4 Ways You Can Make More Money in a Slow Market

There are only 4 ways you can make more money in business.

1. Get more clients.
2. Sell the same clients additional homes.
3. Charge more for the services you provide.
4. Sell new products and services to your database.

That’s it.

The typical agent is typically strong in one area and it’s usually getting new clients. This works in a great real estate market. However, when the market slows down, it becomes more challenging to stay profitable. This because you’re forced to reduce the amount you invest into marketing. Less marketing means fewer clients. This turns into a viscous cycle that repeats itself, until you end up with no new clients and no home sales.

One of the best ways to out this downward spiral in sales is to think about selling new products and services to your database.

Here are a few ideas for you:

1. If you work with sellers, consider starting a “Home Staging” business.

Home staging has never been more important to get listings sold. There are too many homes on the market and staging will make your listings stand out. This really is a win/win for you and your clients, because home staging will increase the likelihood that your seller’s homes will sell AND it will help diversify your business away from sales commissions.

Lets face it, we don’t get paid to list homes. We only get paid to sell home homes. Home staging offers you an opportunity to get paid on every listing, regardless if it sells or not.

This home staging income can be used as a marketing fund to advertise for new listings!

2. If you work with buyers, consider starting a painting and remodeling business.

The majority of buyers today are attracted to foreclosures. They want to save money when the buy. Well, this presents a great opportunity for you to start a business that will help them fix up their new home. Most foreclosures need painting, flooring, landscaping and some need kitchen and bathroom renovations. You could start a business offering these services and operate as a general contractor. You could simply hire contractors to handle the work and manage the entire process for your clients. Or if you’re handy, you could handle some of the work yourself.

In fact, one of my former agents does this with his business. He helps buyers and investors find foreclosures and then he remodels the homes after they purchase them. He is super handy and can actually do a lot of the work himself. Believe it or not, he is busier now than he has ever been and each client is worth a great deal to him. Based on our discussions, it sounds like the average remodeling job runs around $4,000. This is in addition to the commission earned on the sale.

What would your business look like, if you made an additional $4,000 with every sale?

3. If you work with investors, figure out a way to offer property management services.

Thankfully, the entrepreneur who bought my real estate brokerage started property management in the business. He now manages a significant number of homes and earns management fees each and every month. Turns out, property management is recession proof. The majority of investors DON’T want to manage their properties.

The reason I suggest property management is because you set your self up to receive recurring income. This is very powerful and can have a dramatic impact on your business. Imagine how things would be if you’re property management business generated $7,000 to $10,000 a month in management fees? Would you feel pressure to sell more homes?

Probably not!

The key to adding new products or services to your business is to be synergistic. You need to find a new service that works with your particular client niche. As an example, you wouldn’t start a home staging business if you worked with investors. This is because there is no synergy. You’d have to advertise two different businesses and build two different databases.

When you offer new services that your existing clients want, you become more profitable. You won’t have to invest in marketing for your new business. You’ll simply offer the services of your new business to your existing database.

If you’d like to make more money in your business, stop trying to simply get more clients and figure out a way to make every client you have more profitable.

For a limited time, you can download Rob's new marketing report titled "Advanced Online Marketing Strategies for Real Estate Agents" for free at http://www.OnlineStrategiesReport.com

The Curse of Sameness

Have you ever been to a Trader Joe’s store? You owe it yourself to get to one, and not just for the grocery chain’s foods.

For the business lesson.

Maybe you don’t have a Trader Joe’s near your house. There are, after all, less than 350 stores in only about half the U.S. states, part of the company’s plan of exclusivity. If you haven’t been to one, let me borrow from a fantastic recent Fortune article to explain the experience:

“It’s an offbeat, fun discovery zone that elevates food shopping from a chore to a cultural experience. It stocks its shelves with a winning combination of low-cost, yuppie-friendly staples (cage-free eggs and organic blue agave sweetener) and exotic, affordable luxuries — Belgian butter waffle cookies or Thai lime-and-chili cashews — that you simply can’t find anyplace else.

