that a blog is an instantly, frequently and easily updated website. It’s not so much what the blog looks like but it’s in how it’s updated; that it’s very easy to do.

A blog can be logged into from any web connection in the world, any browser in the world, any computer in the world. Instead of having all of these web pages on a hard drive somewhere, you manage your blog from any Internet connection in the world. It looks and works just like a word processor, just like writing an email. You can easily add text, images, documents, audio and video. You write out your post and you click publish. And in a few seconds, that entry, that post, is then up on your blog. It’s kind of like an instant website. You can create a blog in the time it takes to watch a sitcom. If you can send an email, you can write a blog.

With a normal website, it can take a great deal of time to find a web designer, go through the entire contracting process, get their request for proposals, wait for the deposit to clear - all of this administrative minutia. With a blog, you’re saving time because you can move faster. You’re not waiting on an IT department or your cousin who knows about computers. Search engines give blogs higher weight because they’re fresher content and they give weight to fresher content.

A blog integrates into what you’re already doing with your marketing. It’s another way for people to find you either through referral, through reading about you in somebody else’s blog or through a search engine result. It also differentiates you from the competition. Plus, a lot of journalists and news organizations use blogs to keep tabs on current trends, developing ideas, things that are coming up that will break into the mainstream news.

The top method of blogs, and we’ll say it right now, is to stay current with the trends. You’re an expert on a certain type of property or a certain locale or a certain neighborhood. It also provides extra info to your client.

A real estate professional could include links on their blogs besides writing post entries, like to the Chamber of Commerce, or to local schools, or to local papers for people to read. Instead of handing them this 30-page packet of orientation information about where they’ve just moved to when you know they’ve moved in, you can point them to the blog and it’s constantly updated.

The best way to find out what other realty professionals are doing with blogs is to go out to Google or Yahoo or the search engine of your choice and search for “real estate blogs” or search for “realtor blogs”. There are a ton of them out there from all over the country and some are outside the United States. There are tons of options out there for people to see you, what’s available, what’s being done and what’s working.
And how much does it cost? It could cost you as little as $8 a month.

A blog is written in the first person voice. It’s much more personal. And as we know in realty it’s the relationships that are so crucial and so important.

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Andy Wibbels is an award-winning blogger and author of Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, Entrepreneur and Wired as a recognized expert in blogs and related technologies. You can learn more about blogging for realtors at www.BlogsForRealtors.com.This article is courtesy of Exeter 1031 Exchange. To find out more about Exeter 1031 Exchange, please call 866-393-8377 or visit them online at http://www.exeterco.com/realtors.

By Charles Warnock, eNeighborhoods Marketing
When it comes to leads, are you a leader or a follower? Do you have a strategy to find prospects and turn them into clients and referrals? Regardless of their source, it’s important to make the most of the leads that come your way. Here are seven eNeighborhoods-endorsed strategies to help you make the most of your lead management program and turn those prospects into customers and referrals!

1. Showcase your neighborhood knowledge

The Internet has whetted customer appetites for all types of real estate information. Educated buyers and sellers make the best customers, but the Web has also raised client expectations. Many consumers are proficient in finding information on their own and are no longer impressed by folders full of MLS and web page printouts.

Agents who provide relevant local information can quickly establish lasting client relationships. If you reinforce individual property information with neighborhood knowledge that interests buyers – including school, crime, housing prices and resident demographic information – you demonstrate a level of expertise few agents can match. By positioning yourself as a neighborhood expert, you avoid pinning your hopes of doing business on a single property.

2. Timing is everything

Most people end up doing business with the first real estate agent they speak to, so fast response is crucial. Research shows many people have come to expect a response from real estate agents within an hour of requesting information. Many brokerages now reward agents who respond quickly with additional leads or other incentives.

Your strategy should include a plan for both initial response and ongoing contact. For example, your goal may be to respond to phone calls within two hours and emails on the same business day.

3. Create a professional follow-up package

Many agents prefer to establish face-to-face contact as soon as possible with an introductory information package. Be sure to have both presentation and leave-behind materials ready to go. Your follow-up package may include:

- A cover letter / thank you letter recapping your initial contact
- Your resume, including professional accreditations such as REALTOR®
- Relevant reports, such as CMAs and Neighborhood Reports
- Sample marketing materials, including flyers and newsletters

4. Have a unique value proposition

top agents shift their focus to making prospects feel like the center of the universe

All agents understand the importance of creating a unique impression, but it’s more important to make prospects feel unique. After a brief introduction, top agents shift their focus to making prospects feel like the center of the universe. To convert leads to sales, personalize materials and presentations as much as possible. Put your customer’s name on sample flyers and reports. For a knockout listing meeting, take a digital photo of the prospect’s home beforehand and incorporate it into your presentation materials.

