FCP 036: How To Write Property Ads And Copy That Sells

Intro:   Are you ready to transform your financial future? Here’s your chance to see inside the mindset of self-made millionaires, Jack and Michelle Bosch as they pull back the curtain on secrets that can make you rich. Discover how everyday people are breaking the norms and building empires from the ground up, using a little known yet proven and time-tested wealth building real estate strategies. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to the ForeverCash.com podcast, and introduce you to our hosts, serial entrepreneurs, investors, educators, and best-selling authors, Jack and Michelle Bosch. Strap yourself in for the ride of your life.

Jack:   Hello everyone, this is Jack Bosch.

Michelle:   And Michelle Bosch.

Jack:   Welcome to the Forever Cash Real Estate podcast. Today, well, before we start to what we’re talking about today, I want to, as always, mention to you guys that the podcast now is on ForeverCash.com/Podcast. And we have a new free gift for you that you can find on ForeverCash.com/Freedom. Even if you’ve already downloaded our free 5-part tax delinquent real estate course, you please go back to ForeverCash.com/Freedom and check out our newest gift. I’m not going to tell you a whole bunch about it but I know you will love it. The course that I mentioned to you is in there as long with a whole bunch of other things that you can get there and get access for free. Michelle, we’re talking today about…?

Michelle:   Well, I would like to talk about how to create copy or ads that really sell your properties.

Jack:   Absolutely. Let’s talk about how to copy write, really how to write your ads such that they sell. Now there are multiple things to that part. There’s the one of things of how you structure the offer. We talked about that already once in a previous podcast that you want to anchor higher prices, first of competitor… of comparable properties, then you want to say your price. And if you offer seller financing, you want to even offer that price and then perhaps a cash discount and you want to offer it even lower. You can look into our podcast list, just about 5, 10 podcasts ago, we talked about that. Today, we want to talk about the actual text that you write, correct?

Michelle:   That is correct.

Jack:   All right, so today… So the text that you write, I want to talk about a concept that’s called AIDA. Now Michelle, what does AIDA stand for? You can perhaps talk about that subject.

Michelle:   Okay, so AIDA is really… The A is for attention, the I stands for interest, the D stands for desire and the A stands for action. It’s one of the oldest models out there I think in terms of salesmanship and copywriting.

Jack:   Right. So to say it, like by far, that means when you talk to… When you want to sell anything, it’s not just written sales copy. It’s in anything you that you want to sell something. First, you got to call out with attention and you see that on the television all the time. There’s like… Or in magazines, the front cover of magazines, they get your attention with a big fat headline that looks like that. There is a head twister that is like, “What is that?” That’s what you basically… They want you to do that.

Michelle:   Because you have to think about your prospective seller basically who knows what state of mind they’re coming in, and where they have been, or what website they were in just a few seconds before they landed on your listing. You definitely want to grab their attention, and more than anything interrupt whatever pattern of story it is that they wore in their heads, that they had in their heads.

Jack:   Absolutely. So another way to say that is literally like you need… It needs to be such a loud shocking headline that it takes them out of the old realm of influences that everyone is in this days.

Michelle:   Overnoise, yeah.

Jack:   The noise around them. There is like millions of impressions falling coming on down on everyone every single day and it’s way worse. I mean, imagine the days back in the days where everyone lived on a farm and you came out and there were five chickens running around and the sun was shining and that’s it. Now I mean, you have your iPad beeping, your cell phone ringing, your computer blinking, your car driving, your radio blaring, people talking to you, the television giving you advising every three seconds, and all of that at the same time possibly. It gets harder and harder to break through that attention, that cloud of noise. Therefore, the first thing you’ve got to do is grab people’s attention with a really big headline that they’ll look at.

You see that on Facebook. I mean, people complain all the time on Facebook about the advertising. Don’t complain about the advertising. Use it to hone your skill as a copywriter. Use it to see what’s basically and whatnot and you see a lot of bad advertising on Facebook, and you see some good advertising on Facebook. As you’re on there, look at it and if something grabs you, take a screenshot of it, write it down, because whatever that sentence was that grabbed you was a good headline. Then you want to apply some R&D, which means rip off and duplicate, and basically take it, save it. Create a stack of stuff that once you create your own real estate listings, you can go back to because those are very… Those really good headlines are very inspirational and you can use pieces of them.

Michelle:   Okay, so the second one: interest.

Jack:   Interest is well… It’s just that. You don’t want to just have a headline and then start giving then the fine print and front print of a credit card statement, to put them to sleep. Now you want to have something that capturers them right away and in that aspect you want to continue either with something, with some details or if it’s real estate listing, a land listing, you want to come out with some stuff that is really appealing or…

Michelle:   About the property or about the area…

Jack:   About the property, about the area or you want to start telling a story.

