Month: September 2019

Farming is the term real estate professionals use to describe the marketing strategy of seeking clients in certain areas. Real estate agents have always chosen geographical areas and neighborhoods for successful farming. Farming is one of the most effective ways real estate agents get new leads and grow their business. To continue the practice, whether starting out or have been in the business for decades, real estate agents should consider using updated technology to reach audiences more efficiently.

The traditional marketing tools are all still working to some extent, some better than others.

• Postcards and other types of direct mail
• Promotional items such as calendars and pens
• Neighborhood and subdivision newsletter ads
• Bench and shopping cart ads

There are probably other innovative ways that real estate professionals are using to promote their business in neighborhoods. The point is that, though they may still generate business, there are new ways to get the job done; sometimes they’re a lot less expensive than traditional advertising methods.

Blogging and Neighborhood Associations

If you blog, or even if you have a website that you can update easily, offer to run neighborhood announcements and information for associations. These types of organizations understand the value of internet exposure and may be willing to provide you with updates to post on your website or blog.

Email Newsletters

Though direct mail still produces leads, the vast majority of your prospects use and prefer email. Begin to develop an email list, and send regular newsletters via email instead of by snail mail. You’ll definitely spend less money, and you can add interest to your newsletters by including links to current listings in the area. If you couple blogging with the auto-generated newsletter approach, you’ll make regular contact with prospects without increasing your workload.

Regular Statistical Reporting

Use your multiple listing service’s reporting tools to generate detailed reports of recent listings and sales in your farm area. Both buyers and sellers want a lot of information, and they love statistics about current market conditions and past sales, and your commentary on these topics builds your credibility as an expert. Use these reports in your email newsletters, and on your website and blog. I post teaser reports with good information on my website to pique my readers’ interest. This type of information gets a lot of leads and email addresses for a newsletter. We buy houses Joliet.

Statistics, Texting, and Signs

If you’re placing signs in an area, current news and statistics can help you hone your advertising message. Companies such as Altos Research and CoreLogic specialize in providing businesses with data to target marketing campaigns. Also, get creative with using technology to reach prospects in your farm area. For example, text messaging continues to be one of the leading ways that businesses, including real estate brokerage firms, reach consumers, so look into ways to use it.

In the end, that refrigerator magnet may still work, but take the return on investment compared to low-cost online marketing tools into consideration as you plan your marketing strategy.

Pulling together an email list of prospects and past clients is the best way to grow your business using email marketing follow-up. If you don’t want to do that, or you just want to offer your site visitors an alternative to get notified when you publish new content, let’s look at another way.

This may seem obvious, but it’s interesting how few real estate professionals who blog are sharing their posts to their own Facebook business page. If you do not have a Facebook business page, get one going now. It is where you segregate your business from your personal posts. Everybody uses Facebook, and most people are on that site more than any other all day. You can’t ask for a more dedicated audience.

Once you have your page set up, let’s look at two different ways to get your new content posted there. The first is for everyone using any website solution other than WordPress. The second is for those whose site is on WordPress. Either way will accomplish the same goal, but WordPress has some plugins that can make the process easier.

For Non-WordPress Sites

This is really easy, as no reputable website resource today would miss putting social sharing buttons on the site. When you finish putting up your new content, simply go to the site, click on the Facebook share button, and share your own content to your page. If you find a problem sharing to the page instead of your personal profile, it’s just an extra step or two.

If that’s the problem, simply copy out the URL address of your content page/post from the URL bar at the top of the browser. Go to your Facebook page and create a new post with that link. Facebook will pull the content and an image if appropriate, and you’re done!

For WordPress Bloggers

The wonderful world of plugins helps us here. Search from inside the plugins function, but a search on Google for “posts automatically to Facebook” yields pages of useful plugins. Once installed, depending on the plugin’s setup and instructions, you should be able to have all of your new posts show up automatically on your Facebook business page. You simply do what you’re already doing, and the rest just happens.

If you want to spend a few bucks and take it to the next level, check out NextScripts Auto Poster for a plugin and extras to send a post automatically to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more social sites. Once set up, you post when you choose, and every post (images and video if you want) automatically goes everywhere you want it to.

If you really want to try to get people to sign up for your posts delivered by email, you can do that too. But, you’re likely to get more exposure going the automated social sites direction. A combination of both should work for everyone as well.

Since WordPress is also publishing an automated RSS (Really Simple Syndication) stream, your more tech-savvy visitors will simply subscribe to have it delivered to them in their feed reader. There is no reason that every person out there who wants to keep up with your new content can’t get the job done. Leverage your work with social site reposting of your content.