5. Making it mobile

Even if you don’t know a Blackberry from a Bluetooth, it’s important to maintain a “mobile office” for responsiveness. More than ever, it’s important for brokers and agents to do their jobs – managing phone calls, customer contacts and accessing listing information – without being tethered to a desk.

It’s easy for prospects on the Web to send out several requests for information, and the agent with the quickest response often wins the business. There may be a learning curve involved in adopting mobile technology, but agents who can instantly obtain current property information from a phone or PDA are a step ahead of those who need to call the office.

6. Divide and conquer

While some prospects are close to buying or selling, many are clearly in the research or evaluation stage. Some brokerages have developed separate strategies for hot leads and those with longer time horizons. Some have automated lead management systems or staff dedicated to prioritizing and distributing leads, but this task often falls to individual agents.

Regardless of who manages leads, an efficient sorting and distribution strategy can help raise conversion rates. Even in a smaller office, having a system in place can help you respond quicker and focus on more qualified leads. If you’re shopping for a lead generation service, notice how lead management is handled and whether it fits the way you work.

7. Track lead quality and cost

The best lead solution for you will depend on your goals, business requirements, budget and your style of working. You may need to evaluate several lead sources and management strategies before hitting on one that’s best for your individual needs.

It takes time to track the life cycle of individual leads, but it’s the only way to make the most of your investment. It’s certainly preferable to a lead generation strategy that underperforms your expectations. Be sure to schedule a reasonable amount of time for your evaluation period. A solution that does well initially may not perform consistently over time.

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This article is an excerpt. See the complete report, Seven secrets of turning real estate leads into clients, at http://www.58freeleads.com/report.aspThis article is courtesy of eNeighborhoods. To find out more about eNeighborhoods and other articles, please visit their website at http://www.eneighborhoods.com.

By Michael Port, Sponsored by In House Lender

I do almost everything quickly. Ask anyone that knows me and they’ll tell you that patience is not my greatest virtue.

But there is one thing I do slowly–sell. Which is the opposite of the typical selling paradigm, isn’t it?

Why must we rush that process? Why must we set up sales processes and bonus structures and incentive plans for closing sales quickly? Why must it always be about the end of the month, or the quarter or whatever?

I’ve been searching for a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for some time now and believe that I’ve found the system that I’d like to use. However, in order to use it, I need to have an application built that will integrate all of my customer and client data between my online system and this new CRM system.

The salesman that I’m dealing with is a really nice guy. He’s been super helpful. In fact, he’s extended our trial period for the software a number of times because my programmer needs to access it to create the app and it’s taking longer than expected to build, as is often the case in software development.

One problem though… this lovely salesman keeps calling and emailing with great urgency at the end of each month to see if I’m ready to close the deal. In fact, he calls each time letting me know that it’s the end of the month and he’d really like to hit his numbers so he’s hoping I can make something happen before the end of that week or, worse yet, the end of that day.

Now, again, he’s a really nice fellow, but I’m not buying this system for him. And I’m certainly not buying it according to his time frame so he can make his numbers.

The point is, we often set up processes that are meant to incentivize our sales people, and all they do is put pressure on our sales people to then put pressure on our potential customers.

What if we reversed the process? What if we rewarded our sales people for building trust over time? What if our sales professionals were offered bigger bonuses when they made more (and more meaningful) contacts with potential customers over longer periods of time? What if we offered a bigger bonus to a salesperson because they made a sale three years after first contact rather than 3 seconds after the first contact? What if, just once, we thought about the not so distant future rather than just the next few minutes?

Not only will you have happier prospects but you might also just have better customers.

I’m not sure how you do it yet. But it’s worth the thought.

Sell Slower – Sell Better, continued

Buying and selling investment real estate can be incredibly rewarding and profitable for real estate agents and investors. However, to be truly successful in building a real estate portfolio, agents and investors must learn how to manage — or more importantly defer — the depreciation recapture and capital gain income tax liabilities from the sale of investment real property.

