Cooking Up Persuasive Copywriting with These Two Crucial Ingredients
On Friday I wrote about Copywriting and the Art of Persuasive Advertisings and in other articles I go into detail the help you craft successful, lead-building, client-accumulating mail, ads, emails, web sites and more.
But here are two of the common and most powerful copy ingredients for effective direct response marketing, regardless of medium.
The One Thing You Cannot Forget
It seems so obvious and basic that you can’t imagine anyone would fail to do this, but I have to say upfront because writers frequently and regretfully neglect this point: Present your offer–the thing you are selling and the terms you’re making–as soon as possible.
And after you say it once. Say it again. And again.
Copywriting is like storytelling. You create drama. And you can create drama one of two ways:
- Demonstrate how you can achieve their desires
- Show how you can conquer fears
But in one very important way, direct response copy is not like a story…you give away the end at the beginning. That is the offer.
Even when you have a lot to say about your offer, you bring the conclusion [your offer] into the story right away.
And then backfill with persuasive material as you move along.
How to Achieve Your Greatest Desire
This is a a rough sketch of a marketing strategy when you’re making an offer for something desirable, such as a beautiful home or knowledge about the worth of their home.
1. Show the readers the vision.
Within the headline or the opening copy, tell the reader about the benefit: living well, saving money, entertaining grandly.
2. Offer the “prize” inside.
Either within the same headline or within the first few lines of copy, introduce your offer as the means for obtaining the desired end: the infinity pool that makes you to live well, the low property taxes that allow you to save money, or the finished basement with wet bar and 50 inch plasma screen.
3. Go on the quest.
Show the reader how and why your offer, in Step 2, fulfills the desire in Step 1. And bee sure to restate the offer along the way.
Now, the flip side of desire is fear. That’s the other persuasive ingredient of successful copywriting.
Overcoming Pain and Fear
This is the formula for benefits that help you overcome things you don’t want, such as high taxes, foreclosure, drop in property values, ill health or being left behind:
1. Make the readers hurt.
Describe the pain to be avoided: the rising property taxes, the crush on their credit if they foreclosure, loss of equity of they don’t move, diseases from contaminated soil or being the only one who didn’t invest in a rising market.
2. Show readers the cure.
Introduce your offer–the market with low tax dollars [maybe a way to lure people from one state to another], short selling, healthy lifestyle in your city or system to sell their homes fast for the most money.
3. Prove it works.
This is where the rubber meets the road. Your lofty promises better be backed up. Use testimonies, statistics, reports, anecdotes, professional statements. Anything you can get your hands on that support your claims.
Without evidence, your claims will be ignored. So do your homework. It will pay dividends.
Conclusion
One more word: In each of these approaches, it’s important that you repeat the offer often.
The reason? You want people to remember it.
In the next post, I’ll describe how to write good offers, offers that articulate the favorable consequences of accepting your offer and the undesirable consequences of doing nothing.
See you then.
The Nine Naughtiest Real Estate Agents in History
In an inaugural sort of “Human Nature” roundup for the last century and seven years, we stooped to the naughty and outrageous. We didn’t go for the buttoning up.
Of course this doesn’t mean these people are creepy because they are real estate agents. They are creepy people who happen to be in real estate.
In the long run, who will history judge as the naughtiest real estate agent? Here are our top 9 guesses.
1. Real Estate Agent Arrested: Woman Accuses Howard D. Van Sant of Embezzlement
What I like about this one in particular are the prices and the language. The prices: “Van Sant agreed to sell her a piece of property at Island Heights for $450.” The language: Mrs. Cuppers swears up to the present she’s received but $75.
That’s like small claims stuff, right? Remember, this is in the year 1901.
2. Police Arrest Real Estate Agent in Raids on Pot-Growing Homes……21 pot growing homes to be exact.
Hoang was one of 15 people arrested in the raids, which followed a 10-month investigation. Police seized 6,855 marijuana plants, 36 pounds of processed marijuana, more than $200,000 in cash and 10 vehicles.
