"Neighborhood Letter" Generates Open House Traffic

Instead of a 'Just Listed' postcard, send a 'Neighborhood' letter to your farm area written as if it is from your seller.

The response rate from this mailer (details below) is often significantly higher than a 'Just Listed' postcard and offers a better opportunity to connect with a buyer or future seller.

Be sure to insert two ListingCards to the letter to make the letter fun and memorable. The ListingCard easily fits into a shirt pocket and is a handy pass-around size so you know it will get around.

This 'letter from the seller' strategy speaks to the natural curiosity that people have when one of their neighbors is selling their home. The 'law of social proof' is what Robert Cialdini's best seller, Influence underscores as an enormous motivator for our society.

It's simple:
Go to: http://www.listingcard.net/ to order your ListingCards today.
- Modify and print the letter (below) on plain white stationary, nothing fancy.
- Use a postage stamp, not metered.
- Write the letter 'greeting' by hand for greater impact
- Hand address the envelopes for much higher letter-opening rate
- Use a plain white envelope with the sellers return address
- Do not add your business logo to the envelope or any reference to your company.

If you've ever used a just-listed postcard before, you'll be pleasantly surprised with the increase in response and showing activity this simple letter produces.

This proven strategy is just one of many great ideas that we bring to you as our way of supporting the success of your business.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Listing Letter:

(Personalize the Red Font & copy/paste the text)

Dear Friends & Neighbors,

Hi! I am your neighbor, Jane, and I live at 12900 Willow Road. My family and I have been living here in 'The Summit' neighborhood for past six years. We have loved living here and now we will be moving on to the next phase of our life.

Next week, you will see a 'For Sale' sign in our yard. We have chosen Bill Donner at ABC Realty Group to represent us in the sale of our home.

The reason I am writing you is to make sure you are the first to know that we are selling our home. Wouldn't it be nice if you could pick your next neighbor?

If you have any friends, family members or coworkers who would like to live in our neighborhood, we'd appreciate it if you would tell them that our house is for sale, and that they must come by to see it!

To make it easy for people to learn all the details about our home, our Realtor has included a ListingCard with information about our home that you can reference or pass along to someone you may know. There is also a website you can visit, click on at www.12900WillowRoad.com for all the details. (Optional)

When we find a new owner I will write you again and give you all the details!

Respectfully,

Jane Doe
12900 Willow Road
City, ST 02123

How To Make The ListingCards Work

William Johnson, a successful San Diego Realtor, offered to share how he utilizes his ListingCards in his overall residential real estate marketing strategy.

...As a component of my extensive marketing plan, I love the Listing Card. I use the card as a tool to involve the Seller directly as a team member in marketing the property. My marketing plan is 3 fold. Part one is getting the property priced correctly. Part 2 is my ability to expose the property through all available sources and Part 3 is the Sellers portion. It is their responsibility to distribute the cards to family, friends, business associates, neighbors and local businesses where they have an existing relationship. The property sells in short order. The property below lasted just 6 days. The prior listing lasted 8 days, the one before 11 days with the sale coming directly off the card that was picked up at nearby restaurant. The ListingCard is a remarkable indispensable resource .

Most Sincerely,
William Johnson GRI CRS E-PRO
RE/MAX Associates – San Diego

A Beautiful ListingCard...

...starts with a beautiful photo of the property.

More and more ListingCards are being created with property photos provided to the agents by professionals, and what an amazing difference it makes. Take for example, a recent ListingCard created by Deanna Smith at http://www.buy760.com/. The deep blue of the sky and the illuminated home are simply gorgeous! The print quality of her ListingCard is stunning as well. Imagine the reaction her sellers will have when she delivers the ListingCards.

