Guaranteed Creative Ideas for Marketing Promotions

Copyright (c) 2009 Alice Chan

In your frenzy to get prospects to notice you, remember you and ultimately hire you, what are you doing to capture their attention? Remember, you are not in the business of Home Staging but rather you are in the business of marketing your Home Staging services.

What are you doing to creatively market yourself?

We know it is important to be in front of your prospects all the time. They must automatically think of you when they have Home Staging needs. It is not enough to network and market only on an 'as needed' basis. By then, you're desperate and desperation is not client attractive.

My recommendation is to get a year-at-a-glance calendar and map out your marketing schedule on a monthly, then yearly basis. For instance, if you know that your local realtor association meetings are on a Thursday, block out your calendar so that you know you will be attending those meetings every Thursday.

Most realtor association meetings allow vendors to display fliers, stand up to introduce themselves, as well as sponsor tables or become affiliates. If your budget does not allow for sponsoring yet, bring fliers or brochures.

Since you know this is something you'll be doing weekly, put a little more effort into it and run monthly specials and create a marketing promotion on a regular basis, tied to the time of year. For instance, January is a great time for New Year's specials and Chinese New Year promotions.

Almost every month there is a holiday or seasonal theme you can tie your marketing to. As creative types, you can take a minute to write down a few ideas that come to mind and start work on implementing them right away.

Here we have a list of five fun, successful promotional marketing ideas that you could customize for your own business that are absolutely guaranteed to get the attention of your prospective clients.

The first one is one of my favorites and was tied to the Chinese New Year which came on January 26 this year. I've used it in my Staging business as well as in other applications.

1) Fortune Cookies with customized fortunes such as "It is our good fortune to have you as our client" or "Good Fortune comes to those who Stage".

To go a step further you can make them more irresistible by getting chocolate dipped fortune cookies. I would highly recommend getting individually wrapped cookies. Fill a plastic or paper Chinese takeout box with the cookies and customize the outside of the box with your company information. I guarantee you will get rave reviews with this!!!

2) Mini Trash Can with "You'd be NUTS to Trash This Opportunity" printed on it.

Put a few peanuts in the trash can (the kind with the shells work well) along with a marketing flier crumpled up inside. Even if you didn't get the printing on the trash can, you can use the headline on the marketing flier itself. Other headlines could be "Don't trash your equity by not Staging" or "Don't risk throwing your commissions away in the trash!"

3) Shredded Money in a plastic bag - "Without my Staging help, your commissions could end up like this!"

Do you think this one will get their attention?

4) Stress Toys - stress toys are great because they come in all shapes and themes and you can really play with the marketing line depending on what you use.

Examples: "Staging Reduces Stress" or "Listings Stressing You Out? Call Your Stager for Relief" (use the phone shape stress toy) or "Your Listings Making you Crabby?" (use the crab shape stress toy).

5) Key - "Unlock the Profits in your Listing with Staging" or "Home Staging Unlocks Profits in Your Listings" (you can use different types of keys or even a key shaped stress toy)

For several years, I sponsored the Holiday Party for my local Realtor Association. If my memory serves me right, they had a wine themed dinner one year so I created a card that read - "Staging works like a Charm" and hung a wine charm on each one and they were placed on every plate.

Another year, they had dinner on a yacht so I bought little plastic toy boats and had labels made that read "Cruise into Escrow with a Quick & Profitable Sale - Use Home Staging". I believe I also filled the little boats with individually wrapped Lifesavers candies. Again, these were placed on each plate.

Your Marketing Goal is to consistently get your business message out there, so that your prospects get to know you, like you, trust you, and inevitably want to work with you.

Doing just one thing won't be the end all of your marketing efforts, but it's one piece of the pie that can help launch your pursuit to becoming a client magnet. Plus, it's a lot of fun - and it works!!!