Saturday morning. Walking the dog. You are strolling through 'your' local neighborhood -- the one you have considered your territory for the last 5 years. It's a fine morning, but the experience is terrible!
Number 201 is up for sale - but with a different listing agent. How did this happen?
Number 37 has decided to do a For Sale by Owner. How could this be?
Two homes closed last week with another agent, the owners are moving in, if only you had some really great information for them (not Real Estate!) that would help you start a relationship now?
Sound familiar? But haven't you been actively farming this area for over 5 years? What's gone wrong?
This scenario, although fictitious, is common enough. The traditional dominance enjoyed by Agents in their farming areas has been steadily eroded as more and more Agents compete for the same clients.
Agents that farm a geographic area are faced with the following issues:
- How can I stand out?
- How do I differentiate my services?
- How do I build a relationship with homeowners?
- How do I build trust with home owners?
Traditional approaches include the use of flyers, postcard mailing and advertising. But the success and sustainability of these approaches is proving more and more suspect. Moreover, these traditional approaches are not very effective at helping to create personal relationships with prospective clients.
The cost of marketing can be high. Typical marketing budgets for top Agents may be as much as 25 percent of revenues. So what alternatives are there?
The aim of a successful marketing strategy for Farming Agents is to create a lasting impression with residents so that over the long term, whenever they think "real estate" (time to sell), they automatically think of "you".
The business of Real Estate is essentially a service-based business, specifically one that helps people with high-risk and emotional purchases. Your reputation and your relationship with potential clients has a critical bearing on their decision to use you.
The creation of a relationship is probably the one most likely thing to give you highest returns on your investment. This is because a positive relationship with a potential client will already have addressed the questions of "Can I trust you?" and "Do I like you?"
When we consider traditional marketing media with this in mind, we can start to see why Agents often spend so much with so little in return.
It has been said that every time you spend marketing dollars on traditional marketing programs, all you really end up with is an invoice! How many flyers, adverts and other campaigns do you spend your marketing dollars on to create some form of impact? Do you know if these mechanisms help you build relationships?
Sure, your flyers, postcards and adverts have a purpose; they establish you as a Realtor and help to give you credibility. However, your business will benefit more from efforts to create relationships with potential clients, than traditional advertising and promotions.
Traditional marketing, which can cost a significant amount, is not only delivering diminishing returns, it is also fairly limited in its ability to help build relationships. Therefore, a critical success factor for Agents that Farm is to have marketing programs and initiatives specifically designed to help build relationships.
So, what can be done differently to build relationships with potential sellers? How can you get closer to the residents in the community you want to serve? How can you spend marketing dollars more effectively?
It's time to think about a new approach. It's time to think about Marketing, not just advertising. It's time to start thinking about the Internet in a way you've probably not thought about it before.
Most Internet tools for Realtors are focused on attracting Buyers -- not Sellers.
Generally, when people think 'Internet' they think of advertising websites. Well things have changed. Breakthrough approaches in Internet Marketing are generating new Listing opportunities through the creation of new types of real and 'on-line' relationships.
It is a simple, effective and sustainable strategy.
The strategy is based on creating a high-value website resource for local residents which is regularly used and sponsored by a Realtor. Specifically, a neighborhood website that is a private, residents-only website for information exchange and news. Such a neighborhood website must provide high value tools and resources that are tailored to the needs of residents. The aim is to provide compelling reasons for residents to sign up and use this free service for their neighborhood.
By facilitating this tangible resource, the sponsor benefits from association with a quality local service for residents.
The sponsor brings the service to Residents free of charge. This fact alone provides one of the biggest opportunities to Listing Agents, a really good reason to go and knock on all the doors in the neighborhood, or speak to people on a regular basis about something that is of interest and value to them.
From a Realtor's perspective, the business justification is simple, invest to build relationships. To do this, the service must be used regularly. To be used, it must provide value to residents who make the initial decision to use the service, and then are provided with good reason to continue to use it!
There are many examples of neighborhood websites that do not work effectively because the value to residents does not make the resource compelling to use. These are often either too focused on Real Estate or are little more than tourist information resources. They are either created mainly to give information to those external to the community or they are created as a sales tool for Realtors. They are not really focused on the needs of local residents.
In discussions with residents you can soon discover the values required in a neighborhood website. For example, "privacy" is a critically important feature residents look in this type of service. It gives them peace of mind and allows them to feel comfortable using the service.
Based on research and focus groups with many residents, these are the key benefits and values to be found in a successful neighborhood website:
- A private resource for residents. This means residents have to register to use the website.
- An interactive resource that provides a lot of value to members. If residents are registered, then a visible audit trail helps ensure proper use, and members can be allowed to post information and use the website interactively, and immediately.
- The website should automate the dissemination of information through regular and continual email updates to all members. This ensures members are given a regular reason to return to the website.
- Residents are provided with a secure area for information exchange. Whether the organization of a block party, a yard sale calendar, car pool information or the requests/offers for services such as lawn cutting.
The ultimate effect is to make the neighborhood a better place to live and with better neighbors.
The bottom line is this: As an agent that farms, you are looking to build relationships. So choose to invest in a neighborhood website that is focused, like a laser beam, on the needs of residents. The consequences of not doing this are demonstrated by the thousands of neighborhood web sites that litter the web and are never used, providing little return on investment to the sponsor
What are the Benefits to the Realtor?
- Privacy creates an email database for e-Farming
Creating a private neighborhood resource, where registration is required, is a critical part of the value to the sponsoring Realtor. Without registration the sponsor will always be struggling to build a database of emails, and return on investment becomes elusive.
- Automation helps re-enforce use and builds name recognition for the Sponsor
Because registration creates a quality database of members and their emails, the process of communicating and updating residents about new contributions and information on the site can be fully automated. This brings members enthusiastically back to the site, re-enforcing the habit of use and building a vibrant on-line neighborhood community.
- Interactive Resources keeps Sponsors involvement to a minimum
Instant gratification is something all web users desire. With registration, all activity on the site can be tracked and linked to a resident. There can be a full audit trail of everything anyone does on the site. Consequently, the site can be truly interactive. As soon as a user submits a message or comment or advert, it can appear. The 'stamping' of each entry with a user name provides members with a highly visible reminder of the audit trail.
- Marketing Tool
Agents that Farm can now have a really great reason to speak to all the residents in the local community on a continuous basis about a high-value service for them. This becomes a marketing approach in its own right to build relationships and establish the Sponsors reputation in the community.
Sponsors gain knowledge of the interests and profiles of residents, which can help relationship building efforts.
Realtors can share an insight of the public side of the Neighborhood Web Site with a potential buyer with a simple link from their Real Estate web site. Not only could this increase the Sponsoring Agents standing with the buyer, it could also create a compelling impression of the neighborhood helping to close the sale.
Paul Eastwood is the founder of two dynamic Denver-based marketing companies, Blue Fire Group Inc., and Single Property Sites Inc., which are dedicated to creating innovative marketing solutions using Internet technology for real estate professionals. He is a passionate and engaging speaker on a variety of strategic marketing and technology subjects, from the processes and disciplines of Internet marketing to the more pragmatic discipline of teaching technology tools. He is actively engaged by the real estate community and has presented more than 50 seminars to REALTORS® within the last three years. He is an established Educator for Stewart Title's 'Technology Center' at the annual NAR conferences, as well speaking and educating at other Real Estate events such as REAL TRENDS and Denver's Realtor Rally. He may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via his websites at Blue Fire Group and Single Property Sites .
