Today, I wanted to share with you something different. It’s a real estate internet marketing idea that will help you sell your house as soon as possible. Now, I didn’t come up with this concept, somebody else it. But I have to admit, it is very creative.
Here’s the scoop. A real estate agent/mom was trying to sell her house located in West Palm Beach, Florida. Struggling to sell her house, she came up with a creative way to sell her house while solving another problem, finding herself a husband. Ans she did it by using internet marketing to sell her house.
Needless to say, she’s been on news, first page on Digg.com, Ebay and Craigslist. She started with selling her house on Ebay but as far as I know, that listing has been taken down.
You can check out the House for sale craigslist listing (still up as June 7, 2008) and a House for sale includes a wife news story on a local channel.
So, what kind of internet marketing lesson can we get out of this for your own real estate listings?
First, her listing has a creative spin to it. Obviously, you might not be able to auction yourself with the house you are trying to flip but this should give you some ideas.
For instance, what if you could add an extra creative bonus to your listing. Lots of people are struggling with the raising gas prices. What if you throw in $200 gas card in there? If you stand to make $5,000-$10,000 on a house, I think throwing in a $200,$500 or even a bigger gas card is a win-win solution for you and the buyer.
Better yet, put a time limit on the gift card saying “If you buy the house in the next 2 weeks, I’ll give you a $500 gas card. After that the gift card will go down to $200.”
Second, her story had a viral effect attached to it. What was it? Well, the headline itself was catchy. Who sells a house with a wife, right? Last time I heard, her Ebay listing had thousands of hits on it. Also, she had pictures of herself in there.
Her idea was following a simple question-What does media want and feed on? What do people want? As we both know by now, that idea was picked up by the news and plastered over the internet.
So, how can you get your real estate listings noticed? If you come up with a creative idea for your listings, call up your local TV station and tell them about it. Seriously, call them up and tell them what you are offering. News stations are hungry for creative and controversial stories. They need to fill out an entire hour with news and stories. And how do you think they get all those stories each and every day? People call them up.
How do you get it to spread all over the internet?
Well, there are many ways but today I’ll give you one technique that I think is greatly underutilized by real estate agents and marketers. Write and submit a press release about your creative idea. You can get your story on the first page on Google News within 20 minutes by writing a press release and submitting it to a press release site.
What sites should you submit your press release to?
The best PR site on the internet is PRweb.com but you’ll need to spend anywhere from $80 to #360 there. But if you use prweb.com, your press release will be all over the place. Plus, you’ll get tons of backlinks to your site giving you boost in your search engine rankings.
Here are couple of other press release sites that I’ve used in the past which have worked very well.
Webwire.com -You can list there for as little as $19.
Prleap.com – You can list there for as little as $49.
Secret Tip: Combine the 2 sites above and you got yourself a great press release strategy. If you do this right, you’ll be surprised at the results you’ll receive.
Press Release Tips: When writing a press release, don’t advertise it there, NEVER ADVERTISE in there. Remember, most of these press releases are read by media and if they see a sales pitch in there, you’ll never get the attention you deserve. Also, write in 3rd person. Write your press release in such a way that it reads as if someone else was writing a press release about you.
And if you don’t know how, or don’t want to write a press release, outsource it to sites like Elance, RentaCoder or ScriptLance. (Stay tuned for a future post on outsourcing- You won’t believe what you can outsource on the internet for your real estate business.)
To Your Success,
Peter K.
Founder of Real Estate Black Book
P.S.
Here’s a bonus tip. Create a blog, just like I have here, and post your listings on there. Google and other Search Engines pick up blog posts much faster that regular sites. Google likes blogs, especially self-hosted wordpress blogs.
So, that’s all for today. Do you have any creative marketing tricks that you have done and would like to share with me? Post you comments below.
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Peter,
Thanks for the great info. You constantly come up with cutting edge stuff. What are some good ways to attract sellers to my website?
Thanks,
Brian
Thanks Brian. This is what I love doing so don’t worry, there’s more where that came from.
Peter
Founder of Real Estate Black Book
Peter you will never know how much I’ve appreciated reading your information. I am ready to launch a new product on a test run to see if I have a market. I’m nervous, but ready to fly at the same time. Just what you’ve shared today is going to launch me further into becoming a passive income earner much quicker. Taking action isn’t a problem for me any longer because of people like you. Thank you again and again!
Kellie
Kellie,
Thank you so much for such great feedback. Woow! I am speechless. By the way, email me if you need any help/tricks to help you with your launch. Good luck with your product launch.
Peter
Founder of Real Estate Black Book
Peter,
Wow! This is great, you just opened my eyes more to the opportunities on the net. Have a situation now where a house needs to be unloaded asap! At least we can get some more exposure with some creative thinking. Really like the gas card idea!
Thanks for sharing,
That certainly is an unusual way to sell a house. It could also be perceived as a very ingenious new way to advertise a call girl service. I can imagine some with her qualification having a hard time finding her Prince Charming. AH! Ah!
Peter I want to get your take on my strategy and also I have some questions.
I am thinking of using PRWeb strictly for sending out my internet press releases because they seem to have more experience in this field and another service called Marketwire strictly for their offline press release distribution because a lot of the big companies use them for their offline distribution and also because they have a strong international distribution outreach (mostly offline).
My issue now is I cannot seem to figure out which of the plans PRWeb offers is strictly internet only and will give me the best exposure on the net and will not send out my releases offline. The reason I say this is because I do not basically want to spam offline distribution outlets if PRWeb’s service goes out to the same office distribution outlets that marketwire uses.
I just want to get your take on this issue.
I sent you my answer in an email Owen. Please let me know if you have any more question per this subject.
Peter K.