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The most successful agents are the ones that keep their marketing efforts running at full throttle even when they get busy juggling multiple buyers and sellers. Here are 7 easy things you can do to help your marketing efforts and keep your pipeline full.
1. A Recap of Neighborhood Real Estate Trends
Create and send out neighborhood market presentations, like this. Your goal is to get potential sellers thinking about what their house might sell for. Email the presentation to your contacts who live in the neighborhood or post a link on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
Track Views with a URL Shortener
Want to track how many clicks and views your presentation gets? Use a URL shortener like Bitly or Google URL shortener to track each time someone clicks to view your presentation.
2. Respond to the Leads You’re Already Getting
According to research by the WAV group, 48% of buyer inquiries on sites like Zillow.com, Realtor.com and Trulia.com, are NEVER responded to, and the average response time to leads was over 15 hours!
Ouch…
“These numbers reveal a staggering failure of real estate professionals to serve the consumer. But this failure actually represents an important opportunity. If brokers and agents take steps to rectify this problem, and respond more effectively to consumers, they are opening the door to a great increase in revenue.” – Victor Lund, Parter at WAV Group
Agents often complain that leads from the portals aren’t “quality” and cite that as their excuse for not responding in a timely manner. But what does quality mean exactly? Someone that is pre-approved, knows the house they want and is ready to put in an offer?
Ha! Dream on.
A lead is simply a person who is interested in buying or selling in the future, and they’ve given you a job interview.
It’s your job to nurture them so when they are ready to transact, they choose you. Responding quickly makes a great first impression, and it’s really not that hard.
Step 1.
You get an email lead from Zillow. You have an email auto-responder set up that lets the person know that you’ll be in touch soon.
Here’s one you can use:
Hi there!
Thanks so much for reaching out. Right now I’m in a meeting with another client, but I’ll give you call in a few minutes as soon as I wrap things up here.
Talk to you soon,
Luke
P.S. Check out some of the nice things some of my past clients have said about working with me.
Step 2.
Pick up the phone and call, the sooner the better. If you’re pressed for time ask a few basic questions to qualify the lead and then ask for an appointment to meet if appropriate. The entire conversation should take less than 5 minutes.
Nice work, you’re doing better than 99% of your peers.
3. Follow Up with Clients Post Transaction
In an industry where a large percentage of your of business comes from word-of-mouth, it’s critically important to stay top of mind with your past clients.
If they had a great experience buying or selling their home they will refer you to their friends and family! Make it as easy as possible for them to remember the positive experience that they had. Set a reminder on your calendar to check in 1, 6, 12 and 24 months out.
Pick 1 day a month and schedule 30 minutes to sit down and make contact with your past clients. An email/text/phone call/card doesn’t have to be huge and time consuming task. Something short and sweet is all that’s needed.
Hey Mark, just wanted to check in with you to see how the move went. Hope you’re loving your new place!
– Luke
To make the process even quicker pre-write several email templates for the emails that you know you’ll be sending over and over. That way all you have to do is copy and paste, change the names, personalize a bit and hit send. Really fast, really efficient.
Here are a couple examples of email templates you could pre-write:
– 1 month “How was the move?”
– 3 month “Checking in email”
– 12 month “Happy move in anniversary email”
– Birthday’s
– Client’s Anniversary
Batch ‘Em to Save Time
To save time, schedule 20-30 mins each month to write out all of your client check-in emails.
Because you’ve pre-written email templates, you can send out the 15 emails you need to send this month in about 10 minutes.
4. Like, Comment, & Retweet
Stay top of mind by interacting with people on social media sites. This isn’t the time to push the fact that you’re an agent, they probably know you are.
What you’re trying to do is keep building that relationship. People like other people who they can relate to. Get excited about the things that other people are excited about. Baby photos, sport team rants, vacation photos, engagements, new jobs, whatever.
Make a point to interact with 10-15 people a day. Do it all at once, first thing in the morning or after dinner in 5 minutes.
5. Engage with People on Twitter
You can use Twitter’s search to find people just like James who are talking and asking questions about real estate.
6. Fringe Questions
People are asking other types of questions online that are related to buying and selling a home, but are more on the fringe. Questions that are really important and factor into where they buy or when they sell. This is a perfect opportunity to offer up your expertise.
Questions about schools, crime, commute times, zoning, public transportation, development, etc. One great thing about responding to questions online is that your response can be found over and over by people who are searching on Google with similar questions. This is basically free marketing. Do it once and it lives on forever.
Here are a few sites you should check out to get started.
– The Nest
– HGTV
– Quora
– Yahoo Answers
– Zillow Advice
– Trulia
– Yelp Answers
7. Start a Blog
The benefits of blogging can pay huge dividends. There are countless stories of businesses using blogging and content to pull in prospective customers with compelling content. I won’t go into all the reasons and tactics here. If you want to you can read about that here and here.
Every post you write has a chance to drive additional visitors to your website which leads to awareness and a thought leadership opportunity for you. It does take bit of work to get started but once you have 20-30 posts all driving 25-50 visitors to your website each month the traffic can really start to rack up.
Consider This
A couple is thinking about buying a home in 12 months. Besides square footage, a view and the number of bedrooms there are a TON of other things that they will consider. Factors like commute times, proximity to recreation, schools, property appreciation due to community improvements, restaurants, coffee, grocery stores or the potential for rental income.
Chances are close to 100% that they are going to be searching on Google for the answers to those questions. By blogging, your posts with answers to their questions can show up in search results, showcasing your expertise over and over again.
What should I blog about?
Write about real estate and the activities that people who are moving care about. A couple ideas to get you started.
– Schools
– Neighborhoods
– Restaurants
– Crime
– Zoning changes
– Guides for people who are moving to your city
– The best coffee shops, bars, food trucks
– Parks, hiking in Seattle
– Finding a Vet
– How to find a good electrician
– The pros and cons of buying a condo
– Renting vs buying
– Upcoming neighborhoods
– Do you really need 20% down
– How much home can you really afford?
– Simple/Easy/Cheap things you can do to increase the value of your home
It’s easy to get started
If you don’t have a blog yet check out one of these.
– WordPress.com
– Blogger.com
– Tumblr.com
– Squarespace.com
Be Consistent
Keeping your pipeline full doesn’t have to be time consuming or overly complex and these 7 tips will help you save time and make your marketing more automated. No these tips wont guarantee that you’ll always have people lined up who are ready to transact. But they’re a great start. Be consistent and keep at these every week and every month. The long-term effects will be more referrals and happy repeat clients.
