In previous posts I have shared how important and profitable it is for our real estate business to make our existing clients a priority by setting up a system where we regularly reach out to them in various ways. My previous posts provide details on how you can effectively do this...
This weeks post provides a tool to implement and execute this process. I realize many of you don't have the time, expertise or desire to do this work yourself so I wanted to provide a tool to do it for you.
I was recently introduced to Travis Balinas, the Product Marketing Manager over at OutboundEngine. He writes a lot about marketing for real estate agents on their blog and recently put together an incredible infographic on how agents can the get most from their marketing dollars.
I’ve asked Travis to give you all some information that you can apply to your marketing strategies to get you the most ROI.
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Thank you Wade. I’m excited to share this infographic with your readers.
After digging into the latest National Association of Realtors’ 2014 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends report and exploring other agent statistics and polls, I’ve learned that you guys are incredible at staying up to date with marketing trends, love trying new things and really hustle to grow your businesses.
But what these various reports made alarmingly clear is that you’re investing lots of money (and time) targeting people who don’t know you, meaning you don’t have credibility with these potential clients. This is what led me to the conclusion that the biggest mistake agents make when investing in marketing is wasting money advertising to the wrong people.
This year’s 2014 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends report sheds a lot of light on consumer behaviors that significantly impact the success of your marketing. Rather than spending time and money trying to figure out what the next “it” marketing trend is going to be, you’ve got an even better resource at your disposal that might not be on your radar: your database of past client contact information.
The statistics don’t lie here. 71% of all closed seller transactions and 68% of all closed buyer leads came from trusted sources or face-to-face contact. Did you know that it’s more beneficial to host an open house than it is to launch a direct mail piece? Agents reported that 8% of their closed sales came from open house interactions compared to the less than 2% that came from all forms of direct mail. What all these numbers show is that money spent on unknown audiences is a lot harder to get back. That’s especially true when compared to the ROI of referral business from your past customers.
What consumers have made entirely clear, both from NAR commissioned surveys and consumer reports in general, is that they’re going to turn to their friends, family and other trusted information sources for recommendations about major purchases. This means that your marketing dollars need to be spent on activating your sphere of influence and inspiring them to take action on your behalf.
With the bulk of your business coming from word-of-mouth referrals, it’s only logical that you invest in growing your business through your existing clients. Focus your attention on keeping your past clients engaged to build awareness, keep you top of mind and ultimately lead to increased referrals and repeat business.
And speaking of referrals, I did a survey of about 500 agents on our own blog, asking them various questions about their referral business. Already knowing that agents get roughly 3/4 of their business from referrals, I wanted to investigate this metric a little more in-depth. I asked our panel of agents a simple question and was absolutely shocked by the answer.
I asked them: Of your past clients, what percentage sends you referral business?
What I learned is that the majority of agents are getting less than 20 percent of their past clients to send them leads, meaning there is a large well of untapped potential in their databases of past clients. This number is huge for you guys! Can you imagine just how many qualified, inbound referral leads you could have if you just activated even 5 percent more of your sphere of influence?
2015 is filled with plenty of challenges for agents, and worrying about making poor marketing investments should be at the bottom of your list. As a marketer now deeply familiar with consumer buying trends and real estate agent spending habits for lead gen, I’ve developed a full-cycle marketing process that I love to share with agents to help increase their repeat business and referrals.
1. Market to people who know you - they’re your largest source of qualified leads and won’t be matched by any other lead gen platform.
2. Use a multi-touch approach to marketing - not everyone you know is on social media and not everyone you send an email to will open it, so you need to do both to increase your chances of being seen. You’re building up your pipeline by staying visible to the people who will send business your way.
3. Quality content marketing - Good content marketing gives your audience information that they find interesting, helpful and entertaining. You want them to keep reading your emails and social posts, so work to help them, not sell to them.
4. Established online presence - A website for the sole purpose of capturing organic leads is expensive and not very effective. However, when a newly referred prospect Googles your name, you definitely want to provide them with a mobile-optimized, comprehensive experience that speaks for you before you even get a chance to connect.
5. Generate referral business - Steps 1 - 4 provide an excellent foundation for marketing to your sphere of influence. With all these elements in place, you’ll have branded yourself as a trusted advisor. You can leverage this trust to help grow your business. In exchange for offering your contacts helpful, insightful content in a non-intrusive way, you will earn the opportunity to directly ask them for referral business, thus helping you repeat this process again.
That is why I’ve put together this infographic on 3 Ways to Fail at Being a Real Estate Agent…and 1 Way to Win, which you can check out below.
One last thing before I hand things over to Wade. Staying in touch with past clients through email and social media to drive referral business, reduce marketing costs and get back your day is what we do at OutboundEngine. I’m excited Wade let me reach out to you today with this infographic and he has arranged an incredible, limited-time offer for you guys too.
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Thank you, Travis for sharing this with us. We’ll get to that infographic in just a second.
OutboundEngine is great because they do 100% of the work for you. It’s a service for agents where the content is written for you, emails are sent automatically and your social media accounts are updated with relevant content to help you stay top of mind with clients. It’s an effective way to grow your business while freeing you up to doing what you do best – sell real estate.
I’ve spoken to the owner of OutboundEngine and negotiated a special offer for you… Click here to check out www.outboundengine.com/agentsboost/ and get a full demo at my discounted pricing. Take note, the offer is only good during the month of February. **Reminder... We don't make a single penny if you sign up. We provide these posts to help you succeed and used our influence with the owner of this tool to get you a special discount but not to make "a cut". We believe in this service which is the only reason we recommend it.
Enjoy the infographic below...
Strength and courage,
Wade
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