I took the giant leap into my own brokerage GPS real estate LLC., in February this year. Global Property Systems covers the Hudson Valley area of New York, including Rockland, Westchester, Orange and Sullivan Counties. It’s been a roller coaster experience to say the least.
In the first week of business my former broker accused me of using his name and my former listings to get business and slapped me with an ethics complaint which obviously proved unfounded, but caused a lot of additional angst and unnecessary stress. My Blackberry crashed and burned along with a lot of my contacts. I decided to go the Android route ( a really bad thing to do under those circumstances as it turned out… quite the learning curve, but worth it eventually. ) My PA took a week off unexpectedly… I hired a new PA, and my first buyer agent joined me. My computer was hacked and my credit card cancelled, and I was hit by a driver escaping from a hit and run at 70 miles an hour, which took my car off the road for 6 weeks.. . Oh, and I took 9 listings. Yes, all in week one.
Since then we have sold 8 listings, have 6 under contract and are currently negotiating several others. We have over 40 listings, an Associate Broker and 4 buyer agents, plus several new corporate relocation contracts. Our global marketing program is the key to our success so far, and we have just opened another branch to cover the Mid-Hudson Valley region covering Ulster, Dutchess and Sullivan counties, as our mostly international clientele are also interested in “up-state” New York.
The majority of our marketing is centered on our website which is powered by Real Pro Systems, who I can’t thank enough for their amazing hand-holding and constant support. Rod Bender is my customer service guru, who even though based on the west coast is ALWAYS there for me by 8:00am and sometimes even earlier, an amazing feat as I am 3 hours ahead of him in New York. I use their Gold program and will most likely upgrade shortly to Platinum as we add more agents to the team. Real Pro made the transition to Broker/Owner exceptionally easy as I have owned my own website for several years. All it took when the time was right was to change the branding, totally seamless. A Real Pro website does a lot, and I find much better than Top Producer for a team set up like ours. From CRM (customer relationship management,) blogging, showcasing listings, it allows enormous amounts of space for links, articles etc. Most importantly it provides a lot of Google Juice. For example a good friend and mentor of mine, who co-incidentally is the president of a large nationally recognized franchise real estate company, and encouraged me to “go it alone,” watched in amazement as GPS real estate climbed from obscurity to #7 in one week. We are now in the top 5 consistently when he “Googles” us in all shapes and forms. Something his company pays thousands of dollars for. He’s incredulous when I credit both Real Pro for providing the platform, and Active Rain for the amazing SEO we get from our blogs providing the necessary link- backs to our listings and website.
Real Pro also provides me with an amazing program we lovingly refer to as “Big Brother,” but actually called VisiStat which allows us to track the number of “Hits” each blog attracts and much, much more necessary for growing a business web presence. In essence VisiStat allows me to see the effect that my blogging has on the overall performance of my website. It’s truly amazing to have the ability to watch what happens when I publish a blog on Active Rain, nothing short of spectacular in some cases, depending on the strength of my content.
Being a Realtor you face a constant learning curve, and I especially appreciate the fact that ActiveRain provides the opportunity to discover what’s new, what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t. I use AR to educate my newbie team and myself. We all love it and are inspired by what we read on a daily basis. Your infographic below is a prime example of the information you provide.
Data provided by ActiveRain.com. Join 220,000+ Real Estate Agents on the world's largest Real Estate Social Network.
Wow a survey that shows what successful agents are doing that works! I also loved another recent article Rich Agent, Poor Agent, well worth a read.
Back to the Challenge. The major financial outlays I have experienced going out on my own is signage, incorporation costs and legal fees, MLS dues (we are members of 4 MLS systems) and sadly, a very expensive computer security system to catch the persistent hackers we keep coming up against. No, I don't spend more on my car than my marketing. In fact I have owned my Mercedes convertable for the past 6 years and it has over 105,000 miles. I do way too much mileage to lease a car, but love the fact that mine is the ONLY Mercedes around that is Ocean Blue and has become somewhat of a trademark. Only last weeka lady stopped me in the grocery store parking lot and mentioned that she's always seeing me buzzing around and loved my car. She knew I was a Realtor as I have the R in my front window and asked me for my card as she's planning on selling her home shortly. So my Old Car has turned into a Marketing Machine too!!
So what to spend the $500 we are going to win on? Our next move is to ramp up our marketing to attract more buyer leads for the team and your competition couldn’t have come at a better time for us. We have no problem attracting overseas buyers it appears. And we have a constant flow of referrals, (which incidentally Happy Grasshopper has helped propgate, once again thanks to ActiveRain,) plus a steady stream of corporate relo business. I have been analyzing the best methods of attracting more buyer leads, but the problem is that we cover such a large area. Most pay per click or Agent enhancement services such as Realtor.com, Realestate.com, Homes.com, Zillow & Truliaall focus on ZIP code marketing – that simply won’t work for us. I was thinking that I’d like to implement the Real Pro Systems pay per click as they use our existing listings in many places to add leads directly into our CRM program. Your $500 would be a great way to try that out, and if it works, then once again both ActiveRain and Real Pro would be responsible for the success of GPS real estate and helping many find their way home!
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