The holiday DVD has become something of a marketing tool for Greg Askins, a real estate agent in Chandler, Ariz., who sends them to clients. "It gets your name in front of people," says Askins, whose season's greetings this year consists of four minutes of pictures, including some taken during a family vacation to Disneyland that shows his boys on various rides. Sonya Hemmen, a friend and elementary-school principal in Glenwood Springs, Colo., says she keeps Askins' DVDs partly because her young daughter enjoys watching them. "She knows the boys and has her own little computer and she'll pop them in now and then to watch them," says Hemmen. Askins' use of the DVD as a holiday card comes at a time when more Americans have grown accustomed to picture-sharing through e-mail, posting video online, or using similar features in cellphones and camcorders.

In an effort to speed sales and keep expenses down as the national real estate market continues to cool, Realtors, sellers, and buyers are increasingly turning to upscale auctions to buy or sell a home. Auctions of this kind are the most rapidly-evolving market of the auction sector, and have been so for the last few years, according to National Auctioneers Association spokesman Steve Baska. The amount of auctions of residential properties nationally rose 4.5 percent in the third quarter, making it the sector's fastest-expanding segment. These auctions comprised $14.2 billion in sales in 2005, around 23 percent higher than the $11.5 billion in sales seen a couple of years earlier. One auctioneer, Bill Fair, who owns the Lecompton, Kan.-based Bill Fair and Co., says he has never been busier in his 37 years in the business, including the past 26 in real estate. Fair noted that he has sold over $16 million in properties at auction over the last three years. Although residential sales comprise a relatively small portion of that total, Fair said he knows that the numbers will continue to increase as other listed properties remain on the market for longer periods of time. "It's been an avalanche, a landslide," he said. "We go to annual conventions--there are 2,000 auctioneers in the United States--and they're all saying the same thing."

Despite the slowdown in the housing market, Tracey and Doug Stelkic of Chesterfield Township, Mich. were able to sell their home a week after it was put on the market. The Stelkics adopted a three-pronged strategy for selling their 2,100 square foot, three bedroom home. The couple priced the home 3.5 percent less than similar houses in the area, and offered a 5 percent commission to their real estate agent so that he would push the house more aggressively. The generous commission--a typical commission is 3 percent--did in fact motivate their real estate agent, Hank Mendez of Realty Executives in Shelby Township, Mich. Before a for-sale sign even went up on the Stelkics' home, Mendez had posted the house on two Web sites and gotten the word out through e-mails and telephone calls.

A growing number of real estate agents are targeting younger home buyers and hoping to get an edge on their competitors in a slowing market by posting video walk-throughs of properties on YouTube. This method of marketing has even caught the attention of the National Association of Realtors, which addressed the topic in its 2006 technology report. YouTube allows agents to advertise for free, rather than spend hundreds of dollars on Web listings, virtual tours, and professionally produced videos. They need only use the video recording feature on their digital cameras and walk through the home just like a buyer would when taking an in-person tour. "The real estate agent that can say, 'I can send you 20 (video walking tours),' is going to have a competitive advantage," says Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy director Stephen Levy. However, experts note that some older agents--many of whom do not even have email access--may hesitate to embrace such technology.

Marketing and advertising have become more of a focus for real estate companies in Myrtle Beach, S.C., because of the downturn in the local real estate market. In an attempt to differentiate themselves from competitors, real estate agents are not limiting themselves to newspapers and the Web, but are seeing more potential opportunities for exposure in some unusual places. Agents at Broadway Station condominiums have set their sights on local buses, the baggage area of Myrtle Beach International Airport, airline magazines, and health clubs. Meanwhile, in a few weeks, George Connell, an agent with Weichert Realtors Southern Coast, will have an "Adopt-a-Highway" sign on a stretch of U.S. 17 Bypass at Coastal Grand Mall that reads "1-800-Listing," and anyone who dials the number will reach him. Connell, who bought the local rights to a national phone number 1-800-Listing in November for $49 a month, also cites auctioning his services on eBay for a penny as the kind of creative strategies he has engaged in. "The exposure to the world [on eBay] is unbelievable for $1.30," he says. Indeed, Brandon Advertising says the Internet remains a key to real estate marketing. According to the National Association of Realtors, the Internet is where the search for a home begins for 77 percent of prospective buyers.

Bootcamp 4 Success, a marketing and selling course for realtors begun by Bambi White, provides enrollees with 24 hours of instruction during a two-week class. For $399, students learn how to draw up a business plan and a marketing tactic, identify a focus sales group, and create selling strategies. White also instructs students about database management, the use of a particular goal when looking for sale leads, and how to plan out initiatives to meet their marketing and sales objectives. Another aspect of White's boot camp is "power partnering," which studies the important factors of a real-estate deal, such as title, inspection, lending, and escrow, and locating the correct individual in each sector with whom to work. Meanwhile, Prudential California Realty provides realtors with a 16-day free course for new agents, with its message being that Realtors are going to work harder for business and that the more information they possess, the more competitive they will be. The courses last four weeks and run from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., four days per week. Students study every line of contracts, talk about strategies of working with others, and discuss additional elements of the real-estate deal. Almost all of Prudential California's more than 2,000 agents have enrolled in the firm's training classes.

