Why Postcards Rock! Effective Marketing with Postcards

Direct mail is one of the most expensive forms of advertising, but it is also one of the most effective. Email may be the cheapest, but is also the easiest to ignore or be caught by a SPAM filter.  Over the past 14 years, I've found that it's best not to rely solely on one type of marketing, but rather to scramble it up and utilize several different sources to effectively reach your target market.

Today I'm going to focus on postcards. Postcards are one of my favorite forms of marketing.

o They are the least expensive form of direct mail.
o The recipient sees your marketing message since there is no envelope
o They are inexpensive to produce as you can print them yourself and print up to four cards off one sheet of card stock

It is crucial to your success that all your postcards contain a unique marketing message - something that sets you apart from your competition and are mailed on a consistent basis to your target market.

Forget about the recipes, tip of the month, just listed, just sold, turn your clock back or forward postcards, all the things that most agents send out. I've tried them in the past and they don't work! Don't waste your money on image advertising when image ads don't work in real estate. I know this because I used to use them with no success. You have got give people a compelling reason to desire to use your services and postcards are one of the most effective methods for getting your message out.

The postcards that have been most successful in my personal business have all have very strong marketing messages backed with strong guarantees and special programs. We designed different USP's (unique selling proposition) or marketing messages for different target markets, for instance our "Sell it Yourself, While it's Listed and Pay No Commission Program" might be very intriguing to a FSBO, but our "Sold in 39 Days Guaranteed" might be just the thing an expired owner may be looking for after having their home on the market with another agent for the last 6 months.

One of the things I like best about postcards is that you can print them yourself. It shouldn't cost you more than a few cents by printing four on one piece of card stock and postcard postage is $.28 at the present time. I've found that ones I've designed and printed myself actually outperformed ones I purchased from a company that were slicker and more professional looking. The problem with those is that that is what every other agent is sending out and you don't stand apart from the competition.

You can choose to print the addresses directly onto the postcards (using mail merge) or you can use labels if you prefer. It's not like it's an envelope that you're trying to ensure gets opened so it really doesn't matter.

Need someone in your corner to help you in your real estate career?  I don't compete with our agents, I help them.  Call for a confidential interview (936) 525-3214.