realsupport: Does One Home Pricing Strategy Fit All?
- 06/24/19 08:17 PM
Homeowners are notoriously optimistic when it comes to the market value of their homes. Real estate professionals have the task of educating prospective sellers about the realistic price range their property will command. Yet when the comps fail to support a desired price point, the seller may react by dismissing the information - and sometimes, dismissing the agent!
Winning the listing in such cases requires giving the seller a sense of control, while keeping the price discussion in reality. Here's a strategy we saw in Residential Specialist magazine a couple years ago, with our own two cents thrown in!
During the listing presentation, give … (1 comments)
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realsupport: Two Big Reasons to Keep a Social Media Presence
- 03/01/19 10:30 PM
Whether you manage your social media pages yourself, or you outsource their management, you might ask yourself if maintaining your social media presence is worth the time or expense. Much of the frustration agents feel is directly related to the lack of definitive "return on investment" in the social media sphere. How many Facebook posts does it take to capture a lead? How many "Likes" and "Shares" does it take to generate a home sale?
There are no set answers, because these are the wrong questions. Social media isn't mere advertising, though that's how some businesses mistakenly treat it.
Real estate social media has two … (2 comments)
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realsupport: Attracting Affluent Real Estate Clients
- 02/27/19 01:34 AM
At most recent count, the global population of high net worth individuals was estimated at about 15 million people. To be defined as a high net worth individual, one must possess investible assets of at least $1 million, excluding personal assets, such as a primary residence, collectibles and consumer items.
The United States is home to the highest number of affluent citizens in the world, at over 5 million people. The highest population of affluent individuals in the U.S. reside in New York City and the State of California. Affluent residents can be found throughout the country, in both rural and urban locations.
A study by Wealth-X and … (3 comments)
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realsupport: 7 Reasons Why You Need Custom Content in Your Real Estate Blog
- 11/27/18 05:46 AM
If you've been using a subscription service for your real estate blog content - or worse, a "free" content provider - you're hurting your brand. Here's why!
1. Authenticity counts. If your blog says the same thing as a number of other blogs, Google doesn't see it as "yours." This means no SEO value. Worse, Google could penalize your site for having duplicate content, and reduce your search ranking.
2. Your unique value proposition is non-existent in subscription content. How do you differentiate yourself from 1.5 million agents? Canned content with a one-size-fits-all approach does nothing to promote your brand, your niche, or your expertise.
3. … (6 comments)
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realsupport: Home Buyers Are Not Leaving the Market
- 10/11/18 10:45 PM
Home buyers may be taking a step back from the market, but there's good reason to believe it's a temporary break and not a long departure. A recent online poll by MSN asked prospective home buyers if they were more or less likely to buy a home because of interest rates hovering around 5%.
The question was framed as follows, with respondents asked to choose one answer:
"Do interest rates of 5% make you..."
Less likely to buy a house More likely to buy a house No change to plans Don't know The survey garnered 245,566 responses. Here's how the answers shook out:
The majority of respondents, … (2 comments)
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realsupport: Is it wrong to ask your real estate clients for a Yelp review?
- 11/21/17 12:53 AM
The short answer: apparently, yes! Yelp created a "no review solicitation" policy, and the topic recently surfaced in Forbes and was later circulated to NAR members through REALTOR Magazine.
Here's the stance, according to Yelp's official blog:
“Don’t ask for reviews and don’t offer to pay for them either. Please don’t ask your customers to review your business on Yelp. Over time, solicited reviews create bias on your business page; a bias that savvy consumers can smell from a mile away. You should never offer compensation (or discounts and freebies) in exchange for reviews.”
While it makes sense to discourage pressuring or bribing clients, it seems a bit unfair to forbid … (3 comments)
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realsupport: Help Kids with Food Allergies Enjoy Safe Trick-or-Treating!
- 10/18/17 02:42 AM
Trick-or-treating is a childhood tradition, but many kids suffer from food allergies that make Halloween difficult to enjoy. Food allergies affect roughly 1 out of every 13 children in America! Allergic reactions to food can be very serious, even fatal. Halloween candy poses significant risks to children with food allergies, which usually forces them out of the Trick-or-Treat fun.
