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How to use clients video success stories to sell more REO’s

// April 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // REO Agent | REO Broker

One of the most powerful and underused tactics in online marketing is using video testimonials from your previous clients; investors or homebuyers who bought an REO from you and were happy and grateful for the good service you provided throughout the transaction.

Think of it this way: whatever you choose to say about your business is a powerful Act 1 of your online marketing.

Act 2 is about your clients telling your new prospects, the people who don’t know you yet but they are watching your online RockStar You video profile on YouTube right now and are getting very close to calling your right now and setting up an appointment and then all of a sudden they watch and hear a video feedback from two past clients who just told the world in a from-the-gut-authentic fashion on how happy they are with you and how they cannot wait to buy another REO from you.

That is an extremely powerful way to convince prospects to do business with you.

Good feedback said to you during a closing is great but useless for your online marketing efforts. You need that energy, that one great testimonial, that one client’s success story, that one client happy satisfied feedback on video and spread that online video everywhere your new prospects are found.

Ask for Action not for Applause

// April 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // REO Agent | REO Broker

Your video should be created to make an action happen with the people who are watching it online right now.

A phone call to your office to come and see you.

A faxing of a pre-approval letter to you.

A visit to your office to meet you personally.

Emails to ask for more information about a particular REO listing that you currently have featured on your property.

Join your fast growing email list?

What do you want a REO buyer want to do NEXT?

I see a tremendous opportunity wasted everyday by people who make videos but don’t understand the marketing creative that goes behind professional online video. When you have my 100% attention – don’t waste it. Ask me to move toward doing business with you.

Facebook is not just for the young anymore

// April 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // REO Agent | REO Broker

Every time I say the word, “Facebook” in front of a REO pro: the first thing I hear right away is that “well that is for young people.”

Wrong. So wrong.  All the new growth in Facebook is coming from people who are not in 20’s anymore.

There is a reason, a profitable business reason why we promote your RockStar You video on Facebook. That is where you future REO buyers are found online today.

How to keep in touch with your past buyers online

// April 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // REO Agent | REO Broker

I was recently talking to a good friend of mine who is a mortgage broker and he said something to me that just stuck in my head – he said that I hate Facebook, although I am getting 3 to 4 deals every month out of them.

I have been wondering about that remark for a while now. Why hate something that is making you couple of thousand of dollars every month on a regular basis? Gets you name out to hundreds of people who belong to your “Facebook Friends” personal networks – all without spending $1?

Why do entrepreneurs say things like these?

Is it because they don’t know how to use these new tools or is it because they are frustrated on yet-one-more-thing-to-learn idea?

One of the hardest things in a REO broker life is to keep in touch with past clients to get referrals. Sending them postcards, letter, trinkets is fine but it does not motivates anybody to sit down and actually email your website to the 300 other people who are on their email list, some of which might be the qualified cash buyers that you would love to become your clients also.

You can accomplish this and much more with a business fan page on FaceBook and putting in place a marketing strategy to promote it to your existing clients and new prospects.

In my experience, all real estate investors tend to hang out online with other real estate investors. Amaze 10 of them and you cut throw all the Adwords clutter that your competitors are snared in. It is here that you can keep in touch with your past clients, and they in turn keep in touch with you plus you get word of mouth to spread about your company and services to other investors (local or not) that your clients are friends with on Facebook.

We believe in this so much that we actually setup a business fan page for all our new clients and then help them implement a marketing strategy to promote it to their existing clients.

My good friend is wrong about Facebook. Hating a website with 200 million users? There is no profit in that.

How to get in front of out-of-state buyers for your REO inventory

// April 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // REO Agent | REO Broker

Back in the days, before real estate investing went mainstream, before the Internet, before Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube, your typical REO buyer was a local guy. Like live-close-to-your-office local. Your county level local.

Detroit buyers came from Detroit and surrounding suburbs. Chicago buyers, St.Paul buyers, and Nashville buyers – they all come from local cities. Nashville had no interest in Detroit. Detroit had no interest in Durham.

And then the real estate condo gold rush started in Florida and Arizona and it became a cool fashionable thing to buy real estate in other “hot towns”. California and the east coast exploded in upward prices. There were no REOs there anymore and the ones that were available were priced crazy high.

The real estate boom ended but the REO market has been changed and changed forever for good. And now you have buyers coming from everywhere. Online social networks where local-REO-envy takes place (“What? You can buy a home for $10,000 in Detroit? I can’t even buy a garage for that in Socal.”) also worked to feed the fire.

I am in metro Detroit Michigan and we have people flying all over the country, sometimes even from across the nation from England and Australia buying REO properties for cash. That by the way has been going around for almost four years now. But Detroit is not alone in this. San Francisco has bus tours of investors coming in from China. And everybody who has some cash and a sun fetish is looking online to find that dream condo on the beach in Florida or in a desert valley around Scottsdale.

How do you think these international and non-local buyers are using right now for finding the REO brokers that they are doing business with?

What tool can you use to convince and impress your new prospects that you are the best, most experienced reo agent that they work with?

The most powerful bullet is online video. Because it gives you chance to showcase everything that can convince them to do business from you, from a distance: yourself, your team, your experience, and your brand.

You get to tell your story the same way you would if somebody was visiting your office but now you get to do it 24/7, to thousands and thousands of new prospects over and over again, all over the Internet.

How to become that third place in your REO buyers mind

// April 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // REO Agent | REO Broker

I love Starbucks. My morning does not starts till I have gone there and picked up my coffee with two espresso shots. Even when they are not doing well, like right now, they impress me. I have ready pretty much all the books written about their business practices and interestingly enough Starbucks mission has always been about becoming the third place in their customer life.

Home. Work. Starbucks.

So how can your REO agent website become the third place in your clients life?

They get up in the morning, check their email, check out Twitter / Facebook and then they check your website out.

Every single day, seven days a week. (I have walked to Starbucks in rain in downtown Cleveland; drove in snow storms in Michigan when you could not see past your pinkie)

Do you think that you make that happen? It is not easy and probably not the money or time investment that it would take but know that right now there are more people online but some place else than your website.

They are not coming to you. You got to go to them. Your online marketing needs to be portable so it reaches your prospects, your future clients on their location.

I like online video apart from its story telling ability because it is portable. WE can create RockStar You^TM video profile of your REO business, strategically place it on your website but then also make a major push to put in front of thousands of new eyes which are looking for somebody like you right now.