Here’s a free publicity case study I’ve been meaning to write about for a while.

It’s a paint-by-the-numbers way to get free publicity and how it resulted in over $52,000 in traceable business for my most important client at the time:  my wife.

But first, to really grasp the nuances of what I’m about to share, you’ll need to imagine a world quite different from ours today.

And it’d help if you’re acquainted with Bizarro World in D.C. Comics — the place where incompetence is rewarded, stupidity is praised and ugliness is treasured. Interestingly, Bizarro World boasts a popular financial instrument called the Bizarro Bond, “guaranteed to lose money for you.”

The backdrop for this story gives Bizarro World a run for its money.

Imagine a place where…

• Little things like collateral, income and creditworthiness are totally irrelevant factors when buying a home.
• Property values can go nowhere but up.
• Generous credit lines are given to anyone with a beating pulse.
• And similar to the Bizarro Bond, something called the sub-prime note is the preferred ruinous investment of choice.

Well, you needn’t imagine it. This was that very strange year known as 2005 and the place was the good ole’ US of A.

But don’t worry. Even if you resided elsewhere, we almost certainly exported these to a place near you.

Recalling this brings to mind an oft-used quote of Woody Allen’s:

“80% of Success Is Showing Up.”

Great quote Woody came up with except in 2005, he was off by 20%.

This was a year in which money ran uphill.

Almost everyone in the real estate, lending, construction and related industries made a nice living just by showing up — from the spec home builder to the journeyman electrician to the girl making photocopies at the title company.

Those who brought something extra to the game enjoyed the gravy.

During this astonishing time, my wife decided to jump into real estate, after watching her energy trading markets implode in the post-Enron world.

She faced a challenge…

Unlike her previous industry where she had plenty of credentials and bountiful press, including a front page article in the Money section of the USA Today (12/11/01), she had no obvious competitive advantage coming into real estate.

But since money was running uphill, she got her license, jumped in and cashed her commission checks.

After a year of enjoying the fruits of being in the right place at the right time, we realized it was time to sit down and figure out…

How To Craft A Real Competitive Advantage

How does a newcomer differentiate herself from the masses? Moreover, how can she turn her lack of experience into an advantage?

Smart marketers know almost any challenge can be broken down into a set of concrete steps. And our first step was to leverage an asset we didn’t own.

Almost immediately, she mentioned a technology-laden home listed at $17.5 million, which was several multiples more expensive than anything else in town. It was also a home with a major marketing challenge.

Since Tucson is far removed from the glitz of the Coasts — it’s a winter haven for frozen mid-westerners, an hour’s drive from Mexico — finding a buyer for a 17.5 million dollar home was no mean feat.

And from what my wife told me, the listing agent was spending far more marketing this property than most agents were making at the time.

So, we decided, (don’t laugh)…

“Let’s put the home on eBay.”

You have to remember, this was 2005, the height of the housing bubble, and real estate marketing on eBay was a trend in full force.

And like anything else that’s trendy online, whether it’s eBay in 2005 or Facebook in 2010, the marketing opportunity lies somewhere between the overhyped to the underutilized.

So, Anjelina went to the listing agent with a simple proposition:

“With you and your seller’s permission, I’ll market this property online at no cost to you and if I find a buyer, I’ll receive full commission as the buyer’s agent. Deal?”

Hard to argue with that. They wanted to get the place sold, so they gave her the green light.

Since this was over a half-decade ago and literally was a house ad, I’ll make a confession that I’d never make to my copywriting clients today.

The ad I wrote was a midnight write.

Yet, it was wildly successful because I unearthed the right hook and linked it to a trendy channel.

My main material to craft the ad was a coffee-table sized prospectus that looked more expensive than a small trailer home. Of course, it was loaded with the kind of gushy superlatives that makes copywriters like me cringe.