3. Real Estate Agent Arrested for Arson: Herman Jonas Accused of Setting Fire to an Apartment House
This is another one from the early 1900s:
There was great excitement at a fire which started in the five-story apartment house, 16 East One Hundred and Ninth Street, at 10:30 o’clock last evening, terminating with an arrest on the charge of arson. The accused man is Herman Jonas, a real estate broker, who has an office at 111 Rivington Street.
4. Man Profiled in WSJ Is Freed In Nicaraguan Murder Case
American Eric Volz, a surfer turned real-estate broker who serving a 30-year jail term in Nicaraguan prison, was ordered freed Monday after an appeals court threw out his conviction in the murder of his Nicaraguan lover. [Note: Subscription required to read entire article.]
5. Kidnapped Boy Found; Stolen by Ex-Broker:
Another story from the dustbin, this time 1906: J.J. Kean of New York abducted Philadelphia jeweler’s son…hiding him in a vacant house. The police eventually capture the “thief” at “pistol point.” Seems this “robber” stole more than just little boys: Two years before he “abducted” $20,000 from a Harlem bank. The blow-by-blow narrative, complete with dialog, is worth the read.
6. Realtor Leader Of Arson Ring Headed To Prison
Sixty-one year old James Insinga gets ten years and must pay over $400,000. In one case, Insinga had solicited an individual to purchase a home, furnish it, place insurance on it and then burn it.
Naughty, naughty.
7. Three Accused of Stealing More Than $2 Million Dollars from Lenders Using False Documents
The mastermind behind this scheme, Eric Braun, created a non-existent straw buyer, “Seth Davis,” who he’d later say “left the country with all the money.” Braun’s accomplice, Noah Yates, ran a website that said people legally can eliminate their mortgages. Prosecutors allege that the Web site Yates created was meant to make the venture, and “Seth Davis,” look legitimate. Yates and Braun said they got the idea for such transactions by attending a seminar held by a Bay Area group that is in trouble with federal authorities. And here’s how they got busted: after taking a look at Braun, who showed up in a new Cadillac Escalade, Morris, the lender who was being scammed, said the brokers began to think they had been taken…because the young man didn’t seem sophisticated enough to be a businessman who needed to pay off a palimony lawsuit, as he claimed.
8. Crazy Realtor Torments Rival with Sex Ads
In December 2007, Dean “Cookie Kwan” Isenberg was arrested and charged with “posting fake escort ads on the Internet using a rival’s phone numbers, sparking hundreds of raunchy calls” and text messages to the woman and her daughter. The victim, Debbie Blasberg, was a former coworker of Isenberg’s who had “closed on a property he had been trying to sell.” Yikes.
9. Creepy Real Estate Agents Walk a Fine Privacy Line
No peeping Tom here. But questionable behavior to say the least. A pair of real estate agents sent out a calendar to a homeowner with a photo of his home on the calendar. What I’d like to know is, when did they take the photo…and was he home? This would tee me off. What about you?
Copywriting and the Art of Profitable Advertising
Yesterday Brian Clark asked the question “If content is the new advertising, what is it saying about you?”
Knee deep in the article he brings in a good point:
Think about it… the advertising we actually enjoy is often witty and entertaining, but it doesn’t persuade us to do anything.
This is true for your blog. Or your articles. Or your email newsletter. And not only does it not persuade us to do anything, you’re not really sure what it’s doing.
Enter copywriting.
In this post I’m going to give you the five-cent tour of the copywriting world and how it can elevate everything you say or write to a level of scientifically precise persuasion.
I hope it provides some insight into effective advertising, or, at a minimum, gets you to think differently about your current notions regarding advertising and the attention you seek from it.
What Is Copywriting?
Copywriting includes all the written communications used to sell, market and promote your service to prospects.
As a category, it’s bigger than “advertising writing” because it also includes things such as brochures or web sites. Buit it’s smaller than “business writing” because it doesn’t include non-marketing communications such as interoffice memos.
