A simple definition of marketing is the chance to tell your story. Marketing allows you to describe what makes you different from all the other agents. More importantly, you can define how people benefit from doing business with you.

Let’s say that your overall goal in real estate is to make your customers and clients better homeowners. You strive to achieve that goal by helping people understand the tax advantages, financing alternatives and investment aspects of homeownership.

Your contacts wouldn’t dream of buying or selling a home with another agent because you take such good care of them and make them better homeowners. They even show their loyalty by referring friends to you when they are buying and selling real estate. Ultimately, your clients feel so secure with the services you have provided that they start buying rental property from you.

This level of service will distinguish you from your competition, create lifetime customers and generate referrals throughout the year. Ultimately, a new revenue source could emerge with a familiar product – single family homes. You could market the same home as a principal residence or a rental property.

Now that the goals and objectives have been established, it is time to set up the marketing plan that will make it work. According to the National Association of REALTORS^® Profile of Buyers and Sellers, 87 percent of buyers say they would recommend or use their agent again. Unfortunately, only about 14 percent actually do. The fallout can be attributed to two obvious scenarios: either the agents aren’t in business when the buyers need their services again, or the agents do not stay in touch with their clients. More often, it is the latter.

The most cost-effective strategy for lead generation is to establish a database of people and brand yourself to become their real estate professional. Keeping your name out there means staying in touch on a regular basis – a minimum of 36 times a year – using various methods of communication.

Let’s explore some strategies that will help us stay on task and achieve our goals.

Database

A commonly quoted statistic is that it costs five to seven times more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. Especially in this struggling economy when lead generation is slow, friends, relatives, past customers and their referrals can all be excellent sources of prospects. NAR has confirmed year after year that the majority of buyers and sellers select their agent this way.

In a competitive market, a customer database is essential to sustained success, whether it is maintained in an e-mail program, contact manager or spreadsheet. The goal is to keep the contact information current and send frequent messages to maintain top-of-mind awareness.

The challenge is to make the messages interesting enough that your contacts will read them. The topics should be geared toward becoming a better homeowner, which directly benefits the customer and furthers your branding endeavor.

Customer loyalty, repeat sales and referrals are the goals of database marketing. It is essential that the customer values your communication, whether it is through mail, e-mail, social media, phone or face-to-face contact.

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter Postings

When using social media, instead of describing what you ate for lunch, ranting about crazy drivers or linking to the latest cute animal video, consider posting links to articles about homeownership. Copying an article is a violation of U.S. copyright laws and constitutes plagiarism. However, it is acceptable to link to those sites, and you can even include a comment about each article. Instead of being the author of the information, you will be the purveyor. You will still be helping your readers to become better homeowners.

Blog

Blogging is a great way to tell your story. Since you control the content, you can write about things that support your point of view. You are branded according to what you write about. Blogs also increase search engine visibility and optimization, and can lead to media attention when reporters search for sources of information and your name shows up in the results.

Blogs are basically free and are considered valuable content by search engines. WordPress and Blogger are two of the most popular blog platforms. It is beneficial to have your blog located on your personal website because it will drive traffic there and increase exposure to your business.

Through blogging, you promote your business by providing information and advice to the public in general while targeting your specific market. Each blog should be no longer than two to six paragraphs. If they are too long, people are unlikely to read them.

The challenge is to post relevant material on a frequent basis, and this is probably what keeps most agents from starting a blog. When you are conscious about providing the content on a regular basis, you will find yourself inspired by advice that you give a prospect or client that would also appeal to your readers. There will likely be times that you write several articles and “bank” them until it is time to for them to be posted.

• Website Content
• Quality content on a website can help to increase traffic as well as search engine visibility and keep visitors on your site longer. Some suggestions for content are:
• Your blog
• Hyperlinks to your social media pages
• All available listings through IDX
• Real Estate Today news radio widget - www.retradio.com/player.php
• Articles of interest to buyers and sellers based on your point of difference

Annual Advisory

An annual advisory is a meeting held once a year with past customers and clients to discuss various things that will affect their homeownership. The objective is to provide them with valuable information and possibly uncover a need for a service. The following items could be discussed:

• A list of similar homes that have sold recently and are for sale currently
• Refinancing analysis to help them determine whether it would save them money
• An equity accelerator to show them how to save interest by pre-paying their mortgage
• An amortization schedule with the increased principal contribution to compare how the lender applies the additional payments
• A list of recommended repairmen
• Rental property opportunities

Marketing is an opportunity to tell your story. If the public likes your story, they’ll do business with you. If they’re satisfied with the service, they’ll do business with you again and refer their friends to you. Your business will grow and sustain itself with lifetime customers.

Your product or services should be clearly distinguishable from the competition. Your story should have a value proposition that clearly defines exactly what buyers and sellers can expect when working with you. As long as the value exceeds the price, people will buy. You’ll be providing a valuable service and building a business that will last a lifetime.

Pat Zaby is a REALTOR^® and instructor who has spoken at WRA conventions on numerous occasions, as well as on a national basis for over 20 years. You can read his blog at www.PatZaby.com and contact him at Pat@PatZaby.com .