Step 1: Find The Right “Hook”

A strong hook (or “power concept”) is a must for even a chance at creating a winning promotion. Fortunately, this home was so loaded with technology, that it leapt right out at me and I put it in the headline…

“Amazing ‘22nd Century’ Tucson estate boasts every luxury and technology innovation you could ever conceive of…

it even comes with a 602-page owner’s manual”

No time for fifty candidate headlines. This was a midnight write because we told the listing agent the ad would be published by morning.

As soon as I learned of the 602-page owners manual, I knew that was it. What was a barely legible footnote in the prospectus was transformed into a dynamite advertising hook.

The rest was straightforward.

I added captions to the photos and made a bulleted list of the most compelling features of the home. Features, not benefits — this was pure cut-and-paste since I had so little time.

Within a short-time, the “Amazing 22nd Century Tucson estate” listing rocketed up eBay Pulse.

<< CLICK HERE To See the eBay Homes Ad Along

With Newspaper Articles From The Publicity >>

At $13.5 million (which didn’t include the surrounding 10 acres of land) it was the most expensive piece of residential real estate on eBay for two out of three 30-day ad insertions.

The barrage of emails and phone calls from all corners was relentless.

Since the percentage of people with a net worth of over $50 million is small compared to the number of eBay users, most of the inquiries came from curiosity seekers, plus a healthy share of outright nutters.

Eventually, the ad brought in several qualified respondents who took tours of the home. One even flew into town on his company’s private jet shortly after making a telephone inquiry.

Step 2: Contact The Press

With several thousand page views taking place each day, it wasn’t long before Anjelina’s name became associated with this property. And all she did was offer to help the seller and his agent market the property in a way they hadn’t considered, while spending almost nothing out of pocket.

Now, it was time to contact the state and local newspapers and let them know about the eBay auction.

All it took were a handful of emails before the state’s second biggest newspaper called. Within a week, there was a front-page article in the business section about the property and Anjelina’s role in marketing it on eBay.

Even though this happened over a half-decade ago, there are plenty of timeless marketing and public relations lessons in here.

The one that still jumps out at me is what I call the “newcomer’s advantage.”

Most people are accustomed to looking at a lack of experience as a negative. And while it’s true there are some spin-resistant professions like heart surgeons and airline pilots, you can make a case in many fields that the old, entrenched way of doing things doesn’t work as well as a bold, novel approach. That was one of the clear take-aways from the article.

The Lifetime Advantage of Free Publicity

Besides achieving the major marketing advantage of having prospects come to you, after a front-page story like this hits, you now hold the lifetime advantage of being able to say: “as seen in The Wall Street Journal” or “as reported in The Oshkosh Northwestern.”

Oftentimes, you can parlay one story into many.

In Anjelina’s case, she was later written about in a real estate industry trade journal, as well as interviewed on a local TV station.

And the best part is, you don’t need to spend thousands on publicity agents or PR courses to do it.

In fact, the absence of a marketing or a publicity budget has often been an advantage for me because every time I’ve thrown money at a problem, it’s usually gone down the drain.

My PR approach today can be best described as a bootstraper with a budget. Here are my…

3 Guidelines For Getting Press For
Yourself And Your Business

1. Keep your eyes pealed for unexploited marketing channels. Are you a specialist in one or multiple areas? Look for ways to bring something being marketing successfully into your niche area. (Example: I’m now working with a company that does over $20 million in sales through direct mail but they have almost no experience with online marketing. I’m condensing and translating their strongest direct mail packages to the web, then helping them push this offer to proven online lists in their market. News outlets are often interested in stories like this which would benefit both me and my client.)
2. Find a hook or create one yourself. “22nd Century Tucson Home.” Cliche-ish? Sure. But it’s memorable. You want something where readers and viewers will have as close as possible to 20/20 recall.
3. Join two ideas together in an exciting way. The attraction of social media for business development is trendy, and to a degree, a black box. But the problem with social media marketing is it can be a boringly generic. Solution? Join the use of social media to an exiting business model. (Example: Curtis Kimball runs his business from a crème brûlée cart on the streets of San Francisco. On any given day, he can be miles from where he was yesterday. Curtis’ customers not only follow him on Twitter to find out his location but also about the flavors of the day. The New York Times liked this enough to lead with Curtis’ story in an article over the summer. Think what that’s done for his business.)

