Rule #2: Crating Value Is the Only Responsibility of Your Offer
Your headline has achieved its goal of engaging readers and sufficiently intriguing them to read the copy of your ad. Now is your opportunity to create value and separate yourself and your offer from the competition. Your offer should be descriptive and creative. When writing copy you should endeavor to address the following:
- “What’s in it for me (the prospect)?” How will the prospect benefit by responding to your ad?
- What is my Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? This should separate you and your offer from the competition. Why would a prospect benefit from responding to your ad versus your competitors’?
- If your offer is separating the prospect from “pain,” promote your offer within a “Problem-Solution-Confirmation” framework. What problem am I addressing? What solution am I offering, and is the prospect clear on this solution?
- If your offer is appealing to a pragmatic target such as a mover-upper or a medium-to-high end audience, exploit reciprocity. With these prospects you earn trust by extending trust. David Cialdini’s book, The Power of Reciprocity, explains this human behavior trait in excellent detail.
- If your offer is focused on high-end achievers, appeal to their ego.
- Tell the whole story. Prospects are more likely to respond to a longer ad that tells a complete story than a shorter ad that leaves out important information.
Focus on Value
There is an abundance of real estate marketing books that promise to provide you with cut-and-paste ads or some sort of magic pill that will make you rich. Their goal is not to give you turnkey marketing that will deliver the riches they promise, but to sell you their book. They play on your desire to succeed and receive instant gratification.
These experts often express that your goal in marketing should be to build desire in the customer. The truth is that real estate ads do not have to create desire in their marketing. Generally, people searching real estate ads already possess the desire to purchase or sell property; otherwise, they would not be looking at a real estate ad. Real estate is not a market that thrives on hard-sells to convince a person that they need a certain house. The house, if priced right, will sell itself.
The goal of your advertising is to uncover the active buyers and sellers, not to convince them to make a buy/sell decision on a specific property or your services.
On a picture ad, if your headline did its job in grabbing attention, the prospect will either find your listing desirable or not. If your ad is an editorial direct response type, the offer is either compelling to that specific prospect or not. No amount of window dressing will change that. Instead of chasing desire, focus on offering value and delivering as unique a service as possible.
The Value Formula
Prospective home buyers and sellers find value in the product and service, not in self-promotion that originates from the person selling the product or service to them. Marketing yourself instead of your service serves no purpose. Phrases such as “number one agent,” “most active agent,” “presidents’ club,” “top producer,” or any other self-promotional phrase creates no value.
This is not to say that there are not appropriate venues for accomplishments and self-serving logos and tag lines; but keep in mind that they are most effective once value has been established. With some, but not all prospects, established agents with strong brands already possess value, but that value was created by past performance, not by self-promotion.
So how do you create value? Let’s be specific; let’s define value. Ultimately, value is a transformation of power from owner to customer. Understanding that transformation relies on the following formula:
Value = Function + Perception
Function is defined as Alternatives/Cost. Function is the analytical side of a person’s decision-making process. It is determined by a prospect understanding what an offer does in mechanical terms compared to like offers, divided by the cost or price.
Perception is defined as Belief + Emotion. It is harder to measure and is influenced by intangibles such as beauty, image, and credibility. A buyer’s perception of an offer reflects what they find important, and often has a greater impact on decision making than function. You’ve likely heard that people buy on emotion (perception) and justify on reason (function).
Consider these multiple-choice questions: You receive a $50,000 transportation allowance. Would you:
(a) Purchase a bicycle?
(b) Hire a limousine service?
(c) Purchase a $50,000 car?
Purchasing a bicycle is certainly the most economic but least convenient, while hiring the limo service may be the most convenient, but likely too costly. The most functional option is to purchase the car.
Once you have decided to purchase the car, you may narrow your decision to three like sedans: the BMW, a Mercedes, or a Lexus. Would you:
(a) Purchase the most expensive or least expensive car in the group?
(b) Purchase the car rated #1 by some unfamiliar entity or the car’s own manufacturer?
(c) Purchase the car that you perceived to be the best due to some personal belief?
Generally, you would simply base your final decision on what brand you most liked. Often there is some unique feature or benefit, whether that is actual functionality or just image, which compels you to purchase one of the brands.
Relate this decision-making process to how you create value in your real estate marketing. You address function, or what this offer is mechanically going to do for the prospect. Then you focus your offer on delivering unique benefits. The prospect already has the pre-established desire; you simply want to capitalize on it by leading them to you.
Further investigation of the value model demonstrates that self-promotion simply does not create value. Would you be influenced to purchase the car rated #1…especially if it received that rating by its manufacturer? Why would a prospect buy from an agent because they’ve proclaimed themselves #1?
Certainly price is important, but it’s an entirely different metric than value. The price range is pre-established by the prospect, and the final price is established by the market, not by the agent or the seller. You can relate to this if you’ve ever listed a property that you know is overpriced. It’s not what you or the seller believes; it’s what the market will pay.
Five Ways to Create Value
(1) Professionally point out the differences between your services and your competitors’.
(2) Beware of discounting; instead, offer additional service. If you discount, you will attract a discounting audience.
(3) Deliver quality by under-promising and over-delivering.
(4) Emphasize response time by respecting your prospects’ time and by beating your competitors’ response times.
(5) What does your industry do that is annoying to your competitors? Eliminate that and the annoyance that it engenders in prospects.
Tips to Help You Get Going
- Write conversationally. Don’t worry about perfect punctuation or grammar; you can always fix that later with the help of spell check.
- Write more copy than you need. Pare it down later.
- Focus on your best benefit; don’t save your best for last.
- Avoid humor. What is humorous to one person is not humorous to another.
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