On the Internet, people can go back, time and again, to see if “their choice of dream house” is still available and they can probe deeper and deeper into everything they want to know about the home and the community, and who to choose as a real estate agent. No one can do that with a newspaper. The depth of information available on the Internet far exceeds what you can post in a classified ad. If agents are not positioned correctly and able to take advantage of these online consumers – a huge opportunity is being missed.

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This article is courtesy of In House Lender. To find out more about In House Lender, please call 866-406-1901 or visit them online at http://www.yourrealtyinsider.com/ihl.

Online Marketing: Real Estate Professionals Focus Marketing Dollars Online

By: Melani Gordon

Online real estate ad spending grew from a $4 million market in 2001 to a $1.7 billion market last year, increasing its share of total real estate ad spending from 3.5 percent to 14.7 percent in that time, according to a report produced by a research company. By 2010, online real estate ad spending is expected to grow to a $3.1 billion market, representing an estimated 32.1 percent of total real estate ad spending. In the mean time, newspaper real estate advertising is projected to decline rapidly over the next couple years.

While ad spending is on the rise, newspapers are suffering from a decrease in ad dollars. Today, 54% of people choose the Internet over the newspaper to look for a home. For that reason alone, if you are not dividing your advertising dollars with at least a nod to this reality, you are throwing good money away.

I was recently at an industry trade gathering in San Francisco listening in as brokers and agents explained to the audience how their marketing dollars are shifting. Ken Baris, President of Jordan Baris, Inc. Realtors, spoke about the Internet and how it affected his company. “We receive 10 percent of our business from the web. We are now budgeting upward of 25 percent of our advertising dollars online.”

The Internet is enabling a whole new behavior. It allows home buyers and sellers to begin their research months in advanced and prior to even contacting a real estate agent. If an agent is positioned correctly, they can begin to harness the power of these consumers and get in front of them months before they make a decision on whom to work with.

On the Internet, people can go back, time and again, to see if “their choice of dream house” is still available and they can probe deeper and deeper into everything they want to know about the home and the community, and who to choose as a real estate agent. No one can do that with a newspaper. The depth of information available on the Internet far exceeds what you can post in a classified ad. If agents are not positioned correctly and able to take advantage of these online consumers – a huge opportunity is being missed.

As an individual agent or brokerage, what can you do to be on the Internet and achieve success? Here are three simple strategies.

1. Register a consumer appealing domain name. Most broker or agent domain names contain some portion of your name. For example, www.BettySue.com (Note: the domain names used in this article are used only as examples and may or may not point to an existing website). This domain could potentially scare away potential clients who are not ready to be called by an agent. Register at least one consumer related domain name to use in your advertising efforts. For example, www.BuySanDiegoCondos.com or www.FreeRealEsateInfo.com. These domains placed in advertising are much more compelling for clients to click on or to visit. It’s about them and not you.

2. Make your website all about the client – NOT you! Time and time again we see brokers and agents plastering “I’m #1” all over their websites. They believe that saying that they are the best means people will want to work with them. What’s wrong with this? Most online visitors are looking for information to benefit themselves, not to read a full page resume about the agent. Make sure your websites message is geared toward the prospect or client. Content should read “Find out what your home is worth” or “Find your dream home at a price you can afford.” Make this text link to interior pages of your website where they can perform these tasks.

3. Gain traffic to your website. If you’re like most other Realtors, you aren’t having enough success with your website because no one can find you on the Internet if they don’t already know your name. Work with an expert who can make it so people looking for homes in your neighborhood come to you when they describe what they are looking for. For example, if you are trying to capture relocation business to your area, optimize your website to be found in search engines for local searches like “San Diego County Relocation.”

Now you are asking yourself, how will this all pay off?

• NAR confirms that 77% of home buyers begin their home search online
• The wealthiest Americans are the largest group of online users.
• The majority of homebuyers consider online detailed property information to be extremely valuable in their search for a home.

The importance of Internet presence is already greater than newspaper presence for real estate professionals, and it will continue to climb. Start now and be solidly established and you’ll be happy you did. For the last incentive to start now, consider this: next year at this time, most of your competitors will be that much further ahead of you if you don’t get started with an Internet Marketing strategy.

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If you are looking for some one-on-one consulting feel free to contact Melani direct: 619-224-2455 or email melani@gwaveconsulting.com. She promised me that a quick 15 phone conversation will help you increase your prospect lead conversions.