Epilogue of the 22nd Century Home Story

As you may have guessed, we didn’t sell the home. We came ever so close but as they say close only counts in horseshoes.

Had the home been sold, a $500,000 commission from this marketing and PR adventure would have made a great 80/20 case study but no complaints…we got plenty out of it.

And we weren’t ready to quit. A year after this, we gave it another go.

We suspected the sellers were using direct mail to contact people on the Forbes 400 list who lived in the States.

So, we asked ourselves, “who could they have overlooked that this home might make sense for?”

And someone came to mind.

Today, Carlos Slim of Mexico City is the world’s richest man, but at the time, he was relatively unknown in the States.

How do you get the attention of a billionaire like Carlos Slim?

The same way you get anyone’s attention — do something different, even slightly outlandish.

So, we FedExed him a black leather briefcase containing a prospectus for the home, an invitation to come and see it, and a letter making a case for how the home could be a valuable cross-border asset as a corporate retreat.

Though I never spoke to him directly, his English speaking secretary, Sylvia, was easy enough to reach. A week after sending the package I rang her up and introduced myself. She immediately answered in a mixed tone of recognition and astonishment: “Oh, you’re the ones who sent the briefcase!”

And after a dozen more follow-up calls with replies like “Sr. Slim is in Switzerland and will examine your proposal on return,” he finally looked it over and declined.

Sylvia related his answer which was diplomatic and portentous — “Mr. Slim is not interested in making any investments in the U.S. real estate market at this time.”

Guess he knew about Bizarro Bonds.

[Ed note: Copyright Lawrence Bernstein.  Reprinted with permission.  Lawrence has 20 Real Estate Domains for Sale in Top US Markets that would be next to impossible to come by in 2010.  If you're interested, click here for more information... ]

Comments:  Add Yours By Clicking Here…

ANSWER:  It depends on when the product was created…

Have you ever been faced with these questions in your own business?

• “How do I increase my sales?”
• “What do I say in my ad that will make people call right away?”

If so, you could gain a lot of insight by understanding the lesson that is clearly demonstrated in the series of ads shown above.

The ads are for two well-respected corporations: Dell and Mercedes-Benz.

What do cars and computers
have in common?

Not much if you approach things in an ordinary fashion.  An obvious difference would be price: computers cost hundreds of dollars, while a car costs tens of thousands.  One product sits on your desk…the other on your driveway.

The first two ads on the left were used by each company in its early years, and the second set are current examples.  Even though the two “products” appear to have nothing in common, note how similar the first two ads are.  The layouts are similar and each is copy-dominant.

But look what happens in the second set of ads—they both rely on photos and graphics and there is almost no written information.  At first blush, this seems a little confusing because one set of ads uses words to do the selling, but then it gets reversed and the entire pitch is communicated with pictures.

However, it all makes sense if you consider the ads in terms of life-cycle of a brand.  Long ads—ones with lots of copy—are needed when a company or product is unknown.  Long ads are helpful because information can be used to educate the consumers about what sets the product APART from the competition.

This is branding’s sole purpose—it tells consumers what makes you different.  Dell was the first company to sell computers direct, and Mercedes was first to introduce a super luxury brand to the American market (when launched in this country, a Benz was twice the price of a Cadillac).

The question is not as simple as, “Does a long ad work better than a short ad?”  The better question is whether you’re selling a new product or a well-known one.

What do these examples have to do with selling homes?  A lot.  As you’ll soon see.

Remember: Branding is nothing you do to the product…it is a perception that exists in the mind of the consumer.  For example, if you stopped the average person on the street, he knows that “Blockbuster” means video rentals…that “Dominoes” delivers pizza…and that “eBay” stands for online auctions.

