Patricia Cheaure'

Many agents send out monthly e-newsletters to their clients and prospects to keep in touch with them on a regular schedule. The newsletters contain items like ways to weatherize their homes, tips on home maintenance, area school news, real estate trends in the area and more. The articles are great information for you clients, but they don't always offer a way to contact the companies or associations for more information and assistance, so you or your clients spend hours online researching where to go to find to obtain that assistance.

That's where Open Your Door™ Reference Guides can help you, saving you time while presenting you as the area expert. The guides contain the information and direct - verified links - to these places and people. The guide can point to what utility company they may want to speak with to find out the best ways to weatherize and save on their bills, to how to contact their schools for updated information or their government representatives for further guidance.

All this information and more is tabbed very neatly in Open Your Door™ Reference Guides so it is all at your fingertips taking you seconds to look it up and deliver it to your clients!

You can even customize the guides to give the client their own copy, making it look like you put all the work into the guide, just for that client! This also keeps you and your brand in front of that client for years to come.

So if you want to be the expert in different areas of your town and county, not spending all the hours researching that information yourself, take a look at our guides. See how many questions our guides can answer for you and your clients.

How much time do you think something like that would actually save you when you are busy and need to be out with buyers and sellers, not sitting at your computer?

For your listings do you still print out a bunch of informational pages, put them in the plastic sleeves and into a three ring binder (or some type of holder) that you set out or have the sellers set out when buyers are viewing your listings? Besides the home spec sheet and the county parcel map, maybe you add a list of the schools and utilities in it. Or possibley, if you have extra time, you might even add a page of nearby parks or shoppping, right?

Well, Open Your Door™ Reference Guides are a great replacement for those 3 ring binders or plastic sleeve folders. Not only do the guides have the information on the community that you usually have to take hours to look up, print out and put into the binders, but it has so much more. Open Your Door™ Reference Guides contain the state, county and city information with accurate website links so they can look up any other details they may want to know.

You may be asking yourself,"Well do I have to buy one for each city I have a listing in?" Open Your Door™ Reference Guides are set up by state information, then county information and then list information for the 10 largest municipalities in that county. You can then customize the guides with your photo on every other page, your website and phone number on the footer of the pages and your business cards in a pouch in the guide. That way, when setting these out at your listings, no matter who the buyer is working with, they will always see your information when looking at the area specifics in the guide!

If you really want to know what it takes to stand out, you should be paying attention to the pro’s. We are all familiar with that ever popular Nike “swoosh”, the “C’s” all over purses from Coach and on and on.

If you are the head marketer of your company, and most of us running our own businesses are, it doesn’t matter what age we are or what our company does, we all need to understand how important branding is.

Huge corporations are buying each other up, mergers are everywhere, but don’t be fooled by that food frenzy going on at the monstrous end of that spectrum; the real action is at the other end. This is the economy of free agents, entrepreneurs and sole-proprietorship looking to have a fantastic upcoming year. Even if you are established with a large real estate corporation, you still need your own personal branding because more then likely there are 100's trying to rely on that corporation's brand.

The good news is that everyone has a chance to stand-out and have a brand worthy of remark. Today brands are huge and every single website sponsor understands that. Brands become a promise of quality and service.

The internet makes the case for branding more so then any packaged product. Which sites do you bookmark, trust enough to order products from and which ones do you keep going back to?

Starting today, you are a brand. What makes you different? Ask yourself and ask your current customers, “What is it that my product or service does that makes it different?” What is your greatest strength, your most noteworthy characteristic? Then really think about what you would like to be famous for. Be the best at what you do or provide so you can back your brand and be the expert. Then let all of your associates, friends, family and past and current clients know it. Word of mouth is and always has been one of the best ways to promote your brand.

Keeping that brand in front of your clients is also important. Most of us cannot afford the TV commercials and magazine ads that the big boys use to constantly remind us of them. That’s where Open Your Door™ can help! Take a look at our tools and see for yourself!

Searching for a unique marketing idea, but can’t find one?Can’t figure out what to give your clients when they close on their home that will actually help them to remember you down the road? Never have enough time to stay in contact with your past clients like you should, and they forget about you?

Open Your Door™ has come up with a solution to all of the above!Open Your Door™ offers unique marketing tools for Real Estate Agents. Our flagship product is the revolutionary OYD™ Guide, a resource and information guide for your new homeowner clients that simultaneously performs as an ongoing marketing tool for you.

OYD™ researchers have done the hard work for you – thoroughly investigating and pre-screening the local “what’s, where’s and who’s” information for each neighborhood, county and state. This way your clients will have the most current and accurate information they need, whether using the OYD™ Guide to access websites directly, or launching the CD version to hyperlink to desired information.

OYD™ Guides are available in both electronic and print versions so they will be loved by all generations and you won't believe how inexpensive they are.Your clients will find the guide so helpful, and feel like they are being welcomed into their new community.

We’ve included many ways of keeping your name and brand in front of your clients that are included with the guides. But if you prefer, you can also customize each OYD™ with your own cover along with listing your phone number, email and website on the pages inside. Your clients will think you did all the work!

Our booth at NAR's 2011 Expo and Convention was very busy and that convention was a really great place to be. It gave us the chance to meet so many wonderful people from all over. NAR's President, Ron Phipps even announced that this years attendance exceeded all expectations; 19,000 attendees. It was a very energized placed to be.

Agents were very interested in our new line of products for their clients. Due to their attraction to our products, along with them sharing their thoughts, we are going to be coming out soon with a new, completely electronic version of Open Your Door™ Guides that can be accessed through a link that is placed directly on your website! You then give a password to the client and the client can access the guide by going to your website and using this link! Completely awesome!

Keep your eyes out for the release of this new product. I will be officially presenting this product at Triple Play in Atlantic City December 6-8. I hope to see a few of you there!

And as always, we love to hear your thoughts and ideas about Open Your Door™ Guides, so please send them on to us!