You may find it strange that I'm writing about the offline marketing technique of using real estate postcards on a blog that deals primarily with online marketing and real estate SEO. The truth is that you can't afford to ignore either online or offline marketing techniques if you want to compete for your share of real estate transaction in this market or any market.

Make sure your online marketing techniques are up to date, such as your IDX website, drip email marketing campaigns, organic search engine rankings, etc. Then make sure you are still marketing to your community using offline methods such as real estate postcards, radio ads, and print ads. Offline marketing is not dead--it just needs to be done intelligently.

If you are renting a home, how likely are you to upgrade the kitchen, or invest in new landscaping to increase the resale value and curb appeal? Not likely, I imagine. After all, when you rent, you know that any investment you make in your home will be lost when you decide to move.

But here's a question for you: Do you rent your website, or do you own it? Are you one of the million or so agents who choose to pay a regional or national real estate technology provider for the privilege of borrowing their server and their content management system on a monthly basis? Yeah, I thought so.

While many real estate agents encourage an ownership mindset when it comes to real estate decisions, they have a hard time shaking the renter mindset when it comes to their own real estate website. Are you really going to invest serious time or money in a website you don't actually own, knowing that if you decide to switch providers, you'll have to give it back and start over? Of course not.

If you're interested in buying property in a beautiful part of Washington, you should check out the Bellingham area. Located near the Canadian border on the coast, Bellingham real estate provides some good deals and gorgeous scenery!

Email newsletter marketing is a tool used by highly paid pros in Big Business to add customers to their sales pipeline and big profits to their bottom lines. If you as a real estate agent are not using it to its full potential, you are leaving sales (and commissions) on the table.

If you want to grow your real estate business, learning more about automating your email marketing efforts is an essential item on your to-do list. It doesn't have to be intimidating, and you don't have to be a disciplined or accomplished writer to make this tool work for you.

Every real estate agent who has flirted with blogging needs to pick up a copy of Hugh Hewitt's book Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World. Better yet, read it, and see how it impacts your strategies for real estate marketing. I'm adding the book to my homeschooled kids' required reading list. It's that important.

Why would I recommend a book by a nationally known political commentator to a readership of real estate agents across the political spectrum? That could be dangerous, as I certainly don't want to lose readers over politics.

Ever heard of drip marketing or drip newsletters? It's method of sending newsletters to leads and clients in a more personalized way. In fact, this this article you're reading right now will be delivered on day 28 of my own drip e-mail system (also called an autoresponder).

There are several reasons a drip marketing system is superior over a standard broadcast newsletter system. First and foremost is the ability to dramatically boost your conversion rate of leads to listings or leads to sales.

Have you ever wondered how some of your Realtor colleagues got to become the experts in a particular area of real estate?

Whether it's commercial real estate, development land, vacation properties, or even a neighborhood, city, or county, it's possible for you to become a real estate expert by combining your experience with focused search engine optimization strategies.

Everyone wants to be all things to all people, but sometimes it is better to narrow in on your strengths and really get that message out clearly.

When I talk to Realtors and real estate agents about their websites, one of the things I talk about is the importance of unique content—in other words—written content that is not boilerplate, that is not simply one copy of 10,000 copies out there on the web.

Boilerplate content is content that comes standard with most agent websites. But if you want your site to show up on the search engines, you need to either replace it or add significantly to it. Otherwise, your site will be exactly like the sites of the 10,000 other customers of that particular Realtor website factory.

Are you a boilerplate Realtor®? Are you a clone of all the other real estate agents out there you are competing with?

"Of course not," you say. But is your most important marketing tool, your website, a boilerplate site? I thought so.

Why do so many real estate agents get sucked into boilerplate sites that just don't perform—that just don't bring in leads, listings, or sales? It's easy to keep paying for them, month after month, year after year, with the same dismal results when it comes to search engine ranking and search engine traffic.