Real Estate Advertising

DO YOU KNOW:

• Triple exclamation points are a dead giveaway of advertising amateurs?
• That outrageous metaphors, like “Scottsdale on the Water,” undermine credibility?
• That investment cliches like “ground floor” cause many readers to immediately toss your sales letter in the trash?

You didn’t. Well that’s evident from this sales letter which hails from the distant year, 2007.

As the creator of the Ultimate Online Swipe File, I store more junk mail than any sane copywriter should and I recently unearthed this doozy.

Now, I don’t fault the principals of this real estate project for thinking big and pitching their plan to the public. Wasn’t that what everyone was doing in the sub-prime years?

And though cheesy, I don’t blame them for renting the most expensive restaurant in the neighborhood and trying to get the attendees soused on chateaubriand and claret in an attempt to loosen their wallets.

But they deserve everlasting condemnation for mailing such an appalling ad.

Yes, it’s an invitation for a free dinner and everyone knows there’s going to be a pitch. Even rich folks are willing to sit though a dog and pony show for a freebie.

But is there any hope of attracting a bona fide prospect with a headline containing “The Most Exciting Project in a Lifetime!!!”

This developer has gone “all in” as they say in poker parlance. He’s done a mass mailing to a compiled list and even rented a restaurant to host the would-be buyers. Yet, the copy reads like it was written by someone who uses a photocopier for a living — not someone who creates accountable advertising.

It’s probably too late to “rescue” this advertiser in 2010. And maybe in hindsight it’s a good thing that tepid copy capped response.

How many other clueless souls are out there today mailing pieces like this? There’s a greater number of clients than any of us could handle in two lifetimes.

This lead generation ad for how to get-rich-in-real-estate appeared in “Popular Mechanics” just a few weeks before Black Thursday and the eventual market crash of 1929.

That $100,000 in today’s dollars would be about $1.3 million, so that was quite a claim to make.  Reminiscent of the real estate gurus of our not so distant past?

This is one of the first recognizable to the 21st Century marketer’s eyes, get-rich-in-real-estate ads and it was published by a company called American Business Builders.

This ad and their biz-op ads in general were in a word — phenomenal.

You get the feeling that a heavyweight copywriter, like Victor Schwab, had a hand in this but since so much of Schwab’s oeuvre has never been identified, we may never know.

Notice the interesting coupon with the year the company was founded and its business capital.

Once again…nothing new under the sun.

Click the thumb to DL the PDF.

Here’s an ad that should be placed in the “could-of-been-a-contender” category.

It starts off with a flash and quickly burns out.

“Ten years ago a good friend pointed a solid gold gun at my skeptical head and pushed me into a real estate profit of l000%! Since then, I’ve turned modest land investments into the kind of money I never hoped to have. I have nothing to sell-no ax to grind. But I know this:

You can make your money grow in western land , as you can in no other investment. All you need to know is

THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT WESTERN LAND INVESTMENT

Talk about a great hook — “Ten years ago a good friend pointed a solid gold gun at my skeptical head…”

But the reader quickly discovers this advertiser has pulled a fast one. Not only is there no pay-off of the captivating pre-head, but it’s clear the ad writer has cheaply embellished to snag our attention.

No solid gold gun. No story. Max Sackheim would call this a Deadly Advertising Mistake.

What the ad might have been if there was a  drunken, midnight poker game and the cowboy’s New York host suddenly pulled a revolver on him to emphasize the value of real estate investing in the Western United States. This is likely why there were so few insertions for this ad in the mid 1960’s — a mere generation after the Florida Land Boom of the 1920’s — curiously not mentioned in the ad. Perhaps, this is also why Doubleday & Company sold so few of the books.

Nevertheless, it’s looks like time to start hording some good real estate advertising templates. “Be greedy when others are fearful” and all that.

Robert Allen has been one of the most successful information marketers in the real estate arena for over twenty years. Though he may not be writing the copy, this guy knows how to use space advertising and invests millions each year in print media across the United States.

