Please Welcome Michael Price (Our Blog Swap Companion) and His Article “Famous in ‘07″

This article was written by Michael Price of MLPodcast as part of the Yankee Blog Swap event.

I’d like to start my post off by wishing Jim Messenger, a speedy recovery. Jim has recently undergone heart surgery and from the recent posts I’ve seen in this blog, it looks as if he is doing fine. Jim, you will be kept in my daily prayers as you heal.

Famous in ‘07

There’s no doubt that 2006 will be seen as year of major change in the real estate industry. Plenty of retrospective articles will be flying around the blogging world and news sites about Zillow, the DOJ, bubbles and more. Rather than spend time talking about what has been, I’d like to offer a a few suggestions (in no particular order) to help you achieve or maintain your status as a Famous Agent in ‘07

Define Your Niche Then Build Your Brand Last month’s issue of Business 2.0 had an article that pointed to the success of a broker who has concentrated his efforts on the luxury market. His ability to recruit agents and help them succeed has been built around his efforts to concentrate marketing endeavors in a narrowly focused fashion. Take the time to identify your strengths and build your business model around a unique value proposition. This foundation will help you make better decisions regarding where to invest your time and marketing resources. You’re an independent business person. How you choose to charge for your services is your decision. You should at the very least be exploring different compensation models and pricing structures for your services. Your competition is and some of them have figured out ways to maintain and even increase their income levels using new approaches to pricing. Once you’ve established your niche and applied your business model to it. Build a brand around it. Consult a professional or do your homework on the web. Create a professional identity and all of the components that go with it. A good memory hook, a professional logo, a consistent look and feel to all of your collateral materials etc.

Digitize Your Presentations Use new media to deliver your message. Create your listing or buyer’s agent presentations in power point or something like it and deliver them in a multimedia format on your laptop. Leave the presentation behind on a CD. This will give the flexibility to customize your message to each client and the powerpoint can include links to content on the web that is specific to that client’s needs.

Become One With Web 2.0 Web 2.0 is changing the way you do business. Educate yourself on the best practices of these new tools to stay ahead of your competition.

1. Blogging
A little research can go a long way when it comes to business blogging. Learn the fundamentals of a good blog and carve out a reasonable amount of time to devote to the effort. You’ll hear a great deal about the lead generation opportunities and search engine benefits of blogging but remember that the long term benefit of establishing your brand and the “top of mind” awareness you have with prospects is equally important. A well written blog will help you establish a point of contact with consumers in the very earliest stage of their decision making processes.

2. Video
Broadband has ushered in a new era of media. Understanding video and it’s impact on how you will deliver your listings and your unique community knowledge will strengthen your brand, generate traffic and establish your technical acumen with new prospects. Learn how to go beyond simply enhancing your listing on your web site or placing your your video in amateur video sharing sites like YouTube. Video podcasting allows you to have your own broadcast and a means to distribute your videos across a vast network of sites.

3. Social Networking
Active Rain is a great example of a social networking site that allows you to build a network of contacts that you might otherwise never meet. This type of technology takes the concept of online forums and email list servs to a whole new level.

4. Web Based Software
You will be able to save money and increase productivity in ways you never imagined with the emergence of web based software applications. Collaborate with clients, vendors and experience transaction management in a whole new light. Keep and eye on companies like google and microsoft’s Live.Com. Smaller providers like 37signals and Smartsheet.com will also provide flexible, customized alternatives to expensive boxed software and upgrade paths.

Enhance Your Listings
Start with good photography. My recommendation? Either become a professional or hire one. Composition, external flash, wide angle, exposure and more make all the difference. I know of many instances in which listing agents have been selected solely on the difference in quality of the photos for a property. It’s hard to build a top notch marketing plan for a property with amateur photos. Brochures and flyers should represent the listing, not you. If your collateral materials seem more like a means of marketing you as an agent, re- think your strategy. Convert your documents to .pdf and add them to your listings. Learn to write compelling copy. If you’re really bad it at, hire a virtual assistant or someone to help you. Write copy as if you’re communicating to a prospective home buyer, not another agent. That’s what the private MLS comments are for. There are a number of resources on the web to help you hone your copy skills like copyblogger.com or wickedwordcraft.com.