“Employees dress in goofy trademark Hawaiian shirts, hand stickers out to your squirming kids, and cheerfully refund your money if you’re unhappy with a purchase — no questions asked. At the Chelsea store opening, workers greeted customers with high-fives and free cookies. Try getting that kind of love at the Piggly Wiggly.”

You can also subscribe to a Trader Joe’s newsletter, which is almost as quirky and unique as the in-store shopping experience. Whether it’s in person or via newsletter, your experience with Trader Joe’s will be completely absent of at least one thing: The Curse of Sameness.

The Curse of Sameness is a marketing phenomenon that dooms many businesses. Grocery stores a great example. There are thousands of them across this continent. Yet aside from the rare cases, such as Trader Joe’s, how do any of them differentiate themselves from any other ones?

Do you know many grocery stores that do things much different than any other? You probably don’t. They all market the same way – weekly sales flyers, mostly – and carry the same kinds of products. They tout their huge selection, their low prices or their outstanding service, or blah, blah, blah.

They all seem to want to blend in rather than stand out. They doom themselves to the Curse of Sameness.

The real estate industry is almost exactly the same. It’s not entirely our fault; we don’t learn much about effective marketing as we plow through the material we need to get our licenses. We learn by watching what everyone else is doing, then doing that. “It’s worked for years,” we tell ourselves. “Why change?”

So we pay for expensive print ads in homebuyer magazines to showcase our listings, which, not accidentally, are written just like everyone else’s listings. “This lovely, 3BR, 1.5BA home … etc.” We take the same ads that are written like everyone else’s and also put them online, on listing sites that – you guessed it – look like everybody else’s.

We send out postcards with lame slogans and our smiling picture, both to possible buyer leads and to farm an area where we just had a listing or found a buyer for somebody else’s listing. We concern ourselves with getting “Pending” and “Sold” added to the yard sign of the contract we just got signed.

Agents do what they see every other agent doing. Just like the grocery stores that simply do what every other grocery store is doing. In this day and age of real estate, however, the Curse of Sameness is particularly diabolical.

You want proof? At the end of 2006, there were 1,357,732 Realtors in the National Association of Realtors membership. At the end of July this year, there were 1,088,703. That’s almost 270,000 agents who have dropped out of the game in three-and-a-half years.

You can blame the market for their plight, but you can bet that most of those more than quarter million people didn’t leave the business because they were standing out from their competition.

The big question is, if people’s real estate businesses are dropping like flies, why is it that so many agents are STILL copying what they did?

In today’s market, those who stand out – the Trader Joe’s of our industry – are the ones who thrive. Not long ago, I wrote a great blog post about agents copying tactics that have been successful in other industries.

In the blog post, it specifically mentions Internet marketers. If you think about it, there were successful Internet marketers well before real estate agents recognized the importance of online marketing (we were late to that game, too). Yet, what most agents have done is simply copy the good old model that’s always been used in print and attempt to transfer it online. Wouldn’t it make more sense to take what we’ve already seen working online and adapt that to our real estate businesses, rather than the other way around?

The reason most agents can’t see the benefit in this is because of that stupid curse. The sooner you recognize it, the better off you are. To succeed in the game nowadays, you must rid yourself of the Curse of Sameness.

Stand out. Be different. Don’t blend in.

Maybe even try a Hawaiin shirt.

There’s an extensive report that shows how real estate agents can differentiate themselves from their competition with one simple lesson. To get a copy of this report for free, visit www.FreeFarmerReport.com.

Marketing Case Study: Fishing with Captain Gus

Several years ago, we took a vacation to Lake Norman, North Carolina. We rented a nice house on the lake. My oldest daughter had asked if we could go fishing on the lake. I hadn’t fished since I was a kid. Too busy working . I did what any other guy (sissy guy) would do; I looked to hire someone to take us fishing. A real guy would have figured it out by himself. Not me. I’m no Bear Griles.

