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Last week I did an hour long presentation for Allegra Dioguardi’s new home staging curriculum. Staging Training by Design
In it I covered three different major topics. The first section dealt with some basic decisions most people make before they have enough information to do well. That includes picking their url, web host and decision as to whether to have a blog or web site.
The second topic covered includes a discussion of how to make your web site more search engine friendly and also how to generate back links need to raise your standing in the search engines.
The third section, dealt with how to get more of the people that find your web site to do something.
These are topics I’ve dealt with before, here and in my two eBooks. My challenge was to condense all the information into a single 60 minute presentation. Turns out I ran about 2 minutes long.
But if I say so myself, I did a pretty good job of covering all the major points you should be aware of when setting up your internet marketing campaign for your business.
Now while I would advocate that most people should learn how to manage and run their own web sites, the reality is that most will not. Therefore I discussed these topics so that people would know what they wanted to accomplish, so that they would be better equipped to tell their computer people what they wanted, and why.
Thus while the conversation was directed to home stagers specifically, the comments apply to almost any locally based business wishing to attract more customers by internet marketing.
In support of the audio, I have created a resource page of links and resources. It is pretty rudimentary at the moment, but I will be developing it as time goes on.
There are two main areas of attention when discussing how to move your website to the top of the search engines. The first are the on-page factors and the second are the off-page factors.
The on-page factors are the easiest and quickest to deal with and are where we will start to focus our attention. They are critical but not the most important. The off-page factors will in the long run carry more weight. But that said, if your on-page factors aren’t set up properly you can and will lose much of the benefit your off-page efforts could supply.
We will talk about 10 on page factors. Of these four are invisible, and of the six that are visible, one may already be cast in stone for better or worse.
The invisible elements are the Meta Tags. The meta tags are in the hidden code that the search engines can see, but your visitors normally don’t see. You will learn how to see them, and anyone else’s when we discuss them in detail in our next section.
The meta tags include your title tags, your description and your keywords. The fourth of the invisible items is called an H1 tag. The results of it are visible, but since it’s also HTML code (of the simplest kind) I am listing it as one of the invisible factors. Almost all of you will be able to make improvement to these elements on your web page. For some of you this alone will make a significant difference in your page ranking. So stay tuned.
I’ve been surprised at how few websites I’ve reviewed have had adequate meta tags. Even those done by expensive web designers are often poorly done or in some cases missing altogether.
The visible elements include your first 50 words specifically, and the total number of words altogether. The total keyword count within your text and the percentage of the whole they comprise. We call this keyword density. The visible elements also include the internal links you have on your site and the way you link them, as well as the originality of your content.
The one item that may already be locked in stone is your domain name itself. As we will discuss, you will do better with the search engines if your web site includes you main keywords in it. If your site is already up and established you may not want to change it. That’s understandable. But if you are just now starting up and or are considering a complete makeover of your web presence, give serious thought to including your keywords and geography if appropriate in your new domains.
In our next article we will focus in detail on the hidden items. That will be followed by a look at the visible elements. Once we have covered those we will move on to discuss the off-page strategies.
I have been testing it over the past week or so with home stagers and it has been very well received. I’ve got the service rock bottom priced for a short while, but will be raising it soon, so check it out now and take advantage while the price is so low.
I got up before 5 AM this morning, which is against my religion. I am a night person, not a morning person.
I do some of my best thinking when I am on long walks, driving to or from Chicago (400 miles) or sleeping. Last night the muse hit me while I was sleeping.
A couple of pieces finally fell into place. And they may make a difference for you.
For some time now, I have been imploring home stagers and other small business people to make changes to the meta tags on their web pages. Many have and have had good results. Other less so. And I have been troubled as to why.
There are two major categories of things you can do to improve you search engine success. Things that are done on your page and things that can be done off your page. I will be starting a new series on this topic this week to repeat much of what I have already said, but to expand it into additional areas that I have not covered as well in the past.
