Josh F. Sanders asked:




You spend a majority of your day driving around town, showing houses, going on listing appointments, meeting with clients, checking out comps and going to open houses and broker’s opens. Prospects are going to see your vehicle everywhere you go so why not leverage that to your advantage and turn it into a marketing machine?

Vehicle wraps for Realtors are becoming more and more popular. There are a few similar products so let’s go over the main 3. First and cheapest aren’t exactly vehicle wraps for Realtors but they get lumped in the same category. They’re car magnets. Companies will design a huge magnet for you, maybe 1 ? ft. by 1 ? ft. in size. You can put your ad or website or whatever you want on it and slap it on the side of your car. In my opinion, I think they’re a bit cheesy and unprofessional, especially compared to vehicle wraps for Realtors. They don’t quite give of the vibe you want to prospective clients. The benefits are that they’re cheap and you can take them on and off when you want. I’m not saying don’t use them. Just know the image you’re conveying.

Second is a window decal. With car windows, you’ll see people use their name, company, website, image, etc. as the decal. They are similar to magnets in that you can customize the piece as well as remove it but still not as professional and slick as true vehicle wraps for Realtors. Some decals permanently adhere to the window and others are a removable film. You can pick the style you like best. The decal is on the inside of your window rather than the outside of your vehicle, as with the magnets. You can get creative and customize the font style, color and size of the text.

That brings us to real, true vehicle wraps for Realtors to use. You essentially “wrap” your vehicle with the advertisement and design you choose. It could be a small wrap or design that only goes down the side of your car horizontally or it could literally wrap your entire vehicle all the way around. It all depends on your budget, style and what your spouse thinks about revamping the family vehicle. Vehicle wraps are the most expensive of the options but definitely the most unique, professional and eye catching.

With all 3 options, the point is to catch people’s attention and direct them to your site or phone. That’s the goal. Not to have them see another Benz or Ford Focus drive by. Grab their interest, reel them in and tell them what to do. This should go without saying but make sure you have your logo or name on whichever product you choose. Keep it consistent on all your marketing. Make sure you make everything big enough for people to read and give them either a phone number to call (make it easy to remember) or better yet, a short website for them to visit.

And please, do me a favor and make the size of the text you use big enough to read if I’m further than 1 foot away from it. The worst thing in the world is spending money on some advertising that nobody can even read. Some people don’t like this marketing weapon because it draws too much attention. That’s how I am. I just don’t like so much attention. But the name of the game as an agent is to stand out, draw attention and use that attention to your benefit.

Sure, plenty of people will stare at you in the grocery store parking lot. But guess what? They’re going to know who you are, that’s for sure! And that’s what we want to have happen. The goal is for people to know who you are and remember you. If you’d like to try out a car magnet, I’d recommend VistaPrint.com. They’re inexpensive, professional and you control the design process.

If you want to go with a car decal, try JavaSigns.com. You can order online and don’t need an installer to come out to your car. Makes it a bit easier and less expensive. As for car wraps, I’d go with CarWraps.com and check out their portfolio. They have dealers/installers all over the country. Again, car wraps are the most expensive but it’s for a reason…They get better results! Don’t forget, if you’re going the car wrap route; be sure to check with your spouse beforehand. You don’t want to be sleeping on the couch because you didn’t get the “ok”.

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Todd Temaat asked:




Now’s Your Chance to Beat Your Local Competition Online

In a 2009 VistaPrint study of small businesses, it was discovered that 46% of small businesses don’t even have a website for their business. And, to make matter worse, a Discover Small Business Watch survey found that 45% of the entrepreneurs interviewed didn’t think they needed a website either.

This is a huge window of opportunity for local businesses that truly catch the vision for online advertising! For years, advertising locally meant putting an ad in the local paper or phone book. If you had the money, you might produce a radio or TV commercial or program. But now, you can quickly an easily reach your target audience at little or no cost…and you can get a head start on the 45% of your competitors that don’t see a need for it.

Paid versus Free/Low-cost Advertising

There are two broad categories of advertising. Whether you’re talking about offline, traditional ads or online ads, your choices are free and paid. The difference is in the online world, free advertising can be as good as or even better than paid ads. The drawback in the past was that free online advertising took longer to take effect. There was no way to begin advertising this week and see a result next week. But that’s changed. And you don’t have to be an internet marketing expert to take advantage of it.

You should think of local online advertising as a funnel…just like your offline advertising efforts. The point is to be in as many places as possible and to provide your potential customers the information they’re looking for so you can begin building a relationship with them. Once they know who you are, you can continue building the relationship to the point they decide you’re the best company to meet their needs.

Maximizing Your Leverage

To be most effective, your free or low-cost online advertising funnel be based around your own web site augmented by thorough, complete profiles in each of the local search engines.

To have an effective local search listing, you need to go into Google Places, Yahoo! Local, and Bing Local and make sure the information they have for you is correct. If they don’t have you in their listings already, you can easily add your information. You’ll want to make these profiles as accurate and complete as possible. That way your customers will be able to get most of their questions answered even if you don’t have your own web site to drive them to.

In addition, you should go back to check your local listings in all the search engines periodically to make sure they stay correct. They have a tendency to change over time because Google and the other search engines find what they call ‘citations’ for your business all over the internet…and sometimes those citations are wrong. In other cases, one of your competitors might be trying to highjack your listing. By periodically checking the profiles, you can catch both of these situations easily.

You Site Can Be a Lead Generating Machine!

If you have a website, you need to turn it into a direct response, lead generating machine. If you don’t have a website online right now, you need to get one quickly or your online advertising will suffer. The biggest mistake most small businesses make regarding their website it trying to make it pretty rather than functional.

When it comes to websites, functional means it’s useful for your customers and effective for you. Customers need to be able to get information about you, your business, and your products or services. But you also need to give them specific, relevant, timely information that helps them solve problems in their lives and not just info about you or your products/services. Keep the site’s focus on the customer and their problems, not your business or products.

Functional for you means you need it to generate and collect leads so you can follow up with them. The easiest way to do this is to make sure each page on your site has a single goal. Before you write each page, you need to decide what it is you want your customers to do after they read that page. And then maintain that focus as you write.

By making your website the central focus of your online marketing efforts and supplementing it with a thorough local search campaign, you’ll be on the first page of Google quickly and (relatively) easily; without worrying very much about search engine optimization.

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