I went online and searched for fishing charter in Lake Norman. Here is what I found in Google:



Notice the top two websites listed out of 233,000 different possible websites. They both direct visitors to Captain Gus’s website. Capt. Gus is mentioned in the title line of both websites. I also searched “fishing Lake Norman” and guess what? His website was the first website listed in the organic search listing. This simply means he gets tons of free traffic to his website. I would venture to guess that he gets over 50% of the traffic for Lake Norman fishing related searches. He probably got the top spots from numerous incoming links to his website.

Below, I have included a snapshot of Captain Gus’s home page. Notice all of the different pages or links on his website. If you have any interest in fish or fishing at Lake Norman, you’ll more than likely end up at Gus’s website. You can find information on just about anything within one or two clicks. Oh, don’t miss his book, which he sells for $8.95. His book is really just a compilation of fishing stories. I haven’t read the book, but I’ll bet they are funny and entertaining. Each one is also probably an indirect testimonial for his charter fishing business.



After visiting Gus’s website, I remembered reading about him in the local Lake Norman weekly newspaper. I had subscribed to this paper and had it mailed to me in Ohio. I wanted to learn as much about the Lake Norman area, because we were thinking of moving to the area. So I went and checked a few of the Lake Norman Times weekly newspapers and sure enough, there was an article from Captain Gus each week. Here is a copy of one of his articles from the “Lake Norman Times” newspaper:



This article is a masterpiece in marketing. Remember, this is an article, not an advertisement. I don’t know if he pays for this or not. If I had to guess, I would bet that these articles are free for him. This small newspaper needs content and I'm sure they are happy to receive articles from Gus. Let’s study Gus’s article in the weekly paper:

1. Headline is around “safe boating.” This is a big deal on the lake because of boating related injuries during the busy summer months. The headline is sure to draw in readers who own a boat.

2. The article includes Gus’s picture with the phrase “Fishin’ with Gus.”

3. He includes 13 short pointers for boating safety.

4. A section titled “Tips from Gus”

5. The “Upcoming Events” title promotes a free fishing seminar he will be hosting at Gander Mountain.

6. He includes “Hot Spots” of the week so you can find where the fish are biting.

7. Last but certainly not least, there is a large picture of a father and son holding a big fish they caught with Captain Gus. Simply awesome!

This article has everything you could possibly want. He is positioned as the fishing expert for the area. A happy client picture proving that he can help you catch fish and have a great time. The hot spots of the week is designed to get you reading his article each week to see where the fish are biting. And finally, he markets an upcoming free fishing class that he will be teaching.

It truly is a marketing masterpiece and should be copied by anyone looking to grow their business. (THIS MEANS YOU!) This newspaper article follows a similar format from week to week, which means he has a template for writing articles. You should have a template for your newsletters or marketing emails.

I ended up calling Gus and hiring him to take us fishing. It was November and the weather was terrible. We had to buy warm clothes for our little fishing day. Gus picked us up on his boat at the dock of our rented house. He had everything we would need, fishing rods, bait, snacks and beverages. We spent a few hours on the lake with about 8 fishing lines in the water without catching a fish. My daughter was getting bored, so we started to head back.

Gus wasn’t happy about leaving without a fish. I could tell that he has a personal rule when fishing with customers. The trip doesn’t end until you catch a fish. Low and behold, we tried a new area and we caught a fish. Our little journey was complete.

During this time, I had the opportunity to talk with Gus. He had some great stories. I learned a great deal. As it turns out, he was a retired corporate guy who enjoyed fishing. He started a fishing charter on the side and it had grown each and every year. I wonder why?

He even had a few different fishing crews. If he was personally booked for a day, he had other people lined up to take you out for the day. His little business was setup to deliver income even if he didn't work.

During this fishing trip, I learned that Gus was part of the Safety Commission for Lake Norman. He was concerned about signs on the Lake. These signs get damaged and/or disappear from weather or vandalism causing safety issues on the lake. He talked about meetings with the mayor and city council and he knew everything going on around the Lake. In simple terms, he was connected which I bet is extremely helpful for his little fishing business. Our trip ended and we headed back home. I often thought about Gus and how he turned his hobby into a lucrative business in retirement.

