Why is marketing so important in real estate investing?
Why Marketing?
To put it in simple terms there are two things to consider here; marketing, and selling.
Selling, or making the sale, is everything involved with getting agreement; getting the seller on board with your offer and his/her ink on paper.
Marketing, in general, is what is in front of selling and making the sale. It incorporates advertising, lead generation, direct mail, and whatever else is necessary to make the phone ring; everything that leads up to getting in position to make a sale. In our case, making a sale is actually purchasing a house. What we are doing really is selling the homeowner on the offer we are presenting them.
With everything that leads up to our making the sale (so to speak) with the homeseller, we have two ways we can go. We can do it the hard way, or we can do it the easy way.
The hard way, the way we are all familiar with, and how real estate investing has always been done in the past, is to randomly go out and contact sellers and end up on phone with, or in front of, someone who is highly likely to be skeptical, resistant, difficult, who is essentially afraid of you, and doesn’t trust you.
Under this circumstances, the job of selling is very hard. And is it any wonder?
This is only one step away from the old-time vacuum cleaner salesman who knocks on the door, jams his foot in the door so the prospect can’t close it, gets in the house and then wrestles the person to ground, ripping the money out of their pocket and forcing their hand on the paperwork to sell the vacuum to them.
Its an adversarial relationship, it’s a constant slog, and its very hard work. (Sound familiar?)
The thing about this leads to burnout is that its incredibly repetitive. You are physically saying the same things over and over again, and having to clear the same hurdles over and over again. So selling this way becomes as much manual labor as working on a chain-gang.
On the other hand, we have the easy way for us to make our sale. What is required if selling is going to be easy, is for us to make sure that when it comes time for us to be in front of a seller, that they (the seller) be the opposite of what we described in our seller above.
The seller must view you as someone they can trust rely on. Your positioning must be such that they look up to you as something of an advisor or a consultant; more like a doctor or a lawyer than someone who is trying to sell them something.
With this relationship between you and the seller, you will have near zero price resistance and almost no objections, and selling your offer to the homeseller will be easy. It will be more a matter of taking care of the details than actually having to make the sale.
This is the position you want to put yourself in to make it easy for you to make your sale.
Notice “position” is what the big difference is between these two scenarios. And positioning is the thing that creates the different perception of you in the sellers mind.
Positioning is of critical importance in marketing and is what will probably present the greatest challenge to you with your marketing. It will present a challenge to you because it requires you to change your thinking about how you see you, so you can change how your sellers see you.
As we will discuss later, we embrace positioning and magnetic attraction of motivated sellers, over prospecting and the pursuit of sellers. This is the paradigm shift that requires the change in thinking on your part, but makes all the difference in the world.
When you position yourself, you stay put and tell the rest of the world, “Hey, this is who I am, this is what I do. You want what I got, then you come to me.”
Ok. Very ballsy. Very brave! However, once you have positioned yourself, and vowed never to chase a prospect again, you are now confronted with the reality that you have to attract people to you to do any business. And you are not going to attract people to you unless you deliver a message that resonates with them and gives them a reason to call you.
First; who do you want to attract? Who are you targeting? Second; why should target seller prospects do business with you?
Remember, all of your prospective sellers have selfish motives and really don’t care about you and your business. If you think they do, or should, snap out of it! They don’t.
So, when your marketing does reach your most desired seller prospects your message must capture their attention and convey how they will receive more benefits from you than any other home buyer in town. Otherwise, why would they call?
The message we are talking about here is called a Unique Selling Proposition, or USP.
Your USP (your message) must answer the question all seller prospects are asking (consciously or unconsciously), “why should I do business with you over all other options I have, including what I am doing now, or nothing at all?” It must make an emotional connection. It must be concise and must convey what it is about your business that will bring emotional gratification to the sellers in your target market.
To put it in simple terms there are two things to consider here; marketing, and selling.
Selling, or making the sale, is everything involved with getting agreement; getting the seller on board with your offer and his/her ink on paper.
Marketing, in general, is what is in front of selling and making the sale. It incorporates advertising, lead generation, direct mail, and whatever else is necessary to make the phone ring; everything that leads up to getting in position to make a sale. In our case, making a sale is actually purchasing a house. What we are doing really is selling the homeowner on the offer we are presenting them.
With everything that leads up to our making the sale (so to speak) with the homeseller, we have two ways we can go. We can do it the hard way, or we can do it the easy way.
The hard way, the way we are all familiar with, and how real estate investing has always been done in the past, is to randomly go out and contact sellers and end up on phone with, or in front of, someone who is highly likely to be skeptical, resistant, difficult, who is essentially afraid of you, and doesn’t trust you.
Under this circumstances, the job of selling is very hard. And is it any wonder?
This is only one step away from the old-time vacuum cleaner salesman who knocks on the door, jams his foot in the door so the prospect can’t close it, gets in the house and then wrestles the person to ground, ripping the money out of their pocket and forcing their hand on the paperwork to sell the vacuum to them.
Its an adversarial relationship, it’s a constant slog, and its very hard work. (Sound familiar?)
The thing about this leads to burnout is that its incredibly repetitive. You are physically saying the same things over and over again, and having to clear the same hurdles over and over again. So selling this way becomes as much manual labor as working on a chain-gang.
On the other hand, we have the easy way for us to make our sale. What is required if selling is going to be easy, is for us to make sure that when it comes time for us to be in front of a seller, that they (the seller) be the opposite of what we described in our seller above.
The seller must view you as someone they can trust rely on. Your positioning must be such that they look up to you as something of an advisor or a consultant; more like a doctor or a lawyer than someone who is trying to sell them something.
With this relationship between you and the seller, you will have near zero price resistance and almost no objections, and selling your offer to the homeseller will be easy. It will be more a matter of taking care of the details than actually having to make the sale.
This is the position you want to put yourself in to make it easy for you to make your sale.
Notice “position” is what the big difference is between these two scenarios. And positioning is the thing that creates the different perception of you in the sellers mind.
Positioning is of critical importance in marketing and is what will probably present the greatest challenge to you with your marketing. It will present a challenge to you because it requires you to change your thinking about how you see you, so you can change how your sellers see you.
As we will discuss later, we embrace positioning and magnetic attraction of motivated sellers, over prospecting and the pursuit of sellers. This is the paradigm shift that requires the change in thinking on your part, but makes all the difference in the world.
When you position yourself, you stay put and tell the rest of the world, “Hey, this is who I am, this is what I do. You want what I got, then you come to me.”
The More You Chase A Seller, The Faster They Will Run Away!
Ok. Very ballsy. Very brave! However, once you have positioned yourself, and vowed never to chase a prospect again, you are now confronted with the reality that you have to attract people to you to do any business. And you are not going to attract people to you unless you deliver a message that resonates with them and gives them a reason to call you.
First; who do you want to attract? Who are you targeting? Second; why should target seller prospects do business with you?
Remember, all of your prospective sellers have selfish motives and really don’t care about you and your business. If you think they do, or should, snap out of it! They don’t.
So, when your marketing does reach your most desired seller prospects your message must capture their attention and convey how they will receive more benefits from you than any other home buyer in town. Otherwise, why would they call?
The message we are talking about here is called a Unique Selling Proposition, or USP.
Your USP (your message) must answer the question all seller prospects are asking (consciously or unconsciously), “why should I do business with you over all other options I have, including what I am doing now, or nothing at all?” It must make an emotional connection. It must be concise and must convey what it is about your business that will bring emotional gratification to the sellers in your target market.
posted by benji at 6:46 AM
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