Imagine it's six months from now, you’re talking with your assistant when the phone rings… You’re busy working on a new proposal, so they answer… it’s another call from someone you’ve never heard of… someone that wants you to stage their home. As they hand you the phone they cover the receiver with their hand and whisper to you, “Geez, you’ve been getting a lot of these lately.” You smile, nod your head and pick up the phone and say, “Hello.”

Is it a fantasy? A dream perhaps? Or could it be real? Could you really transform your business to the point that perfect strangers are calling you, begging you to stage their home?

Maybe.

But if you are not living this dream today, the odds are that you need to do something different than you are today, if you are going live this dream in six months …or ever.

Now before you dismiss this dream as impossible, bear with me a while longer to dream that dream even more fully. Image that it’s early morning, and you just woke up after this pleasant dream. You don’t need to get up yet, so you close your eyes again and savor this dream yet once more.

Imagine that the person on the phone, already seems to know who you are, even though you have never met. Imagine further that they understand how you work. They already know whether you just do consultations, or only work with existing furnishings or have your own inventory of furniture. Not only that, but they already believe that staging works and is right for them in their situation. Further, imagine that they understand that while you charge more for your services than your competitors…they want you anyway because they know you are worth it.

It’s a nice dream.

What would you need to do to make it happen?

Maybe, not much at all.

I can sense your skepticism alert just went off, I don’t blame you. But if you read to the bottom of this letter I will prove to you that this is not only possible, but maybe even likely…

But first, let me introduce myself.

My name is Earl Netwal, and I call myself a Micro Business Specialist. I am not a home stager, and what I have to share with you today has nothing to do with how you go about staging homes.

Instead it has to do with how you market your home staging business.

In the summer of 2008, I conducted a survey of 189 home stagers like you and asked a series of questions about their business. I learned many things, not the least of which is that while most of you were great home stagers, many of you are challenged at marketing your services.

Since then the housing market, and the economy as a whole have deteriorated. The need for effective marketing has grown to become an even more important factor in the home staging business.

Today, for many home stagers, effective marketing is a matter of survival not just a vehicle to drive them toward prosperity. And yet there’s not much new in the way of marketing that makes sense and is realistic for most home stagers.

Until today.

Below, I will share with you a novel set of techniques that will transform your marketing efforts. A plan that will not only help you survive the current downturn, but will set the stage for your future prosperity.

If I could deliver on this promise, would you be interested?

If so, stay tuned. This is a long letter, and an important one. Rather than toss off a bunch of promises, hype and hope, I want to be clear and complete. I understand that your home staging business is important to you.

When I am done, I will ask you to take action. Before I do, I want to give you a complete understanding of my proposition and what it will do for you and your business.

But first, I need to get a little geeky on you. But don’t worry. While I will be discussing web pages and related internet marketing techniques, you won’t need to learn any fancy HTML code or computer jargon.

But I will ask you to think about how you build relationships with people. How you make friends. And in the process, I will show you how you can transform your existing web site into an effective marketing machine.

Now I should let you know, I’m not a techie myself. But I have been marketing online for over 12 years and have learned a thing or three about internet marketing, first as a buyer of information products, and then as a seller. (I’ve had many careers over my lifetime, including a decade and half as a Real Estate Broker with my own Commercial Industrial firm)

In any industry where there is big money to be made, competitors gather and innovate to out market one another. The more the money, the more the competitors and the fiercer the battles.

In the home staging industry, the hottest competition is between the various schools teaching and certifying home stagers.

In the internet marketing world, the battle front is in selling information on how to make money online. Unlike the home staging school situation, the competitors in the “make money online” battle are making tens of millions of dollars. That kind of “juice” draws a lot of players and a lot of products.

Virtually every week, a major new product or two gets launched that will make its sponsors millions. And since the vehicle they are using is the internet… and they are selling products on how to better use the internet to make money,… it stands to reason that they not only know but practice cutting edge techniques.

For Example, in February of 2009, Frank Kern launched a $2000 information product that sold 2000 units in 24 hours. That's $4,000,000.00 in a single day. Not too shabby! Especially in a recession.

