Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category:
Written on January 21st, 2010 by adminno shouts
A business card is such a basic element of just about any business, that most of us don’t give it a second thought. We get them printed up and hand them out like crazy. However, when you work virtually, as we do, it’s not easy to hand someone a business card. So we all have websites, and Facebook pages, and LinkedIn accounts…you name it, we’ve got it! But do most of us have a virtual business card?
I came across just such a virtual business card yesterday. The website is BusinessCard2 and it took just a few minutes to put mine together. It holds a great deal more than any paper business card! Not only does it have the basics, such as name, business, and contact information…it also has a location for business description, experience, and much more. It accepts up to 10,000 characters for those descriptions…so you can express yourself in great detail!
The information is condensed in a size comparable to a paper business card, with little buttons that bring up the various bits of information. The card can be given as a link, or it has code that allows you to embed it in your website. (Which I think is pretty neat!)
The best thing about it is the price…it’s totally free and the website says it will continue to be free. Time will tell on that, especially since it’s in Beta form, but for now at least it’s a bargain!
A virtual business card will certainly never replace a paper business card when dealing with people face to face, but if you are looking for something to take its place in the virtual world, BusinessCard2 may be just the thing you want.
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REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA. Contact us today for more information!
Written on January 17th, 2010 by adminno shouts
Recently we attended an all day webinar through Virtual Rebarcamp and learned great information about marketing real estate agents, as well as ourselves. One of the sessions I attended was titled “The 7 A’s To Building Your Business Online & Offline” hosted by Darin Persinger. Because of his experience as a trainer and coach in the real estate industry, the session was very valuable.
Below are highlights of this great information. It outlines strategies to use when building your business.
- Audience – Know them! Who are they, where are they located? For example, if you are an agent in Manhattan, your blogs are probably not going to reference planting a garden in your fenced back yard. However this may be appropriate for the agent blogging in a small town in North Carolina.
- Availability – Make it easy for your audience to contact you. Make sure your phone number, email and office number are on each page of your website. Some agents have an area of the website where the user can click a button and immediately contact the agent. Even if the lead gets a voice mail, that is okay. As long as the call is promptly returned.
- Approachable – Does your audience feel like they can contact you? When you first obtain a potential client/lead, do you make it known they can call you any time and there are no ‘stupid questions’? Generally with potential clients, you will give more at first and expend more effort. Do not get discouraged if they don’t respond at first. Be friendly and cooperative. And most important, be patient.
- Acknowledge – EVERY email, every facebook interaction, every twitter @, every voicemail. Time is important to people. If they take the time to write or call, even if it is 120 characters on Facebook, acknowledge that.
- Appreciate – There are 9 billion web pages and 200 million blogs out there today. There are also 6 billion tweets. There are so many places your clients can go to get information, or referrals, or real estate agents. Appreciate your clients. Time is even more precious than money because it is non-renewable. How do you say “thanks” to your clients or to people that refer clients? How do you acknowledge them?
- Authority – People use the market leader. With so many options, they want someone that knows what they are doing and has their act together. Be confident. Learn it…share it!
- Authentic – Be you! Not everybody will click, so there is no point in spending time being disingenuous or being someone you are not. Get involved in social media like Facebook, and be yourself. Most people can see through insincerity. They want someone that is going to be genuine and honest.
Some of these tips are pretty useful and some are common sense. But still a great reminder. Hopefully you’ll find them helpful as well!
Written on January 4th, 2010 by adminno shouts
Today we are attending Virtual Real Estate BarCamp and are so excited to learn more about marketing our clients as well as other useful topics. 
Some of the topics include “7 Secrets To Facebook Page Success”, “Twitter Essentials for 2010″, “15 Ways to Make Your Marketing Mobile”, “Branding Boot Camp” and “How To Leverage The Power Of Social Media In Real Estate”. There are at least twenty other webinars as they are running four simultaneous webinars all day long, with 28 speakers. I was glad to see one of the topics “The Value Of Adding Posterous.com To Your Online Tool Belt” since I recently blogged about Posterous. It is assuring to see a leader in the industry confirm a social media platform that I also think is worthwhile.
Some of the speakers are very well known and I am thrilled to be able to learn from them. You may also recognize the names. Susan Adler is a top agent in New Jersey with $50M/year in sales. In 2009 her business was 80% ‘repeat’, ‘referral’ or ‘reputation’. It will be interesting to hear what websites and marketing strategies she uses to maintain this!
Tara Jones is an Emmy™ award winning journalist and licensed real estate agent who co-owns Reel Productions TV. She will discuss tools that give unlimited exposure to agent’s listings. Drew Meyers from Zillow.com is hosting a webinar as well as Brad Inman from Inman News. There are many others but not much time to list them all because the webinar starts in just 45minutes. (9am PST, noon EST).
The website to attend is VirtualBarCamp.com. However if you cannot make it, we will be blogging about everything we learn. Just visit REVATS.net often for updates!
Facebook is incredibly popular. Everyone has heard of it. Many people have a Facebook page. And many of them are even active on it! Now that you can update it from a variety of sources, including your cell phone, the activity on Facebook is tremendous. In fact, Christmas day set a record for Facebook—it was the most visited website on the net! It even beat out Google!
What do people do on Facebook? Well, they keep up with their friends, they make new friends, they play games, they promote political and social causes, and they expand their business connections. Just about anything. Facebook is a place that people “live”.
Businesses are finding that the free advertising they get on Facebook is more effective than thousands of dollars of television or print advertising. We have long known that word-of-mouth is an effective way of getting business. Facebook is, in large part, word-of-mouth (err…hand?) marketing at its best.
Here is how it can work. Shelley goes on Facebook to knock out a few more “Mafia enemies,” and while she is there she thinks about her upcoming house hunt. She has browsed houses online quite often, but she wonders if there is a local Realtor on Facebook. So she searches for one. And sure enough, she finds one! Let’s say the Realtor’s name is Jim. Shelley becomes a fan of Jim’s business page and begins to get great updates about real estate in her area. When Shelley becomes a fan of Jim’s business, every one of her friends sees a nifty little update about her, it says something like “Shelley became a fan of Jim’s Real Estate.” Shelley’s friend Mark is also thinking of buying a house in the future. He sees Shelley’s update, and clicks on the link to Jim’s page. Mark likes what he sees, so he also becomes a fan of Jim’s page. Mark’s status is updated to reflect this, and his friend Peter sees it and clicks….well you get the idea. Once the first fans have been found, a business page can spread like wildfire!
Who are the people in your area finding when they search for Facebook business pages? If you aren’t on Facebook, then someone else is getting fans—and customers—that could be yours!
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Looking for some help getting started? The virtual assistants at REVATS are experienced “Facebookers” and enjoy setting up business pages, managing fans, posts, etc. We would love to have you become a Facebook fan of ours!
Written on January 1st, 2010 by adminno shouts
Happy New Year! Now is the time for lists, lists, lists. There are lists highlighting everything from “worst dressed celebrity of 2009″ to “top political stories of 2009″. People like to review the previous year, and make predictions for the new year. Some of the most helpful studies were ones regarding social media marketing strategies. Maybe some of these findings will help you formulate a plan on how you will use social media in 2010. Or if you need help setting up and using these sites and platforms, please contacts REVATS and let us help! We have a full social media marketing package to help get you started.
According to eMarketer, the number of people who use Twitter has increased by over 200% over the last two years, and 2010 shows a predicted increase of another 44%. According to their study, an estimated 26 million adults will be using Twitter in 2010. I recently blogged about the effectiveness of Twitter. I was a ‘hesitant convert’ and didn’t necessarily understand all the hype. That is until I started using Twitter. If you do not use it, you must!
