Consistently chasing after business week in and week out can eventually burn you out. I don’t care if you wear a cape and are the world’s greatest Realtor. At some point, you will break. If for any reason you don’t please call me directly because I may want to work for you.
Old school prospecting techniques teach you to set aside a certain amount of time per day to pick up the phone and cold call ideal prospects in hard selling techniques. The days of Glen Garry Glen Ross are long gone. People do not want to be sold, they want to be served.
People hate being sold on anything. Sales in our business is dead. Serving others is alive and well.
Do you know what consumers think of getting cold called? How do you feel when you get a cold call from India? I seem to get three cold calls each week and I hate them. My cable provider, some car warranty company, and countless calls from real estate related internet paid lead service providers. Even though they may be trying to help me get a better deal, it still annoys the living shit out of me.
So the question you have to ask yourself is what kind of “prospecting” do you want to do? Do you want to spend 2-3 hours a day annoying strangers? Do you want to spend hours a week “popping by” FSBO’s? Do you want to have to rely on “closing” people all the time on something they are unsure on?
OR
Do you want to create marketing systems that have potential clients calling you? We call this permission based marketing. It’s really a simple concept. You create some kind of marketing piece interesting enough to make someone want to reach out to you. No more cold calls. No more pop bys. All you need to do is learn to attract business. Lets look at some of the different ways you can do this.
Direct Mail
I’m sure you know some real estate investors in your market. Did you ever wonder how they are able to consistently buy properties cheap enough to turn around and flip them? Did you know that the majority of them use direct mail as their #1 lead source? Why couldn’t you do the same thing?
If you want to run direct mail marketing systems in your business then you MUST have a good targeted list and an appealing offer. Direct mail is a very effective way to target potential sellers. You can purchase all kinds of targeted direct mailing lists. The second part is that you need to have an attractive offer that can help solve your prospect’s problems. If they call you, they are interested. Pretty simple.
We built a software to totally automate this process for you. If you are interested please inquire further.
Let’s go through an example direct mail campaign targeting For Sale By Owners:
FSBO’s
For sale by owners are great potential leads. You know they want to sell and the vast majority of them end up listing with an agent. However, most sellers do not want your phone call solicitation. Direct mail is a great way to break the ice and try to build a relationship by offering a helping hand.
After about 1-2 months FSBO’s begin to realize that selling a house encompasses alot more than just popping a sign in the yard and posting the house on Zillow. This would be a more ideal time to reach out to them.
Marketing Piece Example: Perhaps you could offer your entire marketing plan to help them sell their house for FREE. Send them a For sale by owner marketing plan in the mail detailing exactly how you sell every house. You could call it a “DIY” Home Sale Guide. You can insert some kind of call to action and drive them to a landing page on your website. You can also follow up with a call after you sent them the information asking them if there is anything else you can help them with and to confirm receipt.
If you are interested further in direct mail marketing I suggest you read this article, How To Use Direct Mail For Real Estate Lead Generation
Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are amazing if you use them the right way. If not you can be digging yourself a hole on ad spend trying to figure it out. Trust me on this because I’m the guy who spent boatloads of money with them trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Facebook allows you the ability to place your content in front of people who are most likely to need your services. You do this through Power Editor on the advertising backend of Facebook. This requires a 1-2 approach. I wrote an entire article on this that will spell it out greater detail should you be interested. Check it out here, An Advanced Facebook Ads For Realtors.
In quick summary, you would create a great piece of content in the form of a video or blog post. You would place a tracking pixel on the page you are sending traffic to knowing that you are going to retarget everyone who visits that page. You would then create a second ad retargeting only people who saw your previous content with an offer for more information like a FREE CMA.
Here’s an idea of what this looks like.
Video Marketing
I love video marketing. Video marketing is simple. It’s about creating compelling content that consumers are searching for online. You create a video with a goal of educating on a specific topic.
The video below is based on a true story and one of my most popular videos on my You Tube Channel.
You have to get in the habit of asking yourself what you can be making videos out of constantly. That’s the mind of a marketer. Here’s the story:
This was a rental unit we made $700 on before our split. The video cost me $200 alone so do the math. This video served as a loss leader for me as I only shot it for the marketing. I knew I was not going to profit on the rental.
The amount of business I received from this video has paid its dividends. The term “Lofts For Rent In Chicago” was the keyword that got it ranked so high. There must be a lot of people who type that into You Tube’s search bar because it currently has over 6,000 views! Some videos get tons of views and others not so much, but this one was winner that will continue to create new business for me.
This video made me well over $25,000 just last year! One couple called me inquiring about loft living in the city. I ended up selling them a $400,000 condo and also listed their single family in the suburbs for $290,000. They wanted someone who knew loft living and my video made me the expert! Video makes you an authority. Authorities get business without having to prospect.
Point of the story is that you never know where your next client is going to come from. Go all out on marketing every listing regardless of what you will make because every listing is an excuse to create spin off business. Not bad for $200!
Paid Internet Leads
We have all heard of Zillow and Trulia. I’m sure you know you can buy zip codes to capture leads. This can be a great way to to pick up business, but to be successful you have to be very good at building relationships. Potential clients are inquiring about specific properties and you get an opportunity to call them back and try to build a relationship with them.
The key to any kind of internet lead service is to be good on the phone and follow up as soon as possible. The agents I see who do best with paid internet leads are great at building relationships with complete strangers.
What do you do for new business?
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Creating systems to keep business opportunities coming is very important to running a successful real estate business.
Would you be interested in learning more about adapting a cold marketing attraction plan in your business? Do you want to run a business instead of being run by one?