Real Estate Signs - War Horse of Marketing

Related article: Ordering Yard Signs Online

In "olden times" cavalry soldiers would brag about the reliability of their horses, and the number of battles their horses had weathered. Today, we still use the expression "war horse" because of this, and I can think of no better way to describe real estate signs as a form of marketing.



In fact, aside from basic word-of-mouth marketing, I would say the real estate sign is the absolute oldest from of real estate marketing. As long as properties have been bought or sold, there have been people putting up signs to direct traffic toward the sale.

So as a publisher of real estate marketing advice, I thought it was time I gave some much-deserved respect to the real estate yard sign ... that bastion of property promotion. I would like to begin my tribute with a brief poem.

How the real estate yard sign catches one's eye,
How it shines and sparkles like the sun in the sky,
Not glitzy or glamorous but getting things done,
Unsung but faithful until the contract is won.

Thank you, thanks a lot. Please hold the applause. There is still more to come.

What to Love About Real Estate Signs

Okay, so they're not as glamorous as a brand-spanking-new website or a glossy brochure. But real estate yard signs get the job done! That's just one reason not to forget the fundamentals. Here are more reasons...

• When compared to consumable marketing materials like paper flyers and postcards, yard signs are more environmentally friendly. Buy them once, and you can use them over and over again.
• Real estate signs are a proven way to drive traffic toward your listing. Just the other day, I went astray upon entering my neighborhood because of a "for sale" real estate sign on the corner. Just curious!
• Yard signs are relatively easy to produce. After all, there's not a lot of complexity to them. These days, you can even design a real estate sign online ... I've seen at least three companies offering this sort of thing.
  

So I've spoken my piece now. I have paid my respects to this great pioneer of real estate marketing. When was the last time you said thanks to your real estate signs? It's okay. You can do it when nobody is looking. Next time you visit one of your listings, just give that sign a little pat on the head and say, "Good job, little sign. Good job."

Credit Articles for Your Real Estate Website

I've recently published two new credit articles to educate home buyers on the importance of good credit in today's economy. I invite you to republish either (or both) of the articles onto your real estate website to educate your own audience.

You are free to republish these articles with the standard guidelines for syndication -- please keep the articles intact and include the author's note / hyperlink at the bottom of each article. Here are the complete publication guidelines.

Here are the new articles that are available for republication:

Credit Score Needed for Buying a Home in 2008
An explanation of the connection between credit scores and home buying success. A must-read for any first-time home buyer who wants to qualify for a mortgage loan and get a good rate on that loan.

Repairing Bad Credit - And Conquering Confusion
Did you know that credit repair is one of the most popular topics within the realm of consumer finance? It's true. So let's examine this topic and hopefully eliminate some common confusion along the way.

Hope you find them useful. More importantly, I hope these articles help you educate your readers toward home buying success!

New Real Estate Agent Marketing

I'm a new real estate agent and I want to know where to spend my marketing dollars. What is the best type of marketing for an agent who is new to the real estate business?

I cannot tell you how many times I get emailed some variation of this question. But this is not a question I could even begin to answer for a total stranger. Real estate marketing for new agents will vary from one person to the next, based on such things as:

• The agent's background, unique skills, etc.
• The level of competition in the area
• The agent's marketing goals and intended audience

These are three of the biggest variables, but there are many more. So it's impossible for anyone to say that new real estate agent marketing should consist of this technique or that strategy. A thorough analysis would have to be performed to flesh out the three criteria listed above, among other things.

With that being said, there is one aspect of marketing that new agents should definitely include in their "arsenal" ... that's online visibility.

Web Marketing for New Agents

This is the only aspect of marketing I feel comfortable recommending to 100% of new agents 100% of the time. The reason is obvious: Everyone goes online when researching real estate in their area!

People like to throw statistics around like "84% of home buyers use the Internet" and other random numbers. Stats aside, we all know the truth ... if you're a new real estate agent without a web marketing strategy, you're going to have a hard uphill climb ahead of you.

