Asset Management & Recovery: April 2008

What do 49 individual condos I had listed all have in common?  They are all in contract at a price acceptable to the bank and it only took about an hour to do it.

That is the sound bite.  It actually took a lot of hard work over the past three weeks to pull it off, but today was a success.

Over the past 3 weeks our office undertook a regional marketing effort that encompassed print media around the region in city and national publications, posted to dozens of websites that spidered out to even more, implemented a media campaign, sent direct mail and held open viewings.

The end result was over 12,000 web hits on our site, close to 100 individual emails and calls and 18 registered bidders.  Of the 18 bidders, we are in contract with 8 of them.

All we need to do now is get the contracts approved by the judge and move to closing.

Here is the real interesting part.  We offered the properties two ways.  First in bulk and then separately.  When you look at the gross sales numbers, the sales numbers are only separated by $4950.00.  Clearly these properties were sold for what they are worth in today's market.  

A friend of mine once said that if I ate a Snickers bar that I should put out a press release about it.  I'm not so sure about that, but media relations is a large part of our corporate marketing strategy.

A media campaign can be designed around almost anything.  For example, we send out a press release for every large event such as auction and when we bring on new staff.  In addition our local business paper, Business First, holds a free networking breakfast about every 7-8 weeks.  These events are great for seeing the reporters in a relaxed setting as well as networking.

I am writing this post because I get the impression that some folks are possessed about new marketing venues such as blogging.  Not that blogging is bad.  Quite the opposite, but the old school ways should not be totally discounted.

It is said that being quoted in the news media is the best advertising you can get.  Someone else is proclaiming you the expert. 

To prove my point (and pat myself on the back) I point to the last 12 months in our local market.  There have been 3 articles in about projects I am involved in and 2 about market conditions where I am heavily quoted.  I also regularly receive calls from reporters to get background for things they are writing about, to check facts and (drum roll) to get referrals to other local experts in town.  There are an easy 6 articles out there in the last 12 months where I was able to direct the reporter to another expert that I do business with.  The reporters remember it and so do the people I refer them to.

Something else that is neat is that I can track web hits and incoming call volume increases back to the days following sending out a release.  It is significantly higher following an article with my name in it. 

In short, media relations is good for business.

If you have never written a release before there are a ton of places online that can give you tips, just Google "press release tips".  Who, What, When, Where, Why, How and Company Information.

The next thing to do will be to get that release out to the reporters.  I have gone two ways.  First, you can search your marketplace getting the names of the reporters in your field of choice and contact them about how to send a release.  Most will want email while some of the smaller publications will still request a fax.

The second way would be to use a service such as http://www.prweb.com/.  This is more global and has a fee associated with it. 

I use both, but my personal list gets the most results.  Part of that is due to the relationship I have developed over time.

Good luck.

R