The following expose' from Norm Fisher at http://www.teamfisher.com/ features low to exceptionally quality property images used to feature real properties on the market. It painfully underscores the importance of good property photos.

http://www.visualtour.com/show.asp?T=830679

Caught In the Act

Linda's startled expression would have been amusing had it not been for the saucy Hot Wing in her hand. She was standing next to the lectern at a recent Caravan, commiserating with a colleague about the credit mess and wondering if the Hot Wing was actually on her 'diet approved' list, when Tom Jacques handed her a ListingCard. Now her only clean hand was holding a ListingCard as she exclaimed, ''I use these too, they save me money and my sellers love them. Tell me about your property.''
Tom went on to educate her on the property, as she shared with him several properties she was working on, also featured on ListingCards. As a fly on the wall I noticed how easily the conversation was able to focus on the important topic at hand, getting the word out about listings that need to be sold.
Now Tom's ListingCard, now in Linda's pocket, was in 'viral-pass-around' mode, and on its way to connect with more and more interested people. This is what the ListingCard is all about, helping make a conversation about your listings easy, engaging, and memorable.

Localize to SEOize

Serious marketers in real estate are zeroing in on their local market and generating strong sales results from this strategy. Review Teresa Boardman's blog site for an example of a sales producing localized blog. Simple, clean, transparent, and accessible (folksy). Many Realtors I consult invariably refute this strategy by saying, "Why would I limit my geographical area? I'll do a transaction practically anywhere."
Of course. But keep in mind that laser-targeting your marketing area has two important benefits that naturally increase your overall marketing efforts, plus generally not diminishing the possibility of missing an opportunity.
Here's why: (1) Strictly from a 'prospects' viewpoint, a realtor who specializes in an area is going to be perceived to be the expert in that area. The more you zero-in on your target area (say, include short video's or photos in your blog or website that feature your local haunts and secrets that 'only the locals know for sure') the more the prospects will return to your site. The more they return, the more they develop a relationship with you, and the more likely they will call you to do business.
(2) Better local site content is rewarded by the search engines, and thus your site will generate more 'organic' traffic and ultimately help develop more of what happens in #1 above. Do you know what your SEO traffic patterns are? Do you know where your visitors are originating from? Do you know where they visit on your site, the most popular pages, how long they stay? Visit www.google.com/analytics to learn how to access a free site-traffic analytics service.
(3) Trust is developed when you are perceived as an expert, and your trusted relationship will carry you into other markets, beyond your imagination.
(4) Teresa has a few additional thoughts (pardon the monkey-cam):

Time Is Money - Marketing in 2008

Inman News, one of the best real estate channels of news, marketing, and technology information, has a new video from their recent gathering in New York that is worth watching.

ListingCard.Net is the fastest and easiest system for generating affordable flyers for your listings anywhere. We receive emails from agents who boast that they completed their ListingCard design in less than 8 minutes. Since we print and ship with a few days, that is an efficient use of time!

Key Points: The 80/20 Rule for Home Prices

Eighteen months ago we listened to a leading Economist from Stewart Title tell the audience that "In this new market sellers are going to have to sober up..." to the new price reality if they are going to sell their home in a reasonable timeframe. At the time we knew it to be true, but we were still drunk with the upswing of home prices and basically in denial.

What is interesting is the lower market today is broken into two levels, 80% of homes that are overpriced, and the 20% that are priced correctly to sell. In the mind of the buyer, the margin that separates an attractive price to "out of the ballpark" is thin, yet very distinct. The home price cannot be close to the "In the market" price, it has to be all-the-way "In the market".

For example, our neighbor across the street finally found a buyer after being listed for over 9 months. But it took a 20% price reduction during month 8 to make it happen. This seemed extreme until the realtor explained, "The first 17% drop in price was the owner accepting the distinction that their listing was 'On the market' and had to become 'In the market' if they wanted it to sell. The last 3% was typical negotiation."

We checked with our old neighbors who lamented, "It was frankly many months of disbelief before we realized that our home was not worth what we'd hoped. We're still disappointed about the market, but quite happy our home finally sold, and believe it was the right price."

This notion of "On the market" versus "In the market" is important to convey to sellers, and the fine line that separates them. It requires that you study the market and evaluate prices every day to best understand how to properly price the home. A careful analysis of price and condition versus the comps will tell the story.