It's interesting to see how many expensive full-page real estate ads featuring homes and agents in any newspaper that fully miss the golden opportunity to go beyond the basic marketing effort. By offering a simple line of text to capture the attention of the reader, the results from the ad would yield stronger results, maximizing the effectiveness of the investment.

Major franchises spend thousands of dollars on full color pages featuring the photos of agents, their production volume, sprinkled with a few select housing opportunities. The cost of these major print media extravaganzas have continued to be high and remain impossible to track direct business leads as a result. This traditional format probably will not end anytime soon, however, the effectiveness and profitability factors will soon be hard to ignore as the baby boomers children come of buying age…and go to the Internet before reading a newspaper.

So why don't our newspaper ads offer a compelling reason to go to our websites for service and information? In many cases the only attempt to offer web information is a solitary URL under the company's name and phone number. Although this is a step in the right direction, it is often not inviting or enticing enough to prompt a reason to visit the website.

Today's Internet Empowered Consumer(tm) is seeking information on their own terms, and when they want it, to get truly valuable information specifically related to what they actually need at the moment….risk free! This is the key and only the first step to driving activity to your website.

Capturing the actual lead, servicing the request, and using electronic follow up to maintain the relationship by offering value-added services and information is the secret to making any printed collateral marketing or advertising programs. This is the difference between spending a ton of money for “exposure” and translating exposure to solid prospecting opportunities.

This first step directs the prospect to your website whether the prospect is currently interested in listing or selling property. By incorporating a unique option for information or a report that virtually anyone would find interesting, makes the investment of a printed ad, classified or otherwise so much more valuable. We are still compelled to use traditional marketing, like ads and direct mail, to please our customers and clients and to span the gaps between those individuals using the Web and those that still migrate to a newspaper or magazine. The powerful difference is to offer additional information that invites the prospect or viewer to more choices that may better suit their needs for wherever they are in the decision making process.

Offering reports like, “The 5 top ways to improve your property”, or “The 6 Steps to increasing value through home improvements”, would appeal to a spectrum of viewers, even if at that moment they were not in the immediate market to buy or sell.

Once the view arrives at your office on the Web, the second step keeps them there to secure any myriad of additional services and information. It is at this point that a well designed web presence can turn viewers into real leads and finally a money-making experience. Your web must be equipped with a tool that will capture the prospect's e-mail address to begin building customer service and eventually secure a client for life. Your website should be functioning as a virtual 24-hour office assistant working as a full time prospecting tool. By directing prospects to your website from your printed marketing materials, you truly begin purposeful prospecting while meeting and exceeding the new 21st century consumer requirements. Many agents have websites, but sadly there are only a few really performing in a way that produces profit and service.

Check out websites that offer back end services, or work stations. If you already have a website and are looking for this additional service, check out the new product, wwwMyPro.com which comes from the iProCenter.com Company. They have designed a “back-end” web solution that “snaps” on to your present web presence to enhance and organize your communications. The MyPro system incorporates the e-mail capture capability combined with multiple AutoResponders that disseminate reports to prospects and notify you of the incident. The database begins building automatically and you can now perform “warm follow-up” with a purpose and the offering of additional contact with an easily editable “drip-system” at an affordable price.

Published: April 10, 2002

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