My mistake in the past was to focus on just part of the equation – the meta tags and my innovative emphasis on geographical keywords. And while these are important, not paying attention to other factors was undermining results we were getting on some web sites. I now think I know why, and better yet what to do about it.
It’s too early in the morning to tell my Market Maker associate Allegra Dioguardi, but her web site promoting her Hamptons Home Staging business was bothering me. Despite my efforts, it was not rising as rapidly as I thought it should in the Google Listings. The reason – it has a splash page. The same problem affecting her, may affect you as well, even if you don’t have a splash page, so please read on.
By a splash page I am referring to a graphic page that viewers first come to when they type your url into their browser. When you go to www.styledandsold.com you see a logo and then some pictures slide in from the right. When fully resolved there is a link that says enter here.
This is an attractive and stylish design and may even win a design award, but it creates a marketing problem. Let me explain why.
The Googles of the world use a variety of factors to rank different web sites. Among these factors are a variety of on and off page aspects of a web site. While I have been stressing the meta tags because so many home stagers and other micro businesses have grossly inadequate meta tags, another set of key factors are what is actually on the page. This shouldn’t be surprising at all.
The keywords listed in the meta tags should also be on the page. The main keyword of the site, and for home stagers, the main keyword is “Home Staging” should not only be on the main page but should be in a “H1″ tag on the main page. It should be used between 1-4% of the time on the main page. It should be used at least once in the first 50 words of the main page. And finally, the main page should have at least 425 words.
I will be discussing all of the above in the coming week in my new series on getting to the top of the Google Pile.
But for now, let me point out that even if you don’t have a splash page like my friend Allegra, your front page may also lack some of these features. And it is costing you Google Rank. But never fear, there is at least a partial solution.
In Allegra’s case, her front page is all graphics. Even if she had the keywords in the images, the Google bots couldn’t read them. Google bots read text, not images. So if your first page is heavily graphics, you may fall into the same boat. Her site didn’t have the H1 tag which is Headline sized type. It didn’t have 425 words which Google uses to determine is the page is “substantive.” It didn’t use her keyword in the first 50 words, and It didn’t repeat the keyword enough without over repeating it, which google uses to counter keyword spammers who attempt to game their system.
All of this means that this splash page gets a weak rating for the keyword “home staging,” or as in Allegra’s case she really wants to rank on the term “Hamptons Home Staging” to get the geographical long tail keyword benefit I have been advocating.
Now as I mentioned at the start, there are on page and off page factors that influence Google Ranking. As readers of this blog know, I am an advocate of article marketing as a way to build back links to your web page. Back links to this splash page will help the page, but without a lot of its own keyword gravitas they may be wasted.
So here is the solution. When Allegra writes an article she should seek to get backlinks not to her splash page but to an inside page. So when I included the anchor text in this article for the term “Hamptons home staging” I used http://www.styledandsold.com/home.html as the link and not www.styledandsold.com. This is her real home page on her site. This allows her to rework that page to meet the above google criteria and increase her chance to climb in the Google rankings for her actual home page.
That way she can keep her existing web design and still build her Google ranking. Now if I were to recommend a new web site, I might argue against the splash page all together, but if you have a splash page, and/or a page that is heavy on graphics, or just light on text, you may want to consider focusing your attention on an interior page for the purposes of getting ranked on Google.
I suspect this article will raise some questions. If so, please leave me a comment. I will answer in the upcoming posts. As mentioned, I will be doing a series over the next several posts on how to get your page a better ranking in your local market. This is important stuff. And while you may not always be able to get the number one spot, you want to be in the fight because it matters. The top ranked organic site almost always gets more viewers and more business as a result of that placement than number 2 and #2 does better than #3 etc. (but I will share a hint that will help you even if you are #2 in the new series.)
Writing a good article is an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise and showcase your business in a local newspaper or online. An article in a local paper of course will bring you some immediate attention in your home market and that is a powerful way to build your business.
