Marketing Truths: Building A Better Bridge For Your Clients

Hello and welcome, my name is Andrew Houglum with Direct Business Marketing. Today we’re going to talk about a marketing truth known as “Building a Better Bridge”. First I wanted to talk about marketing truths and what they are. At our business we’ve found that no matter what you’re marketing, if you follow these truths when you’re developing a campaign and messaging out to your potential clients your results will be much better. As we go through all of these, definitely wash them all and it will help you.

The first one we’re going to talk about is “Build a Better Bridge”. What do we mean by this? This is a marketing truth that holds true from print marketing all the way to online marketing. The first thing in building a better bridge is what are your prospective clients searching on online marketing or looking for offline marketing. The next question is, “What are you selling?” Really identifying your business is important and this is where a lot of businesses make their mistakes because they feel that they’re selling something that they’re not. This marketing truth is basically reminding you to make sure you recognize what your prospects are looking for, what you’re selling and make sure there’s a bridge between the two. Ensure that you can deliver what the prospect is looking for and bridge them over to what you’re selling so they can make the connection between the two.

In closing, figure out what you’re selling, figure out what they’re looking for, build that bridge and all of your marketing materials will perform better. Again, my name is Andrew Houglum; my contact information can be found on the last slide. I’d also like to remind you to join us every Wednesday at 10am PST for more of these live webinars. Thanks for watching.

Door Hangers | Marketing Plans For Real Estate

We’re talking about one of the marketing plans that fits nicely into small marketing budgets for real estate professionals and realtors.

We’ve found that the best practice in using door hangers is to farm a specific area. This allows you to test your marketing in a specific place to test the results of door hanger marketing. With the Short or Stay marketing system, you can place your Short or Stay Calculator on a specific domain and then market that domain on your door hangers to track the results.

It’s also important to put your information and branding in front of homeowners. Understand that people share information with others and might pass on your information to those other people.

One idea to offset costs is to team up with a mortgage company or a title company. If you can market with a partner, the cost can be split.

Free Marketing Ideas | Training Other Agents

Training other agents is a great way to generate leads. The benefits of training other agents are numerous. First, you can solidify your position as an expert in your area. Secondly, training other agents creates a referral source from other agents. And lastly, this promotes an environment of abundance and a relationship in your market. Promote the idea that there is enough business for everybody.

When you’re considering this option, set a time, date, and location and follow this up by sending out a notice to agents in your office and area. Consider promoting this training with your local NAR. You don’t need to cover your lead generation process. And ALWAYS remember to end your training by asking for referrals. At a later time, you can consider providing paid training service.

Free Marketing Ideas – Host A Live Open Forum | Direct Business Marketing

Today, we’ll continue our conversation about free marketing plans with a creative idea, hosting a live open forum. This forum can be a small seminar, large seminar, or town hall setting. The type or size of your forum isn’t necessarily important.

It’s important that you understand the benefits of a live open forum. Firts, you’re given the opportunity to be face-to-face with potential clients, answering their questions and concerns. Secondly, this platform gives you the advantage of being seen as the expert in your field. And lastly, with most businesses, it is easier to close a deal when you are face-to-face with your potential clients.

To set up a live open forum, there are a number of steps that need to be completed. Set up a time, date, and location for your marketing efforts. Through your information process, let prospective clients what you will be talking about, then tell them and follow that up by telling them what you’ve just told them.

Finally, remember to finish up with a call to action. Give them direction as to what you would like them to do next.

Free Online Marketing Ideas – Backlinking

Today we’d like to talk about another free online marketing idea, backlinking. We include backlinking with our free online marketing plan because you can do it very easily.

Backlinking is simply creating a link to your website from another website. When doing this, you should keep in mind that using keywords in the link and title will help your SEO or Google rank.

If you have other websites, use them. Blog websites, twitter sites, facebook, etc. can all work. Start linking those sites back to your call to action. One error commonly made is in using the phrase “click here”. That phrase has no SEO value. So consider linking an actual keyword phrase. When using a banner or image, use a keyword phrase in the link code.

Finally, the other important reason to use backlinking is to help out your users. There are people looking for your services on other pages. So, give them what they’re looking for.

Free Marketing Plans | Social Media Marketing

Looking at some of the free marketing plans that you can implement, we’re discussing social media marketing today. Social networks have integrated themselves into our society. So, let’s take advantage of them.

Using social media for marketing purposes starts with two basic points. First, be active on your social networks. If you have a twitter account, use it. If you have a Facebook account, use it. And equally as important, if you have a social network, BE SOCIAL. Don’t just post business related items repeatedly.

Also consider using dlvr.it. This product is a great way to send out information to all of your social networks. When you post information on one site, dlvr.it puts that same content on several other sites.

When you are thinking about a balance between business and social posts, consider a 20:1 balance. For every business related post, you should be posting, commenting, and sharing 20 non-business items.