This said, let me introduce to you three important ideas about copywriting repeated through this website: targeting prospects, inspiring action and measuring results.
These three ideas put together make up what is commonly called “direct response advertising,” which is different than brand or awareness advertising.
All direct response advertising appeals to specifically targeted audiences, is crafted to inspire action or response and can be measured to determine its effectiveness.
Targeting Prospects
Instead of making communications that impress a message on as many eyeballs as possible, direct marketers do everything they can to limit their efforts (and dollars) to the prospects most likely to be interested in their offers.
Instead of broadcasting, they narrowcast to increase their customer base.
Why the List Is So Important
Your audience is the single most important element of a targeted direct response campaign. In fact, in descending order, list is more imporant than copy, which is last [list, offer, format and copy].
Keep in mind that a weak message to the right audience has a far greater chance of success than a beautifully designed, brilliantly written message to the wrong people.
If you have limited time and money, concentrate most of your efforts on the list.
And lists need not be complicated.
Building lists are easy. For you, the most effective list is the one you gathered from past clients and propsects who have given you permission to send them meaningful stuff.
And that’s the secret: giving them something meaningful. Whether it’s a newsletter, blog, market updates, housing forecast information or new listing postcards…send people something they care about…something they’d trudged through 3 feet of snow to their mailbox or wait 3 minutes while their computer booted up to read.
Inspiring Action
Dig this: Copywriting provides a means for generating a lead in the here and now. This is done via a toll-free number, your web site, email address or postage paid reply cards. Prospects are encouraged to take action….
This “take action” quality is what separates copywriting from other business communications. It is intended for one thing: increase response.
Brand awareness advertisers attempt to create a set of ideas or emotions they hope you remember. But copywriters and direct response advertisers don’t give two hoots and a handshake about what people remember: They want to motivate action now.
That’s why it’s important you don’t rely strictly on “image” campaigns or “name recall.”
Years ago David Ogilvy demonstrated that brand recall and celebrity endorsements stuck in peoples’ minds…but nobody could remember why.
If you are spending hard-earned and hard-to-replace money on ads, make sure you are investing it wisely. Which brings me to my final point…
Measuring Effectiveness
In the last century, the following words have been put in practically every significant business leaders mouth:
“I know that 50 percent of my advertising doesn’t work…what I don’t know is which 50 percent!”
The truth is nobody knows who exactly said this. But that’s not important. What’s important is this: copywriting and direct response advertising can help you discover what is working and what is not.
The above adage was probably quoted by every business leader at one point in his career because all he knows is that they are selling products…but they are not sure which commercial or which magazine ad motivated people to go out and purchase paper towels or car tires.
Something spurred sales, but despite the best efforts of the best market researchers and MBAs, no one knows for sure.
You never need to be in that position.
You can know scientifically, objectively and absolutely down to the last dime what ads worked and which ones didn’t.
Imagine you send out a thousand letters with postaghe paid reply cards and get 20 cards back requesting a CMA.
Simple maths says you got a 2 percent response rate.
Now, add up the sum of the total houses sold and subtract the cost of the mailing [list fees, if any, creative time spent or charge, production costs, postage, and so on]. The difference is the money made–or lost.
If the cost exceeds revenues, you know you need to change something: the list, offer, format or copy.
As you probably figured out, you can get even more sophisticated and the run the numbers inside, outside, up side down to give you even more information about costs, values, revenues and profits.
In the end, one point remains constant: Action is measurable, and these measure give your business meaningful information on which to base future decisions.
On Monday, I’ll give you some tips on how to actually test your copy.
Stay tuned.
11 Guilt-Free Tips to Making Your Blog Posts Sexy
For some reason, sex sells…and real estate agents get way up in arms over it.
Seth Godin says objectifying women is a short cut to cash [one only has to look to Hugh Hefner]…a short-cut people are tiring of.
Of course, ten, fifteen years ago [or was it thirty?] Gary Halbert, crudely and crassly…but classical in form…said the quickest ways to boost sales for a product was to put a photograph of a woman in a bikini in the ad.
