If your real estate letters aren’t getting the response you want, one of these four reasons is probably to blame:
Why you can sell homes in person, but your real estate marketing letters fail:
First, blame Mom
When you get face to face with sellers, you can get the listing. It’s easy for you to show them what you’ll do for them.
When you have a buyer, you’re able to establish an instant rapport, find exactly the home they want, and guide them smoothly through the transaction. By the time you hand them the keys, you’re fast friends.
But … when you try to write real estate letters or copy for your website, your efforts fizzle. Writing your own real estate agent bio is especially difficult – and it comes out sounding stiff and boring.
Why?
The short list of reasons has to be headed by your natural reluctance to toot your own horn. And for that, you have to blame Mom – or Dad – or any other adults who influenced your early years.
If you were raised as I was – to be quiet, never brag, never be pushy – it isn’t easy to break that old habit and tell the world what you have to offer.
In fact, you may not even recognize how much better you are than the average agent. You may be one of those agents who tells me “I don’t do anything any different than anyone else.” When I write a real estate agent bio, I ask agents to fill out a questionnaire. But then, sometimes I have to get them on the phone and ask “20 questions” to show them that what they do is exceptional.
The first step to overcoming this obstacle is to realize that yes, you are better than the average agent. The things you do are beyond what average 
agents do. Begin by thinking back to compliments you’ve received. What did clients thank you for?
Next look at your testimonials and notes or emails you’ve received after closings. What did those clients appreciate most? They probably mentioned those things because other agents they’ve known didn’t offer the same service.
Step out of yourself for an hour and start writing a letter about you. Sing your own praises. Tell about the extra effort you make to help your clients. Talk about the things you do for them when you’d rather be curled up with a good book or spending an afternoon with friends and family.
No one else ever has to see it. In fact, you can shred it when you’re finished – but you need to admit to yourself that yes, you are better – and you need to understand why.
Next, start incorporating some of what you learned about yourself into your prospecting letters. You don’t have to shout “I’m great” (and in fact should NOT) but you do need to start mentioning some of the extra things you do into your real estate marketing letters to homeowners, and into your web pages.
Even if all you have to say is “I’ll communicate your way – be it phone, email, or text,” say it!
Why you can sell in person, but your real estate marketing letters fail:
You aren’t addressing your prospects’ concerns
Before you begin to write marketing letters, for real estate or anything else, consider who you’re writing to and what matters to them.
It isn’t your years in the business, or your designations, or even how many homes you’ve sold. It’s what’s going on in their lives that matters to them.
That’s why you must never, never, never begin a sales letter with “I.” “I want” is even worse.
Begin with “you” if you can make it fit.
Unless your message zooms right in on your prospects’ concerns, they probably won’t read past the first sentence. You need to reassure those prospects that YOU are the agent who will give them the service they want and need. Do that by addressing their concerns.
So what concerns your prospective real estate clients?
- Is it their fear of choosing an agent who will ignore them?
- Is it their desire to find an agent who can lead them through the buying or selling process and protect their interests?
- Is it that their house didn’t sell the first time around?
- Is it that their buyer agent didn’t keep them informed of new listings, so they lost out a house they wanted?
It could be something as simple as methods of communication – they wanted their last agent to pick up the phone and call, and the agent insisted on texting or emailing.
For every bad experience a prospect has had with a Realtor, there’s a concern, if not a downright fear. And it doesn’t even have to be their own experience – it could be something that’s happened to a friend or relative.
You can’t pretend that those things don’t happen, but you can address them head-on and give assurance that you are the solution to their problems.
Why you can sell in person, but your real estate marketing letters fail:
Blame your English teacher
You may be writing under the mistaken belief that a marketing letter needs to sound formal.
Your English teacher might approve, but prospective clients aren’t impressed. Face it, formal writing is boring, and no one reads “boring” unless they have to. And they don’t have to read your letter.
A good sales letter is conversational – it sounds like you’re talking to an individual person about a subject that interests them. And what interests them is how you can solve their problems, not that your English teacher would give you high marks for grammar.
So don’t worry about perfect grammar – worry about perfect communication.
On the other hand – you mustn’t get TOO far away from the rules of grammar. For instance, if you’ve picked up the “like” habit somewhere along the way, you need to weed it out of your copy. (And your spoken vocabulary.)
What’s the “like” habit?
It’s when you like tell people about your like afternoon and you like say you like took some like buyers to see like a house.
You also need to be sure to use the correct words. Don’t write there when you mean their, or your when you mean you’re.
Don’t trust spell check to find these errors for you – spell check doesn’t know what you mean, so if it’s a properly spelled word, it won’t be flagged, even if you’ve written waist when you meant waste. And definitely don’t trust grammar check – it can tell you to do things backwards.
Do use spell check, but don’t trust it entirely. Sometimes it’s wrong. For instance, my spell check can’t understand proper use of the word “advise.” Every time I write it, spell check tells me to change it to “advice,” which has a completely different meaning.
If you aren’t SURE about your spelling, ask a friend to proofread your work before you let a client or prospect see it. It also pays to own a good dictionary – and use it any time you’re unsure.
If you aren’t SURE about proper word use – such as when to write “me” and when to use “I” or “myself,” start studying, and always have someone who is sure do your proofreading.
For more on what’s important in real estate marketing grammar, click here.
Avoid saying “You guys” or “All of you.”
You may be writing a real estate prospecting letter that will go out to 500 or 1,000 people, but one person at a time will read it. Make it sound like you’re writing to just one person.
Why you can sell in person, but your real estate marketing letters fail:
You aren’t devoting enough hours to writing.
Really good marketing copy looks like it took no effort at all. It appears to be stream of consciousness thinking from you to your prospect.
The truth is – to achieve that effect you have to spend some hours.
In order not to miss an important point, just start writing. Don’t worry about organization on the first draft. Simply start anywhere with what you want to say – and get it all out on paper. Once you’ve captured everything, you can re-arrange it so it makes some kind of logical sense as you progress from one point to the next.
After you’ve organized your thoughts, begin to edit and smooth them out. Remove all the “extra” words that don’t need to be there. Most of us throw in a whole lot of “thats,” “justs,” and other favorite words and phrases from our own spoken vocabularies. Remove sentences that don’t add anything useful.
Next, check sentence length, and try to simplify what you’re trying to convey. Often, we write a long sentence when a short one would serve to communicate more clearly.
Here’s an example from a site I revised recently:
The original: “In the context of consideration for short sale approval, “hardship” is not defined by law.”
The re-write: “Hardship” with regard to short sales is not defined by law.
Now, even if you use “$40 words” in everyday language, get them out of your copy.
For instance, “Choosing a real estate agent who possesses experiential knowledge in this particular scenario can be instrumental in developing resolution strategy satisfactory to all.” will just look like a lot of words to many prospects.
Simplify by saying something like “Choosing a real estate agent with knowledge, experience, and a track record of success is the surest route to a successful short sale.”
Check your modifiers to see that they’re in the right place.
Our local newspaper has a habit of misplacing modifiers, and it makes their news articles difficult to comprehend. They write things akin to this old example: “That woman hit the cow in the red dress.” Obviously, we know it was the woman and not the cow who wore the red dress, but that’s not what it SAYS. That makes the reader’s mind stop to comprehend, and any momentum the writer had in presenting their message flies out the window.
Once you think you’re finished, proofread carefully.
Many writers find that reading their copy out loud helps them catch errors. It also helps them see sentences that have gotten too long. If you can’t read the whole thing in one breath, stop and cut it two – or three. Another good tactic is to read it backwards – that helps you catch doubled words and misspelled words.
Be on the lookout for stop signs.
Those are anything that makes the reader have to stop and think about what you meant. Using an unfamiliar word (or a wrong word), using a misplaced modifier, or switching from first person to third person are examples. Really good copy transfers thoughts and ideas from your brain through your fingers to the text, and directly from there to your reader’s brain. Stop signs interrupt that transfer.
When it’s really important, ask for help
Most of what you write – like a blog post or web page copy – can be changed later if you catch an error.
But if you’re writing an important piece that can’t be changed – such as copy for a magazine ad or print brochure – get one or preferably two other people to read it before you consider it ready for publication. Ask them to look for:
- Confusing or unclear points
- Rambling, and unnecessary words
- Typos, doubled words, and missing words
- Misused words
- Misspelled words
- Stop signs
Email communication with clients is also important – especially when it’s their first impression of you. So if you’re unsure about grammar, spelling, or sentence structure, ask someone to proofread for you.
Remember – the writer is the worst person to proofread anything because he or she already knows what it says. For some reason, that causes the brain to see what was intended rather than what’s actually there.
One more thing…
Stay focused. Keep to the point and don’t try to cover too much ground in one marketing piece.
Want to see samples of real estate marketing letters?
Click here to get samples of some of my prospecting sets, and to get free letters you can use today.
Don’t like to write? Don’t want to write?
Get in touch. I love to write, and I’d love to help you succeed. Just drop me a note at: marte@copybymarte.com or call 208-448-1479