Michelle:   Yeah.

Jack:   Now story telling in any kind of sales is very important and it’s becoming much more important these days. It’s becoming more hip, more popular. Michelle you might talk a little bit about storytelling.

Michelle:   Well the thing with storytelling is that like Jack said you have to start writing something that will captivate them that basically opens a loop and picks their interest into whatever it is that you’re offering. What you want to probably start doing is through that story is creating some contrast for them. Basically in your listing showing them, okay these are the possibilities, this is where it is right now, and basically showing them contrast and helping them dream build basically in your listing.

Jack:   Also story, as a matter of fact the entire AIDA concept is a story because AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, action. It’s a story that you describe this entire motion; it’s almost like a rollercoaster that you want to show. It’s like you start a rollercoaster that you start up on top. Sometimes in a rollercoaster you start and then you go like slow, you tell them where you basically are, you start where you are, and then you hit, you go down and you go down very-very quickly, and then you hit this valley and then though you go back up and then you kind of continue from there, so it’s the exact same thing with the sales copy with an AIDA concept. You grab the attention and then you get their interest by telling people how… By telling them a story of for example how things were different, that it wasn’t how things were bad, and how you kind of like perhaps improved the things and how your life changed and so on.

I am not talking about only about real estate right now, I’m talking about any kind of sales story that you want to tell. You can start to say you know what I started out with this, but then we really hit the crisis and then we really went down and we lost our car and we lost our house and we slept in the car, and you hear people talk about that all day long. And then we found the solution and the solution solved XYZ, and that’s the sales copy that follows the AIDA concept. Now how can you use that in the concept of real estate? You can say that you can tell a story.

We found this house as a forwarder property, it was in horrible condition, but after spending XYZ dollars and rehabbing everything and putting in custom granite counter tops and doing a full electrical and the full plumbing and the full floors and the full walls and adding an addition, and putting pool and then so on and so forth. Now it is pretty much like a brand-new property. Now if you read this you’re already thinking about oh my God they pretty much put together a brand new property that I can buy now, and therefore it is absolutely amazing. The same thing in a sense you can do in land. In land you might not be telling a story with how it was bad, but you’re telling a story of like you know what this is a great piece of land in XYZ area and it’s a…

Michelle:   It’s only however minutes many minutes away from the biggest largest city there you know.

Jack:   You really don’t take people into that down part, you eliminate that, but you go from attention to interest. You tell them like, you tell them what they care about and the interest part is like you tell them this is only five miles away from a hospital. It’s only three miles away from a golf course; it’s only two miles away from Walmart. It’s only one mile away from, I don’t know. From the major interstate, it’s only… There are 15 restaurants in town. You get their interest now, you haven’t even talked about the property yet, but you have talked about all the stuff that people care when they choose a piece of land, when they choose a property or a house, because they want to be close to the amenities.

Then also that creates desire, so now the desire in this case you can create by creating a little bit of that what Michelle talked about that discrepancy, that kind of emotional, that stretch between what it is and want it could be or so. That when you say like right now it’s a beautiful piece of land, but look at directly surrounding it there is million dollar homes. There is whatever it is, there are custom homes, there are beautiful stellar homes. Whatever it is…

Michelle:   Or beautiful mountain views or electricity is to the property, and there is perfect road access.

Jack:   Exactly all the desirable stuff that is right on the property or right affecting the property, like the school district the property is in. It’s like this is in XYZ school visit. Well, if you know about school districts, school districts are one of the major drivers of real estate prices in the United States, like you might have one house in one school district and the exact town near in the other school district that’s twice as good and the other house costs twice as much.

School districts are major drivers, so if you know that your property is in a good school district you mention that and it creates the desire. You have the attention with the headline, the interest with the surroundings, and the desire with all that’s really-really great about that property whether it’s land or houses, and then you start asking for the action, because it if you stop at this point which a lot of people do, then you gather a nice description of the property and nobody knows what they’re are supposed to do.

Michelle:   So then I think the next action would be depending on whether what kind of… whether it’s a listing or you’re trying to sell it to an end user, or to another investor, this would be a great investment opportunity. We are offering three adjoining lots if that’s the case and we could… We’re willing to work with you on price you know if you would like to take all three lots off our hands, or you start talking about the seller financing opportunities, this is where basically you start asking, you start making your audacious ask.

Jack:   Yes, you start asking for the money, you start asking for the decision to make a decision really for… And really it’s not necessarily for the money. You ask for the decision to take the next step, and whatever the next step is that’s the action.

Michelle:   It could be to call you.

Jack:   Exactly.

