Marketing Idea for the day

I'm going to try and update this blog a little more frequently, as I've been a little swamped with some "real world" problems and scheduling conflicts lately. However, I did want to take a chance and post a quick idea that I had last night in hopes that maybe you'd be able to get a few gigs this way.


I was thinking about some of the real estate photography that I do, and trying to refine my marketing towards that segment when I came upon an idea that I hadn't thought about for some reason.

I've used this idea in other ventures, but it never came about for my real estate photography clientèle and yet it is SO simple to apply here.

The idea is a joint venture.

Sounds more complicated than it is though.

The power of a joint venture is that you are able to spread your marketing efforts significantly further than if you were doing it solo. The disadvantage (in some cases) is that you end up having to give a benefit of some sort to the people doing your marketing.


Here's what I plan on doing.

I'm planning on creating a coupon that will be personalized to a specific mortgage office (or loan officer even). Then, I'll issue each loan officer a certain number of coupons.

How it will work.

Loan officers are always looking for things to pitch to Real Estate agents so that the agent will refer a buyer to the loan officer for financing. A lot of the same old thing is being thrown around the industry though (free comps, mailing lists, postcards, etc. I spent too much time in real estate, haha).

What if, though, a loan officer approached a real estate agent with a coupon for a photography package on one of their listings? Say $50 off the normal package price of $250.

This does a few things:

- It makes the loan officer stand out by being able to offer an incentive that not many LO's are able to offer (Lo's incentive to pass your coupon out)
- It enables me to pass out a bunch of "coupons" to LO's and spread the word significantly faster than meeting with agents one on one.
- It enables me to do a shoot for a slight discount, but PROVE my value to the agent and also add them as a warm contact to my database (which makes marketing to them in the future much easier)
- It gives the Agent something that they can TRULY use rather than just some rehashed database or some Just Listed! postcards sent to a few homes around their are.
- It costs the LO NOTHING
- It SAVES the realtor $50 bucks (they love that)
- It MAKES me $200 I wouldn't have normally had


Trust me, this one is hot.... If you are into real estate photography at all, you know that agents are less likely to spend money on frills right now than any time within the last 5 years... yet, now is the time for them to be spending money on GREAT marketing for their properties...

If you're going to use this technique, I would approach a loan officer with this angle:

"If you were looking at an MLS listing of, say 100 homes, and one of those homes had exceptional images, wouldn't it attract your attention significantly more?"

That gets them in the right frame of mind.

What you're trying to do is sell the LO on your product, so that they can sell a Realtor on it. It's impossible to sell something you don't believe in so you need these guys on your side!


Now go out there and get some real estate photography gigs!!!

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BY THE WAY:

If you want to post a comment and ask some questions I'd be glad to post responses. I'm looking for a little more interaction here... so IDEAS are encouraged.

Thanks!

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