Real Estate Marketing Tools &Tips from Real Estate Virtual Assistant, Megan E Barber
I find Generational differences in their communications and buying behavior super fascinating. When it comes to real estate marketing in the current times, how to market to and speak to different generations is very important. They each have their own communication style and comfort level with technology that you must take into account.
This fabulous infographic that originally came from Smith and Associates, displays the differences perfectly!
Lately you cannot seem to go anywhere without people talking about Pinterest, how fun it is and how awesome it is for business. I’ve touched on the subject on using Pinterest for real estate a few times already. In previous posts, I talked about having the right expectation of it for your business (and what not to do), and gave some examples of how to use Pinterest to tie into your real estate business. I realized that some of my readers are still newbies, so today I am talking the basics.
First, Why Pinterest Matters?
Pinterest has become the fastest growing social network as of late. According to Compete, unique visitors jumped 155% from December 2011 to January 2012. Mashable reported recently that Pinterest is now the #3 ranked social network in the US. The point is, it gets HUGE traffic, and chances are there are many of your potential clients that use it regularly. Can you use it for marketing? You can, but as I pointed out before, it is important to do it authentically and in a smart way.
Another reason Pinterest matters? The potential to drive traffic back to your sites and blogs. I will delve into this more in an upcoming post, but Pinterest can potential have a huge impact in the incoming traffic to your site/blog if you post interesting and relevant images sourced from your own site. More to come on that later.
Who Uses Pinterest?
According to stats analysis sites such as Alexa and Infographic, Pinterest has about a 70% female user base. This group also reveals a higher than average percentage of college-educated users, with most being between 25-34 years of age. Certainly this is a growing sector of the homebuying world as well.
Basic Pinterest Lingo
Pin: An image posted to Pinterest
Pinboard: A themed collection of pins
Repin: Reposting someone else’s pin
Grab The “Pin It” Button for Your Browser
One fabulous goodie that Pinterest provides is a button for your browsers bookmark bar. Once installed on your browser, you can then Pin images on any website you are browsing and add it to one of your pinboards. It is quite convenient and makes pinning easy. Go find it HERE.
Still Need An Invite?
Pinterest is still running on an invite only system. You can go to the site and fill in your info to request an invite. If you want to get in on the Pinterest fun sooner, have a current Pinterest user to send you an invite (like me).
So those are some basics. As you can tell, this is one of my favorite topics to talk about. Coming up next in future posts, I’ll be talking about the traffic driving force of Pinterest, some Pinterest etiquette, and ways to build your following.
What separates Rich Real Estate Agents from the Poor Real Estate Agents? Check out this awesome infographic and survey from Active Rain. Lots of striking information in this, definitely worth checking out.
Believe it or not, there are only 11 weeks left in 2011! We are firmly in the 4th quarter and have you examined your progress on your 2011 business plan? Are you flying blind without one? Well whatever your answer, there is no time to waste. The time to implement is now if you want 2012 to get off to a great start.
Some say that if you start your business January 1st 2012, you are already behind. Real estate is a lag industry and things can take 60-90 days of implementation to see any results. So if you don’t start until January, you may not see any results for several months (especially in this slow economy).
The best marketing advice I’ve ever received is to ramp up your marketing efforts and activities in the 4th quarter so you can see your results once the new year hits and get it off to a fabulous start. If you wait too long, you may find it harder to reach your business or revenue goals because you were waiting for leads to convert and get those marketing results to appear. Market for next year starting NOW!
Starting now, there are probably a few things you can be doing differently, or at least get started on, that can get your 2012 started off right. For example, you can:
It is the perfect time to examine your current business plan (if you have one) refine it, in start implementing NOW so you can have a fabulous 2012. So take some action! I want you to start it off with a bang!
Have some marketing ideas you can implement now to get next year off to a great start? I would love to hear them! Please leave me a comment below!
Old school vs. the new school. Traditional marketing methods vs. Social media marketing. Ways of the past vs. the wave of the future. Around the online real estate world, a small debate was going on about the different schools of thought on real estate marketing methods such as social media and online marketing, and the more traditional routes such as cold calling, door knocking, and direct mail.
Some have quickly taken one side over the other, dismissing the validity of the other point. The “old school” folks cheer on the statement that social media is a total waste of time. The “new school” people think the ones who deny the potential of social media are dinosaurs of the industry that should step aside. I think the the bigger picture here in this debate is that a balanced approach using both old and new methods is necessary to succeed in this market.
Is social media a complete waste of time? I don’t certainly think so. If you know me, you know that I am a big social media fan, and use things like Facebook and Twitter quite often personally and for my business. I have even signed new clients that I’ve met via social media.
Social networking can certainly have potential to be a time waster, with the virtual farms, virtual mafia, and the penchant to announce what one had for breakfast. Certainly if you spend too much of your time living on Facebook and Twitter, you are not going to get much done in general, or be able to effectively work with your clients. But if you handle your social networking activities correctly (strategically), you can get potentially attract new business through your social media engagement.
It is also necessary to have the right mindset and expectation about the potential business social media marketing can bring you. Connections that you attract through social media can take a long time for them to convert to actual business, much like other internet leads. But if you look at the bigger picture, social networks are a great tool to foster new relationships with prospects by engaging with them and repeatedly be out in front of them.
Through some of the more traditional methods of cold calling, and door knocking, most of the “old school” gurus direct agents to go through their database, sphere or lists looking for buyers and sellers that are ready to make their move RIGHT NOW. And then they’ll instruct them to cross the prospect off the list and move on the the next if the are not ready to do business in the immediate. Where this differs from social media marketing is that you are spending little time incubating those warm or cold leads, and going directly for the hot ones. While this approach may be successful for some, it is not for everyone, and even some prospects find this type of communication a total turn off (Hello Gen Y?).