Since this first vacation to Lake Norman, we've been back several times. On our second trip, we rented our own boat and I had planned to take on the lake without Gus’s help. Our first stop was to Gander Mountain to get our fishing licenses. We also needed bait and some fishing equipment. Remember, I’m a sissy man so I don’t have any of this stuff myself. As we walked into Gander Mountain, I noticed a large sign offering a free fishing class. Guess who was teaching this class?

Captain Gus.

We then got everything we needed and we headed to the checkout line to pay. At the register, I noticed a stack of business cards offering fishing charters.Whose cards do you think I found?



One of the items we purchased at Gander Mountain was a detailed fishing map of Lake Norman. I have scanned part of the map in for you to review. See if you
can find Gus? Hint he is next to Waldo…



Well, did you find Gus? I did. I have reviewed this map thoroughly and didn’t see any other advertisements. His advertisement was the only one. It doesn’t even look like and advertisement, does it?
So, what can we learn from Gus? A lot:

1. Be everywhere your prospective clients are. Gus’s marketing is everywhere someone thinking about fishing would go. If you go fishing in Lake Norman, you’ll hear about Captain Gus one way or another. Do you have the same name recognition Gus does? Will someone thinking of buying, selling or investing in real estate in your area see your marketing? They should.

2. Get connected. Get involved with city council or other community related activities. When Gus told me about his involvement with the Safety Commission, he obtained instant credibility. He knew things other fishermen wouldn’t know about the lake. You should know things about your area that other real estate agents don’t know.

3. His website included information that other websites would link to. His website includes food recipes, weather related information, funny stories, online shopping, pictures and more. His website is the center of fishing in Lake Norman. This attracts many incoming links which help him obtain high search engine ranking.

4. Because he is connected in the community, he was able to get a weekly fishing column in the local newspaper. His weekly column is a masterpiece in marketing. Consider submitting 3 or 4 articles including any photos to your local newspaper. Tell them that they can run these articles whenever they want. Profile your clients in each article and tell their stories. Let them know that you would be happy to provide a weekly column for free. If you’re articles are good, who knows what might happen.

5. He uses pictures of happy clients in everything he does. Keep a camera with you and collect as many photos as you possibly can. These photos can be used in many ways: website, newspaper column, marketing funnel, free classes.

6. Host free classes. Market these free classes in your weekly newspaper column. If you can’t get a free column, consider copying Gus’s article and paying to have it run as an editorial each week/month.

7. Get local businesses to market your free classes. Gander Mountain benefits from Gus in several ways. The first way is that Gus promotes Gander Mountain in his weekly newspaper article. It is the location of his free classes. They receive direct plug each week in his article. He also promotes Gander Mountain on his website. Go back and look at his website above. See the Gander Mountain logo on the top left-hand side? Gander Mountain can promote Gus’s classes to all of their customers giving value added services. Finally, anyone attending one of Gus’s classes has to walk through their store. They get free foot traffic through the store every time Gus teaches a class. It is a win/win business relationship.

8. Look for areas to advertise where you won’t have any competitors. Gus advertises on the Lake Norman fishing map. Where do buyers, sellers and investors look for real estate information in your area? How can you advertise in these places? Be creative. Think outside of the box.

Bottom line: Gus is one smart business man. He knows more about fishing for customers than most business people do. On the surface, most people think Gus is a fisherman. In reality, he is a marketer.

For a limited time, you can download Rob's new marketing report titled "Advanced Online Marketing Strategies for Real Estate Agents" for free at http://www.OnlineStrategiesReport.com

How My Assistant Stole $57,000 PLUS Four Ways You Can Prevent This From Happening To You

Back in February, I had a meeting with my accountant and my bookkeeper to discuss the various tax returns we had to file for 2009. My accountant started asking some questions about one of my businesses. The finances for this business were handled by one of my long-term employees who left in 2009. My bookkeeper wasn’t able to answer my accountant’s questions because various bank account statements were missing. We looked everywhere for these bank statements, but couldn’t find them. Finally, we requested the missing statements from the bank and paid to have them pulled from archives.