Michelle:   You know if they wanted more information, and then the phone number should be right there.

Jack:   It might not be the money; it might be to call, because people don’t necessarily go from a nice description to right away writing their check book. They want to first verify that you’re for real. The call to action is might be just pick up the phone, call us and get your property brochure. Pick up the phone and call us, and schedule a showing, pick up the phone call or send us an email and get the exact terms, or call us and work with us on the numbers. Whatever it is, but that’s a call to action and you need to firmly ask for them to do that. And really that’s the secret about writing good sales copy, and again you can apply that to a piece of real estate by… And you can apply that even to the pictures that you put on the property.

Michelle:   Yeah and when you’re doing this listing, basically you want to also talk about, you want to talk about it from two perspectives. When you’re doing your story, or when you’re creating the ad, you want to appeal to the emotion of the person reading it, and you want to appeal to the intellect. There are certain things that you can say that will appeal to the intellect part you know that is your rational brain making a decision. Like if you have good offer on seller financing, or you just you know drop the price and it’s a price to sell type of stuff. That will appeal to the intellect, to the more rational brain.

Then stories that appeal to the emotion, it’s like I said earlier it’s stuff where you’re dream building with them about the possibilities, about what their future piece of land could be used for. It could be that retirement spot that you’ve always wanted, and that you thought you weren’t going to be able to get. You know now it’s affordable, it’s available, it’s easy, it’s just you know a phone call away and so on. You want to appeal to this emotional aspect, and you want to appeal to the intellectual aspect when you’re telling your story through the ad.

Jack:   Right, so but even in the pictures as I mentioned you can use that. When you do the pictures what you do is what we call the hour glass shape or like the sand…

Michelle:   Yeah, not just the pictures, but the plot maps, the links, I mean even how you’re organizing the different screen shots as far as the views on the map. You know you want to go from really not being targeted it on the property, but on all the surroundings so that that’s the top of the hour shape… of the hour glass. Then you then want to start zeroing in with the photos, and with the map into the actual property, and then if the actual property is just… a barren piece of land you don’t want to leave that person in that state, and that emotional, so you want to again bring them back out.

Jack:   Yeah so the key here is particularly when you do this on land, your dream building with the pictures, your dream building with the story, but particularly with the pictures. You don’t want to just have as some text and then put a bunch of pieces of barren land in there, some of you cannot envision what that land could be in the future, just sees a bunch of dirt and so he’s like what do they want with that?

Michelle:   They need a picture of the neighboring property for example.

Jack:   Exactly, even picture… More important than the picture of the land is exactly what we just talked about. It’s the picture of the Walmart two miles away, of the golf course, of the hospital, of the…

Michelle:   The lake for fishing.

Jack:   The lake for fishing, the neighborhood, the road going to the property, the houses close by, and then you show them to the picture, and under that picture you continue the dream building which is part of the copy writing. You continue it by writing a caption underneath that says this is your property, but I actually want to say on the picture of the house next door you can say this is how your lot could look like, or this is what you could make from your lot… out of your lot, so that when people see the lot, they no longer see the lot, they see the lot as a basis to build the house that they just have seen. It’s a dream that you’re building, it’s you sell what could be, not what is.

When you do that your sales are going to go through the roof, and everything is going to go through the roof, the same thing by the way with houses. You don’t want to show the picture of the border of that picture, yeah you do have to do that, but if you sell to experienced rehabbers they know all that, they can see through that. But if you sell to a beginner you need to basically explain to them what the property could be after it’s rehabbed. You need to tell them some information; you need to give them, say like this is what it’s going to take to rehab.

You want to put this, this, this in, and then the property is going to look just like the neighboring property here, and it’s going to fetch this price, and your profit margin is going to be X. As long as you… So you dream build again, you show them what could be, not what is, right? Well good. That was a short episode of the… of our Forever Cash Real Estate podcast, short but therefore to the point. If you want to leave us feedback, I would love for you to go to ForeverCash.com/Podcast, and I think there is a feedback possibility there if you can click right there and over to iTunes and then rate.

Michelle:   Leave us a review.

Jack:   And then rate our podcast and give us a review. You can also go and go directly to iTunes. And obviously you can also… We would love for you to go to our Facebook page which is Forever Cash Life… just Facebook.com/ForeverCashLife and engage with us there. Like the page, join us there, ask us some questions, we’ll be happy to answer your questions there. With that, other than that again the new free gift is on ForeverCash.com/Freedom, we would love for you to go there, and join us there and check it out there, and then Michelle do you have anything to add?

Michelle:   No, I think we’ll just be with our listeners in the next podcast.

Jack:   In the next podcast right, thank you very much.

Michelle:   Thank you.

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