So when I am asked what a new real estate agent marketing program should consist of, I offer the following advice:

It depends on the agent and his or her market, but the one thing the agent absolutely must have is search engine visibility. With a highly visible web presence, a great burden is lifted from the agent's shoulders in terms of marketing effort and cost.

Of course, it's not easy to achieve good search engine ranking. Search engine optimization / SEO takes time and effort. So people often ask, "Is SEO worth all of that effort?"

Let me answer that question with another question. How great would it be if you got a steady stream of inquiries from prospective clients, day in and day out? It would be worth a lot, wouldn't it? Then it's certainly worth the effort to pursue a search engine optimization strategy as part of your agent marketing program.

Lastly, let me offer you a path to better search engine rankings. Actually, I'd like to offer two paths ... one for the do-it-yourself agents, and one for everyone else:

• For the do-it-yourself types: My guide to real estate SEO
• For everyone else: My SEO services for agents

If you found this guide to new real estate agent marketing helpful, you might also want to check out this article I wrote on the subject a couple of years ago.

Website Maintenance Service for Real Estate Agents

We now have a Client Services Manager with the company, and this frees me up to offer a broader range of web services for real estate agents. The latest addition to our services lineup is web maintenance.

Most of you are aware that we also provide expert SEO services to help you boost your search engine rankings. But what if you just need some minor changes done to your exiting website? What if you just need to remove some outdated content or add an image to your photo gallery?

We have developed our website maintenance service around these very situations.

The Need for Web Maintenance

These days, it's common for real estate agents to have a website built by one company and then later migrate away from that company. Maybe you no longer needed their services, or maybe they were charging you an arm and a leg for every web maintenance task.

Whatever the reason, there are a lot of real estate websites out there without webmasters to maintain them. The result, of course, is outdated web content and other concerns. That's where our website maintenance service comes into the picture.

Let's say you had a website built five years ago by some company that's not even around any more. Web development firms come and go quite frequently, after all. And now you just want some small changes made to the website, but you don't want to pay some high-end firm a ton of money to perform basic maintenance. This is where we can help.

Our web maintenance services are affordable and efficient. We charge a flat rate of $55 per hour, for most types of work.

Some of what we can do for you:

• Updating content on web pages or adding new pages
• Adjusting navigation to reflect new content
• Creating photo galleries / adding photos to existing galleries
• Graphical work to create buttons, improve website appearance, etc.

So if you have a real estate website that has been "languishing" without a webmaster for some time, and you need some basic web maintenance to freshen things up, please contact Melissa with Client Services.

Republish Our Credit Guide Onto Your Website

In the wake of recent economic troubles (and here the phrase "mortgage crisis" comes to mind), I have created a home buyer's guide to credit and posted it over at the Home Buying Institute.

Better still, you are welcome and encouraged to republish this tutorial onto your real estate or mortgage website, as a public service to your own website visitors. You can publish parts of the tutorial, or the whole thing. Your choice.

Have a look and see what you think:
The Home Buyer's Guide to Credit

I think you'll find that it's very informative and helpful to any home buyer with questions about credit (credit reports, scores, maintaining good credit, how it affects mortgage qualification, etc.).



At the top of the tutorial, there is a link for instructions on republishing the piece. To make it even easier, I've put some comment tags into the HTML code for the page. That way, you can just copy everything between the "Start" and "End" tags and paste it onto your website.

5 Reasons to Republish the Tutorial

1. Because we are currently suffering an economic crisis partly as the result of uninformed consumers ... consumers who did not know enough about credit or mortgages when they signed on the dotted line.
2. Because it's one of the most comprehensive guides to consumer credit ever created within a single web page.
3. Because it's extremely easy to republish onto your website (given the fact that it's a single self-contained page of information).
4. Because it will add value to your website.5. Because it will make your website visitors more inclined to trust you (since you are so obviously concerned for their financial wellbeing).

I hope you find it useful. Let me know if you have any questions.
-Brandon