The Challenge: A Different Demographic

Home owners who are ready to offer a private loan in order to sell their houses are still faced with a stumbling block: how to find buyers in need of seller financing. Most property owners don’t have any experience in finding individuals interested in buying a “high ticket” item like a home directly from the owner.

When property sellers work within the established real estate agent process to find buyers and close a deal by “traditional” methods, it is generally safe to assume that the vast majority of these customers will qualify for bank financing. In order to pursue private seller financing to sell a home, however, a property owner will need to attract home buyers who do not have adequate credit to buy real estate – a significantly different demographic.

The key to successfully orchestrating a seller-financed real estate deal is getting the right buyers through the door – just like a traditional property sale.

In order to get motivated buyers interested, the seller will need to use a targeted marketing technique designed specifically for the “unconventional buyer’s market”. The most effective advertising method to tap into this distinctly separate pool of buyers is surprising to some.

Unconventional Marketing

The seller’s best strategy for finding their credit-challenged buyers would be to list the property in places that are frequented by individuals that do not have a real estate agent. The newspaper is one of the best places to start putting out the word.

The majority of home buyers looking for seller financing start by searching the “For Sale By Owner” ad listings in the local paper. Seller financing originated and took off via this print medium. Even in today’s Internet-dominated business world, newspaper advertising continues to be an effective means to reach those looking for seller financed deals, so it makes sense to start the advertising here. A simple sale ad including the line “seller financing available” or “credit issues OK” should help to generate genuine interest from the right potential candidates.

Orchestrating the Deal

Once interested buyers start coming around, the seller can choose to work with the party that brings the most to the closing table in terms of the down payment. Of course, larger down payments are better than smaller amounts, but it is entirely up to the property seller to decide what is acceptable.

Once the details of the initial payment, payment term, interest rate, and any necessary clauses are established, the buyer and seller could create a new seller-financed note. If the seller needs money immediately to pay their down payment, the note terms can be specifically tailored to ensure that it’s attractive to cash flow buyers. Once the newly-created note is sold, the property seller will have “cashed in” their future monthly payments for an immediate lump sum of cash.

The details of the note creation are easily handled with standardized boilerplate or the assistance of an attorney; some note sellers are able to manage the sale of their home without any paid legal counsel at all. In fact, once the seller understands the potential advantages of seller financing and takes the proper steps to market the property to the target buyers, the final steps in cementing the note deal are usually much easier than expected. ~thanks~ The Texas Note Guy

Rent to own homes are homes which are on sale but you need not pay for that outright. That is good for prospective buyers that want to check out the property first as they may still have the option to withdraw should they think they do not like the property anymore. This is just one of the many advantages of rent to own homes. Another is if the customer doesn’t have adequate funds for the time but would like to get a hold of the residence.  That way the buyer can have time to make up his budget over a period of time indicated in the buyer-seller deal.

The downside to that is if the buyer decides not to buy the particular property then he loses the regular lease that served as his credit. If the purchaser continues to buy the property however pays late for the regular monthly amount, most usually, he may incur higher rates of interest from then onwards. If he has actually late payments, three times within a year, odds are his choice to buy the property is completely useless. Most of these are the popular terms and conditions of the rent to own homes arrangement.

Regarding the maintenance of the property, all repairs that has to be done by the owner if this is a strictly rented house, will be shouldered by the renter since they are considered upcoming proprietors already. Maybe a positive note to it would be the care and attention given to the property by those serious tenants who really plan to have the house eventually. Most of these renters would care for their house and their neighborhood much better since they find themselves living there for a long time compared to those who might be leaving in a year’s time frame.

Besides that, should the residence is considered “bought” already but is still on rent to own terms, then the owner can never charm any prospective buyers anymore who might be willing to buy the property outright – a scenario that might be good for the seller especially if he only likes to turn his home into cash. Or maybe, if the seller has actually another mortgage going, selling these rent to own homes the soonest would be best for him.

Without a primary business and marketing objective, you’re shooting arrows at random targets. Your chances of success will improve if you shoot arrows at the same target.

Is your primary objective to double your number of clients over last year? To venture out on your own? To increase the size of your farm area? Whatever the objective, you need to define it … on paper and in your mind. Only then can you develop a real estate marketing program to support it.