The statements received from the bank showed several online transfers into my employee’s personal bank account. All totaled, these transfers were in excess of $57,000.

I was obviously alarmed by this and sent my former employee an email asking why there would be over $57,000 transferred into their personal account. The response I received indicated that they weren’t able to transfer the money into the business’s savings account because it wasn’t available online. The employee indicated they transferred the money into their account and then moved it into the businesses savings account.

Makes perfect sense, right?

Needless to say, the savings account statements were missing, too. So to speed up the process, I asked this person to show me the money being transferred from their account back into the business’s savings account. A day or two later, I received copies of this person’s bank statements showing online transfers from their account into the businesses saving’s account. Thank god!

To be safe, I decided to request all of the missing saving’s account statements from the bank just to make sure everything matched up. When I finally received these statements, I couldn’t find corresponding deposits. I took all of the statements to the bank to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Believe it or not, my former employee sent me factitious statements of their account showing fake transfers into the business’s savings account.

The money was never returned.

This person stole over $57,000 and then tried to cover it up. The hardest part of this is the betrayal. My wife and I felt sorry for this person and included them in holiday dinners. We sent this person on vacations at our expense. We even paid for a dinner reception after their father’s funeral.

This person was stealing money from us the entire time. This person was recently charged with grand theft, which is a 4th degree felony and will probably do time. I share all of this with you because I’m hoping to prevent something like this from happening to you. I made a few costly mistakes, which allowed all of this to happen.

Here they are:

STUPID MISTAKE #1: This employee had check signing privileges and access to the business’s online bank account.

It was very easy for this person to transfer money out of the account. For every other business I own, I’ve personally signed all of the checks. This was the one business where I delegated check signing. Never, ever delegate check signing. This includes delegating to partners and/or employees. You should sign every check personally. I know it’s not convenient. However, it’s vitally important if you’d like to keep your money!

STUPID MISTAKE #2: The bank statements for this business were mailed to the office.

As you know, I work mostly from home. This employee was the first one to get the bank statements. In fact, I never even saw them. Even worse, I didn’t have access to the business’s bank account online. I had no idea what checks were written or what money was transferred out. I completely trusted this person. Shame on me.

Believe it or not, all of the other bank statements for every other business I own, are mailed directly to my home. I’m the first person to open them and can see everything flowing through the account. You should be the first one to receive and open your bank statements. If they go to a partner or employee, you’ve opened up the opportunity for theft. Simply change the mailing address for all of your bank accounts and have them sent where you’re the first person to open them.

STUPID MISTAKE #3: Make sure all incoming money comes directly to you.

In my various businesses, money was sent to my office. This includes my rental properties, too. Tenants would mail their rent to my office or would drop it off in person. And in many cases, tenants paid their rent in cash. My employees had access to this money and could redirect it into their own accounts. Today, I have a P.O. Box and I’m the only one with a key. All incoming rents, checks and other payments are now sent to this P.O. Box and I’ve eliminated the possibility of theft.

STUPID MISTAKE #4: I felt sorry for this employee.

Every single time I’ve felt sorry for someone, I’ve been burned. This has happened with tenants in my rental properties and it has now happened in business with one of my longest, most trusted employees.

I realize this sounds terrible, but you cannot allow yourself to feel sorry for an employee, a business partner, or anyone else you do business with. You have to take emotion out of your business decisions. If you want to help other people, do so outside of your business.

Please understand that what I’ve shared with you applies to business partnerships, rental properties and your employees. Anytime your money is accessible by someone else, you have to pay attention and you have to exert control over key areas.