Halloween candy may contain common allergens such as nuts, soy, milk, eggs or wheat. Mini-versions of brand-name candies can also have different ingredients than full-size bars. Since bite-sized servings do not have ingredient labels on individual packaging, there's no reliable way for parents to identify "safe" candy.
The Teal … (1 comments)
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realsupport: Real Estate Agents and the Trap of Overwork
- 10/11/17 02:03 AM
Real estate professionals are pressured to make themselves available to clients virtually around the clock. Business hours can include nights, weekends and holidays. Days off are few and far between! But overworking yourself causes a number of consequences, according to studies reported by Scientific American.
Without adequate rest, our brains lose cognitive power. This results in memory loss and reduced reasoning ability. In turn, we become easily confused and error-prone. Eventually, our ability to complete simple tasks becomes compromised. We lose productivity, and worse, our health.
If you don’t allow yourself enough sleep, and seldom take personal time off, you could … (3 comments)
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realsupport: Big Reasons to Use YouTube for Real Estate Marketing
- 07/03/17 10:55 PM
If you're not already using YouTube as part of your real estate marketing, you're missing out on a vast audience! According to 2017 social media statistics by Fortunelords, the total number of people using YouTube averages 1,300,000,000. Nearly 5 billion videos are watched every day!
Breaking it down a little more, YouTube has over 30 million visitors per day. Mobile devices account for the vast majority of site visits, with users watching about 40 minutes of videos per session.
But are YouTube visitors looking for real estate agents and listings? According to a recent article in Inman News, yes they are! … (13 comments)
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realsupport: 5 Email Marketing Rules for Real Estate Agents
- 04/04/17 09:58 PM
Need more listings, but lack the time for cold-calling and knocking on doors? Now is the time to spruce up your real estate email marketing! Email marketing campaigns are a budget-friendly way to reach a large number of prospects. But to be truly effective, there are 5 basic rules that your campaign should follow!
1. Your lead database must be organized and up-to-date. If it isn’t, go no further until your database is scrubbed. Remove invalid email addresses that will skew your analytics. Sort your email addresses by client type.
If your lead capture system isn’t collecting essential details, such as whether … (2 comments)
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realsupport: Scheduling Strategies for Real Estate Emails
- 02/06/17 07:48 PM
Can you improve your real estate email campaign open rates with strategic scheduling? According to a recent article in Entrepreneur magazine, you can! We’re sharing the highlights with you here, along with our own insights!
An industry analysis of email campaigns found that sending messages during certain days of the week, and during certain times of day, can improve your open rates. Getting the timing right depends on the type of message!
For example, emails that feature hobby and recreational content do best when delivered on the weekends. The optimal time of day for hobby and recreational emails is early morning between … (3 comments)
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realsupport: 5 Steps for New Real Estate Business in the New Year
- 01/02/17 05:28 AM
2017 will be an interesting year for real estate professionals! Rising interest rates will motivate home buyers to take action, while the same conditions will make current homeowners less motivated to sell. This means we can reasonably expect another year of low home inventory, with more agents competing for shrinking slices of pie.
In in a low-inventory market, agents cannot be passive and wait for business to show up. Here are some ideas for cultivating new business in the New Year, drawn from our own experience in working with top producers!
1. Get in front of property investors. Ask the lenders, … (4 comments)
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realsupport: 5 Top Tips for Working with First-Time Home Buyers
- 12/13/16 01:56 AM
Mortgage interest rates are at their highest level in two years, and home buyers are not only off the fence, they’re vaulting over it! With limited inventory and pressured buyers, 2017 could be an exciting year for real estate professionals. It could also be challenging and frustrating for first-time buyers! They’re going to need your help!
Inman News recently published tips for helping first-time buyers, but it only scratched the surface. We’ve added more tips and details, based on our experiences from serving buyer agents around the country!
1. Explain the home buying process and set expectations. Buyers are anxious to … (1 comments)
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realsupport: 3 Smart Email Marketing Tips for Real Estate Agents
- 10/31/16 02:49 PM
An effective real estate email marketing campaign isn’t rocket science, but it does take good planning! Here are tips we’re sharing from Entrepreneur magazine, along with our own suggestions!
Include images with descriptive tags. Make your message stand out from a crowded inbox! Include an interesting image with a descriptive tag.