2. Set achievable goals.
Incremental goals will give you something to work for (and achieve) along the path to your overall goal. Looking at your main goal from step 1, make a list of smaller individual goals needed to reach the “big one.”

Be realistic and specific when setting your goals. Instead of saying “I want to grow my business during the first part of the year” … say “I want to gain seven new clients by March 20th.”

Be specific, and you’ll know exactly what you need to do. Be realistic, and you’ll have a better chance of accomplishing the goal — and enjoying the boost in morale that comes from it.

3. Learn something new.
Learn something new several times throughout the year. Learn a new technology that can help you work smarter. Learn something new about your farm area and the people in it. Learn a new real estate marketing tactic.

Combine these lessons with the incremental goal-setting from step 2 above. For example, maybe you’ll set a goal to learn about one new technology per quarter — websites in February, digital cameras in May, real estate blogs in August, etc.

4. Take notes (or better notes) on each client.
Perhaps you’ve heard that referrals account for the majority of real estate business. It’s true, but only if you make follow-up part of your real estate marketing program. Nothing produces referrals like great service and proper follow-up.

Taking notes about your clients makes the follow-up process easier and more effective. Keep a file on each client, and refer to it for specific information you can apply to follow-up emails and letters. Nothing makes people feel special like being remembered!

5. Buy a book (and read it).
To improve your real estate marketing, you must become a student for life. Every year, try to read at least one new book about real estate marketing.

6. Get motivated … again.
Repetition can weaken your motivation. So as you move forward with your real estate marketing, revisit your reasons for becoming an agent in the first place. What were your dreams then? What attracted you to the real estate profession?

Remind yourself of those reasons. Keep them in mind always. The dream justifies the routine — sometimes you just have to remind yourself what the dream was in the first place

7. Look backward while planning forward.
You probably won’t have success in real estate marketing until you’ve had one or two failures. It’s part of the learning process. And that’s okay, as long as you learn something from your mistakes. So as you move forward with your marketing, take a moment to look back. What have you learned? What has worked for you, and what hasn’t?

8. Improve one thing about everything.
Make it a point to improve at least one thing about everything. In other words, find a way to improve each part of your real estate marketing. If you have a website, add some helpful new content, or strive for better search engine visibility. If you use direct mail, build a stronger offer for your postcards.

9. Ask for help.
Real estate marketing can be a lot of work. So don’t try to carry it all by yourself. That’s a short road to exhaustion. Ask for help when and where you need it. That might mean hiring a professional for certain parts of your marketing, or seek help from a marketing-minded colleague.

10. Reward yourself.
Got a new client as the result of a direct mail campaign? Treat yourself to a nice dinner. Heck, order an expensive bottle of wine while you’re at it. Don’t be shy about celebrating your success. If you work hard and gain something as a result of that hard work, you deserve a reward.

Achieving goals without being rewarded will reduce your motivation to achieve similar goals in the future. So break out the bubbly once in a while. It’s okay. Really!

Conclusion
Don’t feel like you have to apply all ten of these tactics to your real estate marketing. Just pick the ones you think apply to you the most, or the ones you can best accomplish. The point is to improve the individual parts of your real estate marketing program in order to strengthen the program as a whole.

Submitted by: Proyectos inmobiliarios en Cartagena de Indias

But what if that weren’t the case? What if you could have fully automated business blogging happening for you, attracting the search engines for you each and every day?!?

What if you suddenly has access to building a blog one time, loading it up with your exact keywords (the more long tial the better btw) and then you let that blog run 100% on autopilot forever???

Two former Madison Ave Creative Directors/Copywriters are now using some of the most advanced blog creation software available to do just that…to build you a blog that literally goes out multiple times per day and finds content that matches YOUR EXACT keywords. That content is loaded into your new blog and then the process begins for you to start attracting laser targeted traffic to your new blog…then moving that traffic to your site every day. 100% hands free. You never have to do a thing!

This is you being able to finally do fully automated small business blogging. This is you being able to get your best keywords out there in front of people looking for them!

But wait, because it actually gets even better. Knowing that it will take a bit of time for the search engines to find your new blog, these two have also come up with a way for you to get unlimited one way backlinks to your new blog for immediate rank and immediate traffic.

