Realtor marketing plans come and go. Many are based on strategies and ideas gathered from sales seminars more focused on "getting a listing," or "closing a buyer," than servicing the client.

The first step in being a resource to your client is to know your community. Click on "Who We Are" and find out just how well we know our valley.

As a real estate team for nearly 20 years, with more than a thousand happy clients, we know what to do. Read how:

	The Multiple Listing Service (MLS): The exclusive Broker to Broker, up to date, database of properties for sale throughout the Southland Regional Association of Realtors (SRAR), which include the Santa Clarita, San Fernando, Simi, San Gabriel, and Conejo Valleys.
	The Internet: “The web” is involved in some capacity with 95% of our personal real estate sales; 25% of which are sourced directly to the internet. The regional MLS is partnered to the web via Realtor.com, IDX systems, our Tracy-Mike.com site, plus select web-based Virtual Tours.
	www.Tracy-Mike.com: Our website is designed as a principal resource and comprehensive tool, primarily for the out of area homebuyer. It is not a “Rah, rah, aren’t we wonderful,” typically flashy Realtor website. It has been specifically crafted to look and be a one-stop resource for anyone considering a move to the Santa Clarita Valley. It is a tool for human resource departments in firms recruiting, and relocating, to our area. The site works in conjunction with our banner-ad on the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce’s home page (scvchamber.com), “Relocating to the Santa Clarita Valley?” Tracy-Mike.com walks the viewer through the Santa Clarita Valley in directly linking to all the home-sites for the major resources and service providers of our valley. Homebuyers can view our listings, in addition to specific searches of the entire current MLS inventory for the region; but, there’s a tool-within this tool for them. “Value Tracker” is a benefit of ours which affords would-be home sellers (i.e., potential buyers) to keep themselves automatically updated on a neighborhood’s value. There is a sister-service which also notifies home hunters every time a property pops up for sale, tailored to their specific search criteria. Most tangibly though, Tracy-Mike.com allows the browsers and clients to “log in” and have interactive personal “accounts,” where we instantly electronically notify the status of their listing, escrow, and/or a “hot” property, in order to update anyone we have established a secure file for.
	Email: Our email databases have been strategically crafted and directed since 1997. We routinely schedule and email our property brochures, detail sheets, listing updates, service reports, home buyer wants, etc., to our database of nearly 500 brokers with whom we’ve had a transaction(s) with in the region; an additional 300 Realtors in and out of the Association with whom we have not had a transaction, but are known to be productive in the business, are also updated. The human resource departments of forty of this valley’s top employers are regularly notified on our listing availability for would be transferees. Our past and present clients, including personal referral contacts, are also rapidly email notified of our properties for sale and our home buyers’ real estate needs.
	Virtual Tours: If a virtual tour is determined as an appropriate tool to promote a property, then our virtual tours lead the industry. Every one of our virtual tour homes is its own web-site. They are an interactive, user friendly, emailable, downloadable, 360-degree showcase of a property. Our tours provide not only the public, but the home seller with an internet based “commercial” for their home.
	The “Alliance:” The MLS Alliance is a State-wide collaboration of “Boards of Realtors,” and their participating member agents. Our membership in this State-wide MLS allows the details of properties to be accessed by “Alliance” agents throughout the State, something normally granted only to members of local real estate boards. With the Alliance, the exposure of a listing becomes state-wide, rather than just regional.
	The key safe (lockbox): The device which determines whether or not your home is shown by a cooperating broker. 98% of Santa Clarita Valley listings provide lockbox access. Those that don’t have a 40% longer average market time. The devices are high-tech, secure, convenient, and increase a listing’s exposure ten-fold.
	The Sign: The “calling card” of a listing. It attracts anyone who is looking to buy a home in the area. It tells neighbors someone is heading out, and gives them the chance move their friends or family into the neighborhood. The for sale sign attracts the attention of every passer-by. It even helps aid out of area agents navigate a neighborhood. A sign says there’s something special to be seen behind the front door.
	The Brochure: A listing’s souvenir; the tangible remembrance of a property. The highlights, bells, whistles, and price, etc., are all included in this image-packed item. The flyer, or brochure, is the tool which helps the property stand-out in a would-be buyer’s memory. It is a tool geared also for mass distribution to both the real estate and lay community. Essentially, the flyer communicates “come see me,” and/or “remember me.”
	The Brochure Box: The “cookie jar” of the listing. This For Sale sign-mounted flyer box is like a magnet to all passers bye, whether or not they’re interested neighbors or would-be lookers. All the same, a For Sale sign with a brochure box accounts for 60% more sales than a Sign without a box.
	Target Mailings: “New listing” picture postcards of a property are mailed to the entire tract to encourage neighbors who are not aware, from the For Sale sign and brochure box, the property is on the market and to come help participate in the sale of the property.