Listing Distribution
Now is the time to get a handle on all of the new ways to distribute listing data. Demonstrate to your clients that your ability to expose their listing is second to none. Find out what role your MLS plays in sending data to other portals. Learn the best way to aggregate the data. Sites like Trulia, Propsmart, Google Base, Zillow and more offer free exposure, take advantage of it. It isn’t disintermediation if you’re the one in control of the distribution. Follow Other Industries Pay attention to the rest of the business world. Read blogs like Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Duct Tape Marketing and more. Read books like “The Long Tail“, “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?” and “An Army of Davids“. The perspective and ideas that you can glean from these authors can be invaluable. The issue of transparency is a common theme and one that anyone doing business in any market would do well to understand and embrace.

Track Your Marketing & Advertising ROI The Right Way Most agents and brokers will tell you right off the top of their head where all of their business comes from. The truth is, most don’t really have a clue. In the last 12 years I have had contact with 1,000’s of agents and brokers and I can honestly say I’ve met very few that have a sophisticated method of tracking marketing and advertising expenses. Your web site is a business generation tool, not just a lead generation tool. Do you know how many people have used it to find your phone number and call you? Are you asking each client how they originally found you and tracking that information? Companies like FamousAgents.Com can help you analyze the traffic to your web site and improve those results. You should be doing the same with all of your endeavors. To that end, I’ve teamed up with the folks at SmartSheet.Com to create a special template just for tracking your media investments. SmartSheet is a web based spreadsheet application that you can collaborate with other team members to make changes and additions. Make it a point to start asking your clients how they found out about you (if you have a team, make it a requirement to ask and track this info). Don’t stop there, ask them if they have ever been to your web site. You’ll be surprised at the results. The selling cycle for real estate is a long one. Your web efforts may have been the original touch point for a client, but as they moved through the decision cycle and finally landed on you or your company to do business with, they may have used a different form of media to contact you. As a holiday gift to the readers of this post, SmartSheet.Com is offering a free account to use the media tracking template. If you’re interested e-mail mprice@mlpodcast.com with the subject line, “Help Me Track My Media” and I will forward you the information for getting your account established.

Thanks to everyone involved with the Yankee Blog Swap for allowing me to participate, I hope I’ve contributed in a meaningful way. Get well Jim!

Read the FamousAgents.com ’swap article’ here: Outrageous Marketing: Not Just a Shot in the Dark.

Tour all of the contributions to the 2006 Yankee Blog Swap:

Transparent Real Estate’s Pat Kitano vs. Zillow’s Drew Meyers

RSS Pieces’ Mary McKnight vs. Future of Real Estate Marketing’s Joel Burslem

St Paul Real Estate Blog’s Teresa Boardman vs. Phoenix Real Estate Guy’s Jay Thompson

3 Ocean Real Estate’s Kevin Boer vs. SLC Real Estate’s Nigel Swaby

Issaquah Undressed’s Larry Cragun vs. Maury Properties’ Andrew Maury

Chicago Home Weblog’s Geno Petroche vs. NY Houses 4 Sales’ Christine Forgione

Phoenix Arizona Real Estate Blog’s Jonathan Dalton vs. Real Estate Snippets Bonnie Erickson

The boys of Sellsius vs. Real Estate Tomato’s Jim Cronin

ML Podcast’s Michael Price vs. FamousAgents.com’s Elise Wright

My Tech Opinion’s Reggie Nicolay vs. Ubertor’s Steve Jagger

Redfin’s Glenn Kelman vs Rain City’s Ardell DellaLoggia

CondoDomain’s Anthony Longo vs. miOaklandCounty’s Maureen Francis

The San Diego Home Blog’s Kris Berg vs. Urban Dig’s Noah Rosenblatt

The Property Monger’s Jon Ernest vs. XBroker’s Jeff Corbett

Realty Blogging’s Richard Nacht vs. The Mortgage Reports’ Dan Green