Long ads are well suited when you are building a brand.  Short ads are fine for maintaining an established brand.  At this point, Dell and Mercedes-Benz are household names so long ads are not needed.

What’s best for selling a house…
LONG or SHORT ads?

Because homesellers are too close to their situation, they often make a misstep when they put their homes on the market.

They know all about their home and what makes it special, and they assume prospective buyers will easily recognize its positive attributes.  But the consumer has never seen any of the homes that are on the market.  Buyers start with a blank slate.  They will form an opinion about a home based on the marketing material they see.

Unfortunately, most houses end up being promoted with “me-too” real estate flyers that simply list boring statistical data such as:

• Bedrooms: 4,  Baths: 3,  Year Built: 1994,  etc.

If you allow a house to be marketed with details that are COMMON to many other houses, it may never escape from obscurity.  For example, houses in Westlake (an area outside Austin, Texas, where I sell homes) are often marketed with a theme that stresses the highly acclaimed Eanes School District.  But why rely on a feature that is guaranteed to be available at every other Westlake house?

A seller may in fact have the best home in the neighborhood, but it may not make a difference if the consumer never gets the message.

When you set out to market a house, it tracks the same path as bringing a new product to market.

This means that houses are tailor-made for using long ads.  Since no two houses are alike, there is always plenty of information you can communicate to the consumer.  And you cannot bore consumers with straight facts.

It is better to use a “story ad”—ads that sell by telling an interesting story.  In theory, holding an open house is a sound marketing idea because the consumer gets to use all of his senses to see the house and get a “feel” for the floorplan, the yard and the neighborhood.

But an open house may only produce a handful of people who walk through.

However, a well-written ad, that is widely circulated, has the effect of one voice speaking to thousands of potential buyers.  The law-of-averages kicks in at this point, and your odds of finding the right buyer increase exponentially.

Here’s an example of a “story ad”…

(click the image to open the ad in a PDF)

This ad is an example of the type of message needed to bring a beautiful home to the forefront in a glut of inventory…

When the seller called me, this house in the Lakeway area of Austin had already been on the market for a year, and there were about 90 other “for sale” houses in the immediate area.

This home really was the best house in the neighborhood, and there was not a thing wrong with the seller’s price.

How do you get a prospective buyer interested
enough to come see your listing?

I wrote this long ad above that told about the home’s unique design, materials and lot.  The seller got THREE offers, and the home sold in less than 30 days!

Here’s how I did it (and the same steps you can follow to sell your listings quicker):

STEP 1: Interview the seller on what made THEM interested in the house

STEP 2: Find your story-line by pulling out some of the unique benefits of the home from your research

STEP 3: Write a “story ad” that communicates the home’s difference

STEP 4: Place your ad in local publications where it will find the right buyer

Believe it or not, it really is that simple.

All kinds of excellent products fail in the marketplace because of weak, tame, and ineffective advertising.  This includes homes when all that’s used is a traditional flyer to communicate a list of features.

Learn how to investigate what makes a home truly different than the others on the market.  And then communicate that difference in a way that targets and benefits the potential buyer.

More examples to come in my next article…stay tuned!

[Ed note: Copyright Stan Barron.  Reprinted with permission.  If you, or someone you know wants to sell a house, please give Stan a call at 512-345-8585.]

In a previous article I described some of my best marketing advice for building a successful business in 2010.

Here are FIVE more million dollar marketing strategies that will help you generate more clients and build a long-term viable business.

1. Use Education-Based Marketing To Prospect

No one wants to get “sold” yet everyone loves to buy. “Selling” implies manipulation; buying implies control. Use marketing that prospects will welcome, or even desire. Help your prospects understand the important tips, issues and secrets related to their buying or selling situation and you’ll win their hearts.