The benefits of online article marketing may not be as clear nor as immediate, but it too can be a powerful way to market your business. Each article posted online can contain backlinks to your web site. These backlinks are one of the factors Google and others use to decide where your web page appears when someone searches for a home stager in your community. The more back links you have, the more likely you are to get top billing. And you want top billing.
A lot of articles will also make it more likely that the local media in your community will find you and seek you out, when an editor decides to do an article or newscast on home staging. If a newspaper article is good for business, a minute or so of exposure on local TV is golden.
Article writing comes naturally for some and less so for others. But whatever your situation, it’s worth doing. But once done, there is no reason why you should submit it to only one venue.
The article is yours, and if you post it to Active Rain that’s great. But if you have gone to the trouble of writing the article why not get double and/or triple duty out of it?
Actually you can do a lot better than triple duty. Let me explain.
There are tons of people writing newsletter, blogs and ezines on the internet. Some write all their content themselves, but this gets to be time consuming and a royal pain for most. So, rather than writing everything themselves, they will go to one of hundreds of different article directories that exist and find suitable articles they can use for their publications.
These directories are always looking for fresh content to offer to these bloggers and editors. So they are willing to take your article and post it on their site so newsletter editors can find it. To make it worth your while, they stipulate that anyone who uses your material must include your resource page.
Your resource page is a brief statement at the bottom of you article that you write that says who you are, and allows you to include usually two links to your web site and or other site you want people to go to.
When I write articles I might include a link to one of my blogs and maybe another to an eBook I am selling.
The article directories make money on the advertising on their site, the people using your article get fresh content to use in their publications. It’s a classic win-win-win situation.
The Granddaddy of all article directories is www.ezinearticles.com. If there were just one place you wanted to post you article it would be there. It is free to sign up as an author. And almost everyone I know who is serious about internet marketing uses them. But as I said earlier, there are hundreds of similar article directories.
Now understand that each of these has their own set of rules, and it can be a bit frustrating at first to understand their different editorial requirements. But If you are capable of writing an article a week or even just an article a month, but are able to commit to doing so on a regular basis, it will be well worth your while to learn your way around these sites.
One of the biggest shortcuts out there are some of the article directory submitters. These are services that will take your article and submit it to multiple directories at once. Some of these are pretty pricey for occasional users. I use a service developed by Brad Callen called Article Submitter.
It too is designed for the professional. It’s top level service the platinum allows you to submit your article to over 250 directories with the click of a single button. That’s a big time saver compared to going to each site and copying and pasting your article, title, resource box, and other items like keywords directory by directory.
But I don’t use the platinum version myself. Frankly I started out with his Free version and later upgraded to the Gold. These take a little more effort, but once you have the basics down you can upload the same article to a lot of different directories. I usually submit to about 25 different directories for each article I write.
That gives me a lot more chances that my articles will be picked up by different newsletters and bloggers. Now this may be especially valuable to home stagers. That’s because a lot of Realtors use newsletters to keep in touch with their farms or prospect list. (Home stagers should as well – that’s why you need something like market maker to build your own lists)
Since home staging topics will be relevant to many of these newsletters, I would guess that you would have a good chance of getting relevant article picked up. And while most will be from markets outside your market area, each will include a link back to your web site and do you some good. And sooner or later, you will find a local Realtor or two using them in your own market, with any luck at all.
Article marketing is a powerful, if slow working tool to build a significant marketing advantage in your local area. Article marketing is one of the topics that will be part of the monthly marketing calls we will be doing as part of the Market Maker Program.
PS: if you are interested in the free version of the Article Submitter, look for the four tabs at the top of the page and click on article submitter. That will take you to the free version. If you can afford it, and plan on becoming a regular article writer, the Gold or Platimum versions are more powerful.
Which ever you use, once you have taken the time to write an article it make sense to distribute it as widely as you can. The more directories you post on the more editors that will see your work and the more likely it will get published. It multiplies the benefits of your efforts. Check out Article Submitter.
