Positioning

What’s your story? How do you help people learn about you and your business? Finding the right tools to market your product can be downright tricky. You have to find a way to get your story out there, but you need to balance that with the time and money you have available. At SREC, we know a few strategies for that balancing act, and this is one of them.

For many real estate investors, basic marketing can be a complete rollercoaster. You step it up when business is down, and you put it on the back burner when you’re busy. Rely on this, and that back burner will burn your business. Your marketing expenses become unpredictable and unfocused, and when you need new deals, they won’t be there because you were too busy wrapping up the old ones. It can really rip up your stress level.

It doesn’t have to be like that.

The framework that we use in our approach to marketing is called The Helping Hand Positioning Process. Using the ideas listed below has allowed us to develop marketing programs that never leave us scrambling for deals. They lead us scrambling to keep up with the deals that come in!

A cornerstone of The Helping Hand Positioning Process is the referral. Referrals are the most effective way of insuring your business is operating at an elite level. By cultivating solid relationships with people in all aspects of business, you will expand your network and client potential. Do not limit yourself to only those who have vested real estate interests – friends and colleagues can be good sources as well. (You can get some detailed suggestions for possible contacts in this post.) No matter where it comes from, a good referral is valuable.

The following is an outline of The Helping Hand Positioning Process that you can begin using today:

Step 1: Information Mining

Identify and implement technological tools to fill your pipeline with quality leads. Obtaining accurate RAW data is the critical foundation for success.

We begin with information mining because the deals you ultimately close depend on the leads you get at the front of the system. For example, you need to hire someone to go to the county courthouse to get foreclosure listings. But you also need to think about using Centers of Influence for both marketing yourself and lead generation.

What Centers of Influence would be helpful to you in building your business? How might you use their knowledge, skills and contacts? And what techniques do you need to develop in order to get what you want? I’ll give you a hint. Attorneys, realtors, and mortgage brokers could fill your pipeline so full of leads that you would literally have to turn the faucet off to control the chaos. We have developed a complete system based around this presentation and methodology.

Step 2: The Multiple Medium Approach

Customize your message and apply it to several forms of advertising as a way to ensure a greater reach. You’ll have a greater chance of making clients think of your company when they are ready to take action.

Step 3: The Consistency Formula

Streamlining your message and delivering it in a consistent and repetitive way will establish your brand quality and trust. By maintaining the same steady outreach, this type of “gourmet” marketing will position your business to dominate the market. The key is being consistent. Don’t send out mailers and wait three months. Implement a combination of steps 1 and 2, and give it time. After tracking its impact, you can adjust it with better insight at a later date.

Step 4: The Deal Filter

Beware of the Law of Diminishing Returns. Learn how to differentiate between time-consuming, resource-wasting deals and the ability to detect deals which offer the best chances of closing with the most lucrative results. The Deal Filter is a tool found in Open Road, which is the latest generation of our Realeflow software.

Step 5: The Credibility Filter

Trust and likeability is the key in moving a deal forward to a close. Your credibility is established when you set expectations and meet them. Never forget that your clients will be evaluating and determining their faith and trust in your abilities during this time.

Step 6: The Positive Results Conversation

Identifying the needs of your client and creating a compelling and actionable solution that is valuable to both of you is critical to cementing a deal. You must discover the key need of the client and specifically what is most important to them. Then you can create a solution to fulfill that need while achieving your end result. (Read this post for more on how to plan for that conversation.) Both parties walk away from the deal satisfied, and you just earned another referral source.

If you use the above as a guideline for market positioning, something else will happen (other than seeing more dollars come in): you’ll begin to be seen as “the” short sale expert in your market. Being known as “the problem property solution” is an unbeatable position for your real estate investing business!