Keep in mind, this will not work for all products.
Ogilvy points out in his book Ogilvy on Advertising that sex has has to be pertinent to the product.
Read: will work for Viagra. Will not work for a rotor rooter.
I lean towards the view point that sex in ads degrades women and is not a healthy strategy. I certainly wouldn’t want my daughter nor my wife posing half naked on a magazine spread or website. Or billboard.
Or a blog.
But that’s neither here nor there…
My real point about this post is how to format your blog posts so that it is attractive to your readers…
So that it captures their attention and forces them to review what you wrote.
With that in mind, here are 11 tips to help you write with flair and make your posts appealing, approachable and seductive.
1. Use short sentences. People crave brevity. Especially on the web. And like it or not, people read best at about a fourth grade comprehension. So short sentences are key. Especially on the web: in fact, people scan. Short sentences makes it easier.
2. Write short paragraphs. Copywriting is in my blood. So everything I write flows from that. Thus you’ll constantly see tiny paragraphs…sometimes only one sentence long.
This is also a trick newspapers like. Just look at USA Today.
People can scan short paragraphs. And scanning is the presiding world view for most online readers today.
3. Bold important thoughts. As the eye scans your post, it is looking for important information. Make important information abundantly by bolding it.
Also, look to have your bolded sentences and phrases tell a story in themselves. As best as you can.
4. Use Bullets and Numbers. Any lists you provide should be bullets or numbers. Think a litany or a grocery list: easy to remember.
5. Strike hard with action verbs. Start sentences, lists with verbs. And not just any verbs. Verbs that resonate, thunder, strive, yearn, force. Verbs that work hard. Verbs that will manhandle people into slowing down and reading what you wrote.
Arresting attention is what you want.
6. Confuse people. “Rub a chicken against your ear. Now go buy my book.”
Joe Vitale, the so-called hypnotic copywriter, uses this technique because “confusion will arrest people. It will cause them to stop and scratch their head. That’s why after the confusing phrase you insert the most important piece of information…and that point you know people are paying attention.”
7. Pepper your post with ellipsis. This is an ellipsis …. It’s a suggestion of a pause in speech. It’s a suggestion that there is more to come. Something you can’t do with out…
It naturally leads the eye along the path of the sentence…
And encourages the eye to clamber down to the next line. Which brings me to my next point…
8. Mimic conversations. In other words, ignore the rules of grammar. Start sentences with verbs. Rely on the implicit “you.” Abuse punctuation! Kick off sentences with the words “and” and “but” and “also.” However…
Remain within the boundaries. Otherwise it will back fire on you.
If what you write is obscure or artsy, people will turn their noses up at you.
Your best course of action is to listen to conversations. Don’t always be the person who dominates at the dinner table. Let others speak. And spy on other conversations.
9. Employ sub headlines. Sub headlines work like the sentences you bold…easy to scan and tells a story.
A reader should be able to scroll down your post and gather the important points immediately.
From the important points they’ll then decided if they want to read the post carefully.
10. Publish provocative photographs. Tech geek blogger Robert Scoble once shared his method to work effortlessly through 600 blogs in about 10 minutes…
One of the things that caused him to slow down as he jogged through his RSS reader where photographs.
The eye naturally sees something visually stimulating and tells the hand to stop. If the headline is compelling, Scoble looks for more clues to whether he wants to read more of the post or not.
What are those other clues? Read on…
11. Embed links in your posts. Greg Swann once nailed me on the absence of links in one of my posts. He said I was “inaudible to the conversation,” meaning, in essence, not sharing my sources…
And sharing your sources adds credibility.
Robert Scoble also said “It shows that someone took time to write the post. Demonstrates he did his homework.”
Links demonstrate your post was thoughtful and planned. That it is worth the time to read and not just some random brain dump.
Calculation and research, oddly enough, seduces people, my friend. Gets them to pay attention.
Final Thoughts and One Suggestion
As is shown in the Scoble video, not one single element here will make your blog posts sexy to readers.
In truth, it will be a combination. Employ more of these elements and the better you will do.