Squidoo: A Great Supplemental Marketing Tactic Podcast
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Getting your web site to be top ranked on Google and the other search engines is a complicated task. Particularly, if you are one of many within a given market area.
A little known tool to most home stagers is a web portal called Squidoo. It’s similar in many ways to sites like Facebook, and Myspace in that it allows people to create a web presence easily, but unlike the aforementioned it unabashedly permits commercialization. That means you can put up sites that advertise your business.
The easiest way to do so is to reuse much of the content you have on you web page now, and/or items you have just taken down, or not yet put up on your main web site.
Squidoo calls its pages, lens. There are a group of modules that you can create and edit in minutes once you get the hang of their system.
The most critical point when setting up your first lens is what you call it. Pay attention now. Call your lens, “Home Staging in ______” Fill the blank with your top geographical reference point in your market.
If you do, you will often find that your Squidoo lens will get higher ranking than your own web page, even if you have optimized your meta tags geographically as I do for my Market Maker Clients.
That’s because Squidoo itself has a high PR or page rank in the eyes of Google.
Now what you want to do is include links in your Squidoo Lens to your web site’s home page and to additional pages within your web sites. This helps raise your web sites ranking in Google’s eyes as well.
It sees Squidoo as an “authority” site and gives more credence to links coming from it.
When I say you want links from your Squidoo lens to additional pages in your web site, I am suggesting that if you have a separate page on your web site for Realtors (and I think you should), then somewhere in your Squidoo lens you have a section about Realtors in your home town, and link not to the front page of your web site, but rather to the page about Realtors on your web site. Do this with other pages as well.
Google likes these links to internal pages.
There is a lot more to internet marketing than having a web site. And that is one of the reasons the Market Maker Program includes a monthly seminar on internet marketing. While Squidoo is easy to use, like everything, there is a learning curve.
And once you master the basic mechanics you also need to learn the strategies to make it work for your particular needs. There are a number of eBooks about Squidoo out there. I publish one called Squidoo Basics. It is a general introduction to Squidoo and not specifically directed to home staging, but worth the $17 to get a handle on the Basics.
There are other formats beyond Squidoo, like Hub Pages, but Squidoo is probably the best place to start building a broader internet presence. To get started all you need do is open an account at www.Squidoo.com
In due course, you will not only get your web site on the top of the Google Rankings in your home town, you will also have a Squidoo page there as well. When prospects see you listed not once, but twice, in the top of the local listings, they will begin to understand that you are the person to go to locally for home staging services.
And that’s where I intend my Market Maker members to be. On top of their local markets.
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If you remember the null set from your school days, or as likely from your kid’s math homework, you might recall it being used to describe those who did neither a or b but nothing at all.
You put a lot of effort into marketing your home staging services and sometimes get undercut by your competitor, and that hurts.
Marketing is essential in our competitive world, particularly in adverse times. Most people realize it’s all the more important to invest in marketing when times are tough. But do they realize that sometimes the biggest competitor isn’t the gal down the street with that “other” designation, but rather the null set.
In this case, the null set includes the people who come to your web site because they are considering home staging, but then decide to do without.
That’s one of the reasons the little gift or bribe I wrote about yesterday is so effective. If you offer visitors something of value on your web site and then follow up with them; you have a far better chance of getting them to use staging and most importantly your services to stage their home.
If you don’t, it’s like betting your business on one cut of the deck, high card wins. They either are sold on your services when they see your web site or not.
In contrast, with a little gift, and follow-up you have a chance to continue that conversation for days, until they either say yes or no. You get multiple chances to share with them the value of staging and win their business. You won’t win over the entire null set, but you have a better chance at getting more of them to use your services.
This process is at the heart of the Market Maker system. Market Maker will be launching very soon. You want to be part of it.
http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html
Now I confess I have been stressing the need to sign up before your competitor does in most of my posts. And while it’s true that market maker will give you a distinct advantage over your competitor, a good part of that advantage will be in turning members of the null set into customers. People who otherwise might not have staged at all.