Email may be the first form of online marketing, but it is still an effective form according to Bizreport.com. They predict more integration between email and social ad platforms. A good example of this integration is Posterous.com which I blogged about earlier. Bizreport.com also released a study that 40% of email marketers plan to increase their email marketing budgets in 2010. Another study on this same site concluded “email remained the most popular media among marketers for use next year (56.8% “realistically” plan to use it), social media isn’t far behind. Over half (56.3%) “realistically” plan to include it in future marketing plans.”
Ad-ology.com wrote the “Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010” and this states lead generation is the biggest benefit of social networking. Small businesses rated Facebook as the most beneficial site. The forecast continued to say awareness of social media is high but nearly one-half of respondents wished they knew more about how to use it.
If you are one of the people that need help utilizing these sites, please consider using REVATS. There are a variety of packages available to get you started with social networking.
Check back to read more on recently conducted studies on internet marketing.
Written on December 9th, 2009 by adminno shouts
The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) Program is a recent supplement to the Making Homes Affordable Program that was implemented earlier this year. HAFA was released November 30, 2009 and provides additional options to avoid foreclosures plus also offers incentives to borrowers and investors who utilize a short sale or deed-in-lieu.
This plan goes into effect April 5, 2010 and ends December 31, 2012. Borrowers who have mortgages through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, as well as those held by 14 mortgage servicers, including the five largest fall under these new guidelines. The plan also provides incentives to borrowers. If you complete a short sale you will be released from all mortgage debt and receive $1,500 in moving expenses. The plan allows the borrower to obtain a pre-approval for short sale conditions before their home is put on the market. Currently, servicers will not discuss acceptable terms until an purchase contract has been received.
HAFA has also streamlined the documents used during a short sale. One standard set of documents will minimize the complexity of short sales and the time it takes to complete a short sale. Caps have also been set for payments to subordinate lien holders (second mortgages). Previously these mortgage companies wanted large payments to release their claim, thus blocking a successful short sale. Another change is that lenders will now have only 10 days to approve or reject a short sale once a complete package is presented.
There are many more changes that you can read about in the Home Affordable Foreclosures Alternatives guidelines. REVATS has helped real estate agents with marketing and closing short sales. If you would like help in this process, please contact us.
Written on August 25th, 2009 by adminone shout
Part 2 of TopProducer and Your Virtual Assistant
Managing a mailing campaign can be a full time job. Don’t even bother trying to send a different email or letter to a handful of your leads or contacts every day! That is unless you have TopProducer as your database.
TopProducer is not only a lead management tool, it also is the perfect tool for setting up, maintaining, and implementing mailing campaigns to all of your leads and other contacts.
You can use the standard action plans that come with TopProducer, personalize these in minor or major ways, or even develop your own 100% unique plans. Within the action plans are not only to-do lists and reminders for you, but also emails tailored to specific types of campaigns.
Let’s say you have three new leads that come in to you today.
The first one is a seller lead that looks pretty promising. After contacting her and doing everything you typically do, you can set her up in TopProducer with an action plan specifically for your “best” seller leads.
The second lead is a buyer that gives an email address, but no phone, not even a last name. Chances are this lead is just window shopping, but hey, window shoppers are dreamers who do eventually end up buying…and you want them to call on you when they are ready! So you set this lead up with a drip email campaign that will last for a few years, sending them an email every month or two.
Your third lead is a buyer that claims to be pre-approved, has a decent down payment, knows what they are looking for, and has even sent you the links to some houses they like. So you jump on this lead, and in the meantime you get them set up with your best action plan for buyer leads. And while TopProducer works behind the scenes…you do your thing on the front line!
These email campaigns aren’t your typical long list of call me, call me, call me emails. Most of them are a series of educational notes about various topics of interest to home owners or home buyers. Sporadically throughout them are emails emphasizing why they should use you as their real estate agent. The idea is to build their trust in your expertise and knowledge.
