If you are a real estate professional, marketing yourself can also feel like a pretty thankless job. You catch my drift, right?



You entered real estate possessing the sincere desire to assist the public. But it didn't take long to discover if no one knew who you were or how to contact you, your career was not going far. Because without a continuous flow of new business, real estate agents will shrivel up and die.

Time flies so I am not surprised that two years have passed since I sold my house. It was my turn to accept help. I needed a real estate agent. I was about to become a seller.

I won't delve into why but suffice it to say, I needed to move. That's why even though the real estate market had taken a turn for the worst, I proceeded with listing our home.

I mention this because the rest of what you are going to read here is not based on theory. It is from my personal experience which I hope can be of assistance to readers.

Like I already mentioned, I needed a Realtor to list our home. The professional who referred her buyers to our mortgage company on a daily basis was my obvious pick because I knew first hand how conscientious she was. I appreciated the willingness of the agent I chose because I knew it made her nervous to list our home. Talk about feeling scrutinized.

Marketing practices had changed since the last time I sold a house. After all, thirteen years had passed. Real estate marketing had moved to the web using virtual tours. To update myself, I requested a market analysis and marketing plan from my Realtor.

Well, I was right! Things had changed. Throughout the process of marketing our home, I certainly discovered a thing or two. And I dare say our real estate agent did too. As we finished up with our listing agreement, I mentioned to my agent my one pet peeve regarding real estate marketing.

I continued to explain how my husband and I were checking out neighborhoods admiring properties for sale lately. In order to keep from confusing the homes when we talked them over later in the day, I was collecting flyers. But a trend was developing and it wasn't a positive one.

We had a little system. My husband would pull over to the curb while I jumped out of the car to grab a flyer from the box in the yard. But I can't tell you how many times I was frustrated by an empty flyer box. Sellers had to be discouraged too.

But most of all, I thought about the lost opportunity for the real estate agent who had been hired to market and sell the property.

Now I knew everyone in real estate was focusing on internet marketing to generate real estate leads. Flyers has been around since the dinosaurs. Paperless was the way to go! But hold that thought until you hear what happened. Then you can be the judge.

So getting back to my pet peeve. We were still meeting with the listing agent and I told her as a seller, I was only going to request one thing. Give me a full flyer box, please. I did not expect her to fill it. I was more than willing to monitor the flyer box myself.

Although my agent seemed a but skeptical, she agreed to comply with my request. Between the two of us, I'm not sure in the end who was more surprised.

Going back again, do you remember the real estate market was in the dumps? It still took almost four months to sell our house. But most homes listed in our vicinity were languishing for a year or even longer.

Now while our home was up for sale, a strange thing was happening. We felt a little discouraged because no one were coming by. Or were they? I began to count how many flyers were going into the box and how many were left over every couple of days. About 100 were vanishing every week.

And the stats of the virtual tour were soaring. It turned out even though our house wasn't getting visited physically, home buyers and real estate agents were touring it digitally. Our Realtor had made sure every flyer had a web address leading to a descriptive page and a link to the tour. Potential buyers might have not been knocking on our door but they sure were using the flyers to locate our home online.

Now think back to what I mentioned earlier about real estate agents missing marketing opportunities because of empty flyer boxes. Not our Realtor! In spite of a depressed market, she attributed selling at least three other houses to prospective home buyers who made contact via her flyers. Not only those buyers, the overflowing flyer box impressed a neighbor as well who listed his home with her.

And don't forget my house. It sold faster than others in our neighborhood.

My Realtor and I both came away with a valuable lesson. By mixing traditional real estate marketing methods with new, we got a superior result than either by itself.