I’m not suggesting that you handle the bookkeeping for your business. Paying bills, preparing financial statements and balancing your checkbook is not a good use of your time. You should definitely higher a competent bookkeeper to handle these activities for you. However, you should still manually sign every check. You should have the banks statements sent directly to you, not your office. You should also remove access to all incoming checks or payments. My bookkeeper didn’t handle this one business. My employee did. I broke my own rules and suffered a significant financial loss.

Don’t read this article and think this can’t happen to you. It can and will, if you don’t set things up properly.

How to Be Innovative in Your Real Estate Business

In order to bring innovation to your business, you must learn...

To study other successful businesses OUTSIDE of real estate and apply what they’re doing INSIDE real estate.

Please take a minute and read this sentence again – it’s critically important.

This is easier said than done because we have a tendency to look inside our industry and copy what we see. When you first get into real estate, you look for agents who appear to be successful and you copy them – right? I did it! Hell, every new agent has done it, too.

The problem with this approach is zero innovation happens in your business. To make more money, sell more homes and dominate your market, you need to be innovative. You need to stand out by doing something different.

A great example of finding something successful outside your industry and applying to your industry would be fractional jet ownership. This style of ownership wasn’t invented by companies selling smaller jets. They simply copied it from the real estate timeshare industry and applied to it to jet sales.

Several years ago, I copied something I saw outside of real estate and used it in my real estate business, and it had a dramatic impact on my business. I was participating in several memberships and coaching programs designed to help me improve my business. Each month, I paid a membership fee for access to information. This fee was charged directly to my credit card.

It was obvious how powerful this recurring monthly income was to the businesses offering these memberships and coaching programs. My goal was to do something similar in my real estate sales business.

My plan was to create a club of real estate investors and charge members a fee to participate. Each month, we would provide special expert interviews, a lengthy detailed newsletter with investing tips and strategies, special classes and more. I launched my membership in November of 2004 and had over 100 paying members by the end of 2005. When I sold my business in 2007, we had well over 400 members paying $29.95 a month. This membership provided over $12,000 a month of recurring income and doubled our home sales annually.

Some people have called me a genius for what I did. But in reality, any agent could have done the same thing simply by copying what they saw outside of real estate.

I’ve included this little story to show you the power of what’s possible when you look outside of the real estate industry instead of inside the real estate industry. The topic of this special report is Advanced Online Marketing strategies, and to be innovative with online marketing, we must look outside of the real estate industry.

So where do you go to find innovative online marketing strategies that you can apply to your business?

Internet Marketers

Internet marketers make their living online by selling information products. They live and die by their websites and follow-up marketing.

Internet marketers are constantly testing new strategies. More importantly, they’re tracking their results. This tracking allows them to see what works and what doesn’t work. It’s very powerful.

By copying internet marketers, you leverage their testing, tracking and knowledge of online marketing. And when I say copy, I don’t mean to copy their copyrighted or trademarked material. I mean to copy their process for selling. Their process for selling online can be very, very valuable to your business.

Here are just a few things Internet Marketers track in their online marketing:

1. Every advertisement they run and how well it drives traffic to their website.

2. The conversion percentage of every web page they have online. (The number of people visiting a web page vs. the number of people who fill in their contact information)

3. Which email subject lines work the best?

4. What time of day is best to send emails to get them opened.

5. How many people watch videos they post vs. how many take action after watching the videos.

Do you track these things in your online marketing?

Probably not.

The good news is you can leverage their testing and tracking by copying their online sales process in your business.

This article is continued with detailed examples in my new report titled "Advanced Online Marketing Strategies for Real Estate Agents" which can be downloaded for free at http://www.OnlineStrategiesReport.com

How to Use Sales Letters to Automate Lead Conversion

Sales letters have been my most valuable marketing tool in ALL of my businesses. The reason why is because they are automatic sales machines that work 24/7. They are extremely valuable assets that can be leveraged simply by generating more leads. Sales letters are powerful lead conversion tools and should be used by every real estate agent to automate their lead conversion.

A few weeks ago, I released a free report titled “Advanced Online Marketing Strategies for Real Estate Agents.” In this report I suggested copying businesses outside of real estate. A sales letter is something I watched other businesses outside of real estate use and decided to copy this strategy inside real estate.

