Are you tuned into WIIFM? No, it’s not the latest radio station in your area. It’s shorthand for a fundamental direct-mail principle -- a principle every real estate investor should keep uppermost in his mind.
WIIFM. An acronym for What’s In It For Me? When your recipient receives your postcard in the mail, you have a scant 30 second or less to grab their attention. That means you need to answer that question for them.
If you’re offering something to them, that “something” must be beneficial to them in some way. You may have heard this phrase in another way. Perhaps some staid, academic copywriter once told you to emphasize benefits, not features.
And you probably nodded and went on your way, only later wondering what the real difference was between a benefit and a feature. That’s exactly where WIIFM comes in loud and clear.
A benefit answers the question: What’s In It For Me? When you tell the potential seller what he can gain from this arrangement, then you have him thinking about selling. Far too many real estate investors spend far too much time telling the seller about his business.
Yes, it is reassuring to know if you’ve been in business for so many years . . . and that you’ve sold so many houses . . . and you’ve generated so much extra cash for your customers. Those, however, are all features – very important features of course.
You need to turn these features around to make them attractive to your seller. Then and only then you turn your feature into a benefit.
Remember, when push comes to shove, an individual potential customer sitting at his kitchen table reading your post card will eventually stand up and wonder: What’s In It For Me?
Answer that question for him and you’re succeeding in your marketing campaign. It’s not a simple question to answer – not when it comes to real estate investing. You must consider exactly what your customer wants.
If he’s facing foreclosure, he wants out of this nightmare. But more than that he probably wants to keep his house. You may be tempted to go with “I’ll give you fast cash for your house.” And for some individuals this certainly may work.
But maybe – just maybe – in addition to wanting the money, he may want to be reassured that whoever buys the house will treat it well . . . will love it the way he and his family has. After all, to him, the house is more than just a structure . . . it’s a home where his children played and slept, where family meals were eaten . . . where family stories were shared.
Keep these things in mind when you attempt to answer the question – from the seller’s perspective – What’s In It For Me?
Fast Cash? Sure. But perhaps just a little bit more as well. If you can deliver – through your postcard campaign -- an angle that includes care for the home and even peace of mind for the homeowner, then you’ll well on your way to closing that sale. And you’re becoming the successful real estate investor you always knew you could be.
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