Effective marketing isn’t just about beating your competitor to the job, it’s about getting more people to use your services. Market Maker does both.
That said, it’s still true that only one home stager will be allowed to join the program from any one telephone area code. So it’s important that you at least take a good look at Market Maker as soon as possible. And then decide to join or not. Don’t let your friendly competitor take your option to join away from you by beating you to the punch.
Home stagers who sign up on the advance notice list will get a half hour head start to join and advance notice of the actual start time. Word to the wise, I would sign up for that head start today.
Market Maker http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html
Earl Netwal
Micro Business Specialist
www.HomeStagingBusinessTips.com/blog
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We all like things that are free and pretty and/or delicious.
And if it’s something that is also related to what our web visitors
are looking for and the product or service we wish to offer, it’s
very much all the better.
In recent articles we’ve been looking at what it takes to get
people to find your web site. There are a whole host of tricks
tweaks and tactics collectively called Search Engine Optimization
that can help build traffic to your web site.
But once they are there, what are you going to do to get them to
pay attention to you?
You are going to give them a sucker, a popsicle, an ice cream cone
just like you did your kids. Only in the adult world we are going
to give them something of value, related to our mutual interests.
Presumably they came to your web site because they were at least
somewhat interested in Home staging.
You want to be able to give them something they can use related to
home staging. Something for free. Something they can take with
them, right here and now. With no fuss or muss. With no obligation.
If you do and no one else does, you will be ahead of the game. What
you want to give them is a free report of some sort that they can
download. A Gift.
To get it they will need to give you their email address so you can
send it to them. That way you will know who they are, and how to
get a hold of them again.
That will allow you to send them another gift in a few days. And
another.
And if you keep it up, they will end up calling you when they are
finally ready to make up their mind and hire a home stager.
If you have a pretty thing to dangle on your web site, and no one
else does, you are going to get their attention and eventually
their business.
It might not be nice to bribe your kids to get their attention but
it works. It works with prospective customers as well.
Market Maker is coming and coming soon. Market Maker takes the
ideas of Search Engine Optimization and what we call ethical bribes
and much more and wraps it into a unique marketing plan
specifically designed for Home Stagers. It’s a marketing plan on
auto pilot that pays for itself. Membership in the plan is limited
and you should be sure to sign up for advance notice as not
everyone will be allowed to join.
[Many home stagers post on the Active Rain Blog site. While this is a great forum and brings home stagers and Realtors in close proximity, it shouldn't be the sole marketing focus. Instead, if you post there learn in the article below how you can leverage your efforts.]
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Listen to Sailing Beyond Active Rain on Podcast
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Posting on ActiveRain has many benefits but if that’s all you are doing, you are missing the boat.
Active rain is a good place to share with other homestagers, to learn from them and to get exposure of your business with other active rain members. But most Realtors and home stagers are not on active rain, so don’t let yourself spend all your marketing efforts there.
Instead, multiply your results. Post articles on your own blog and on article directories and not just on Active Rain.
This will significantly boost the number and value of back links to your web site. It will accelerate your rise in the search engine results and win the top ranking in your market.
A post on Active Rain, puts some wind in your search engine rankings because the Active Rain site is seen by Google as an authority site. It has a page ranking of 6 which is pretty good, and a link from active rain back to your site gets more credit that a link from your cousin Mary’s occasional blog.
That said, if your only back links are coming from Active Rain, there is reason to believe that each additional post is less and less meaningful from Google’s perspective.
To really fill you sails, you want to get back links from dozens and then hundreds of other web sites. And it’s easy to do. Particularly, if you are already posting regularly on Active Rain.
There is no reason why you can’t post the same article you intend to put on Active Rain on your own blog first. I highly recommend that you set up a either a free Blogger Account, or better yet a free Wordpress blog. There are a lot of reasons for this, but most notably, having your own blog sets you up as the expert and allows you to develop your own identity.
