I love Inman.
Every year NAR releases the Homebuyer Survey. This years survey went out to 7,500 homebuyers and gives an excellent snapshot of our real estate market. For some of us, the house values are way off, but the percentages do stand true.
Here are two links that review the survey findings released in NAR New Orleans, I can't track down the actual report yet
Long story short, 80% of homebuyers have come from the digital realm.
Mnay of you will hem and haw that the number is exaggerated, but lets look at some facts and you tell me if you agree:
Are your showings down from previous years (only agents in the business 5+ years can answer this)
Are you getting many requests via your website to view homes?
Are Buyers asking you to e-mail them?
Do buyers call up with just one question and after you answer it, they say "thanks" and abruptly try to hang up on you?
If any of these symptoms sound familiar, you are dealing with internet buyers. But how do you truly know?
YOU HAVE TO ASK. This is step one in CRM (customer relationship management) How did they find you?
The key question to ask every buyer before you answer their question is, "by the way, before I look this up, how did you find us?"
If your admin, secretary, assistant, partner, or yourself, asked this key question every time your phone rang - then you can dispute or agree with these findings. the same goes for your open houses, on your sign-in forms - do you even have them? - do you ask "how did you learn about this open house?"
This will help you market way more effectively - at the end of a month break out the percentages of your lead sources. Put more money in what is working and turning into business. An effective CRM solution can assist you with this, or you can just use Microsoft excel with defined columns for: name, phone #, e-mail, source of call/contact, for every month and start to track your results.
Invest in banner ads: If you are NOT getting web response, then your traffic is very low. Most brokers across the nation, especially the big boys - get a large percentage of their closed business from their websites. The great thing about the web is the ability to have the same voice as a 20 office or even 500 office company. You have a website - use it - market it. Read this blog and keep up as I go into specifics.
For now I am dealing with a few vaguaries to just wet your appetite and get you thinking. i will start to get more specific as i move along. thanks for reading and pelase feel free to comment.
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