There’s an old saying in sales: “Always be marketing.”
And that’s what you need to do if you want to build a solid career and income in real estate
sales. Further, if you want to succeed, your real estate marketing must go in several directions.
You must market your services in general.
Unless you’ve decided to exclusively represent only buyers or only sellers, when you put your name out there, you’re trying to capture attention from every person who is a potential client – on either side.
You must market your expertise in your niche or territory.
Becoming a specialist in a niche or territory will help you grow your business, but it will do you no good to be a specialist if no one knows it! Your marketing, including your prospecting letters, should demonstrate your knowledge of information that matters to people in that niche or territory.
You must prospect / farm / market to find new listings.
This does, of course, go with promoting yourself in your niche, but it goes beyond demonstrating your knowledge of the niche or territory. You must also demonstrate your real estate expertise, your care and concern for your clients, your skill in marketing your listings, etc.
In addition to community or niche pages on your website, blog posts and social media entries can carry the message.
Meanwhile, direct mail prospecting to homeowners in your territory or niche is a time-tested, proven method of gaining new listings.
You must market to find buyers – and hang on to them.
Whether you’re using social media, mailing to apartment dwellers, getting referrals from past clients, or capturing buyers who search for homes on your website, you need to do something to hang on to them once they’ve made an inquiry.
My Nurturing Buyer Leads letter set will help you with that. And so, of course, will your personal attention via texts, emails, and phone calls.
You must market your listings.
Marketing your listings is not only for the purpose of selling those listings. It is also part of marketing to find new listings. Prospective sellers will look at how you market other listings to see how you will market theirs.
And results count. When you can point to an impressive list-to-sell ratio and a short number of days on the market, sellers will be eager to choose you.
This hasn’t been an issue in recent years, when buyers were getting into bidding wars, but things do change. A real estate marketing best practice is to put your all into presenting / marketing every one of your listings.
You must nurture past clients.
If you want referrals and repeat business, you must not ever let them forget you. For this group, email, postal mail, phone calls, and in-person visits are best. They’ll be reminded of you if they see you on social media, but they also need a little personal attention. After all, they are special. They will become your personal gold mine if you take good care of them.
Think about the marketing methods you use:
- Direct mail
- Social media
- Your website / blogging
And then there are the other miscellaneous methods, such as:
- Advertising in print publications
- Networking
- Cold calling
- Door knocking
- Volunteering
- Joining organizations
- Public speaking
- Advertising in miscellaneous places, such as bus benches, grocery carts, golf score cards, etc.
Marketing is necessary, but how much is too much?
There’s probably not too much danger that you’re going to overdo it if you’re using postal mail
or advertising in print. It simply costs too much.
You also probably won’t overdo it with community pages or niche pages, or with blogging about those topics. Unless you rely on AI (which I wouldn’t recommend) there aren’t enough hours in the day to write and then post “too much” content. The same is true for posting on social media. You have to leave time to interact with the customers/clients once you’ve made contact with them!
But what if you’re using email for prospecting? Can you overdo it?
It’s a sound practice to use email to prospect to buyers or sellers who have opted in to receive your messages. And it’s easy to set up your messages in an auto-responder so they’ll go out even when you’re busy.
How often should you mail to them?
When they ask my advice, I generally tell agents who purchase my prospecting letter sets to send (by either email or postal mail) the first 2 or 3 about 3 days apart, then drop back to 5 days, then 7. This is to remind the readers that you’re there, you’re serious, and you’re ready to help – but without becoming a pest.
But according to at least one guru, being a pest is a good thing.
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately because for the last couple of weeks I’ve been “sort of” following a marketer who emails twice a day and believes others should do the same. I say sort of because sometimes his messages go straight to the junk folder and I don’t bother to retrieve them. Other times the subject line or the first few words are uninteresting, so I don’t read them.
But more than that – I find that I’m getting annoyed with seeing him in my in-box ALL THE TIME. So sometimes I just delete him without checking the message at all.
Two messages every day from one marketer is beginning to feel like too much.
Even though he can supposedly teach me some sound marketing tactics, I’m becoming annoyed enough to consider unsubscribing. Especially since for the last several days he’s been pushing a subscription to his $400 print newsletter.
When I see his name on the from line, the little voice in the back of my head sometimes says “Go away!” Note that I haven’t opted out yet, but still might.
UPDATE: I did become annoyed enough to unsubscribe – or at least try to. Funny thing though, the unsubscribe button doesn’t work. I’ve tried 3 or 4 times now. So – yes, this is a very annoying marketer.
Would two messages every day annoy you? Would you unsubscribe?
Master Marketer Bob Bly says we should not discount marketing methods because they don’t appeal to us personally. For instance, I should not shun using pop-ups because I am personally annoyed by them and delete them as fast as I can. They work for some people.
But for me, the big question about frequency of mailing is this:
If you as a real estate agent mail to your list or lists every day – or twice a day – what will be
the result?
Will you gain profound name recognition and that coveted “top of mind” position any time they think of real estate?
Or…
Will the people on your list begin to see you as a bothersome mosquito and slap you down? Will they begin to ignore your messages? Will they simply delete them? Will they unsubscribe?
I’m willing to bet that you aren’t mailing every day… (I know, I could be wrong.)
I’m also willing to bet that if you read advice from marketing gurus, there’s at least one who says you should.
Would you consider it?
Leave a comment below or write me: marte@copybymarte.com.