Free Marketing Plans | Video Blogging

Thanks again for tuning in to our free marketing webinar. Today we’re going to continue with our series of free marketing plans that you can implement today.

Video blogging is one of the best ways to market yourself or your business. It does so much for your SEO and for your credibility.

Keep these things in mind as you video blog…

  • Make the video short, 2-3 minutes
  • Post your video on Youtube. Google owns Youtube. So naturally, the Google search results will include content that they own.
  • Use appropriate keywords and phrases in your title, tags, and description
  • Put a hyperlink in the description box.
  • Video blog frequently, at least once per week.For more great information, reference our Video Best Practices pdf https://directbusinessmarketing.com/downloads/sos/SoS-Videos-Best-Practices.pdf

Free Business Marketing | Emailing Past Clients

Talking about free marketing plans again, we’re discussing emailing past clients.

When we email past clients, there are certain things that you should always do. First, you should continually building your list so that you have a pool of clients that you can email at any given time. Secondly, we should stick to a schedule in emailing past clients. Also, it’s important to seperate your lists between past clients and leads.

When you’re sending emails out, keep them very plain so that the recipient can pay attention to what we are trying to convey. Also, keep in mind that subject of your email should be attention grabbing.

With the body copy, keep it at four to six sentences. Add a bullet point list to grab their attention and always include a hyperlink at the end of the email that will direct the recipient to a specific page. Don’t direct them to your home page. Send them to the specific page that you want them to find.

And lastly, configure the email to make it appear that it is a personal email from you. Avoid graphics and the look of a sales pitch.

Real Estate Marketing Action Plan: $3,000 Budget

Marketing Action Plans for real estate agents is our topic again today. This week, we’re focusing on a plan for those of you that have about $3,000 to spend on marketing per month. If your marketing plan budget is less than that, you’ll want to check out the last few weeks of marketing plans that laid out a free marketing plan, a $500 budget plan, and a $1500 budget plan that might be right for you.

With a $3,000 marketing plan budget, you can expand your already existing Pay Per Click campaign to include other networks like Facebook, Bing, and Yahoo. Remember, if you’re already running an effective PPC campaign, you can expand the budget to expand the number of leads. You can also expand your TNT program. If you increase the number of videos you’re doing or the number of websites in your network. Next, we believe you should consider expanding your SEO backlinking. And finally, sending out mailers to a deliquent list can prove effective. We need to remember our printed materials because not everyone is comfortable with the online marketing yet.

Real Estate Marketing With A $1500 Monthly Budget

We’re continuing our marketing action plan series discussing your marketing strategies if you have a $1500 budget. If you haven’t checked out the zero dollar budget and $500 budget from earlier webinars, please check those out today.

First of all, if you have already used some of the previous items, you should implement your pay-per-click campaign or expand the campaign that you already have. You can do this by expanding to other networks like Bing and Yahoo. At this level, if you aren’t using PPC, you are missing out on leads.

Another marketing plan to consider with this budget in mind is an old school tactic that works well. Farm an area with printed material. Find an area that you know well or has the right price point and send out a strategic marketing campaign with a letter, postcard and door hanger.

You can also expand your SEO reach with backlinking and boost your organic search results. And the final thing that you can do with this type of monthly budget is expand your video bloggin efforts. We have a product called TNT that can help you with your online marketing campaigns.

Real Estate Marketing Plan $500 Monthly Budget

Today we’re continuing our action plans for real estate agents. We spoke about free marketing plans last week and we’re going to talk about if you have $500 to spend on your direct marketing budget.

We’ll show your lead generation process as usual to give you a reminder on what the goal is in using your online marketing and direct marketing budgets. So, moving forward on the next level, here are some of the things that you can use to market your business with a small budget.

  • First, complete the action plan for the free marketing plan
  • Door Hangers in Your Listing Areas
  • Sign Riders
  • Press Releases
  • Info Tube Flyers
  • Pay-Per-Click
  • Content Submission Program
  • This action plan is for the short or stay marketing system, but it can be used for anything.

    Real Estate Marketing Plan: $0 Budget

    Today we’re talking about our marketing action plans. We’re going to give you a documented version of this plan with this video so that you can put the two together.

    We always talk about our lead generation sources when direct response marketing. There are four aspects of a marketing campaign; generate, capture, store, and nuture. Right now were positioning the short or stay calculator as that capture source. We’ll talk about where to store those leads and, of course, nuturing those leads. Whether you’re emailing them or picking up the phone, you have to nuture the leads to effectively market your business.

    If you have no money to market your business, there are a few things that you can do to directly market your business. You can use email marketing to past clients. Craigslist is also a great way to get some free marketing. We also strongly suggest video blogging to market yourself and your business. Posting to social networks is a great way to get your business out there and social marketing is becoming increasingly popular. You should also link to your current websites to let people know that you have other sites. You can also provide a live open forum to connect with homeowners or other agents to market your business.

    Take a look at the list and if you have any questions please contact us directly. We are here all day to answer your direct response marketing questions.