Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Brian breaks down some mail advertising pieces and gives some tips as well.

Transcription

Advertising advice and expectations.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I want to talk really about how to apply the principles that we’ve been talking about over this past week. All the last few videos and podcasts I put out had to do with a plot had to do with really the basic principles.

Now I want to take some of that and apply it and show you how so much comes down to both expectations and tracking. So first off, let’s talk about expectations you have to know what you expect to get off of your advertising.

Otherwise, you can determine whether it was successful or not.

You can just wait and see what happens but if you’re doing anything more than that at all in regards to either advertising or word of mouth or anything else, it sometimes it’s tough to be able to track it and know where one started and the last one ended and to really know if it was worth your effort and money to do it.

So I’m going to give you an example that direct mails are a fun one because it’s one of those that really can be tracked. And you can really good a good get a good idea as to whether it worked or not. Or my favorite things to send out as postcards.

Here’s a postcard, this is from a local lady who’s doing real estate and I don’t get that many real estate postcards or letters or anything.

There are hundreds of it and probably close to 1000 Real Estate people that cover this area and it’s a small area but there are tons of them there’s everyone in their brother’s a real estate person but very few of them advertise directly.

So I got to first off give her name is Suzie. Give Suzie props for putting this out now we’re going to talk about what worked in this and we’re going to talk about what didn’t work but once again this has to do with expectations.

You know and whether you’re tracking it if you’re tracking it and you’re getting back more than it was necessary to be able to constitute it working then you keep doing it you find a way to keep getting it out there or get it out to a broader audience or what have you.

I don’t know why I was placed on the list but here it says thinking of selling your home.

Okay so there’s the headline, it’s not super clear yet. I’m not sure if you can read it from where you’re at. It’s not super bold white on a dark background doesn’t do as well as a dark color or black on a white background.

The little picture of a teacup and some flowers, there’s not a chair but there is a little watermark symbol.

I just happen to know that I believe this is dream time the website that you can purchase and if you don’t purchase it there watermark stays on there so that’s that doesn’t look that hot. I’ve just noticed that now for the first time I didn’t notice it the first time.

Not that that’s going to deter whether people are interested or not but doesn’t say anything about a home I mean obviously this is on the inside of a home but besides that, and it’s a little beat up.

One of the letters fell off here but it says call for your complimentary market analysis. So that’s the basic pitch that’s what they’re going for. They want you to make a phone call.

See what your home is worth today, John L Scott real estate. So this is the main site and then you’ve got the address side and the rest of the copy here which is interesting.

That says if selling your home is on your mind, or you just want to know its current value, I would be happy to help.

I believe in old-fashioned customer service call me to receive your no-obligation market analysis and her phone number.

Suzy Matney PC broker-owner license in the state of Oregon or phone number and her website, there she is right there. And then it says something about you know, some offices are independently owned and operated.

If your home’s currently listed with another broker, please disregard this letter, all this type of thing that you probably have to do legally, if not ethically.

So pretty typical yet typical picture name of the real estate company. And that’s it. It’s a very straightforward pitch. And let me talk about what works or what does work.

She’s got a call to action, she’s got more than one way to contact her. If you don’t want to use a phone, you go to her website and go specifically to her. Not just someone else at the real estate office, which is good.

And I didn’t go to the website to see what the presentation is there that can matter to you got to make sure you are asking for something very specific. But this is specifically asking for people who want to sell their homes.

Now, what are the chances that she’s going to get my business versus all the other people that never asked me?

If I was interested in selling my home, if she caught me on the day or week, this might pique my interest?

If I paid attention to it long enough. There’s not a whole lot drawing you in here. It’s pretty boring, pretty straightforward.

There’s no glitz or glamour, but maybe that’s all that’s needed.

Once again, expectations come to, does this produce the results?

Is she getting people contacting her because of this piece or does she have to send out multiple amounts to be able to build up familiarity?

This is the first time I remember seeing her now maybe we’ve been I apologize if that were the case. But this is the first time I recall seeing her in regards to real estate and selling homes.

There’s a lot of things you could do you could do, you can have a little bit more standout pictures. It could be it could stand to be a little uglier.

Honestly, I mean, if it were more ugly, bolder, you will get more attention that way. If you offered something for free to be able to, I mean, seeing what your home was worth, for the most part, I would think that most people would know that you’d be able to look online to get a lot of estimates like that.

Maybe they don’t and maybe this works great. Once again, it comes down to expectations or tracking. And what are the results are what you want them to what I would test against this is maybe a little bit more to the offer, maybe offer, you know, see all that off the top of my head, I can’t come up with an offer right off the top.

But there are so many more different ways of doing this. This is very bland, but don’t throw off bland. bland may get the job done.

That’s the real question, in the end, is whether it gets the job done and what you expect back from it. And whether you’re planning to do more than just one so I’ll let you know if we see more from Suzie.

Suzie, I recommend continuing your direct mail out there to the community because you’re one of the only ones that I’ve seen this certainly in the last few years.

So hopefully that’s helpful to you in kind of taking some of those principles that we talked about and kind of reverse engineering them based on a piece of advertising that we saw, hey, I want to also recommend my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business if you have a business if your business owner or an executive in charge, and you want to make things completely competition proof is my book.

You go get yourself a copy off amazon.com or anywhere books are sold or you get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll be back here tomorrow night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.