The second additional step is to register with eZine articles, and begin publishing your articles there as well.
These steps work in combination with each other, and capture the wind of your effort like a three masted ship captures the same wind three times over.
The same article with a few tweaks can be used for all three. And the results are a swifter voyage to the top of the rankings.
Let me explain it a bit more.
Your own blog makes you an authority in the eyes of those who come to it. Be they past or prospective customers, other homestagers or realtors or the media and general public.
This increases your status as the go to person in your market on home staging.
You have an article idea. You write it up and post it on your blog. You then take the same post and share it on Active Rain. You get Active Rain points, and rise in their listings. Plus you enjoy all the other benefits of participating in the active rain community.
Once you have it up on your blog and active rain, your rephrase it slightly to appeal to the general public. You then post in on one of hundreds of article directories. I recommend eZineArticles as the place to start.
Once posted on eZine Articles, your post is available to be reprinted by bloggers and ezine writers around the world. The bargain is that anyone can post your article, but they cannot change its wording and must include your resource box.
The resource box is where you put a brief blurb about yourself, and a back link to your blog and to your main web site.
As your article is picked up by blog writers, you get more and more back links. It builds slowly at first, but as time goes on it grows into a gale of a windstorm sending tens, then hundreds, and then thousands of back links to your web site. Before long, Google realizes that you are an authority, and blows you past the finish line as the regatta winner and top ranked homestager in your market.
The beauty of this system is that you go yourself to the article directory and find other home stager’s articles from other markets and print their articles as entries on your blog. That way you can add new material to your blog on a regular basis without having to write it all yourself.
For Example, I posted this article on Active Rain, and a modified form here and as a broadcast to my Home Staging mailing list.
You should do the same thing. You write an article a week, and post one or two others from elsewhere on your blog. It sets you up as an expert.
You take the one article you wrote and with minor revisions as necessary post it in three places.
This provides you with a great deal of leverage, and will make you captain of your own destiny.
When you become a member of Market Maker, which will be opening next week, I will be sharing other ideas and techniques that will help you maximize your return on effort as you market your home staging business. Marketing can be challenging, that’s why it’s a good idea to put as much as possible on auto pilot, and then leverage the work you do so that it has maximum benefit.
Market Maker is a limited membership program. Members will have access to some innovative marketing tools that will put them on top of their local markets and provide a genuine competitive advantage. It is highly recommended that you sign up for advance notification of the start date as only one home staging company will be allowed to join from any given market place, and initial membership will be limited to only 30 companies.
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Chased by a Bear!
There is a story of two people in the woods, being charged by a hungry bear. One stops to tie his shoes, the other scoffs, “you can’t outrun a bear.” “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you.” His companion replied.
So too, with marketing in a local market.
You don’t need to be the best in the nation at marketing, you just need to be better than your local competitors. That may be easier than you think.
With notable exceptions most home stagers spend very little time thinking about their marketing. Some may even feel it contrary to their nature. But if you are serious about your home staging business, you must give some serious thought to how you are going to attract your next customer and then the one after that.
That’s one reason you have a web page. But many of you make a mistake and think a web page is all about selling a potential customer on your staging skills. The purpose of a web page is to get prospects to call you.
I will discuss that more in a future article, but many of you have a bigger problem and don’t even know it.
Many people looking for a home stager in your town can’t find your web site.
In past articles, I’ve touched on two things you can do to remedy that problem. One is to change your page title tags to include relevant keywords. Another is to change the Meta Tag description on your web page to also include relevant keywords. There is one more major step to take in the meta tags area, that will greatly increase the chance that prospects looking online actually find you.
And that is the formal meta tag keywords.
There are over six million web sites that show up when someone searches for the term “Home Staging” in Google. That’s way too many, so most people when confronted with so many responses do a second search.
And in that second search they may try another keyword, like “home stager,” but more likely they will use the same keyword and add a geographical term.