I decided to write a sales letter for my real estate business. The goal of my sales letter was simply to convince my prospects that I was the best agent for them. I wanted to eliminate my competition and pre-sell prospects on my real estate services. This sales letter ultimately generated millions of dollars of commissions to my real estate business. Needless to say, I’m a BIG fan of sales letters and use them extensively today.

The good news is you don’t have to be a great marketer to write a compelling sales letter for your business. Winning sales letters follow a proven template and you can easily write a compelling sales letter for your business, if you follow this proven template.

Here’s the proven template you should follow when writing sales letters for your business:

1. Grab the readers attention with a compelling headline.

2. Highlight the big problem the person faces.

3. Agitate the problem further.

4. Provide a solution to the problem. (This solution would be your services!)

5. Present your expertise and why you’re qualified to provide the solution.

6. Show the prospect what they’ll receive when using your services.

7. Provide testimonials to back up what you’ve promised.

8. Include a clear call to action to get the prospect to respond.

9. Add scarcity to create urgency.

10. Reverse the prospect’s risk by adding a guarantee.

This sales letter template is proven throughout history in almost every industry and is something you should copy in your marketing.

How to Use Content-Driven Marketing

You probably heard the buzz in the news recently when President Barack Obama made a commencement speech at Hampton University in Virginia. The president made headlines in the media, which portrayed him as anti-technology because of something he said about a handful of electronic gadgets. Here is the part of his speech everyone’s talking about:

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.

Class of 2010, this is a period of breathtaking change, like few others in our history. We can’t stop these changes, but we can channel them, we can shape them, we can adapt to them.”

Now, if you’ve followed the president at all you’d know that he is not anti-technology. Much was made when he was elected about his giving up his precious Blackberry. He also gave the queen of England the gift of an iPod on a visit there. He wasn’t saying the devices are the problem.

What he was saying about messages in the media, however, was underscored by how the media seized on that part of the message. What he was saying to the graduates was that education should help them sift through the distracting messages, that the “spin” put on information out there needs to be processed thoughtfully. As if to prove his point, there were dozens of “Obama hates Apple” headlines that followed.

Technology has re-shaped information for centuries; the printed word did, radio did, TV did and, more recently, the Internet has. With each change has come a challenge for the audience, which is increasingly asked to believe more subjective, even contradictory, information.

For example, I recently read on a news aggregation website two headlines about the same story. One said: “No ‘frenzy’ to beat homebuyer tax credit deadline.” The other headline said: “Selling frenzy as homebuyer tax credit nears end.”

What is a reader supposed to believe?

The way consumers have been bombarded with information has changed the way marketing works. The messages that were once sent to consumers to “buy, buy, buy” aren’t received the same way. The sales pitches are hitting an audience that is mistrustful and skeptical of information, and so they are often ignored.

It’s why content-driven marketing has become so important. The best marketers are the ones who are providing less-overt, information-driven messages to their prospects. They are the ones who are able to package their marketing in a manner of delivery that is helpful to their customers – or prospective customers – and also builds the trust factor. It’s why we have blogs, Twitter accounts and do article marketing. We want people to get to know us.

Content-driven marketing is effective because:

• It gives you the ability to be timely, to capture the “buzz” surrounding current events
• It can be constant and consistent because it’s not a hard-sell
• It allows you to shape your message in the context of the news
• It can be delivered in a number of ways
• It builds your credibility

Actually, content-driven marketing is not any big leap from the old marketing adage “Don’t tell them; show them,” it’s just that in this day and age, we have to “show” them the benefits we provide in the form of content they can digest and appreciate in this day and age of information overload. They don’t want to hear you say “I can find your dream home,” or “I can sell your house,” they want you to SHOW them that you’re the expert, and the person they can trust.

Prospects and clients are starving for a reliable source of information they can trust; it’s up to YOU to be that source. It’s a mistake to let other media shape your message.

Just ask President Obama.