If you are online and marketing…this is something you have to look into! Search engine traffic is simply the most targeted and most cost effective way there is to increase your business!

Start With Postcard Direct Mail

Let us start with post card mailings for illustration, because this is certainly customary advertising for Realtors. For the most part Real estate professionals will select a neighborhood, mail out their post cards for 3 months, and count the quantity of active clients or closings they get from their mailing. Is that enough? Not even close.

The first thing you need to accomplish is plan to send your post cards a great deal longer than 3 months. On the whole potential, buyers really need to see your advertising at the least seven times before they grow to be comfortable enough with you to respond. Yes, a few prospects will act in response in the first 1 or 2 months, but the lion’s share of this group will take action further down the road. Prepare your advertising funds correspondingly.

Set Up Your Prospect Funnel

The next factor is to confirm you have a “prospect funnel” in place; a method intended for these buyers to respond to your merchandising. As an example, nearly all advertising and marketing for Realtors means making a prospect phone call and attempting to sell them right then and there. However, that is similar to attempting to induce the girl you just met in the sports center to “tie the knot” with you tomorrow at 7 pm.

I might advise taking it a little slower and having a “prospect funnel” set to extend these relationships. You will catch extra prospective customers and turn more of them into enthusiastic clientele and closed deals.

Let me to explain this style of advertising and marketing for Real estate professionals like this….

A way to set up your “prospect funnel” is by means of investing in a site or blog ready for prospective buyers, encouraging them to join for some sort of “Free Report” or “Free Video Tutorial on Ways to Save $7,000 When Listing.” Get ingenious on something beneficial you will offer them in barter for their name and email. That way, you are able to now begin developing the rapport that’ll bring about an active buyer and subsequently a closed deal.

Once a prospect passes through the earliest portion of the funnel as a result of responding to your postcard and signing up on your internet site, you now need to set up an “autoresponder” to send these buyers information and periodic updates.

An “autoresponder” is a software system that enables you to send email to these buyers routinely. You can write a series of emails and have them posted to your prospects for the days and times you pick.

In these emails, you may give them valuable info, advice and pointers, but also direct them to the next stage in the funnel; talking to or a business meeting with you. For purchasers, you may possibly state that they can email you or phone for a free home tour. For sellers, you can ask them to call you for a free market analysis.

Building a Relationship

Now this is the thing, with this type of traffic generation for Real estate professionals, that you will need to recognize……

Offering a free house tour or market analysis is not anything exceptional. Every Real estate agent in the world provides this. But the reason why you will get a higher response rate is because you’re offering these services after you have started building up a relationship with them. Other Real estate professionals are hastily offering it before they meet the prospect; just like trying to influence someone to marry you before you meet them.

You have the advantage by building the relationship all through this “prospect funnel.” Capturing a customer is all about the relationship. Lacking it, you are just one more Realtor, in their sight. Be patient; let them get to know you and you will see far superior results.

Ok, so when a prospect has called you or emailed you with reference to, let’s say, a free of charge home tour, you at that moment start the following action of “selling” them on committing to working with you. This really is your expertise as a Realtor, correct?

When you get in front of someone, you understand the way to show the reason you’re the best. You know how to let your character shine through. Plus it will be as a result a lot less complicated to acquire this allegiance from a prospect for the reason that you’ve by now been building the rapport! you’re not beginning from scratch like every other Real estate agent.

The only remaining stage with this sort of promotion for Realtors, after you have a binder from a prospect, is to secure a deal. Irrespective of whether it’s helping them buy a home or market a home, that’s the end goal and where your profit is made.

Monitor Your Advertising

Where the monitoring of your marketing and advertising campaigns comes into all of this is the conversion rates of each stage in the “prospect funnel”. You must to know the number of prospective buyers that go from one stage in the funnel to the following.

• You should to be aware of the number of postcards you mailed out and what number of buyers responded by going to your website.
• You want to be aware of what number of the web site visitors signed up for your free offer.
• You should follow the number of the buyers who signed up, requested a home tour or market analysis.
• You need to count how many of the prospective buyers who requested a residence tour or marketing analysis turned into closed deals.

