Open houses are more than just a one-time event. They are an opportunity to think long range. Here are some tips that may be new to you and help you think of your open house as an investment in your future:

Advertise Your Open House on Your Web site

John L Scott Real Estate provides every one of their listings with its own address on the World Wide Web. A typical address would look like: http://www.johnlscott.com/98766 with the five-digit code being unique to each home that is listed for sale.

John Scott, the president said, "This program represents the ultimate application Internet marketing for seller's homes. Showcasing each listing with its own Web address significantly raises the level of John L. Scott's interactive marketing strategy -- customers reading the company's newspaper ads, signage, flyers, and Homes Magazines can now instantly access the Internet home page for a specific property."

If you and your company decide to do the same thing, there are powerful advantages. First, instead of simply saying "We're on the Internet" you can then tell your clients... "We will put your home on the Net." This is a subtle, but powerful distinction.

A unique address means each listing will help you gain additional search engine exposure for your entire web site.

What does this have to do with open houses? Advertise your open house on your Web site. The cost is minimal, you gain additional exposure, and you give your sellers and prospective buyers another reason to continuously visit your web site. (Remember: successful real estate agents and brokers are those who find themselves in front of buyers and sellers WHEN buyers and sellers want to do business.)

When you buy a newspaper ad to advertise your open house, cross-pollinate by putting your home's URL in the ad. The buyer can go to the URL and find out about the home before attending the open house. When the buyer arrives, s/he is that much more likely to "choose" your home because the Internet helped qualify the home for the family.

Get Your Associates and Competitors Involved

You can take this strategy to the next level by offering a weekly Open House schedule for your entire area. Simply contact local brokers and ask them to provide you with a a schedule of their Opens. They benefit by gain free exposure. You benefit by providing valuable, timely content on your Web site. Your prospects benefit from the timely content.

To bring more traffic to your own open house, offer to schedule a tour when you see that there are several open houses in the area. Get the other brokers to co-op the cost of neighborhood tour with refreshments, signs, balloons, and copies of the feature sheets and directions to the participating homes. You'll have other agents directing people to your home and you'll be helping them with their homes. By making it an event, your buyer will be much more excited, and your seller will be more impressed. You'll also be included when one of the other agents plans an open house tour.

An advertising network works well besides for open house tours. Consider creating an advertising network with other agents in your local area or in your own office. The idea is to pool your advertising dollars to effect greater discounts.

For example, your local press might charge $12 per word for a small home classified. However, if you were to purchase a display ad, a large section of space in the midst of the classified section, and you can place 20 small classifieds within that space, you might see your cost drop to $6 or $8 per word.

Structured properly, your advertising network could include a number of agents who specialize in different areas such as buyers brokerage, commercial, land, investments, and farms. Have all ads point to an 800 with a "branched tree" menu to sort through the responses and direct all callers to the agent or broker most suited to serve their particular needs.

Add to Your E-mail Database

Strive to gather e-mail addresses at your Open House events. Simply add an additional "blank" to your sign in sheet and/or ask each walk-in prospect specifically. Serious prospects who have e-mail will gladly give you their address if you promise to provide them with important, home-buying information. Your first message should ask a number of qualifying questions to help distinguish and separate the Lookie Loos from those more qualified.

You will also want to provide these new e-mail contacts with a way to "unsubscribe" as well as a number of additional options to get even more involved. You might offer tickets to a FREE Home Buyers Seminar, a FREE Home Buyers Analysis, a FREE weekly listing of all new listings matching their home buying criteria, etc. Give them a number of reasons to "raise their hand" and take you up on your services and, more often than not, many of them will.

Promote Your Other Listings

Dawna Conley, shares this tip. "Instead of putting my photo on my business cards. I use my digital camera and take of photo of the listing. Then I put the photo of the house on the front of my business cards and a little about the house on the back. I then print 20 or so for the seller to hand out, with my name and number on them. Works great. I get a lot of positive feedback!!"

You can take the same idea and make your home flyers, which you will distribute at the open house, do double duty. Put all of your listings on the back including the addresses, price info, and a brief description of the property. Use similar properties in the same area or price range. If you don't have any... make arrangements with your peers to include their listings with your contact information. This will increase the number of calls you get on your own listings and, hopefully, help you pull off a double-sider.

Published: May 19, 1999

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Robert Fore is the president and CEO for Realty Profit Systems. He is a nationally recognized marketing trainer and strategist who specializes in combining the proven principles of direct response marketing with the cost-effective, worldwide penetration of the internet. Realty Profit Systems publishes the Online Real Estate Marketing Report at http://www.hometeam2000.com and offers a free, weekly e-zine of real estate marketing tips at http://www.top10realty.com.