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news & marketing tips — November 21,
2005
Three common
marketing mistakes ... and how to correct them
As a mortgage
broker, you're constantly trying to get into the heads of your
prospects to learn what will prompt them to contact you instead of
your competition. However, as Julie Ryan, a real estate marketing
expert based in Australia, explained, there are several common
mistakes made in the process.
Here are three of
the most common mistakes Ryan said real estate professionals make in
their marketing efforts:
Trying to be all
things to all people.
Every mortgage broker wants to be known as the expert in their area
and they often promote themselves as just that in their marketing.
The problem? So is every other broker in their area.
Instead of
marketing yourself to everyone in your community, Ryan suggested
developing multiple lines or niches in your business and sending
marketing to the prospects that would fit that niche best. For
example, send out a separate marketing piece to first home buyers,
refis, vacation home buyers, reverse mortgages, etc. This way, you
differentiate yourself from the other mortgage brokers marketing in
your area because prospects will identify you as the broker who
specializes in the type of loan they're interested in.
Sending out
marketing too frequently
—
or not frequently enough.
According to Ryan, sending out marketing too often causes
what she refers to as the "Wallpaper Effect." This happens when the
recipients of your marketing will become so used to receiving
something from you that it's no longer effective. And while monthly
campaigns are effective for keeping in touch with past clients,
they're useless for new prospects. Why? Ryan says it's due to the
innate human characteristic we all have: Every three weeks we tend to
forget everything that isn't absolutely important to us.
So how often should
you send out your marketing? "If you haven't sent something at least
three times in three weeks to your new prospects, you're wasting your
money," she told attendees at her session. That way, your prospects
have the opportunity to go through three very important stages in
brand recognition: Curiosity ("Who is this postcard from? What do
they want?"); Recognition ("It's another postcard from that mortgage
broker."); and Remembering ("Oh, That's from the mortgage broker who
specializes in first home buyers like us."). That doesn't mean you
should send out marketing every week; rather, Ryan suggests sending
out a postcard or e-mail once a week for three weeks and then stopping
for a month, and so on.
Inconsistency.
Many real estate professionals make the mistake of being too
inconsistent with the frequency they send out their marketing, or the
medium in which they send it (e.g. e-mail, postcard). The result?
Your prospects won't make the connection that you are the one sending
them the marketing piece.
If you send out a
newsletter or report to past clients, make sure it's sent on the same
day every week or month, so your prospects will learn to expect it.
If you have a logo, motto or other recognizable characteristic of you
or your company, make sure it appears on every piece of marketing that
you send out.
Our XSellerate marketing solution
can help you avoid these common mistakes with its automated marketing
capabilities and large library of professionally-written e-mail and
print ads. You schedule when and how often you want your
marketing to go out so you're in constant contact with clients and
prospects. And you don't need to find time to write ads because you
already have a complete library of customizable ads for every occasion
and every type of client.
Click
here
learn more about XSellerate and how it can help you manage your
marketing efforts better.
How to write
effective web content
As you know, your
XSite comes with more than 75 (20 for XSites Standard level)
professionally-written content pages. You can edit them as
needed to make them more personal or more geared towards your market.
But you may also want to write your own content pages from time to
time. But writing content for the web is different than writing an
essay for English class. Web surfers rarely read web pages word
by word; rather, they scan the page, picking out individual words and
sentences that appeal to them.
Because you only
have a few seconds to grab your visitors attention on the web, here
are some tips on writing effective content pages:
-
Reel them in with
a good headline. Grabbing your XSite visitors' attention with a
compelling headline is the most important ingredient to good website
content
— and it can often be the most difficult part to write.
When writing your headlines use words that appeal to your target
market and remember the age-old K.I.S.S. formula: Keep it short
and simple.
-
Use the inverted
pyramid style. Treat your content page as a news article and
provide a summary of your information in the first paragraph so your
readers will know the direction of your discussion.
-
Write as though
you're having a conversation with your readers. You're not
writing to impress, you're writing to communicate so keep your
sentences simple.
-
Use the active
voice not a passive one. For example, instead of "I know I
will be able to find the right loan for you" say "I will find the
right loan for you."
-
Add subheads and
bulleted lists to break up your copy and make it easy to scan.
Eliminate fluff.
Avoid using filler sentences that do not contribute to your
discussion.
Proof read!
Spelling or grammatical errors in your web copy make your site look
unprofessional and will likely turn off your visitors. Read the copy
out loud or have someone else to proof read it. And don't rely
on spell check as it won't pick up errors that may have been spelled
correctly, but do not make sense in the copy. (For example, if you
wrote "This it a loan for home owners who have built equity
in their home" instead of "This is a loan for home owners who
have built equity in their home").
To add your own
content page to your XSite, go to Step 6 in your Wizard, click on
the "Custom Pages" tab and click on "Add A New Page." You can
write your content on the page using our robust editor that includes
everything you might see in a word processing program like Microsoft
Word. Plus, you can also add your own images, outside links,
Flash files and other media files with just a few clicks! |
