What Can Real Estate Agents Learn From Internet Marketers?

There are certain industries that change their practices at a snail pace. The real estate sector is certainly one of them. Only recently have real estate agents turned to content marketing in order to augment their current marketing practices, writes David Tile in his article “Can Marketers Learn from Old School Real Estate Agents?”

Traditionally, real estate marketing relied on three general marketing techniques: literature drops, door knocking, and cold calling. Sure, there are others, but those are the big three and, well, you can’t really argue with results. Frankly, if these approaches didn’t work, the industry would have stopped using them long ago.

So if internet marketers can learn from real estate agents, what can real estate agents learn from marketers, specifically, content marketers?

A lot, of course, but in this post let’s focus on a few basic tips and techniques.

1. Create funnels.

Real estate agents are so used to ABC (Always Be Closing) that they forget to think and plan ahead before they act; they just do stuff for the sake of doing. So this is what you can learn from marketers. Plan your marketing campaigns. Plan an actual funnel, as in “the lead opts-in; then it sees xyz, then it gets a welcome email; then in 20 minutes it gets a call…”

2. Know the price of your conversions and build your funnel around conversions.

Yes, real estate has a very long sales cycle and in most cases you have to nurture (“touch”) your lead for months before it converts. However, this is not an excuse to completely ignore keeping track of your metrics and knowing the price of conversion. According to experienced real estate brokers, $1,000 in pure advertisement expenditures per lead is completely normal. Plus, include how long it took for you to reach the conversion and what kind of tools helped you achieve that.

3. Use Facebook to connect with local prospects.

Whatever you do, do not just post your listings on Facebook. It’s annoying, it’s not effective. JUST. DON’T. Facebook can be a very powerful tool if used correctly. One of the ways to plant some sweet seeds of future business is to find local groups.

For instance, is you live in a town of Oak Brook, IL, find groups with at least 500 members that are associated with Oak Brook and join them. Some groups may be open, others may require an approval form the admin. Once approved, start positioning yourself as a local real estate expert. How? By sharing relevant content with the group about real estate in Oak Brook, IL.

An occasional blog post, two-sentence long opinion, a useful link to a local service are all good examples of relevant content and value. Do this with a few groups and you will (finally) start getting quality leads from Facebook.