This is always one of the biggest challenges real estate agents have, especially when they come into crunch time. They find that they just came into their last transaction and they only have one or two listings on the books. Now what do they do?
If you find yourself in a pressure point that you have to generate listings fast, there are two ways to do it. In fact, these are about the only two ways that you can generate listings through marketing. I’m not going to talk about generating listings through referrals. That’s another subject. Or generating listings through partnerships with a builder or bank. What I’m going to talk about is how to use marketing to generate listings fast. The two ways are direct response marketing and branding marketing. They both work equally well. Some generate more listings faster than others. In a short period of time, the other will often catch up. So let me walk you through direct response in this blog (and branding in the next blog) in terms of getting real estate listings fast.
Direct Response Marketing
The best way to get real estate listings fast is direct response. With direct response, as the name implies, you get an immediate response from your marketing. You can do direct response in postcards, you can do it in radio, and you can do it through email. You can do it through almost any medium. For simplicity sake, let me focus on postcards. You can then expand the concept because the principles work universally in whatever medium you choose.
If you are going to direct response marketing for sellers to get more listings what do you do? The most important thing you can do is offer someone who is thinking about selling their home something of value to get them to respond. Think about this: You have 1000 homes out there and you want more listings from these 1000 homes. Not every homeowner is about to list, but there are some who are thinking about putting their home on the market right now. You somehow have to get them to identify themselves. Once you get them to identify themselves then all you do is reach out to them in efforts to get in front of that person thinking about selling.
The way you begin is to start to think about things that sellers want that non-sellers don’t care about. Whatever that is, that gives you the information you need to send offers to them. Let me throw out a few suggestions. The first thing that sellers want to know is, “What is my home worth?” So one of the things you can do in your marketing is offer a home evaluation – a free evaluation, an online evaluation, a telephone evaluation, anything that causes that homeowner to want to take action and get an idea of what their home is worth.
Now, here is the key that I’ve also found. You have to do it without creating fear. If you want your direct response marketing to work, it has to be free, it has to be simple and it has to be fearless. What I mean by this is simple.
- Free: It’s going to cost them nothing.
- Simple: We don’t want them to jump through hoops.
- Fearless: We don’t want them to be afraid that they are talking to a sales rep who will be pushy. Whatever you offer them needs to be something that they never have to engage in with you directly.
Let me give you an example. “Do you want to find out what your home is worth? Call me right now and I’ll give you an evaluation by phone.” Someone is not going to call because they do not want to engage with a pushy salesperson. On the other hand, “Want a free home evaluation? Go to my website and it will give you an accurate price evaluation in 30 seconds.” That is more compelling.
There are other things you can do that will better identify sellers thinking about selling right now. If you have a list of home buyers that are always looking in a certain area then you can send out a mailing that says, “Hey, I’ve got buyers looking to buy in your area and they can’t find the home they are looking for. If you are looking to sell your home in the next six months, I placed a list on my website of exactly what these homeowners are looking for in a home. Go to that website right now to see if your home is a match. If it is, then give me a call and let’s talk.” What this does is prompt the homeowner who is thinking about selling to think, “Hey maybe we can sell our home easily and immediately without any effort because this agent may already have someone who is looking for a home just like ours.” So they go to your website. That is direct response.
How Do You Identify the Person Responding to Your Website?
Now the key to that is you need a way to track who goes to your website. This is where the challenge begins to come in with direct response. How do you identify the person responding? This is what we actually developed with ListingGrabber. We developed proprietary software that will pinpoint with 100% accuracy who responded and visited your website. When you offer that marketing piece that says, “If you are thinking about selling I’ve got buyers who may buy immediately, they are looking in your area, go to my website to see if matches your home”, the sheer fact that someone goes to the website to check it out gives you a high indication that they are planning to sell soon. All you have to do is identify who they are and go knock on their door and meet them. That is how the process works in direct response. Find out what a homeowner wants, make an offer to a homeowner who is thinking about selling and then track your response.
There are also other ideas that you can do to get real estate listings fast. How about this? “The top 10 list of items that someone can use to fix up around their home so when they put it on the market they get the most for it?” How about this? “What are the best items that you can invest money in when making repairs to your home that will get you more than what you put in?” Everyone is looking for that fast investment. They want to think they can put $1,000 in and get $14,000 out immediately.
So think creatively, out of the box. What are the things sellers are interested in knowing? Create a marketing piece that offers it and then put it out there through postcard mailings or radio and track the people who are responding.
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