Even though it appears the real estate market is on ice in the States for the foreseeable future, there are always pockets of opportunity in this market, and heed must be paid to Robert Allen’s display ads.

You have to love his positioning.

Here’s a brief history of the challenges I’ve faced in becoming a best-selling author:

My first challenge, and the one that initially thrust me into the international spotlight, was when I said, “Send me to any city in America. Take away my wallet. Give me $100 for living expenses. In 72 hours, I’ll buy an excellent piece of property, using none of my own money.”

The LA Times called me on my challenge and sent me to San Francisco. Fifty-seven hours later, I had taken title to seven properties, generating assets worth $722,000!

A few years later, I did the St. Louis Challenge when I said, “Send me to any unemployment line in America. Let me select someone that is broke, out of work, and discouraged. In two days time, I’ll teach him my strategies for Wealth Creation. In 90 days, he’ll be back on his feet with $5,000 in the bank, never to set foot in an unemployment line again.”

“My Big Mouth Could Make You A Millionaire” (2004)

“Get rich in real estate…God isn’t making anymore land.”

Even though that trumpet is silenced for the foreseeable future, especially in the info marketing realm, you can count on seeing Ron LeGrand around when signs of life return to the market.

I met Ron in Los Angeles at the late Corey Rudl’s seminar in 2004.

I’ve seen a lot of platform speakers and Ron is one of the best. After his presentation, there was a line of about one hundred people with credit cards in hand ready to snatch up his starter’s kit.

This is a self-mailer which promoted one of his seminars a few years ago. You can download a 1.4 mg PDF of it to your computer by right clicking on the image and choosing “save link as” or “save target as.”

When the heart of the real estate market begins beating in earnest again — whenever that is — there’ll be a tremendous thirst for transactions.

And that’s great news because without the “free money” motor which artificially kept the market running, good advertising can resume its rightful role in selling everything from downtown condos to South Pacific islands.

This ad is from 42 years ago for luxury land plots on the Island of Montserrat. It masterfully uses scarcity and social proof and is an ad that can be successfully modeled for as long as exotic plots of land are bought and sold. [Read more…] about Montserrat Land Advertising (Real Estate Ad #19)

Nearly every promoter of real estate investment today owes his existence to a 47 year old, breakthrough ad.

However, unlike many of today’s promoters who are 95% pitchmen/5% real estate investors, Bill Nickerson was the real deal. He was as blue collar as it gets — a telephone company employee — who started off in his part time and built substantial wealth through real estate investing.

At the time this ad was published, real estate investing was not something the average wage earner got involved with. That’s hard to imagine today considering the deluge of late-night infomercials.

And that’s why this was such a breakthrough ad.

Take the title of this now out-of-print classic: “How I Turned $1,000 Into A Million.” It’s spot on specific…and infinitely stronger than…”How I Got Rich in Real Estate.”

It’s an evergreen headline that’s swiped successfully to this day.

Even forty seven years later, the copy is very strong in this ad. Look how the very first sentence sides with the skeptical reader and builds momentum from there.

Who ever heard of an ordinary wage earner like me amassing a fortune of half a million dollars in his spare time?

Yet that’s what happened to me. And the money making formula I used can be applied by almost anybody, almost anywhere.

Maybe you’ll make less than $500,000. Maybe you’ll make more (as I did later on.) In any case, I see no reason why you can’t accumulate enough to retire on a handsome income while you are still young enough to enjoy it to the fullest. Your chances for success in this field are far better than 400-to-1. In fact, 1600 times better than if you went into business according to actual US government statistics.

Notice too, the sophistication of this approach. Nickerson says: “the money making formula I used can be applied by almost anybody, almost anywhere.” This adds volumes of credibility to the claim because we all know there’s no way everyone, everywhere can make something work successfully. [Read more…] about Real Estate Advertising (William Nickerson: How I Turned $1,000 Into A Million)