The funnel I just described is merely one style of “prospect funnel” you can use. You may create and design your funnel however you would like. The basis is to make each stage a little step and not a leap for the prospect. Make the steps too big and scary and you’ll see your numbers decline. Make each phase small and comfortable and your statistics will shoot through the roof.

Figure Out Your Conversion Rate

Advertising and marketing usually boils down to simply knowing the number of deals you closed from a specific campaign, and from time to time you may not even know which advertising campaign they came from. If you track your marketing and advertising in this way, you are missing out on a ton of info that could perhaps triple your closings.

When you figure out the conversion rates from one phase of your “prospect funnel” to the following, you can make out which methods necessitate adjusting so your end goal is reached; more closed deals and additional cash flow in your pocket or purse.

For instance, if you have more website visitors signing up for your free offer, that’ll portend more residence tours and additional closed deals, true? Every step in the funnel impacts the next actions.

Get the drift how this approach of marketing and advertising for Realtors works? See how critical it’s to trace your marketing and advertising campaigns like this? It is the differentiation between running your real estate venture blindly and running it like a peak producer.

As for the mathematics involved, it’s all straightforward division. For every stage in the “prospect funnel”, you just divide the number of potential customers from the earlier step by the number of buyers who went on to the next stage.

For illustration, if you have a hundred site visitors which went to you internet site and you had five site visitors who took the next step of signing up for your free offer, that’s a 5% “conversion rate”. that’s the most complicated arithmetic you will be required to complete! Not overly ghastly, true?

Increase Your Home Sales

When you have been in the process of tracking your marketing for a little while, you will decide to begin a small rivalry with yourself and always seek to beat your present statistics. Should you are receiving a 5% conversion rate at one phase, attempt to increase it to 7%. You might vary some of the sales content you’re utilizing or maybe make use of a another image. When you know how to keep growing your conversion rates, you will keep growing your returns. It is that straightforward.

Play around and test, test, test! Tracking your marketing campaigns is not an option if you want to be one of the top producing Realtors in the business!

Who is Seth Godin?

Godin is the author of ten bestselling books around the world. His most recent titles include The Dip and Meatball Sundae. Free Prize Inside was published in early May, 2004 and All Marketers Are Liars
was published in 2005.

His books have changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. Permission Marketing was an Amazon.com Top 100 bestseller for a year, a Fortune Best Business Book and it spent four months on the Business Week bestseller list. It also appeared on the New York Times business book bestseller list.

It’s been a custom for years for Realtors to send out farming and marketing postcards. Whether or not they immediately get thrown away depends on several factors.

• Is it your postcard unique? It should be eye-catching and not look like the same cards everyone else sends
• Does it offer value? Insert a list of sales prices of homes in the area, special event info for the area, or a recipe or holiday idea

You can easily double your postcard responses and encourage prospective clients to visit your website with a little planning.

It’s easy to take a  screenshot of your web site (on a PC hold down ‘Control’ and click on ‘Print Screen’ button on the upper right hand side of your keyboard). Paste (’Control-V’) this photo into a graphics program (even Paint will do), crop it if you want to, and save it.

To prepare the photo for printing, make sure it is 300 dpi. Then make the image smaller: 4.25 x 6.25 for a full-bleed 4 x 6 postcard. Make sure you don’t reduce the dpi in the process.

If you find doing this confusing, just put the screenshot photo on a CD or flash drive and run it over to Kinko’s. They can quickly resize it properly for you for a nominal fee. While you’re at it ask them to change the color format from RGB to CMYK so your colors will print properly (they’ll know).

Print Your Own Realtor Postcards

Independent printers like Overnight Prints, VistaPrint, and Bizcard give you the opportunity to print any photo you want on your marketing postcard, along with online programs to design your own. I’ve used all three of them and been very pleased with the results.

If you’re handy with a graphics program you can design the back of the card. If you’re not, you can use the service’s online program to do so. Upload your web site screenshot to one of the printing companies for the front of the card, and if offered, add the glossy coating to the front. I prefer to leave the back of the postcard matte – it’s easier to write on it .

By doing this not only will your real estate postcard look like no one else’s, it will pique interest in visiting your web site.