Most real estate agents are used to marketing with paper: newspaper ads, flyers and handouts, market comp worksheets, disclosure packages, and so on. After all, paper requires no special equipment for the recipient, and the tools to create paper documentsparticularly, a word processorare available and understood by most agents. The volume of paper can be overwhelming. Plus, today's younger buyers and sellers have been weaned on videogames, the Internet, iPods, and other multimedia gadgets. So why not provide potential buyers with your marketing materials in a richer visual medium? The disc tour is a great way to deliver those materials. Recordable CDs (called CD-Rs) cost less than a dollar eachoften even cheaper when on sale or bought in bulkso providing a CD is inexpensive. They also hold a lot of information, so you can include a dozen photos, a complete disclosure package, market comps, and a flyer, and still have plenty of room for fancy materials such as narrated virtual tours and community resource Web pages. You could also use DVD-Rs, which hold about four times as much as a CD, since most new computers now come with DVD drives. Just be sure the recipients know they're getting a DVD rather than a CDthey look alikeand that they know it won't play on the DVD player connected to their TV. In other words, a disc tour is simply a disc containing whatever combination of marketing materials you want to provide.
Content Options for Disc ToursIn some cases, you can provide your paper documents in electronic form as a set of PDF files. With PDF files, you won't kill as many trees giving prospective buyers the data they need to make a preliminary decision on whether to make an offer. They'll have to printor you willthe final documents that need all the initials and signatures if they do want to make an offer, but you won't have to make copies of the multiple-hundred-page materials to give to all the other people who decided not to make an offer. If you're paying for the photocopy expenses, a CD is actually a cheaper way to distribute these materials. (DVDs are more expensive, about a dollar each, even on sale.) Often you'll want the disc to contain more than just a set of documents. After all, why not take advantage of the multimedia capabilities of today's computers? If you offer a disc tour that has several kinds of elements in it, your recipients will appreciate having all the pieces clearly organized. They'll also want some way to know all the items that the CD contains. There are two basic ways to satisfy this need:
In practice, you should do both so a recipient who opens the disc's HTML files will see a familiar interface, while recipients who treat the disc like a hard drive can open the organized set of folders and easily identify the content. (You might also put a text file on the disc that simply lists the contents of each folder.) Think of interesting materials to include beyond the basic marketing and disclosure materials. For example, you might include an audio narration that would play in a car stereo, or a virtual tour converted to a movie playable on a TV through a DVD player. You can create discs that work in multiple environments: such as on a computer and in a car stereo, or on a computer and in a DVD player connected to a TV. But be careful: The process for creating such multipurpose discs can be involved, and every program does it differently. So be prepared to spend some time figuring out the software the first time you make an audio CD or video DVD. And always test the disc in all the devices your recipients might useCD player, DVD player, Windows PC, and/or Macintoshbefore distributing it. Checklist Disc Tours While the contents of a CD or DVD disc tour can vary based on the materials you want to provide, I recommend the following elements as standard components:
Other good materials could include:
Creating Audio NarrationsTo create an audio narration for a CD, use the audio recording features that come with your computer. Or you can use the audio recording features in a CD-burning program like the SoundTrax program included with Nero's Nero or the Sound Editor program included with Roxio's Easy Media Creator in Windows, or the CD Spin Doctor software included with Roxio's Toast on the Mac. You'll need a microphone connected to the microphone connector on your computer, of course. (It's best to use a headset microphone to maintain a consistent audio level. With a headset microphone the distance between your mouth and the recording part doesn't move even if you move your head, ensuring a steady volume.) And be sure your recording software is set to receive audio from the microphone rather than from the computer's CD drive. Record the audio file and edit or adjust anything you want to change in your software. (Be sure to write a script first, rehearse it several times, and speak in a clear, enunciated voice with a smile, steady volume, and clear tone.) In Windows, you'd record the audio typically as a WAV file, then convert it to the CD audio format using programs like Nero and Easy Media Creator; on a Mac you'd record it as an AIFF file and then convert it to CD audio using programs like Toast. Often, the conversion is automatic as part of burning the disc.
You can create discs that hold multiple kinds of datasuch as CD audio to play on a stereo and various files that open on a computerin programs such as Nero's Nero (shown here) and Roxio's Easy Media Creator and Toast. Each set of data is kept on a separate "partition," as shown on the left. Be sure to save the final audio file in audio CD format, not in a computer format like MP3 or WAV. When you create your CD, place the audio file in its own partition, formatted as CD audio, so a standard CD player will be able to play it. Note that a CD player requires the CD audio partition to be the first partition on the disk; most modern CD burning programs handle that partition order automatically. CD Resources: For audio CD creation, links to Apple, Nero, and Roxio. Creating DVDs for TV DisplayTo create a DVD video that plays on a standard DVD player, you can also use software such as Nero's Nero or Roxio's Easy MediaCreator. You can use this software to open the source video files, edit them, and then save them in the DVD formatcomplete with a DVD menu, if you want. As with audio files on an audio CD, you need to place the DVD files in a separate partition on the disc (the partition is formatted as UDF, which the software might simply label as "DVD"). Whether you are creating a CD with a separate CD audio partition or a DVD with a separate DVD video partition, your data files will be in a separate partition (or in two, one for Windows and one for Mac). When you burn the disc, be sure that all partitions are burned onto itthe partitions should appear in the software's list of items to burn. CD Resources: For DVD creation, links to Nero and Roxio. |