For example, a subject line like, “Did you see this beautiful home in Newbury?” with a corresponding photo tag “Newbury luxury home” is much more interesting than, “5-bedroom home in Newbury” without a photo.
Tip: You are more likely to get a click through with an image, than … (3 comments)
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realsupport: Mobile Content Tips for Real Estate Agents!
- 06/19/16 06:08 PM
As you may recall from our prior blog posts, smartphones have won the Internet. The majority of emails are read from a mobile device, and apps are becoming the primary way that consumers access web content.
Creating web content for smartphone viewing may not be intuitive to real estate agents. Fortunately, you can become a mobile-content whiz by following a few rules! Here they are, from Entrepreneur magazine, and our own experience!
Use short, direct headlines. On a smartphone, a long headline can take up the entire screen! Your headline should be a few short words with high impact – while using words … (1 comments)
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realsupport: Why Skilled Listeners Make Great Real Estate Agents!
- 04/10/16 07:35 PM
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed help from customer service, but the representative was too busy reading from their “script” to actually listen to you? Or they failed to understand your problems, or brushed your concerns aside? Of course you have. Unfortunately, this also happens with real estate professionals.
Inman News recently published an article about “4 personal gestures to leave a bigger impact on your clients.” While listening was counted as just one of them, it’s important enough that we’re focusing on that point and sharing our own discussion.
First, let’s consider how impersonal the industry makes … (1 comments)
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realsupport: Confidence Builders for New Real Estate Agents
- 02/28/16 06:58 PM
Real estate is competitive field, and new agents have it tough. Establishing your personal brand in a crowded market takes more than advertising – it takes confidence! How you handle your leads, phone calls and meetings can determine whether someone does business with you.
To help you, we’re sharing some tips we found on Business Insider, and we’re including our own examples!
1. Project calm and confident body language. Make phone calls while standing. Smile! Avoid making calls while multi-tasking. Pay full attention to the person you are speaking with. When meeting with clients, make eye contact and display enthusiasm. During your … (3 comments)
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realsupport: Content Marketing Strategies for Real Estate
- 01/25/16 08:52 AM
Content marketing for real estate is something we’ve talked about in prior posts, and it’s important enough that we’re bringing it up again! Today we’re sharing new content marketing tips from Entrepreneur magazine, with more insights of our own!
First, a quick refresher: the purpose of content marketing is to attract and build an audience for your brand. You can accomplish this by creating and posting valuable content on your website, blog and social media pages. The goal: to reach, engage, and convert.
The challenge is, the lifespan of most content is fairly short. Content on Twitter circulates for an average … (1 comments)
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realsupport: 3 Secrets of Facebook Success
- 01/17/16 05:15 PM
To keep user newsfeeds manageable, Facebook uses complex algorithms to decide how posts are distributed. This has resulted in ever-shrinking organic reach. Small Facebook pages, having 1,000 page Likes or less, can expect about 22.8% of their posts to reach their audience. As your page grows, the organic reach actually shrinks! At 50,000 page Likes, organic post reach drops under 10%.
Facebook cheerfully offers to “Boost” your post reach, for a fee. Fortunately, you can improve your organic reach without spending a dime on Facebook advertising! Here are 3 Facebook “secrets” from social media mogul Neil Patel, along with suggestions of … (1 comments)
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realsupport: 5 Compelling Reasons to Have a Real Estate Blog
- 01/11/16 02:55 AM
When it comes to blogging, one of the most common questions asked by real estate agents is, “How does a blog help my bottom line?” This comes from wanting a return on investment; proof that a blog will bring leads, clients and sales.
However, a blog isn’t a mere advertisement. It’s inaccurate to compare it to a postcard campaign, a television commercial, or a newspaper ad. Frankly, one would be hard-pressed to calculate the ROI on many forms of real estate marketing, which is where the frustration comes in. Not all leads become sales.
A better approach is to understand the value of a … (2 comments)
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Homeowners are notoriously optimistic when it comes to the market value of their homes. Real estate professionals have the task of educating prospective sellers about the realistic price range their property will command. Yet when the comps fail to support a desired price point, the seller may react by dismissing the information - and sometimes, dismissing the agent! 
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