We’re going to steal the best of these ideas, the time proven concepts that have made the top internet marketers millions and adapt a couple of them to your business. Now they may not make you millions, but with luck, and a little bit of effort, they will get your phone to ring, and get you some more jobs, some more money and prove to yourself, family and friends that this home staging business is just the ticket for your creative talents.

Still with me?

It’s time to introduce you to the Home Stager's Complete Auto Pilot Marketing System. If I were more creative I would have an acronym that would spell out something sexy but I don’t, so I will call the system, Market Maker.

Market Maker has several components. When you decide to add Market Maker to your marketing plan, you will be able to customize several of the elements or use it “right out of the box.”

Market Maker's mission is to transform your current web site from an electronic brochure into an interactive marketing tool capable of building relationships with people you don’t even know.

It will inform them about the value of home staging, and how you practice the art. It will make friends with prospects and answer their preliminary questions and create in them a desire to at least give you a chance to bid on their business.

It will do all this on auto pilot, 365 days a year, even when you are on vacation.

Not only that, it will include an optional self contained revenue generator that may completely pay for its entire operating costs and potentially even a profit. We will discuss all the costs associated with the system later. You will be pleasantly surprised at how affordable it is.

But first we will explain what Market Maker will do for your business.

    * Market Maker will get more people to visit your web page.
    * Market Maker will get more of your visitors to take action.
    * Market Maker will put your marketing on auto-pilot
    * Market Maker will educate your prospects on how you do business
    * Market Maker will build a positive relationship with your prospects.
    * Monthly Marketing Teleconference (recorded for your convenience)
    * Monthly Home Staging Tips Conference (also recorded)

    * Offer you an exclusive Competitive advantage in your market place

The net result will be that more people will come to your web site and most importantly more of them will call you when they are ready to make a decision on hiring a home stager for their home.

Let’s look at this in more detail.

Behind the visible portion of your web site is a maze of hidden computer code. In the header section of this code is a series of commands called meta tags, that are intended to tell search engines what your web page is all about. The most important aspect of these meta tags are the keywords used. But in addition to key word there are Page Title Tags, and Site Descriptions.

Unfortunately, most home stager web pages we have examined are woefully inadequate in their selection of keywords.

Market Maker will customize a set of home staging related keywords that people actually use when they search for home stagers and couple them with geographical terms relevant to your particular market.

Thus for example, if you were a home stager in my home town of Minneapolis, your keywords would include terms like Minneapolis Home Stager, or Twin Cities House Staging, or Hennepin County Home Staging, etc.

The goal here is to combine your keywords with geographical modifiers. This makes sense. Imagine someone who has just watched a HGTV program and is interested in learning about home stagers in your community.

They might initially type the words, “home stager” in their computer search engine. When they get 6 million responses, they will quickly add a geographical term to focus the search on your town.

When they do, your listing will pop to the top…if your keywords include both your town and the keywords they used.

Now I don’t want to mislead you, Google is finding geographical locations whether people type it in or not. So if your prospect is using Google, they may be able to find you based on your geography whether you include it in your keywords or not.

But while Google is the number one search engine, about 40% of all search engine traffic is done on other search engines, like Yahoo, Ask and dozens of other smaller ones. These other search engines still use meta tags. So the proper use of geographical based keywords can dramatically increase traffic to your webpage.

What that means to you is that your web page is more likely to be seen than is your competitors. That can only be good for your business.

I offer this list of keywords modified with the relevant geographical indicators to home stagers for $75 when purchased separately. It is included free as part of the Market Maker package. Because to be successful, the first requirement is to get as many people as possible to find your web site.

The next step, once prospective customers find your web site, is to get the people who visit to do something. To accomplish that we are going to offer them an ethical bribe. But before we go into detail about what we mean by an ethical bribe, it’s important that we think about the type of people who are viewing your web site first.