And finally, if you write and have not read The Elements of Style, read it this weekend. It’s the single greatest book on writing that you’ll ever read. And it will take you less than four hours.
Enjoy!
This Blog Is Ranked Top 50 Best Real Estate Marketing Blogs
Thanks to the people over at International Listings for creating a list of the top 50 real estate marketing bloggers.
We ranked number 46…
Just before Renderings, a blog by a real estate marketing agency and just after RSS Piece, a firm that builds SEO enhanced web sites for real estate agents.
Granted, International Listings didn’t number based upon a ranking system. What they did very nicely was put each blog in a category and then list the bloggers alphabetically.
Very nice indeed.
Thank you very much for the love, International Listings!
10 Core Emotions So People Understand Your Message at the Gut Level
Last Friday, while I was brainstorming over a marketing message with some other writers, I shared with them a technique I use whenever I’m trying to understand the psyche/heart of a prospect/partner/client…and what will get them to respond positvely to my message.
I filter everything about the person through ten core emotions to see which emotion or combination of emotions will best help a person understand a message.
This is something I learned from the American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI), where I completed both their Accelerated Copywriting Program and Master’s Program.
Here, according to AWAI, is a list of the ten most powerful and common core buying emotions:
1. Curiosity. For some reason, we just can’t stand to turn aside from new, fascinating information. This is why the “news” industry is a multi-billion-dollar business.
2. Vanity. Most people have a strong, almost uncontrollable, desire to be better than everyone else in some way – physically, socially, mentally, spiritually, etc. And not just to be better, but to make sure everyone knows it.
3. Fear. Decades before I was concerned about things that really pose a threat to health and security, I worried about what was hiding in the pitch-black abyss under my bed. Fear makes us feel that danger is imminent, and we will do almost anything to avoid it.
4. Benevolence. The negative emotion of fear is countered by a drive for the positive emotion of happiness, even euphoria. And the quickest way to achieve that feeling is by doing good for someone else.
5. Insecurity. Are you good enough to be a top-notch wage earner? Parent? Lover? Are you good enough to live in the prestigious neighborhoods? I bet you’ve wondered. (We all have.)
6. Power. Think politicians, here. Corporate CEOs. Generals. Dictators. The Brain. Wave the fact the fact they’ll be the top dog, control large masses of people, conquer their enemies… and they’ll eat out of your hands.
7. Wealth and Abundance. This applies to everyone on the planet: the desire to have the jet set life, luxury and leisure…the boat, the house on the beach, the friends in Paris.
8. Security. Life insurance ads do this really well. Or Onstar. It’s rooted in fear, because when this hits a person in the gut, it is usually from fear that something bad will happen to them or their loved ones.
9. Belonging. This one is huge. In every single person God has planted a need to connect with other humans. That’s why the family is foundational to God’s plan. Show someone how they can be part of something important or exclusive gives them a good incentive to do what you ask.
10. Guilt. Not to many appeals come straight out and condemn you. What happens usually in a guilt appeal is you are allowed to connect the dots. And when you do this, there’s that quite ache in your soul that says, “If I turn my back, Fluffy the ferret is going to die!”
You’ve probably recognized that a lot of these emotions overlap. Some are stronger than others. The point is to understand your prospect so well, that you know which emotion—or combination of emotions—will appeal to him or her.
And by understanding these and other core buying emotions, you command the power to help other people understand your message at a “gut” level.
They won’t just read or listen to it—they’ll feel it.
The Word That Can Destroy Your Marketing
There’s a word with so much destructive power that you should never, never, use it when talking about or evaluating a marketing effort.
I know you’ll find it hard to believe a word could have such appalling magic. But it’s true. I’ve seen this word works its evil more times than I care to think about.
The Cult of the Real Estate Agent
Perhaps you could follow this Trappist command: thou shalt not buy too much of our beer.
As Ben McConnell states, “Besides being what people describe as an excellent beer, Westvleteren has developed into a cult brand based on its rituals.”