	Broker Networking: The behind the scenes part of promoting a listing, and matching up the needs of a home buyer. We meet weekly with “The SCV Network Group,” 15 of this valley’s top real estate professionals, representing the major Brokerages in Santa Clarita, to cross promote and match up our home buyers and sellers with those of others in the group. The SCV Network Group has met weekly since it was created in 1990 as a means of wading through the volume of listings found during the recession, stymied by the vacuum of buyers available at the same time. While the market has changed since then, the “Group” still meets and networks properties both currently listed for sale and those not yet on the market. The Group is the best way to expose a listing or homebuyer to the “inside track” on real estate availability in town. In addition to The SCV Network Group.
	Association Marketing Meetings: There are really no such things as “company listings” these days. With the “Alliance” and region-wide MLS, all listings are accessible to all Brokers with equal commission compensation. Only foolish agents list properties as “office exclusives,” and deny the immeasurable exposure a property should receive to all the Realtor participants in the region. Weekly the SCV Association of Realtors holds Marketing Meetings to create the same themed exposure as a listing receives to The SCV Network Group, but by a broader, all be it, less intimate group of sales professionals. At the conclusion of these meetings listings are scheduled on a voluntary “caravans” for brokers to preview listings in a random manner, without the need to schedule an appointment. This is known as the “broker's open house.”
	Agent Follow-up: Every day, real estate professionals and their clients are updated on our listings. Any broker who previews or shows a prospective buyer one of our homes is immediately sought out for “feedback” on the preview or showing. If the broker accesses the property via the Keysafe we are electronically notified of the showing, but ask the home seller to communicate to us ASAP who the agent(s) was all the same. If the keysafe isn’t used, we rely on the homeowner to communicate to us as quickly as possible the Brokerage and agent contact details of the showing. Our goal is to reach that showing Realtor, to “sell the salesman” on selling the listing, as quickly as possible. Another opportunity from feedback is to find out about the “competing” homes with the listing, and/or to make adjustments as to condition, pricing, etc., as recommended from the cooperating showing.
	Target Advertising: Brokers typically take two approaches to real estate advertising. The first involves “self-promotion,” vs. the second, “listing promotion.” Home sellers are much more interested in an agent’s “listing promotional” efforts than their “self promotional” ideas. We feel while our local newsprint resources are wonderful community builders, the majority of homebuyers are relocating from outside our valley, and thus don’t read the local papers. On a listing by listing basis, we may choose to advertise in “The Hollywood Reporter,” or “Variety.” Perhaps, “The Los Angeles Business Journal,” or “Los Angeles Times,” may be more appropriate. Sometimes even local beach-community publications, such as “The Argonaut,” or “Evening Outlook,” are an effective means of pushing a listing(s); again, it just depends on the anticipated buyer profile for the listing. Typically, we feel the magazine publication, “Homes and Land,” attracts the broadest general out of area buyer interest. The latter glossy full color medium is our first choice in print promotion. Indeed, all home sellers should keep in mind that for several years would-be homebuyers have been turned off from print advertising in their home hunts: almost without exception, by the time the ad’s would run, the listings would have sold; so, the would-be buyer would always find the properties they’d inquire on, in sold. Buyers were “conditioned” to rely on a more immediate and reliable real estate resource, the internet…where YOU most likely are right now.

Staff and Support:

In this era of Voicemail and Email, every business is striving to remain “accessible” to the customer. Sometimes, accessibility and a job “well done,” don’t travel hand in hand. None the less, we understand the need of being “tangible.” While we have a task-specific group of five real estate professionals who make up the Tracy & Mike team, each of us is first-person with our clients. Our “buyer’s specialist,” Tracy Grant, has the sole responsibility to remain on top of the real estate inventory in town. Her job is to monitor and communicate what’s for sale, and the changing terms, pricing, etc., of the latter, and what’s up and coming to the market, on both the new construction and resale front. Acting as our Office Manager/Escrow Supervisor, Danise Davis is our “MacGyver” of sales transactions. Danise has task-managed, co-navigated, and delightfully closed, hundreds and hundreds of escrows for the team. Typically if there’s an escrow challenge, Danise has the solution…or she knows where to find it. Margaret Avery is our lady behind the scenes. She’s our “file fairy,” who makes sure all of our listings and escrows have the required and appropriate contracts, forms, and disclosures. She databases all of the agent showings of our listings, compiles “activity” and “marketing” reports for our home sellers. Margaret works with the respective real estate print media in our targeted advertising campaigns, while also overseeing the traditional mailer marketing and contact management programs we employ.