The folks who are browsing the web and your web site at any given time, are something like the people who might be going to a trade show such as a home improvement show. Some of them are there for entertainment and/or exercise. Some are looking for ideas. Others are looking for features or options. Some are looking for questions they should ask before making a final decision. Others may be doing price comparisons. And a few visitors are there specifically to buy something that day.

So while you may be getting a lot of traffic to your web site, it’s not too surprising that not everyone is calling you or sending you emails. Most of them aren’t ready to make a buying decision yet.

It could be they were watching a HGTV show and were idly curious if there were any local home stagers, or perhaps they are hoping for a job promotion in the near future that will allow them to upgrade homes, or perhaps a new baby is on the way and they are looking for a bigger house once the baby is born, but are just beginning the process. Or maybe there’s a possibility of a transfer, or any number of other reasons.

Whatever their reason, most people who come to your web page are just browsing. They may some day become prospects, but now they are just browsers. Most web sites are equipped to deal with people who want to take action today. And that’s fine. You want your web site to provide the information they need to call you. But you want to do more than that as well.

You want to get these people who stopped by your web site today to come back to you when the time is right for them to take action and hire a home stager. But how are you going to get them to do that?

If you have particularly spectacular before and after pictures they might remember you. But that’s not likely. Odds are that your pictures will blur together with those on all the web pages they looked at while browsing the net…no matter how nice the rest of your graphics.

Instead with the Market Maker package, you will offer them an ethical bribe that will catch their attention and get them to raise their hands.

With the Market Maker Package you will get the rights to offer your web browsers the first two chapters of a high quality eBook on Home Staging written by Allegra Dioguardi that will appeal to most people who visit your site.

(There is a link later where you can download your own free copy of the first two chapters.)

These two chapters will serve as your “Ethical Bribe.” They are a gift you can offer to everyone who comes to your web site. Free of charge, no obligation.

All your visitor needs to do is provide you with their first name and an email address so you can send the chapters to them.

Now don’t worry, the Market Maker system will be set up so this is done automatically for you, even if they ask for the download at 2:17 AM in the morning. In fact, the entire Market Maker system is designed to operate on auto pilot so you don’t need to worry about it.

Our goal is to reduce your stress over marketing and allow you to spend more of your time doing what you are good at, home staging.

So let’s recap where we are. We have increased the traffic to your web site by adding geographically relevant keywords that people actually use to find home stagers in your market and we have provided a valuable Ethical Bribe people will be able to download from you web site, if they want it.

Does this mean that you will need to redo your web page?

Not necessarily. In an ideal world, it would be best if your web page had a permanent opt in form on the front page of your web site. But this isn’t necessary.

As part of the Market Maker package, you will be provided with a single short line of computer code which will be added to the hidden code of your web page. Just like your keywords.

The code can be remotely programmed to create an attractive form your visitors can use to request their free download.

This form floats over your existing web page. That means that you won’t need to spend money to get your current web pages changed.

If a viewer doesn’t want to download the free chapters they can push a clearly marked “close” button and the form disappears instantly. They are right back on your web page just as before.

This effect is called a light box. It is very effective in getting people to notice your free offer and to sign up for it. That is good news for you. For now you have their email address and are able to send them not only the free chapters or other ethical bribe, but other free informative gifts as well.

You have now transformed your web site from a static electronic brochure into a lead generating machine. Your ethical bribe has gotten a prospect to raise their hand and make themselves known to you. Now that they have introduced themselves, it’s time to build a relationship with them.

And that’s the next part of the Market Maker system.

The follow-up process is where the Market Maket system works its magic. During the opt-in process the Market Maker system will ask your prospect for permission to share additional useful information on preparing for a move, as well as your ethical bribe. From here on in, you will be practicing what is called permission marketing. Your prospect has given you permission to market to them.

That allows Market Maker to send your new prospect information on preparing for a move, home staging in general, and your business in particular.

Market Maker messages are not spam. This is an important. You don’t want to have to worry about spam complaints, so let’s discuss how the Market Maker System protects you.

First off, as mentioned above, the opt-in form will make it clear to prospects that they will be getting the ethical bribe and additional information on home staging.

Additionally, the Market Maker uses a double opt in system.