I would recommend that you go through the campaigns you use the most and update them for the current market situations, your local market’s quirks, and even your own personality. They are standard emails and while written well and in a personal tone, they might seem very out of place or totally “not like you.”
When its time to send out holiday greetings or open house notices, you can do that from within TopProducer as well. Simply create your email or letter, choose the individuals or groups you want to send it to, and voila!
If you do choose to do actual snail mail campaigns on some of your action plans, TopProducer has another service, LivePost, you can subscribe to which will automate the actual mailing of these letters for you. The cost isn’t much more than your actual cost would be, including postage, paper, and time.
Best of all…no matter what action plan or type of mailing you choose, every completed task, email, and marketing piece is attached to the lead you sent it to. So later on you can look back and see just what you have sent to this person. And you can keep detailed notes of all your interactions as well.
For all of your TopProducer needs, a virtual assistant is the perfect choice to “manage your management software.” A virtual assistant can enter your leads, keep your database clean, personalize your action plans, perform many of your daily tasks, and mail any physical letters that you don’t submit to LivePost.
If you are looking for someone to help you get started with or maintain TopProducer, give us a call. REVATS specializes in TopProducer related tasks and can get your leads in tip-top shape.
—Kim, virtual assistant with REVATS
REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA. Contact us today for more information!
Written on July 3rd, 2009 by adminno shouts
You have mastered the art of selling homes. You use all types of mutli-media, including several web sites, virtual tours, social media marketing, etc. But have you tried selling your town?
Ask yourself why would anyone want to live here? Look around from the perspective of a new resident, what do you see? What are the best features of your town. The best small things that only locals see?
Drive around, take pictures of places that are of interest (not listings), show off your community. Ask your local friends what they think is the best selling feature of your area.
What would you do if your community was a listing? It essentially is. When locals are house-hunting they typically know the community already and are truly looking for a house, and perhaps would want to know about the surrounding neighborhood. But what about those who are relocating for work, family, or retirement? They may have a new job in a location within easy commuting distance to your town. But there are so many communities for them to choose from. Create a website that will say “You WANT to live here in Mytown, USA!”
Keep in mind the seasonal differences…when are the best features of your town the most attractive? Do you have maple trees that turn glorious colors in the fall? A massive tulip garden in a local park? A golf course with bright green grass that may be brighter in the spring than any other time? A community pool that is full of happy children in mid-summer? An ice-skating rink on a busy December evening with twinkling holiday lights surrounding it? It may take you an entire year to catch the best aspects of your town in their seasonal glory, but just think of how you can build out your community pieces in that time frame.
Don’t forget the things that you see as everyday, just-the-way-things-are, places and events in your town. Even something as mundane as a children’s playground at a fast food restaurant could be a selling point. (You would be surprised at the number of towns that don’t have that!) The stuff of everyday life is the stuff that will make a home shopper feel like this could be a great place to call home.
You could also consider featuring a guest blog by the mayor or chamber of commerce president. Or invite a local school to submit entries for blog posts and reward the best ones with a $5 gift card to McDonald’s or some other kid-preferred place, then feature these blog posts for a truly unique perspective of your community!
For another media twist…add video to your community info! You can do this yourself if you are video savvy, or you can have someone assist you in it. (Do you have a teenager? This might be a good bonding activity to do with them!) Just be sure that it is YOU who appears in the video.
You can also get your community involved in this. Does your town have a festival or other community event? Set up a video camera and invite your fellow town folk to talk about what they love about your town, and invite home searchers to join them as a citizen.
Are you interested in hiring a virtual assistant to help you with this? We currently have virtual assistants who are “local” to the following areas: North Carolina, Georgia, & Missouri. We also have connections around the country and we may be able to locate a blogger that is local to your area. We can also help you with posting your own content, editing and polishing your video, etc. Contact us today for more information!
REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA.
