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.

One of the most intelligent allocations of your offline marketing budget is a real estate postcard campaign. You can send out welcome postcards to new residents as well as Just Listed postcards and Just Sold postcards. There are also postcard campaigns you can do for distressed property owners--i.e., owners who are behind on their mortgages and may need to short sell their home.

Email newsletter marketing is important to any real estate agent professional these days, but there is still value in having your potential clients hold a postcard in their hands and leave it on the kitchen table for a few days. This "leave behind" form of direct marketing is a powerful one, and can increase your sales dramatically if you fit a regular campaign of real estate postcards into your marketing budget.

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