What that means is that once a prospect enters their email in the opt-in form, they will get a confirmation message from Market Maker. This requires them to confirm that they requested the information and have given Market Maker permission to send it. If they don’t confirm they won’t get the ethical bribe and they won’t get any additional emails either.

In addition, every email sent by the Market Maker system is fully compliant with US anti-spam laws. Every message will include an “opt out” link. Your prospect can automatically remove themselves whenever they want. This means you will not have to worry about doing so manually.

Finally, you will be explaining this in your first email to them along with the link to the download the ethical bribe.

You can be 100% confident that your Market Maker follow-up campaigns will be completely compliant with all anti-spam laws and common etiquette.

Your Market Maker system will be sending two types of messages. The first are called Follow-ups and the second are called Broadcasts.

Follow-up emails are pre-written ‘evergreen’ emails that are scheduled to be sent at a specific number of days after a person opts-in to your system. The first email will go out immediately after they confirm the double opt in process.

It will contain a link to the ethical bribe download, and a personal message from you. The personal message will thank them for visiting your web page and signing up for the two chapters. It will inform them that you welcome any questions they have, and invite them to call or email you. It will also tell them that you will be sending them some additional free information and that they should keep an eye out for it. And finally it will advise them that they can stop the emails at anytime by opting out at the bottom of any of the emails.

This message will set the tone for the rest of the follow-up messages that will follow thereafter. The second message will be scheduled a few days later and will ask them if they enjoyed reading the free chapters and again inviting them to call you if you can be of assistance.

Subsequent messages will be designed to give them insight into how the home staging process works and gives them an idea of how you do business. The third message will be sent about a week after they first signed up, and then a new message will follow every week thereafter for about three months. At that time the messages will shift to every two weeks.

These follow-up messages will keep your home staging company in front of them. Your competitors will be hoping their web pages made a strong enough impression that your prospect will remember them weeks and months later. In the meanwhile, you will be talking to them on a regular basis. Your prospects will be getting to know you, and, your competitors will be forgotten.

Market Maker will provide you with a set of draft messages that you can use and/or edit to reflect your personal style and business model. If you wish, you will be able to substitute and/or add additional messages of your own, and adjust the timing of the message sequence and timing as you see fit.

The beauty of the Market Maker system is that once written, the follow-up message series can be used over and over again for years.

Market Maker staff will monitor the effectiveness of these messages. If appropriate, Market Maker will make periodic recommendations to change the message sequences and or individual messages should one message appear to be either superior or inferior. Such monitoring by Market Maker will improve overall results for all participants. In general though, once the message sequence is set it will remain in play.

These follow-up messages will be evergreen, which means that they will not have any references to specific holidays or seasons. That’s because the message sequence will start from the beginning for each new prospect who opts in to your system. You will have people starting a message number 1 at all times of the year, while those who signed up earlier may be receiving message 5 or 13.

The second type of message, the broadcast message, offers you the opportunity to send time specific messages to everyone on your list no matter where they are in the follow-up message sequence.

Broad cast messages are ideal for wishing prospects a Merry Christmas, or announcing that you will be speaking at a housing forum at the local high school or have received an award from the Board of Realtors. If you want, you can offer specials or discounts for a limited time to stimulate business.

By combining occasional real time broadcast messages with standard evergreen follow-up messages your prospect gets a sense you are personally emailing them each week. This is a tremendous relationship builder.

As a Market Maker member, you will be able to schedule two free broadcast messages each month. You will email these to Market Maker at least a few days in advance of their intended mailing date. These can be scheduled weeks or even months in advance.

So to recap where we are again, The Market Maker system will help you get more traffic by generating a series of geographical long tail keywords tailored to your specific market. This will generate more traffic to your web pages.

Once they arrive at your web page, your prospects will see an opt-in and/or light box style opt-in form that will offer them an attractive ethical bribe. Initially you will be offering them two chapters of a hot new eBook on Home Staging by Allegra Dioguardi.

(You will have the option of substituting your own report, ebook or other offer if you prefer.)