Some of those rituals include:
- You must make an appointment to buy the beer
- You have to call the Beer Phone to make that appointment
- The monks, from an order of silent monks, may talk on the Beer Phone only
- You may buy only two cases at a time
- The beer is sold only once per month
- They only make 120,000 bottles per year
- Tales abound of people driving 16 hours across your Europe to get their monthly supply
- And the monks truly believe that sell beer to live and not “live to sell beer”
The key to creating this kind of cult is essentially being religiously devoted to your craft.
The Horror of Scarcity, the Pain of Exclusivity
Those who brew Westvleteren are serious about their business, “their craft”, but they aren’t trying to maximize results, track eyeballs, post records…
What they’ve done is created a cult: They’ve developed a need for their product that is borderline addiction.
A short supply sends people into horror-stricken panic. Think scarcity. Like the Great Depression type run on banks when everyone thought money was going to be scare.
Or it creates a sort of exclusivity…that it is a prize to have this product.
On an update to his original post, McConnell, an Austin resident, shares the fact that the only way he could get his hands on one of the beers was through a beer connoisseur’s collection.
How about that for being shut out?
The Cult That Spreads Without Help
Another creation of a cult occurred when Hugh McLeod created a the Blue Monster sticker campaign for a winery.
The blue stickers, which read “Microsoft change the world or go home” where a hit and people clamored for the stickers. In the small print on the sticker was a pitch to buy wine and a web address.
He also encouraged bloggers to request free bottles of wine if they blogged about it. They did. Happily.
That is cult via viral.
The Largest Cult in the Smallest Market
There is another kind of cult: the cult of community. Think Star Trek fans. Or medieval Renaissance week enders. Or Green Bay Packer fans.
The Green Bay Packers thrive in the smallest media market to be home of a major professional sports league.
Why is that?
It has a lot to do with legendary history.
The Green Bay Packers won five league championships in seven years and then went on to win the first two Super Bowls. In fact, the Super Bowl trophy was renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy in 1970 in recognition of these awesome accomplishments.
And tons of lore:
Because Curly Lambeau’s employer, the Indian Packing Company, paid for the team’s first uniforms when they played their first game, they were called the Packers. Initially, due to Lambeau’s affinity to the University of Notre Dame, the Packers’ team colors were blue and yellow. When it was time for a change in 1959, new head coach Vince Lombardi introduced the current green and gold we have all come to know and love. Just two years after the new colors, the oval G was created by Green Bay Packers equipment manager Dad Braisher. [via]
The other towering figure head of the Green Bay Packers is Brett Farve: “The Green Bay Packers have been spoiled to have their quarterback, Brett Favre not miss a start in well over a decade – a record no one has ever come close to touching.”
A Profile of a Real Estate Cult
The thing to remember about creating a cult is that it is slightly religious. A better way of saying it is that it is ritualistic, or rich in ceremony or practice.
As an agent this could mean several things. Let me create a profile to give you an example:
- If you have significant or unusual history, share it. Create that story of your early days as an agent, the history, the lore.
- If you are successful, or if you can manage it, work only six months out of the year. When you come back from your six month hiatus, your waiting list will be the length of your arm.
- If you are charismatic, flaunt it. Use it to make people happy, fulfilled. Use it to entertain or perform on a high level. Cults are built around highly influential people. If you are not an irresistible person, get started on becoming one.
- If you can arrange it, perform certain functions of buying or selling homes differently. Instead of a closing at the title company as usual, see if you can’t do it at an old historic home, maybe even in the old historic court house. Think ceremony and different.
Finally, if you want to be the best, create the purple cow…
What you deliver should be something people instantly recognize, without being told, as something that’s extraordinary and almost impossible to imitate.
Think the iPod. Or the Wii. Or the Four Seasons Hotel George Paris.
The 4 Best Agent Inner Circle Articles
For the last year I’ve been following what I think are the best offline marketing articles written for real estate marketing by Senior Editor Craig Forte of Agent Inner Circle.
