Expired Listings, Real Estate Marketing Tools

I got it again in the mail yesterday. The usual real estate postcard:

“HEY, Look at me, I just sold a house”
Whoopty doo!

Another poor schlep plucking down her hard-earned money on a lame direct mail campaign. When will these people learn?

Geo-targeting (direct mail to a specific geographic area for the uninitiated), is one of the LEAST effective direct mail methods.

Yeah, I can just hear you yell at your computer:

“But Borino, I sent some Just Solds out last month, and I got a listing. Ha! So what do you say to that, Mr. Marketing Know It All?”

Listen to me… Don’t waste your time with another “JUST LISTED” or “JUST SOLD”. Or worse: “I’m your neighborhood specialist”. Stop putting your neighbors to sleep, please!

Everybody and their grand-aunt that’s been in real estate since the Great Depression does it, it’s way too generic, and it lacks a good marketing HOOK. Here is a better approach…

Step One: Good List
You need a good focused list - a specific group of people that have one thing in common. For example:

* Expired listings that are over one year old
* Vacant For Rent properties
* For Sale By Owners selling for more than 60 days
* Properties occupied by the same owner more than 20 ears
* Multiple non-owner occupied properties owned by single out of state owner
* Seniors over 65 living in 4-bedroom homes
* …and on and on. You get the idea.

Step Two: A Good Sequence
Put together a SEQUENCE OF MESSAGES, letters, or postcards, or even better – a combination of both. And here is the most important part…

In each letter or a postcard speak SPECIFICALLY to your target audience. Here is an example of a postcard message:

***
Selling a house without an agent can save you up to $17,492! Visit this web site for a free report and find out how.
www.YourSpecialWebSite.com

***

Now, can you guess which list this piece would go to? Yep, all FSBOs on your list. Then you have a nice simple site explaining the benefits of selling without an agent. Get it? Give your audience information they most likely want. Specific, targeted, and RELEVANT.

Qualified, interested leads hit your site, some will sign up and you can start a follow up mail campaign.

What should you send? Easy. Useful information about the market, the selling process, how to fix a house before selling it, how to qualify a buyer… anything a FSBO should know. But here is the best part…

You don’t mention anything about listing with you – YET. Let them enjoy their short flirt with real estate. You and I know Jessica Simpson has a better chance of winning a Nobel Price for science than an average FSBO actually selling in today’s market.Robert Duval

Take your time and play the role of an adviser – think Robert Duvall in Godfather.

No pressure, no slick selling. You’re there to help. And after a while you become their logical choice to list and sell their property. Just keep in touch until most FSBOs realize it takes A LOT to sell a house and they may be biting off a lot bigger chunk than they can chew… Cancellieri to the rescue. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Back to our mailings… Follow the same process with all your target marketing lists. Help landlords with rent comparisons, market statistics, or recommend good carpet cleaner.

Send old-timers interesting information on a new Florida retirement community with golf and yoga.

Mail expired listings success story about other expireds that have relisted and sold.

You with me?

Every campaign you execute carries a targeted specific message that is RELEVANT to that particular group.

And the best part is your mailing lists don’t have to be huge or expensive.

Step Three: Repetition
It’s ridiculous to believe any one shot mailing is going to uncover everybody interested in your service. Think about your own life. You’ve probably received some offers that you were interested in but you never acted on.

To overcome this, you’ve got to create a plan for multiple contacts. Many marketing experts say it takes up to seven contacts to convert a lead into a client.

Finally, Step Four: Test and Adjust
Track, learn, see what works, fix or discard what doesn’t.

The more you know, the better you get. The better you get, the better your marketing will be… and the more money you will make.

And don’t EVER mail that old boring “JUST SOLD” again. I dare ya. I double-dog-dare ya!

Now go out there and Get ‘em!

Borino

Thomas Edison failed 1,000 times before he invented the light bulb.”
“Colonel Sanders offered his recipe to 1,000 restaurants before one finally took it.”

WOW. Perseverance, you think?

Bull.

God, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that ‘inspirational’ perseverance nonsense from all the ra-ra trainers, motivational snake oil salesmen, and pump-up coaches…. I’m just sick and tired of this sh… stuff.

So what does that mean, exactly? That you have to stubbornly keep doing something and fail miserably 1,000 times before you finally reach success? NONSENSE!

If something doesn’t work, then STOP for crying out loud. Give it a fair - FAIR - shot, yes, but no sense in killing yourself thinking, or worse, hoping things will magically change if you just keep going. I mean, think about…

If you contact 100 expireds and not get one listing out of it, then there is a good chance SOMETHING’S WRONG, bubba.
If you go on 10 listing appointments and walk away with zero listings, then it’s time to pause and see what’s up.

Don’t just stubbornly keep mailing, calling, showing, prospecting, presenting, wasting time, and wasting money… If the results are not what you want them to be, you are off course. Common sense, right? You’d think…

And yet look around you: same old boring marketing, bad postcards, dull ads, wrong approach, ineffective presentations, overpriced listings… It’s the Sanders/Edison approach of “just keep going and hope hope hope”. No wonder so many agents quit every day.

The way I see it, Edison was one smart guy, no question, he just sucked at time management. And he had all the time in the world! No urgency. Honestly, if he took this long today at GE he’d be fired by now, light bulb be damned. And Colonel Sanders might have been a decent chicken cook but boy was he horrible at sales and presentations!

Can you afford to be like them? Keep trying and failing for years? I didn’t think so… I think you’re smarter than that.

So don’t make the same mistake. Go for it with gusto, give it your best shot, take time to get things going, that’s all good. BUT see where your shots are landing, and ADJUST. Evaluate. Learn. IMPROVE. THEN repeat.

Don’t believe for a second that success takes a long time. Or thousand failures. It’s all within your reach. You just need to know what works, and what doesn’t. Do it the smart way.

Now go out there and Get ‘em!

Borino