On Santa Fe...and beyond

In this new landscape of real estate, it is critical for sellers to start with the right Realtor^®. In any buyer's market anywhere, any seller can not afford to a lack of marketing ability, minimal internet savvy, weak negotiation skills and a lack of resources to market and advertise new property listings. With everything changing quickly, the average seller in a buyer's market needs consistency and a message in the marketing of their property.

Everyone agrees the buyers are online. The issue is where are they online and how will they find your listings. Remember not all homes on the market are sold. This year I launched a new ABC's strategy for marketing my listings differently. Instead of developing three often fragmented approaches for print advertising, blogging and postcards, I focused on creating my "Is Santa Fe Your Next Backyard?" campaign and launched this strategy.

Here is how it works and what I do for my sellers to sell their homes. On the first Sunday of every month, I purchase a 1/2 page of color advertising space in the Santa Fe New Mexican Real Estate HOME Magazine. I use color because no one I know sees in black and white or looks at black and white screens anymore. It is that simple. This is the "A" part of my ABC'S strategy. Next, I reproduce my print advertising in a blog to transform it into a digital story. This becomes the "B" element of my ABC's strategy. Then, I print 250 postCards for distribution in a variety of ways, including using a stamp. This is the "C" component of my ABC's strategy. Now, I am ready to implement the "S" to push out my advertising campaign in the big pond of social networking.

I saw new opportunities in frontier new landscape of real estate for something better than the same old same old way of doing things. I focused on finding a way to combine a message and design a marketing strategy flexible enough to fit into these new real estate realities that combined what I love to do best. I do not "farm" or use scripts or adopt any of the basics of last century's real estate model. I think these new tools are changing how we communicate and make decisions in every market place, including real estate. The key is to start using them in out-of-the-box ways to position yourself and your listings in the mind of buyers.

Our sellers need to know we have not forgotten them in this buyer's market. They want to know we are truly professionals and bring value to the table as their representative. We have to show them their home is not just another listing to be thrown into the marketplace without a vision.