Category — Marketing

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Do any of these sound familiar:

Tried a newsletter & quit.
Tried a blog and quit.
Started a business book & never finished.
Opened a facebook account but never used it.
Attended a seminar but never used anything you learned.
Met a great contact but never followed up.

Most people start these things with the best of intentions. But when the payoff isn’t immediate they quit. In this 5 minute video, Zig Ziglar does a great job explaining why that approach won’t work and what will.

(Click here if you can’t see the video.)

All Alone

Originally uploaded by alteragroup

Hahns Peak & Steamboat Lake

Here’s a 2 minute video from one of my favorite authors, Jeffery Gitomer. His get-real approach to business and sales is extremely refreshing. This should be required reading for all real estate professionals.

(Click here if you can’t see the video.)

If you don’t have any of his books, do yourself a favor and pick up a few. I promise you’ll get a ton out of them.

Pick up a few today!

I have choices when it comes to getting my hair cut. I could go to Mountain Cuts for an inexpensive “blow & go” cut by a recent cosmetology grad. It may be a fine service for some but I prefer a little more experience and a higher quality hair cut so I go to Savanna at The Comb Goddess. I pay more and I get more. I pay more and I experience lower risk that it’s going to be screwed up & I’ll look like a fool. Both are hair cuts but they are not the same. They’re not fungible. (Fungible means that there is no difference in value between two or more items. For example, a $20 bill is fungible with any other $20 bill and it’s fungible with roughly $200 Mexican pesos.)
You can’t swap either haircut for the other and have the same result (the guy in the picture doesn’t get this). Savanna delivers additional value and I pay a higher price.

Most if not all of what you do to market a property is not fungible.

How about your real estate marketing? Most if not all of what you do to market a property is not fungible. Point & Shoot digicams won’t capture the same essence of a property as an experienced photographer with a digital SLR. You can’t simply trade one for the other and have the same value.

Writing ad copy 30 minutes before the deadline is not the same as a well crafted message done by a professional copywriter.

Venturing into the online realm with the cheapest web company you can find won’t be the same as investing time, energy and money with an experienced e-business outfit.

Just as we, the consumers, can tell the difference between a bad “bowl cut” and a killer style, we can tell the difference between elegant marketing that tells a compelling story and cookie-cutter-hack-job marketing. They are not the same. They’re not fungible - they don’t have the same value. In a crowded, competitive market, paying more attention to the quality of your marketing and less about the price can make a huge difference. We notice.

It turns out that many brokers have things a bit backwards when it comes to marketing properties. At a recent conference I learned that a study of real estate buyers shows that 80+% of buyers prefer great photos over virtual tours (the “spin-around-to-see-the-room’ kind) and 80+% of brokers prefer virtual tours. A bit backwards wouldn’t you say?

So in reorienting some to the reality of what buyers want, great photography is something that brokers should require of themselves as a minimum. I’ll try to illustrate some differences between really good pictures and the uninspired, drive-by point & shoot photos we see way too often.

I was recently on a trip and took a picture of some super colorful shops. Online, someone else had posted the same shot but with very different results. Take a look & imagine yourself in the market. Pay attention to how these photos make you feel.

This first version was taken by someone else with a simple point & shoot.

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I took this picture with serious camera gear and an inspiration to get a great photo:

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Big difference. Or how about this photo of a ranch:

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Compared to this one I took last fall:

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Which one would interest you?

Photos are such an important asset for real estate agents and here in Steamboat there’s almost no excuse in having crappy pictures. Hire a great photographer and smile when you pay them knowing that you have awesome photos that tell a story and sell property much more effectively. Great photos will pop on the MLS and can be leveraged in many ways.

Kim Keith is an excellent local photography resource. She’s a real pro and puts art into her photos. What this means to you is you’re likely to get photos that evoke emotion. More emotions equals more sales at higher prices.

Kim Keith Photography
Studio K
2550 S. Copper Ridge Rd, suite #204
Steamboat Springs, CO 80477
(970) 846-3680
kim@steamboatgallery.com

I mostly remember either the stuff that was really exceptional or the stuff that was really bad. I remember stuff like Dan from back in 1988, the exceptional Nordstrom sales guy, who mailed me birthday cards. I remember the awful boat rental shop in Lake Powell called “Do Powell” from back in 2003. However, I can’t tell you the name of the title exec that helped us close on a property just a few months ago. She didn’t do anything wrong and didn’t do anything exceptional either.

With so many brokers concerned about referrals are you memorable enough?

There is so much average stuff in the middle there’s not enough room to remember it all. I suppose it’s a bit like this graph with the painful experiences being a little more memorable:

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If you do everything right & meet expectations, you’re average.

So many Steamboat Springs brokers are concerned with referrals but I wonder if they’re really doing the stuff that’s memorable. Are you memorable enough? 3 years from now will your clients remember the exceptional experience they had with you. 3 years from now what will your clients say? Will they say you were average? If you’re truly average, I doubt they’ll remember anything at all. And in today’s world truly average is actually a pretty high bar.

If you do everything right & meet expectations, you’re average. It’s only when you exceed expectations or really screw things up do you become memorable. Going with the flow, blending in, doing what everyone else does feels safe but we won’t remember you come referral time.

Buying & selling a home is such a life changing experience for your clients the goal should be to make it THE most memorable experience of their lives so there is no way they could forget you.

The conditions for photos were pretty amazing last Saturday morning. I took a few around Steamboat & uploaded them to our Flickr account. Here’s one that makes a fantastic desktop for your computer (click photo to download):

Can you guess where this is?

See the rest on our Flickr account

I love Tom Peters! Here’s a 4 minute video about 2 markets he claims are underserved - women & old people

Check it out:

(Click here if you can’t see the video)

If you like the video, here’s a few books I’d recommend by Tom:

Re-imagine!

The Professional Service Firm50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Your “Department” into a Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks are Passion and Innovation! (Reinventing Work)

Talent (Tom Peters Essentials)

The Microsoft iPod (2min 54sec)

If you want to make your ads stand out often simpler is better. We see so many Real Estate ads that are cramped, hard to read, and miss the mark in conveying a message. Next time you’re creating an ad, keep this video in mind. In today’s txt-message world, less is more.

Apple makes some of the most sophisticated devices on the planet and yet their marketing approach is so simple, elegant and effective. That is until Microsoft gets in the mix

(Can’t see the video? Click here.)

Ever wanted to know how search engine values your site? Ever wanted to know how a search engine values your competition’s site? This cool tool will give you an answer.

Website Grader is a free tool that evaluates your website or any site you enter in the form and returns some really useful information. It doesn’t give you a super in-depth analysis but it does provide a nice overview with easy to understand explanations of what the issues mean and how to fix them.

Check it out at www.websitegrader.com

Steamboat Springs