Real Estate Marketing - The Cure for Boring Ads By Marte Cliff

Face it - most real estate ad copy is boring, uninformative, and does nothing to entice a buyer into calling for a showing appointment. So what if it has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a garage? So do dozens of others.

Why are real estate ads so often boring?

First of all - because they list features and omit benefits.

That might happen because the real estate agent writing the ads wasn't inspired by the house. He or she didn't see anything "special" to use as a focus for the ad. It could be because the house was a cookie-cutter and the agent had seen 200 others just like it, but it could also be because they simply didn't take the time to see what benefits the house had to offer.

Are you faced with this problem from time to time? Then try this: Involve the seller.

You can approach this either through an extensive interview with the seller or by supplying a questionnaire for the seller to complete.

Either way, you want to know several things that will help with your ad writing and in your conversations with potential buyers.

• What do you like most about living in this house?
• What do you like most about this neighborhood?
• What is your favorite room in the house, and why?
• What is your favorite feature of the home, and why?
• What features or benefits caused you to choose this house over all others when you purchased it?

I  really recommend the interview over the written questions, because many people aren't comfortable with writing and their answers will be brief. The best combination is to supply the questions ahead of time and ask your sellers to give them some thought. Then do the interview.

Get them talking

If you can get the homeowners to start reminiscing about why they chose this particular house, you might get some valuable information that wouldn't come out otherwise.

And if you do this exercise with a good number of sellers, you'll gain added insight into what motivates buyers in general. You might learn some things that will surprise you if you haven't worn "buyer's shoes" for a long time.

The second reason why an interview is better than a written list is that it gives you the opportunity to get a little more in depth and draw the seller out with conversation (rather than specific questions) about topics such as:

• Adult entertaining
• Kids having friends over
• Kids and homework
• Cooking
• Pets
• Working from home
• Ease of getting to work
• Convenience of nearby shopping, public transit, entertainment
• Neighborhood activities

Armed with this added information, your narrative ad copy can come alive and actually paint a picture of life in this home.

Of course you have to be careful to follow the Fair Housing and ADA rules, but that really isn't all that difficult now that you have plenty of space on line to say what you want to say.

Involve the sellers. They live there and they had a reason for buying, so use their knowledge.

Marte Cliff is a Freelance Copywriter who specializes in writing for real estate and related industries. She'll help you with one letter, or an entire marketing plan. For Real Estate agents and brokers who are ready to get full value from their websites, she'll be happy to put together an entire package - from the web copy to the lead generation packages that make an agent's phone ring.