Craig is a master copy writer, a brilliant mentor, and reading these articles for pure study of copywriting persuasion alone will be worth it.
But there is so much more there for you…offline real estate marketing wise.
I recognize you are time starved, content-overloaded, so what I did yesterday was sit down and go through these articles in the last year and see which four I thought were must reads.
What follows are the ones I chose.
Of course Craig’s got other articles at Agent Inner Circle. Even articles by guest writers. You would not go wrong spending an afternoon sifting through the content.
It’s like an MBA course in real estate marketing online. But it’s free.
[Okay, not entirely free: You do have to hand over your name and email address to access the archives. But it’s worth it.]Enjoy.
The Three “M’s” of Marketing Success
Have you ever spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours on an ad or mailing program, only to stare at your silent phone or pager?
If so, you’re not alone. Most agents spend an enormous amount of time learning about “real estate”, but very little learning about the “elements” that turn your advertising (or any marketing or prospecting efforts) from a “sunk cost” to a true “money-maker”.
The truth about real estate success is this: Even the most competent and knowledgeable agent will go broke without a steady, consistent stream of qualified, motivated buyers and sellers.
So while knowledge about real estate is essential to being a competent agent, it’s not going to write your ticket to success. You also need to develop prospecting and marketing skills designed to create an on-going flow of leads and clients.
Money-making marketing isn’t difficult if you know a few basics. In fact, all successful marketing has three essential components. I call them…
An Investment That Pays for a Lifetime
Would you like a small piece of helpful investment advice? OK… look at these facts:
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of Revlon stock 10 years ago, it would now be worth $4
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of Harken Energy stock ten years ago, it would now be worth $2.
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of United Airlines stock ten years ago, it would now be worth $0.
But think about this…
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, and turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.
Isn’t it amazing that your investment advisor could have advocated drinking and recycling, rather than investing in their worthless stocks, and you’d be 5 to 43 TIMES RICHER?
This does not go in the direction that you think it does. It is well worth the seventeen minutes [if you are a fast reader like me] it takes to read it. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying if you read only one of these articles, read this one: what it teaches impacts everything you do. It puts the horse before the cart.
A Grand Slam Buyer Prospecting System
If you’re looking to generate a consistent daily flow of targeted, red-hot buyers calling you, this quick and easy strategy will have your phone ringing off the hook almost overnight.
You don’t need to make a single outbound call or prospect in any way. It will take you just minutes to set up. And (best of all) you can do it all on a “poor-boy” budget.
In fact, I know agents who have added more than $6-figures a year in commissions with this one system alone.
How to Master the Single Greatest Skill for Real Estate Success
Have you ever heard the saying, “If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention”?
Well, there’s an “outrage” being committed by well-intended (but misguided) “experts” in our industry…and it’s sending unsuspecting agents down a freeway to frustration and failure.
How to Bury a Real Estate Agent Alive
Have you ever been buried alive?
According to illusionist David Blane who spent 7 days buried alive, it’s not the near suffocation or loneliness or claustrophobia that grinds away at you…
It’s the feeling of being alive and TRAPPED that nearly kills you.
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, people were so afraid of being buried alive that they often requested to have their feet sliced or prodded with a fire poker to make sure that they were dead.
They did not want to be trapped.
We have a fear of being buried prematurely. Whether it is real or metaphorical. Nobody likes being trapped.
What does this have to do with real estate? Pay attention. I’ll show you.
The Ancient Bazaar
There’s good reason to believe that the real estate model is changing. [In fact, it already has: you just may not be aware of it.]
Nah, you say. The NAR is a huge organization that will not allow the model to change. At least not dramatically.
Is that right?
Let’s look at other supposed entrenched models that have changed and then tell me how you really feel.
Consider the Internet.
In the Cluetrain Manifesto, Christopher Locke wrote, “In many ways, the Internet more resembles an ancient bazaar than it fits the business models companies try to impose upon it.”
The Internet is a place where people can talk to other people without constraint. Without filters or censorship or official sanction. And perhaps most significantly, without advertising.
That was true in the beginning. But not now.
Manipulation, Coercion, Threats of Reprisal
The web has become just an extension of preceding mass media, primarily television. According to Locke, the rhetoric it uses is freighted with the same marketing jargon that characterized broadcast: brand, market share, eyeballs, demographics.
Of course, online marketeers still drool at the prospect of the Net replicating the top-down broadcast model wherein glitzy “content” is developed at great cost in remote studios and jammed down a one-way pipe into millions of living rooms.
It’s like TV with a buy button.
Yippee!
But business environments based on command-and-control are usually characterized by manipulation, coercion, and threats of reprisal.
And this means nothing to the web surfer. He’ll ignore you because he’s got plenty to keep him busy.
Funny thing is, not a whole lot of agents even know what the Internet is for, let alone blogging. Regardless, we’ve adopted it faster than any technology since fire.
And you need to catch up.
How to Bury a Real Estate Agent Alive
For one, it’s given the consumer way more choice and power than anyone imagined. It’s turned the tables upside down.
Many brokers and agents feared these changes, seeing in them only a devastating loss of control.
Those who didn’t adapt got buried alive.
Darwin said “It’s not the strongest or the fittest that survive–rather it’s the species that most adapts survives.”
Are you willing to adapt?
In the old school, you get this rule-book mindset–the broker’s s common look and feel, logo placement, legal number of words on each Web page, calls per day, work your family list, post a billboard here, churn out endless reams of cash here [pay per click].
These may have worked in the past, when the web was young, when the 80’s were a stellar set of years, but it’s all so cramped and constipated and uninviting now.
Dead.
The real point is that the Internet has made it possible for genuine human voices to be heard again.
The fact is, people at the bazaar, the consumers on the web, often have far more valuable knowledge than brokers and agents and business control freaks. They are driving the car now.
The Challenge Facing 21st Century Agents
So you get yourself a website. Fling up a pic, a logo, a slogan: “Outstanding agent in the Metro City Area who stands up for quality and fairness.”
Somebody, please, slice the feet to see if they’re alive.
What you don’t want with your website is to kill off people. If you kill off this enthusiasm, you can easily end up with a large, professional-looking, and very expensive website or blog that nobody gives a damn about.
In contrast, genuine conversation flourishes only in an atmosphere of free and open exchange. What if, instead, the attraction is a throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales?
When people are encouraged to share what they know with each other, when agents are ready to learn from the consumer what their wants and needs are…then this exchange becomes a rapidly expanding conversation–a conversation that would soon lead to loyal clients.
The challenge I’ve found agents to have is not to offer just trivial feature alternatives, but transparency.
In a networked market, the best way for an agent to “advertise” will be to provide a public window into his or her heart.
Instead of putting up slick images of what they’d like people to believe, agents will open up so people can see what’s really going on.
Of course you’ll be sticking your neck out.
But if you don’t, you risk premature death. You can’t invite customers to contribute buying and selling ideas by holding them at bay.
Or worse: failing to meet them where they are congregating.
Why They’ll Make Fun of You
To some, it’s spooky to think going online invites criticism.
Mouthing platitudes guarantees you will be challenged. Nothing is accepted at face value, or taken for granted. Everything is subject to inspection–whether it was a market condition, a working philosophy or, God help you, an advertisement.
Think of Joel and the ‘bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The point is not to watch the film, but to outdo each other making fun of it.
But this whole gamut of conversation, from infinite jest to point-specific expertise: who needs it?
You need it.
Conversations are markets. And markets is where you make your money.
When conversations are not only engaging, interesting, exciting–they become effective. They become tools and techniques to bridge that chasm between their problems and your solution.
Do It Now
Conversations on the web does not reinforce loyalty and obedience–it encourages idle speculation and loose talk. It encourages stories.
So leverage a blog. Leverage LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Open Social, Active Rain, Zwillow.
Bare your soul. Tell a story. Create a cult. Do something out of the ordinary online. Otherwise this cooling market will bury you.
And bury you before you are ready.
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