Once you have your business plan. There are a couple roads you can follow.
1. You can incorporate right away.
Incorporation for RE thread: **coming soon**
2. Do that first deal and see if you want to do this long term.
Either way, now that you have performed the previous steps ... you have a clearer vision of where you want to take this RE Business.
Image:
Do you have a business name yet? Pick one (even if you aren't incorporating right now think about your name and image).
Do you have colors yet? Talk to somebody. See what other people in your area are doing.
Do you have a logo yet? Mad heads on the board do logos.
Webbootie God is really cheap right now. Hit him up before his rates go up. The
Show also did a logo for me for CYBASECRETS dot com. Hit him up too. He's hungry to test his skills right now and will also give you a great price.
Do you have a website? If not start thinking about one. You can get name and hosting from
PhillyPhilly.
Your
main website will be the site you use to market yourself and provide information about your company and what you plan to do. Since you are just starting out...
get a blog at least so you can start using the power of the internet to your advantage.
- Buy a domain name today.
- start a blog today and start writing about what you are doing or what you plan to do. You can always get it professionally designed later on.
- When it comes to website ranking there are a few things to keep in mind.
- Longevity - the longer the website exists the higher your ranking.
- Relavance - just because you owned the name for 10 years might be a good thing but it's not gonna help if you ain't doing squat with it. At the very least start a blog and start writing once or twice a week.
- eventually you will need a buyers site so when you market to buyers they go to a site that is catered to them.
- you will also need a sellers site for the same reason.
Why is image important?
You will be marketing for buyers, you will be networking, you will be marketing for sellers, you will be trying to get your name out there. Your image on your marketing, business cards, letter heads, etc. will be the first impression that people get and you know what they say about first impressions!
Here are just a few examples of how you will be using your marketing. It needs to be consistent throughout all of your business messages.
Offline Marketing
- Printed media (flyers, postings at the laundrymat/supermarket, leaflets, etc)
- Referrals (business cards/letters to professionals)
- Direct Mail (letters to sellers)
- Outdoor Signage - (bandit signs, door hangers, etc.)
- Newspaper Advertising
- Networking (REIA meetings, Auctions, community board meetings, etc)
Online Marketing
- Mass emails
- Auto Responders
- Online Classifieds (Craigslist, kijiji, backpage, etc.)
- Social Networks (facebook, myspace, digg, twitter, etc.)
- Videos (Vimeo, youtube, your blog, viddler, etc.)
- Article Marketing (hubpages, others)
- Yahoo Groups
- Blogging (your blog, linkbacks/trackbacks, other peoples blogs)
- Ebay
- Ad Words (Google, others)