Friday, May 22, 2009

Real Estate Investor Insider Secret #3: Never Underestimate the Power of a Headline (Even on a Postcard)

By Mark B. Bradley

Journalists never fail to stress the importance of a powerful headline. If you fail to create a compelling headline, your audience will move on the next article that catches their attention. This rule also holds true for real estate marketing investors especially when you are launching a direct marketing campaign.

Let's face it, the postcard doesn't have a lot of space on it. As a real estate investor using this method, you don?t have the luxury of developing a two-page argument leading to the merits and benefits of your product as some marketers do.

The most surefire way of creating a strong headline is to follow the WIIFM ? What's In It For Me principle. Remember, benefits first before features.

The quickest and easiest way to add muscle to your mailing is to use the tried, tested and true formula of WIIFM What's In It For Me. Oh, sure, you're tempted right now to answer this question. But don?t. Not yet at least. Think about it for a while.

Write them all down. Mull over and reflect on all these benefits to get yourself inspired and ready to come up with your own striking headlines. Just write and don't criticize or limit your ideas at this point. When you think you have enough, look back at your headlines and study them. Drop uninteresting headlines. With the remaining promising headlines, replace some words with active verbs or more vivid words.

Study them. Once you've absorbed them, then you can begin to create various headlines. That?s right! I said headlines in the plural. Don?t settle just on one. Get those inherent creative juices flowing. Power your headlines with strong action verbs.

You can also combine all the best headlines to create another powerful headline. The more headlines you have, the better.

In addition, you can achieve more success in your real estate postcard marketing if you pay more attention to your customers, and learn what benefits are most valuable to them. These benefits have the strongest emotional connection to your prospective customers. And when these benefits are merged into a headline, you produce a highly potent means of persuasion.

I know. It seems that you?re taking quite a bit of time just creating your headline. That's exactly the way it should be though. Your headline is just that important. And it's a fact that you should never forget.

In fact, you can even spin your own headline from the tips I've mentioned. Once you come up with the best and convincing headline, you?re on your way to achieving real estate success.

About the Author:

No comments: