Seven steps to up your marketing
Mike Blaney
REW
Your day is already packed with buyers, sellers, training, showings, contracts and everything in between, but how much of your day is invested in marketing?
If you could just add these seven steps to your day, over time you will start to make them a habit and in very little time, start seeing the results.
Habit 1: Start tomorrow today
At the end of each day review your phone calls, emails and personal contacts and make a list of tomorrow’s marketing activities. Get a piece of paper and add four headings or more:
- Phone calls to make.
- Emails to respond to.
- Emails to write.
- People to visit.
Is tomorrow the birthday of a client or the anniversary of when they moved into their home?
Is it time for a three-, six-, or nine-month check-n with a buyer?
Is there a new listing that a client might be interested in?
Did something happen in the market today you should update your buyers and sellers on?
Habit 2: Return your phone calls and emails immediately
Your phone is like an ATM. It is what makes you money. When buyers and sellers are looking for a Real Estate Agent, your response time is a benchmark for how the rest of the relationship is going to progress. The faster you can respond, the less chance a prospect will contact a competitor.
If you are in a meeting, change your voice mail and let the caller know when they can expect a return call. They will wait.
Answer emails as soon as they arrive. This impresses the prospect and reduces the backlog of emails at the end of the day. Email response times do not seem as critical as phone responses and the expectations seem lower, but reply as soon as possible.
Habit 3: Check your social account engagement
Social media can be distracting, so get it out of the way early in the day or late in the evening. Review your accounts and determine if there is any action you need to take.
- Check if there are people on Facebook who liked or commented.
- View your wall for posts you can share or look for suitable tweets on Twitter and retweet with new hashtags.
- Were there retweets of your tweets on Twitter or did anyone share your post on Facebook?
- Post new content, like posts and engage with your followers on Instagram.
- Scan through your social media accounts and see if there is anything of value.
A great way to take control is to use a tool like Hootsuite where you can have all of your accounts in a dashboard and scan them in minutes.
Habit 4: Plan social posts for the day
- Do you have an upcoming open house?
- Do you have a new listing to share?
- Is there a new listing you want to showcase to your followers?
- Do you want to post a market update on a regular basis?
Tweeting and posting can consume more time than is necessary if you are reacting throughout the day. In the morning, when you are sharing content on social media or if you read something in the newspaper or online, schedule posts or tweets for different times of the day so it looks like you are active all the time.
To do this use a social media management tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
Habit 5: Check your website stats
Are you using Google Analytics on your website? If not then you should set up Google Analytics and log in each day to see how your website is doing. You can see visits to listings, the number of visitors and how long they stayed on your website. You can even see if visitors are reading your blog posts.
What else can you see in Google Analytics?
- Visitors and unique visitors (who is coming to your site and how often).
- Bounce rate (how many come to one page and then leave).
- Average time on site (how long do they stay).
- Traffic source (where are they coming from).
- Behaviour (what are the most popular pages).
Use this information to gauge how well your marketing is working and if your listings are getting visits.
Habit 6: Write and upload a blog post
According to some studies, blogging gets 67 per cent more leads on a company website than a site without a blog. That is a good enough incentive to make blogging one of your habits.
I am not referring to 1,000-word posts about the state of the market in in your area. On a daily basis you should take five minutes and write about a real estate-related topic using keywords.
For example, log in to your MLS® and see if there are any new listings. Write a blog post titled “[Community Name] New Listings For Houses For Sale” and a couple of lines of content below.
Here is the perfect blog post you need to be in the habit of writing.
[Community Name] New Listings For Houses For Sale
There are two new listings for homes for sale in the [community name] area of [your area].
1234 Main Street 4 bedrooms 2,300 sq ft $1,123,456
5677 Walnut Street 3 bedrooms 3,300 sq ft $999,999
To view these or any other listings in this area please call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Habit 7: Never be “too busy” for marketing activities
As a company specializing in Real Estate Agent marketing, we work with dozens of Real Estate Agents developing marketing plans and strategies from note cards, to letter writing and newsletters to blogging – and the number one reason we hear why they cannot execute their marketing is they are “too busy.”
There is no successful business, service or Real Estate Agent that can be too busy to implement the marketing activities that are vital to their business. Even if you outsource the actual work take the time to measure, monitor and follow up on the outcome of your marketing.
If you are looking for a fresh start in the New Year, incorporate as many of these habits as you can. If you are set in your ways, just add the habits that you feel are sustainable and will fit in with your current systems and work style.
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