Use the pre-written special reports I provide in the Service For Life!^® personal marketing system (www.ServiceForLife.com) to attract leads with your marketing, give valuable information, win their hearts and minds, differentiate yourself, and generate them as a client. And don’t forget to follow-up. Even dead leads can go onto your database to receive Service For Life!^® each month.

2. Use Direct Response in ALL Your Marketing

There are many elements to direct response, but remember this:

No one will reply to any of your marketing without a specific, self-serving REASON to respond.

95% of the agent community is hopelessly ignorant of this fact and they keep using “image” advertising with the same lousy results. I’m talking about making an OFFER to prompt response from prospects:

• a special report
• an area analysis
• your “Maximum Home Value Audit”
• a “Free Home Package” of a listed home

Make sure everything gets an irresistible offer and call to action to prompt response.  See Step 1 of the 3-Steps System (www.3-steps.com) for more.

3. Sell With Emotional Benefits

Whether it’s a listing presentation, lead generation ad, classified, home ad, showing property, etc….people buy because of what the home, offer, etc., will DO for them.

Features are what something IS (3 bedroom, pool, tennis court, etc.), benefits are what something DOES for the prospect (save/make money, minimize time, beat other buyers to the market, reduce hassles, etc.). Know the difference.

People buy for the emotional benefits they perceive they’ll get – then they justify their purchase with features/logic.

4. Give Compelling Social Proof

People are skeptics. No one believes your own claims. You must give as much believable proof as you can of the benefits you offer. Generate testimonials from every client after close (you can even get them from friends or family at the outset), and make them believable by including:

• photo
• full name
• city, state
• quote
• story

Then use them everywhere: ads, listing packages, etc.

One agent I know created his “Little Blue Book” – a blue booklet overflowing with testimonials. He uses the testimonials and booklet in all of his marketing.

Other examples:  Use statistics to give yourself/your brokerage the competitive advantage.  Use media clippings to prove a point.  Get interviewed or write an article about real estate, then clip the article and use with farming, listing presentations, etc.  It will prove you’re a professional and expert.  Bottom line:  Give people more than your word to rely on.

5. Make Using Your Services Risk-Averse

Agents are afraid of risk reversal because they think their clients will take advantage of them. Just the opposite happens: Ten-times more people will use your services because of your risk reversal than will ever take advantage of you.

Examples:  “Easy Exit Listing Agreement”…

“If you buy a home from me and within the first year don’t like it, I’ll sell it for you for free” (seller commission would apply), etc.

If you’re not willing to stand by your own services, why should your clients? Your risk-avoidance is designed to let people know you believe in your abilities, and make the “yes” decision easier for them.

For all businesses, marketing is far more important in a slow economy than at any other time in the business cycle.  Why?

Because when sales are slow, it is your marketing message that must be focused to get the attention of consumers that have a burning desire for exactly what you are trying to sell.

In this article I’ll give you TWO examples of how you can focus your message and sell your listings faster.

But before I do, let’s take a quick look at how Legos was saved by marketing…

For starters, Legos is not an American company.  It is an old company that has been around since the late 1940’s, and its headquarters was in Germany.

The company was doing okay in their early years, but Germany was a small market in those days, and Legos had ambitions to expand to the U.S. market.

So, in the early 1950’s the company used the same marketing message that worked in Germany to make their U.S. launch.  But the attempt failed miserably.

The company tried again only to get the same failed response.  It made a third run at the American market, and once again there was no response.

But on the fourth attempt, it made one critical change.  Legos hired an outside advertising consultant, Louis Rapaille.  Rapaille was known for “unusual” experiments to help businesses improve their advertising.  He steadfastly believes that companies are too close to their own situations to be objective.

So, to help discover the underlying problem for Legos, he set up an observation room at the Legos headquarters and watched how children actually play with them.  Guess what happens when you give German children a box of Legos?

They carefully unpack the box…they verify that all parts shown in the booklet are present…then they build exactly the few samples shown in the manual.