Once the prospect opts in, they will become part of a spam compliant data base and mailing system that Market Maker will maintain on your behalf. This will run on autopilot, capturing your prospects name and email addresses.

The mailing system will automatically mail to each new prospect a sequential series of messages. A set of messages will be drafted by Market Maker. You will be able to edit, personalize and/or replace any of these with your own messages. You may also add additional messages, and reshuffle the order the messages are sent.

You will also send occasionally broadcast messages to all prospects on your mailing list.

The combination of these messages will provide prospects with detailed information about the value of home staging, specific information about how you do business, and general information useful to anyone anticipating selling their existing home and buying a new one.

This will set you apart from your competition, and create a positive relationship between you and your prospect. This will result in many of them eventually calling you to bid on their home staging project, if not asking you to do it outright

Once Market Maker is set up, the only thing you will need to do is submit occasional broadcast messages and answer the phone when prospects call you.

This will free you from fretting about your marketing efforts and enable you to spend much more time staging homes, making money and satisfying your personal creative instincts. Not to mention allowing you to feel good about yourself while earning the admiration of your friends and family.

Your dream come true.

Additional Features of Market Maker

Adding geographically based long tail keywords to your meta tags is the quickest and simplest way to drive traffic to your web site. But, it’s not the only tactic we can steal from the Internet Marketing Gurus.

Once a month, Market Maker will host a teleconference that will focus specifically on ideas and tactics that you can apply to your business to improve your skills at marketing your home staging business.

Topics covered will include creating incoming links to your web site, effective blogging, social networking tactics, and other ideas.

These conferences will be recorded, and made available in an MP3 format or online so you will be able to listen to the material at your convenience.

Additionally, once a month Allegra Dioguardi will host a question and answer session in which she will discuss one or more problem situations sent in by participating Market Maker members.

These sessions are designed to stimulate creative ideas for dealing with difficult or problem situations. Participating members will be invited to submit photos, which will be posted online. Allegra along with your fellow home stagers will then discuss ideas and options. These sessions should help everyone involved. These sessions will also be recorded.

Allegra is a Graduate of Parsons College of Design and has 26 years experience merchandising homes.

If every home stager in your marketplace used Market Maker, it could lose some of its effectiveness. To preserve the value, not everyone will be allowed to join Market Maker.

Each person who joins Market Maker will need to claim a telephone area code in their market as their exclusive turf. If there is only one area code serving your town, only one home stager will be allowed to join Market Maker from your area code. This period of exclusivity will last at least for six months, perhaps permanently.

If you are in a larger metropolitan area, you may choose any area code you wish within the larger market as long as it’s not already taken. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the area code of your residence, but should be a market area that you serve.

Area codes are one of the geographical terms we use in our long tail keywords, and that is how we will control duplicates, and limit concentration in larger metro areas.

This means two things for you. First, when you become a Market Maker member you will have a distinct competitive advantage over your competitors. Second, you want to act quickly and get signed up before someone else grabs your spot.

By now you are asking yourself, what’s this all going to cost? Can you afford it? Good question. What would it be worth to you to have your phone ring regularly with new people asking you to stage their home?

You may also be wondering about the two chapters that are the initial ethical bribe, and perhaps a handful of other questions.

We promised that we would try to be complete so we will answer all those questions and more. This has already been a long read, but please bear with us. We are getting close to the end.

First let’s talk price. Then we will describe the Two Free Chapters and not one but two ways you can make money with the Market Maker system on top of handling all the new business Market Maker will be sending your way.

There are two components to your Market Maker investment. The first part covers the set up and customization to your business and location.

The second component covers the ongoing maintenance cost associated with managing the system’s data base, and follow-up and broadcast messages.

Setting up your system will require your filling out a short survey and editing of the draft follow-up messages. This should be fairly straight forward for most of you. The set up process is fairly time intensive on our side. Because of this the initial launch will be limited to no more than 30 applicants.

Every effort will be made to complete set up within 5-7 work days after your return your set-up surveys. It may take a bit longer during the initial set up period. Adjustments to the initial set up, including color changes on the opt in form, changes to follow up message content or timing can be made freely during the first 90 days, and on a more limited basis thereafter.

