Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

“Nothing sucks like an Electrolux” was the slogan that the Swedish manufacturer used to launch their new series of vacuum cleaners in the US about 25 years ago. The phrase had worked well in other English speaking markets and they were totally convinced it was going to sound appealing also in the US. You figure what happened.

Using catchy phrases in other languages and countries can have painful results.

Pepsi sold their product in China with the typical message “Pepsi brings tyou back to life” eventually translated into “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave”. And how about General Motors that failed the launch of Chevy Nova in South America for then discovering that “nova” means “it doesn’t go” and sales didn’t actually go anywhere until they changed the name of the vehicle.

And Parker told to his potential pen buyers in Mexico that their pen was not going to leak in their pockets and make them pregnant. And it just goes on and on. So you need to realize that many Internet Marketing strategies don’t work outside of the US for the added complexity introduced by the language and if you rely on automatic translation tools you are in for some very bad and embarrassing surprises.

There is no substitute for simplicity. They more you avoid cunning slogans and double meaning sentences, and just stick to basic communication with possibly lots of pictures or videos then you are fairly on the safe ground. And again there will still be a majority of people that will misunderstand most of what you say, but at least you will avoid the most embarrassing situations. And again they say that 90% of our marketing efforts produce no results and that we get the majority of our customers from the remaining 10% or 20%.

The point is that it take 90% of mistakes to figure out the 10% that really works for you. So keep trying my friend, but be careful of the language and cultural barrier when it comes to international buyers.

Roberto Mazzoni

Gathering testimonials for your business is one of the key activities in any marketing effort and it is a key ingredient of many selling pages on the web, but the quality of the testimonial is a key factor in its credibility. We have all seen lame videos, recorded by people who were overly enthusiastic or who simply didn’t know much what to say except praising some product or person without telling us why we should consider it.

I have just found two very relevant posts, both written by Sean D’Souza on the site Copyblogger that give valuable advice on how to get a valuable testimonial and how to present it so that it contributes to out credibility, rather than subtracting from it.

The first article is titled: “The Secret Life of Testimonials” and the second: “Six Questions to Ask for Powerful Testimonials”. Sean introduces us to the interesting concept of the “reverse testimonial”, namely “ a testimonial that starts off in reverse” and instead of beginning with praise and ending with even more praise, they begin instead by describing some kind of problem the person was trying to solve, the uncertainty she was going through before deciding on the purchase.

In this way you obtain several benefits: first of all you mimic the state of mind in which your new potential customer is right now, you first emphasize the “pain” or trouble he is trying to solve, could it also be just his inability to take a decision and then to stick with it. I would add that you are not pushing the decision toward your customer or reader, but are initially withdrawing a bit so that HE reaches a bit, lowers her screens that have been developed in listening to overly sugary testimonial that nobody would believe. Also you address and solve, in the testimonials, many of the objections that would come in the mind of your potential customer.

The article suggests to structure the testimonial, which is not a new idea as such, but which is always a good idea because the person delivering the testimonial will have a track to follow and will feel, look and SOUND more natural. It is like when you interview some important person as a journalist: they always want to have the questions in advance, so to be ready to answer properly and intelligently. This also helps getting testimonials from people that are far away and that have bought your product or service much time ago.

The article suggests six questions you can ask as a routine. They are quite good, but you can develop your own. The key factors being addressed are

1.Objections to the purchase (so that you can defuse them with the rest of the testimonial).
2.Reason for buying despite the obstacles.
3.Key benefit received from the product or service (note it is just one).
4.Additional benefits
5.Reasons for recommending it
6.Additional comments

I would personally add a presentation of the customer herself, who she is and what she does. I know it’s kind of understood but it always an important to give further credibility and also offer her the chance of promoting herself or her company during the testimonial.

Roberto Mazzoni

Modern marketing strategies can be extremely complex when you don’t take the time of absorbing the basics and building the whole system from beginning to end at least once. The Internet plays a key role, but to win on the the Web you need to emphasizes differences while the medium dilutes them big time by creating a very level playground. The most common difficulty that any new marketer encounters is overwhelm, no matter what business you are in: can be real estate, network marketing or any other field that requires constant marketing efforts and the continuous recruitment of new prospects.