WCI Communities and the Florida Chamber of Commerce have joined forces to create an eye-catching marketing tool to promote the concept of owning a second home in the state. The marketing tool, called "Splitting to Paradise--Your Guide to Owning a Second Home in Florida," is made up of several elements, including a colorful and tongue-in-cheek 35-page printed brochure, a musical CD, and a Web site. The brochure notes that splitting--owning at least two homes and splitting time between them for recreation, to connect with family and friends or to achieve a better work-life balance--was once reserved for people whose last names were "Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, or Kennedy." But according to the National Association of Realtors, there will be more than 11 million second homes in the country by 2009.

Back in September, Debbie Cox, a realtor at Realty Experts Inc. in Surprise, Ariz., started the North West Valley Realtor Network as an education and marketing tool to deal with real estate issues in the Northwest Valley. Every other week, 20 Realtors from 12 Valley brokerages meet to discuss topics such as land and home listings, market trends, and new developments. According to Cox, the network is one of a few that does not just send out e-mails about property listings. "We're committed to helping teach new Realtors the ropes and enhance our marketing strategies to better serve our clients' needs," she said. In addition, the network holds events twice a month to help the public learn about homes, land and recent projects in the Valley. The events feature speakers such as well drillers, lenders, attorneys, and surveyors who help the network's members provide the latest information to their clients.

Leading agents at HER Real Living Realtors have started trying out satellite offices in Central Ohio to provide them with additional space as they grow their businesses. The regional operating unit of the Real Living brokerage network oversees 11 agent-run offices in the region, a figure that could surpass its 20 firm-operated offices in the area by late next year. HER President Bill Evans explained that the idea of agents working from their own offices is founded in the office that agent Carolyn Petree has served in for seven years at the Waterford Tower condominiums in Columbus. Evans noted that agent Susan Wainfor launched the initial official satellite office around 18 months ago in Hilliard. "This allows us to focus on our current [branch] locations and still enter what we'd call niches that would benefit from exposure but would not necessarily be the most profitable," Evans stated. HER has established economic criteria for teams trying to set up satellite offices, although executives would not discuss them. In addition, the agents get a larger percentage of commissions since they now must pay for their own rental space, phone network, and additional costs. They also continue to pay a fee, set up similarly to the official franchise model utilized by Real Living in other sectors, to finance marketing materials and additional professional associated services.

Web surfers will scan a site for just seconds before deciding whether to move on, so small businesses would be wise to use short product and service descriptions to quickly get their attention. Experts underscore that the site's visual layout is more important than having a site introduction, as visitors often get annoyed by having to perform numerous clicks to get to the home page. When figuring out how to organize pages and information, small businesses should consider the priorities of prospective customers and try to design the site from their point of view. Experts suggest that they stick to "the rule of Five," restricting the site to five main points of navigation to enhance usability. Flash technology must serve a purpose, ensuring that movement is designed to attract users' attention and allow them to click to another page with important information. Additionally, experts recommend hiring a professional copywriter so that content is focused and brief. Content, coupled with interactivity, is more important than graphics in getting users to make return visits to the site. Relevant content, keywords, meta tags, and cross-linking agreements are just some of the strategies companies can employ to move to the top of the search-engine results.

Symantec reports that 97 percent of stolen laptops are never found, and thieves make off with the financial records, documents, digital photos, and passwords stored on the machines. Peter Firstbrook of Gartner Research underscores the importance of encryption to make information inaccessible to unauthorized users and backup to ensure that information is not lost forever. Businesses might also want to consider fingerprint readers and other biometric security tools, GPS tracking services, and physical locks comprised of steel cables. Experts urge mobile workers to exercise caution when using public wireless hot spots, as they might unknowingly be giving confidential information--such as credit-card numbers--to hackers stationed nearby.

Small businesses have access to a fax server and mail house through FlyDoc, an online service from Madison, Wis.-based Esker. With FlyDoc, users can send faxes, postal mail, and email within such applications as Microsoft Word by clicking on the Print-to-FlyDoc icon or by going to FlyDoc's Web site. FlyDoc field marketing director Renee Thomas says it takes only 24 hours for snail-mail documents to go out, versus weeks with traditional mail houses. FlyDoc can send emails with large PDF attachments, as well as invoices, contracts, purchase orders, price lists, and other such documents. Businesses pay just 12 cents per page for faxes and four cents for each email. As for postage mail, companies must pay 36 cents for the first page, 18 cents for each additional page, and standard postage fees.

PayCycle has developed a Web-based service to simplify payroll functions for small businesses. PayCycle uses a digital paycheck to pay employees, and it also files tax forms and provides reports to business owners. According to Karen White of PayCycle, "It's beyond just moving money. We tell you how much to move." PayCycle 2007 will feature more online benefit-tracking tools and a secure Web site that employees can access to look at and print pay stubs, among other things. The service is suitable for small businesses with five to 50 employees. White says small businesses opt for PayCycle to save money and gain more control over the payroll process, as the employer's taxes are not held until they are due but released when notified to do so by the employer.