Both social media marketing and more traditional prospecting methods both have their place in today’s marketing plans. Cold calling for hot leads can help you generate business that is ready to move right now, while social media marketing can help fill that pipeline of incoming leads that can eventually warm up to actual business too. I believe a balanced approach in your marketing plan is best.
There is no one marketing method that is the magic bullet. But use any combination of them with the right approach and mindset, and they will bring you new business.
What side of the debate do you stand on? Or what marketing methods have yielded the best results for you? I want to hear from you, so please comment below!
Daily, I come upon great articles and blog postings that I think you should read. I regularly post links to them on my Facebook page, but I thought I would also start to post here my favorite articles weekly that I think you should read.
Here are is the recommended reading for this week:
8 New Facebook Page Changes: What You Need to Know – Social Media Examiner
Real Estate Agent Email Marketing Gone Wrong – GeekEstate Blog
Realtors Should Backup Their Entire Facebook History – AgentGenius
Have You Even Broken Ground - Tech Savvy Agent <<< This presentation is one you MUST WATCH
10 Reasons You Will Never Generate a Lead Through Social Media – Real Estate Tomato
Enjoy the above and happy reading!
I’m a happy Real Estate Virtual Assistant. My new business cards arrived last week and I decided to snap a picture and show them off. Here’s a picture of the front and back. Notice anything interesting?
If you couldn’t tell, I Love Twitter. For 3 years it has been my source of much breaking news, the source of shared ideas and articles with my colleagues, and I discovered who this Justin Beiber kid is (and still don’t care). Twitter can be a fantastic resource and marketing engine if you use it right, or a total time suck if you don’t. It is all about who you engage with and how you go about doing it.
My time is limited enough as a small business owner/work-at-home mom. I have to keep my Twitter stream clean and not full of cluttered nonsense, so I am relatively selective when following other Twitter users. Inspired by Janie Coffee and her post on her rules of who she does and does not follow, I decided to come up with my own rules of engagement when it comes to my Twitter followers.
Not following me yet on Twitter? Well go ahead and find me there - @MegBarberVA
So there’s enough talk about Social Media being the latest and greatest marketing tool and why it’s necessary to have in your marketing arsenal. It’s starting to be overkill, so I’m sure by now you are getting the idea. I want to dig in a little deeper and to talk about adding “friends” and connections that can be beneficial to your overall marketing strategy.
So you’ve set up your social media profiles, Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts. Now what? Now it’s time to add your “friends”. You can accomplish very little in social media without friends, or connections. Who is going to see your posts, videos, or updates if you are not connected to anyone? It’s like shouting out to an empty room.
The great place to start out is by adding your own family, your friends, current and past clients that you regularly keep in touch with. But it is a good idea to be strategic about the kinds of friends and connections you make on your social networks. You want to make connections with people that will bring you business or have the potential to bring you business. And though this may be controversial to some, I am of the opinion that agents should not be spending too much of their social media time connecting with just a bunch of other real estate agents.
When some agents just start out in their social networks, they get caught in the trap of spending a lot of time adding, and friending only other agents, and ignoring the potential client base they can find from their sphere of influence and local area. Networking primarily with other agents may be fun, may generate an occasional referral, but other agents are not the people that a majority of your business will come from. In some cases, they are your direct competition (but not always). You want to connect with real potential sellers and buyers in your area, people that would want to use your services.
Say you opened a new business selling widgets. You wouldn’t necessarily want to connect primarily with other makers of the same widgets. You want to connect with people that are interested in buying your widgets. You want to get front of mind awareness with THOSE people because they are the meat and potatoes of your business.
Now I am not saying that you should ignore and not connect and network other agents on social media completely. You should spend some of your time networking with other agents. You can find some great agents out there to inspire you, to learn from, to joke with, commiserate with. Heck, in my own business, I network with a ton of other Virtual Assistants on Facebook, Twitter, etc. But it is a good idea to balance it out and strategically build your friends lists with clients and those potential buyers and sellers.
So choose your friends and connections on your social networks carefully. Be sure to spend your time networking with a good mix of potential business and other agents. And don’t forget to provide that great content! Entice people to network with you. Provide them great information in a friendly way. Do that, and you will eventually have people clamoring to be connected to YOU.
Referrals and testimonials can be the greatest business booster. And the best sources for referrals are your past happy clients. The problem is that so many agents haven’t mastered the “keep in touch” once the closing papers have been signed. And in the coming months and years, if they never hear from their agent again, the happy clients settle in and suffer from memory loss when someone asks them about an agent to assist in buying or selling.
Attention Agents, you need to combat this memory loss! Again, these past clients are your best source for referrals and repeat business, so you must keep in touch. It is super important to have a Post Closing follow up plan. One place that I like to direct my clients to use is The Personal Marketing Co and their ProPower client follow up program. It is what I like to call, “Post-closing follow up made easy”.
The plans from TPMCo include a 5 year follow up option full of postcards and magazines that will be mailed to your clients. One nice touch the program includes: In the first week your happy new home owners will receive a set of labels with their new address as well as a photo “keepsake” of the new home with a thank you message from you. And following that will be a series of postcards and magazines over the next 5 years (23 touches in all). All you have to do is enter your clients in the system, and they are taken care of without a second thought. All this is offered for $25 per enrollment.
Using something like this, along with your online marketing and social media efforts will help keep that front of mind awareness. Hitting them on all fronts will help ensure that your past clients will not suffer from amnesia later when someones asks them for a recommended REALTOR to help buy or sell a home.
You can reach The Personal Marketing Co at 800.458.8245 or online at www.TPMCO.com
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