Free real estate and home magazines are probably the #1 lead generating tool you can use, especially since they target exactly the kind of audience that will lead to hot prospects for you: those of a mind to make some sort of real estate transaction, or at least very open to the possibility.

Recommendation: Go to the nearest Turkey Hill or 7/11 (or whatever convenience store is nearest you) and grab some home magazines such as Home and Land and Harmon Homes. Be ready to spend a decent chunk of change to put out a full page ad. The ad itself should be nothing but pictures of your listings, basic but compelling descriptions of the properties and a small section at the bottom for your picture, logo and contact information. There should be no prices or MLS #s, just the picture, a GREAT description and your number urging the reader to call for more information. If you don’t have enough listings, get some from other agents – both homeowners and listing agents alike should be fine with it, since it’s more exposure for the property (just make sure you get the agent AND homeowner’s permission first).

You don’t want your advertisement to be mainly a picture of you and your kids at an attempt at branding, nor do you want to offer a free home value analysis, as people picking up these magazines don’t really care about that. (We know, co-founder Dave has tried it before and didn’t get squat for the effort).

If you create the right kind of Homes & Land ad, we’ll make you 3 promises:

One, you’ll have at least 5 agents call and complain every month because you didn’t include prices or MLS #s in your ads.

Two, you’ll get tons of calls from buyers already working with agents (though if they want to buy your listing, that still works in your favor!) Here’s a quick script to determine whether they’re contracted. “Hey Sam, I want to help you out, but it’s against the law for me to provide you with any information if you’re already contracted with another agent – are you contracted with another agent? Yes? Well, let me give you the MLS # for that property and you can call your agent with it, they’ll help you out.” If the answer is no, they’re not contracted with an agent, then GO GET ‘EM! They’re yours to help and follow up with until they become a client.

And three, (the important one!), you’ll get more calls from THIS kind of marketing than any other marketing out there. If you put the price in, your calls will drop in half, because half the calls only want the price of the homes. If you put in the MLS #, agents will be able to use it to get information for potential buyers, so you lose out on more phone calls. By leaving just the right combination of information OUT of the ad, you’ll generate many more phone calls.

Believe it or not, you’re not advertising these listings to sell the home, because that doesn’t happen very often. Rather, you’re trying to build relationships with buyers to grow your pipeline. Of course, getting them to call is half the battle. Once you’ve got them on the phone it’s important to build rapport and try to get a face to face appointment with them. But getting appointments from phone calls is a whole other subject, one you can read up about in our article on Converting Calls to Appointments.