When Legos management saw this, they were not impressed because that is exactly what they imagined would happen.  But then, Rapaille brought in some American kids.  Guess what they did?

They ripped open the box…tossed the instruction booklet aside…dumped everything in a pile and started experimenting.  What this proved was there was nothing wrong with the product, the price or target audience—the only “problem” was the marketing message.  Everything was solved by literally changing one word!

In the German market Legos’ advertising message told parents to buy the product if they wanted to encourage their child’s inclination for engineering (something we now know Germans excel at).

Rapaille advised Legos to reposition their product for the U.S. market as a toy that would encourage creativity.  Legos management was highly skeptical of this minor change, but as soon as they tested the new ads, sales began to pour in.

As we all are aware Legos went on to be wildly successful in the U.S. market.

The moral is: the wrong marketing can keep a perfectly good product from selling, and it happens all the time.

This kind of marketing research is never discussed in the typical business setting, but it is studied constantly by the advertising industry.  There are many instances of reversing a sales slide by simply changing the marketing message.

Here are a couple of more famous cases:  Phillip Morris failed in its initial launch of Marlboro cigarettes.  It was aimed at women smokers.  The company took the same cigarette and simply changed the marketing by inventing the Marlboro Cowboy, and it became the largest-selling brand in history.

More recently, a failed new vodka brand was selling only a few hundred cases a year.  The packaging and marketing message were changed, and in two years it became the number one vodka brand (called Absolut Vodka).

What do all these examples have to do with YOUR business selling homes?…

How Houses Go From Unsold-To-Sold
By Changing the Message

We are no longer in a market where you can stick a sign in the yard and get multiple offers.  Here are two recent examples of what to do to get your listings sold…

EXAMPLE 1: In the first example, a home failed to sell in the traditional way.  The well-intentioned agent listed the home in MLS, had a sign in the yard, ran small ads in the newspaper, and used a typical flyer.

I took the same house and sold it for FULL price in 11 days by making changes in the marketing.

I did TWO things to improve the marketing message of this home and to get it sold fast…

1.  Changed the headline. The previous agent failed to mention that the home was small.  I actually used the word “small” in the headline.  So, why use such a “negative” word in the main heading?

That is a trick question because—to the right buyer—a “small” home is not a drawback, it is actually a huge benefit.  Besides, why gloss over an objection prospective buyers will discover anyway?  Doing so only attracts the wrong audience.

2.  Emphasized the primary benefit. Equally important as the headline, the previous marketing failed to stress the home’s primary benefit—the scenic and private back yard setting.

My ad stressed the “rain forest” theme.  When the message is properly executed…the right audience finds you.

Here’s my “rain forest” ad I created to sell this home…click the image below to download a pdf.

EXAMPLE 2: The second example involved a house in Lakeway (an area near Austin, TX) that had been listed three times and on the market a total of 18 months.  In all that time the seller never received an offer.

Each agent had used a typical flyer that simply told features of the home…the number of bedrooms, baths and living areas (sound familiar?).

Several key benefits of the house were never mentioned in the previous marketing.

It was on a double lot, had a 3.5-car garage, and was one of the only houses in this old section of Lakeway that had received extensive updating.

I simply used an ad that would attract prospects who valued these benefits, and the home sold in just under 45 days.

I don’t have a pdf ready for this “Lakeway” ad, but here’s a larger view of the ad so you can see how I emphasized the benefits right in the headline…

To wrap things up…it doesn’t matter if you’re the owner of Legos or the owner of a house, the principle is the same: the wrong marketing message will result in failure.

Start looking for these small tweaks to the message of your listings.  Remember, always always always, promote the benefits your audience wants in meaningful and specific ways.

[Ed note: Copyright Stan Barron.  Reprinted with permission.  If you, or someone you know wants to sell a house, please give Stan a call at 512-345-8585.  Also, many have responded to this post commenting that the Lego company is Danish and not German.  It is true, the company is from Denmark.  This article refers to when one of their headquarters was in Germany.]