But if you can overcome the desire to know it all and to do it all from the very beginning, then you can really make some sense out of it and you will eventually master it. I am personally on this route and I have been traveling on it for some time now, but only in recent times I have decided to develop it at a professional level sinche I realize that the majority of my business opportunity and leads come from some form of Web interaction, may I it be social media or more simply browsing sites and other blogs.

I have selected for you four articles that will help you stay oriented and progressing on the path:

21 Management Tips for Bloggers

This is an article by Daivd Risley, a professional blogger from Tampa that I know personally and who is very down to hearth. I am part of his “Blog Masters Club” and I have been getting some very solid advice from him.

Blogging Frustration! 10 Simple Tips to Keep You From RIPPING your Hair Out

This article comes from Problogger network and gives some real life perspective from an author who has been through the same frustrations as you have been.

10 Tricks for Getting Inspired to Write

This is an article of Copyblogger by far the best site for learning how to write something that other people WILL read.

Enjoy!

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. If you liked this article, pass it along!

There are always four key steps in developing or redeveloping your business activities online. I have borrowed a video from the famous Thirty Day Challenge, a free Internet Marketing training prorgram, that you can use to get the basics of this challenging world.

Four elements for your online business strategy.

Here is the video taken from the Thirty Day Challenge:

And here is my summary of the four basic elements:

1. Market research – this is the area where people make most mistakes. They start developing or redeveloping a product without first finding out what the market wants. This results in a lot of useless activity and frustration.
2. Traffic – when you have found a potential market you need to check if there if traffic online or any other communication line you might be using. If there is no traffic (which mean interest) you won’t be able to attract people’s attention.
3. Conversion – if there is traffic, are people really willing to spend money on this market? For example political views and comments attract lots of attention and could have a ton of people interested in them, but nobody would be willing to pay for them (you could sell advertisement only during election periods).
4. Product – once you have checked the preceding three items, you are now ready to develop or find a product to resell. You need to use the market to tell you what type of product they want. You can also start without having your product, but reselling somebody else’s product (affiliate marketing) that is already selling well. In this way you can familiarize and then find out what you can develop.

Market research won’t tell you what will be successful, but will definitely tell you what will NOT work so avoiding you a lot wasted time and resources.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. If you want to get more tips and daily guidance for your business online and offline sign up for my newsletter or my rss feed.

Combining general business activities and Internet promotion is often a very challenging activity. You have to care for your daily production and networking activities and, at the same time, you know that you have to spend some time increasing you Web foot print and can’t keep yourself focused on it.

A simple challenge to get your Web presence to the next level.

There is so little time in a single day and you don’t feel like you have to say something that is important enough for other to read or listen. You wonder how the time you are spending in front on this computer is ever going to pay back and how can you really make money over the Internet.

Maybe you have subscribed to some expensive (or not so expensive) “make money online” system you you still wonder why yous subscriber list doesn’t increase and why you can’t use your computer has not yet become an automatic teller machine that spits out money every time you push the “send” button.

Well you are in good company because the vast majority of entrepreneurs and so called Internet marketers feel the same way, from time to time. I count myself in the crowd and even though I have a huge professional writing experience sometimes I hit a “blank” spot where writing just another single sentence seems pointless.

But it never is and let me share with you a little secret that might change you whole perspective: every time you send something out which is of value, you will get something back in. It can come from a totally different quarter. That is, maybe you sent out a post to a certain list and you are then getting people reaching for you from a totally different angle. It can also happen with some delay, but it always does.

It has happened to me recently: I was promoting some of my houses in the US to international real estate investors and I got in return the request from an European businessman to help him market a very valuable property that he wants to sell world wide. It always comes back.

And here is a resource you want to check out to improve the effectiveness of your Internet efforts. It is called “30 day challenge” and it is a free program that assists you in developing a workable Internet presence in one month. It is easy, you don’t need to be a technology expert. It has been used successfully by many and there is a support forum.

Check it out!

Roberto Mazzoni