Our goal will be to get everything set up to your satisfaction as soon as possible. Once the initial batch of 30 are sufficiently processed we will open the doors to the waiting list on a first come first served basis.

Keyword and opt in codes will be provided to you. You will need to arrange with your web site manager to upload them to your web site. They should be willing to do this for free, or a very minimal charge. Once the opt in code is uploaded, Market Maker will be able to make most requested changes to the Opt-in box without needing to bother your web manager. Market Maker will work with you and your web site administrator to make this as painless as possible.

The maintenance fee is $47 a month. It includes:

* In the remote case where someone contacts you directly and asks to be unsubscribed, you will send Market Maker an email and we will manually delete them from your data base for you.

If you prefer, you may make a one time payment of $499 to cover set up and the first 12 months of maintenance.

There are two ways you can reduce the investment costs associated with Market Maker.

Once you are a member, you can join our affiliate program. You will receive $50 for anyone who joins Market Maker through a special link we will give you. It’s our hope that you will be so pleased with our service you will be happy to share it with home stagers you know from outside your own market area. Full details and sign-up instructions will be provided once you have become a member.

The two free chapters your prospects will receive will contain an offer to buy the entire eBook for $35. Upon becoming a member you will be given instructions on how to sign up as an affiliate for these book sales. You will receive $15 for every ebook your prospects buy.

The nice part of this process is that everything is done on autopilot for you. Your prospects will get the free two chapters when they join your list. They will certainly enjoy the two free chapters and either will or won’t buy the rest of the book. The sales page for the book purchase will be part of the download they receive with the book and won’t require any effort on your part at all.

These two revenue streams are completely voluntary and are not required to participate in Market Maker. They are designed to assist in making this marketing tool as cost effective as possible. We hope that each of you will actually make money each month from this feature alone, but we can’t predict the outcome in advance and make no promises to that effect.

The link for the 2 chapters is at the bottom of this page. But before you rush off to grab it, let’s do one last recap.

Market Maker will provide you with geographically based long tail keywords that will increase traffic to your web page.

Market Maker will license you to give away Two Chapters of Allegra Dioguardi’s new eBook, Styled by Design – a Guide to the Principles of Home Staging as an ethical bribe, although you may use an alternate of your own choosing.

Market Maker will provide you with a set of draft follow-up messages you can use or adapt and/or substitute with your own.

Market Maker will design a customized Light Box style opt-in box in your web site colors to attract visitors to you web site and convert them into prospects.

Upon request Market Maker will provide the code for a permanent opt in box to be incorporated into your web design, when and if you redesign your web pages.

Market Maker will automatically send your prospects follow-up messages as selected/modified by you on the schedule you decide for as long as the prospects remain on your list.

Market Maker will schedule up to two new broadcast messages every month to compliment your standard follow-up messages.

Market Maker will conduct two bonus seminars a month, one on marketing techniques and another on home staging topics.

Market Maker will make periodic routine changes to your set up at your request for no charge once a month.

The net result is that you will get more visitors to your site. More of them will actually do something, namely opt into your list, and as a result will be dripped upon with useful valuable messages from you that will convince them to call you when they are ready to make a home staging decision.

You will thus get more phone calls from people eager to do business with you, without having to do a lot of additional marketing. You will then be able to spend more of your time creatively pursuing your career as a home stager, and enjoying the fruits thereof.

You will have a limited exclusive use of the system which will give you a distinct competitive advantage in your market place.

And best of all, Market Maker will do almost all of this on autopilot, without your needing to do anything beyond sending a few occasional broadcast messages to your prospects once in a while.

You will be able to participate in two new revenue streams that could potentially pay for the entire process and maybe even generate a profit.

Do you think that this system, could benefit your business? Do you think it could make the dream we started this page come true? Wouldn’t it be nice to have your phone ringing with new prospects eager to use your services?

How would that make you feel?

If you would like enjoy that feeling, sign up today.