When my son searches for pizza on the web, he adds his zip code. For a less common business like home staging, he might use his telephone area code, or the town name.
I’ve written about this before, but I am amazed at how few people actually take the time to make this simple change to the keywords they have in their meta tags.
If you do, and your competitors don’t, it’s like you putting on a pair of tennis shoes. Hey, they may even be a slightly better home stager than you. But if you are wearing geographically based keywords as your tennis shoes, you will get ranked above them in the computer search engines. You will get seen, they won’t. Or if they do, they will be listed under you in the rankings. You will get first chance to stage more houses. And they won’t know why.
Now I know some of you aren’t into competition, but this is business. If you want your phone to ring. If you want to be doing two to four more home stagings a month, you need to pay attention to your marketing.
You need to change the keywords in your web page’s meta tags. You need to include terms like “Home staging in Minneapolis”, “St. Paul Home Stager”, “House Staging in 612.”
In the first article of this series, I told you where and how to look up keywords. You need to find the top keywords people actually use, and then mix and match the appropriate geographical references for your market place.
It’s a chore, but not hard. It will make a real difference, and will allow you to outrun your competition.
Next week, the Market Maker program will be launched. All of these changes and much more will be handled by Market Maker for you. Market Maker is a unique program designed specifically for the Home Staging industry. It will put your web based marketing on auto pilot and will pay for itself.
Membership will be limited, particularly at first. So if you want to sprint to the front of your market place, make sure you sign up for advance notice of the release date.
Listen to this Audio Post on Why People Aren’t calling you to stage their homes.
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Last week, internet marketing expert Frank Kern launched a new product that sold for $2,000 each. In less than 24 hours he sold 2,000 units. That’s $4,000,000 in one day. Not too shabby.
Who would have thought you could sell such an expensive product to so many people so fast in today’s economy? How did he do it? Well, that is actually the information Frank was selling. How to sell goods and services on the internet.
Part of Frank’s success stems from his willingness to share a good deal of valuable information with his prospects before he launches his product, and I am going to share one of the key tidbits he offered with you today.
Frank would say there are just three reasons people aren’t buying your home staging services today.
They Don’t Want It
No Money
Don’t Trust or Believe you
They Don’t Want It.
Some never will want your services. And while others just need to be educated a little, it’s a mistake according to Frank to be spending too much time on people who don’t want your services. Instead look for ways to market to people who do.
No Money
Frank makes a more important point here. While no money may mean no money, it usually means that they don’t want it badly enough. If people are telling you they don’t have the money, you haven’t yet found a way to increase their desire. You may need to focus more of your marketing efforts on what’s in it for them.
For your home owner, it may be a higher sales price, or a quicker sales, but it also may be just getting help doing everything that needs to be done to get ready for the big move.
Make sure you are clear on the real motivations of those you have already worked with, and then share these with those you hope to work with.
Don’t Trust/Believe You.
Your prospect needs to not only believe that your services will benefit them, they need to trust that you are someone they can work with. Someone they like.
While credentials may help, social proof is far more effective. A list of past homes staged, testimonials from happy customers are powerful tools to help bridge the trust gap. These should be part of your standard presentation.
But in addition, you should find ways to reach out to your prospects and share. Provide them with good useful information, and keep in touch over time.
Little gifts in the form of useful information on how to prepare for a move, provided via luncheon talks to a local church group or social group not only give you visibility and credibility, it offers value.
Little gestures along this line, activate a sense of reciprocity, in which the recipient begins to feel a bit of an obligation to return the favor. This can lead to you at least getting a chance to bid a project.
I recommend that home stagers web sites offer a free gift that viewers can download, and then follow up with over time with a series of additional tips. This helps build that reciprocity response, and more importantly helps build a sense of friendship. And we tend to trust our friends.
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October 12, 2009 
6 Comments 
Brett McEllhiney
Andre Arnett
Lonnie Minton
Doug Champigny
Joel Osborne