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.