Editorial
Front Page - Friday, April 30, 2010
Ramsey’s marketing tactics focus on branding image
Erica Tuggle
Geoff Ramsey stands in front of one his sold properties in the new Flower Branch subdivision in East Brainerd. Several of the 30 lots in the subdivision are under contract or have been sold by Ramsey. These, along with the 18 pending sales he had at the time of this interview, bring his total to 38 closed properties for the year.
- Erica Tuggle
Geoff Ramsey is not oblivious to the economic crunch the realty business has been though and may face again after the tax credit ends on April 30. Yet, this Clinton, Tenn. native who grew up helping with his father’s political campaigns is choosing now as the time to maintain his marketing at a cost of $4,000 per month he says.
Ramsey said he is focused on branding his name and Web site now so that when the market does make a full circle (as he anticipates with the rise of Volkswagen and the other industries that are coming to Chattanooga), he will be the face and name everyone knows.
“It’s a pretty big pill to swallow, but if you don’t market yourself and your product, then you can’t just stick a sign in a yard and hope someone is going to buy it,” he says.
Don’t take his word for it that this strategy produces results; the sales speak for themselves. Ramsey was the No. 1 agent in the East Brainerd area in 2008, he sold over 75 properties in 2009 and has closed 20 properties so far this year, with 18 additional sales pending at the time of this interview.
He says the money he dishes out for advertising, especially for virtual tours, bring the sales to him. His use of virtual tours led to two instances of clients buying a property site unseen from what they saw on a virtual tour. Another part of his campaign is a moving truck he has bought; decked out with his name and contact information along with the slogan, “Buy or sell a home with me…and use this truck for free!”
During Ramsey’s childhood, his father was a district attorney for 28 years, and his mother was a local elementary school gym teacher. Ramsey says being known by everyone in the community during these years established his ability to speak to anyone. He also learned during this time about the rigors of politics in marketing and campaigning, which he now uses in his work as a Realtor for ReMax.
“I was hanging up signs for dad, and now I’m hanging up real estate signs for myself,” he says with a laugh.
Yet, his success wasn’t always so affluent. Ramsey began his foray into real estate in the early ’90s with a small company called Ridge Realty in Oakridge, Tenn., to little gain, and tried again in the mid-nineties in Knoxville for Help-U-Sell with similar effects.
“I only sold one property in my time there. and that was a condo that I bought myself,” he says with another laugh. “In the beginning, with Ridge Realty and Help-U-Sell, the environment was very ‘here is your cubicle, have at it’ type of attitude.”
This trend changed when he moved to Chattanooga and set his sights on ReMax. He says he began this change by calling the owner of the East Brainerd ReMax, Billy Weathers, every day.
Ramsey says, “I basically harassed Billy every day for two weeks to let me come work with him. I saw that he had more signs out than anyone else, and I wanted to work for someone who was busy. I about bugged the death out of him, until he gave me an interview.”
Working side by side as Weathers’ buyer’s agent, Ramsey said he learned a great deal from him. Among the things he learned, he realized the time investment needed to be a successful Realtor. He says he is now fully aware of this responsibility, as he works almost seven days a week. Another thing he says he learned is that, “the fortune is in the follow-up.”
“If you are going to be successful in this business, you have to keep the lines of communication open,” he says.
Although the lessons he learned were important to kick starting his success, Ramsey says he owes credit to fortune as well. Part of this fortune is that 50 percent of his business – the 50 percent that kept him going during the economic downturn – is the new construction market. Another fortunate factor of the shaky economy was the drop of part-time agents that led to a sales increase for Ramsey and a larger share of the market.
“During these times, a lot of people know they can get a foreclosure at a great price, so that has hurt the value of some of the resale residential products, but the new construction price point has stayed strong,” he says.
Luckily, for all Chatta-nooga agents, the local market has stayed fairly level throughout all of this, he says.
“We never saw the huge increase states like California and Florida did; they knew the bubble was going to burst. So when it hit, we weren’t so overly elevated and didn’t get hurt as bad as the rest of the country. Thank goodness,” he adds.
Although Ramsey spends most of his days at the office or in one of his model home listings working on his laptop and answering questions for those who drop by; he says he does enjoy the occasional vacation.
“Since I work six or seven days a week, I will do this for a couple of months, and then I’ll just take four or five days, get on a plane and get my mind together,” he says.
He says although his brother and he go out West every year to keep up with their snow skiing skills, his last trip in January was a week in Mexico.
He says the thing he is most proud of right now are the new subdivisions that the ReMax team, builders and developers have recently focused on.
“We’ve done such a great job marketing these in a combined effort that we have been selling the homes before we finish them,” he says. “Everything we are building is selling, if not before completion, then a couple of weeks afterward.”
Ramsey says, this too, makes him feel very fortunate.
For more information on Geoff Ramsey visit www.geoff ramsey.com.
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