Predictably, as the year is winding down, people who are in business for themselves are making those all important business plans for next year, analyzing what they could have done better or shouldn’t have done at all, and making all sorts of New Year’s resolutions. Nothing wrong with that. We all want to do better and a bit of optimism and planning can go a long way to that end.
But…for all the macho statements of beating the market, and all the stress on self-actualization, whatever that means, it seems that some rather practical and human-motivated advice is missing. I’ve read way too many preachy posts of the "Yes You Can or Get another career variety", and way too many of those “ten step fail-proof guide to success” and the cheerleading comments that follow over the last few weeks, and not nearly enough that imparted practical wisdom, gave insight into new useful tools or showed much in a way of compassion for any agents that are struggling.
So here is my humble contribution to anyone who is willing to go beyond throwing a vision board with a picture of their next preferred vacation spot or a nifty car on their fridge, and a few tools I think are rather nifty and under-utilized.
Save Yourself Some Time and money - do Your OWN Research:
It’s hard not to pay attention to the advice of various gurus. In my opinion two of the biggest culprits costing agents time and money: advice to build a website for every conceivable neighborhood and subdivision the agent covers and to pump out an inordinate number of posts targeting those long-tail keywords. Over the last few weeks I’ve been fielding calls from agents who followed this type of advice, and have seen no change in their income, but they are out a crap load of money and have to now come up with time to maintain the dozen or two websites or blogs they created. It seems that in their eagerness to spread the joy of making a gazillion dollars, these agents-cum-gurus have forgotten that Real Estate IS local. What works in Seattle may NOT work for someone in a suburb of New Hampshire or even in a different suburb of Seattle, for that matter.
So before you embark on the mad domain purchases and writing a pile of blogs in the hopes to score for those all elusive key words of some subdivision or another – click here, and run the few searches yourself. Here is basically what you should search for, using sample location as an example:
Your city, neighborhood 1 homes for sale (El Paso West Side Homes for sale)
Your city state abbreviation homes for sale, real estate, homes, houses, etc (Smyrna TN homes, Smyrna TN homes for sale etc)
Your city’s or hood’s zip, homes, homes for sale, real estate, condos, etc. (in my experience, zip code searches occur very rarely in numbers large enough to justify attempting to score on, but that’s only for the markets in which we currently have clients, so RUN your own search)
All other conceivable combinations of what potential buyers will be searching for, starting from larger area and zeroing in on more specific ones. Put in a bunch of searches and download the results as an excel file. Unless you want to buy Google Ads, don’t worry about the competition index – it’s not relevant to you. The number in the Global Monthly Search column is what you are looking for. If there are, for example, 120 searches monthly for (your city, state, subdivision, homes for sale phrase), but 20K searches for (your city, state homes for sale) – building a whole separate site to cater to the 120 searches may NOT be the best use of your time and money, no matter what some guru told you to do.
This should take you a half hour to an hour at the most. After this you will have a much more accurate picture of what you consumers are looking for in your market than any number of books, tapes or seminars could teach you. And the tools to get you there are all free.
It may shock some of you, but there ARE markets where buyers are not looking for anything in particular at the moment. I’ve ran into a few clients recently in that situation. There are people wanting to sell, but nowhere near enough buyers to devote any time or expense to buyer lead generation. In those markets, your best bet would be to cater to sellers, and sellers are NOT generally looking online to find a real estate professional. In those markets, you’d do better for yourself with direct mail campaigns, publically supporting local events and organizations, networking and the like. You have no shot at getting buyers, so go after the listings until there is some mobility in the other direction.
And finally, to the agents who find themselves in a market with virtually no mobility, especially agents without large spheres of influence and referral base to rely on – no amount of self-actualization will help you. Save your money and energy and do what you can to prepare for when your market starts to move again. That simply means do the research and write your content, post it, update it, but don’t run out buying the latest gadgets, books, tapes, cameras or a hundred domains. If you can wait it out for a bit but be prepared – great. If you don’t think you can – there is NO shame whatsoever in looking for something else to invest your energies into, even if temporarily. There is NO shame in NOT making it in a market that’s at a standstill – so don’t let the holier than thou crowd tell you otherwise. A vision board will NOT change your market, and contrary to some rather irresponsible advice on this network and elsewhere – it’s not all about your state of mind or attitude.
To rely on the words of any guru who doesn’t happen to be working in your specific market is the most irresponsible thing you can do for your business. Relying on your research and intimate knowledge of the market is a much safer bet for success – and if you need help turning your research into an actual site, postcard, brand or anything that requires marketing and tech know-how and experience, hire a professional. It doesn’t have to be us, but it should be someone who doesn’t build websites by night and underwrites mortgages or sells real estate by day, if only because few people in the world are jacks and masters of all trades. I’ve yet to meet one.
For those of you who don't know, I own a full service marketing company. We don't do anything else. We build WordPress Sites for Realtors (and other people), do branding for realtors, postcard and business card design and printing and a whole lot more.
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