Friday, October 18, 2024

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That period from winter into mid-spring is typically akin to a drought followed by a raging storm for real estate professionals.

It’s just as the drought is ending, however, that our fingers ache from clinging to our wits and our wallets.

Yes, it will end. Business will pick up, if it hasn’t by the time you read this.

We have some suggestions to consider if you’re still dealing with a snail’s pace real estate market.

1. Take action

Regardless of how few clients you have right now, there are actions you can take to advance your business that don’t involve showing homes or chasing listings.

In fact, taking just one action each day can get you out of the doldrums and into motivation.

A good first action to take is getting away from your desk. A change of scenery is an excellent way to get your brain moving in another direction.

Take a walk (in a different location every day). Take a few hours off just to think. Or, work from your favorite coffee shop that offers Wi-Fi.

Make lunch or coffee dates with former clients or vow to meet colleagues after work for cocktails.

If you must remain tied to your desk, get back to the basics that have kept you in business. Think back: which activities have delivered the most successes?

If you once did well with door-knocking but ditched it for the next shiny object, pick it up again, dust off your skills and start knocking for dollars.

2. Get help from the great motivators

Some of the world’s greatest motivational speakers are just a book, DVD or CD away.

If you prefer reading, check out some of our favorites:

  • “Shift: How Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times” Gary Keller
  • “The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure” Grant Cardone
  • “Better than Good: Creating a Life you can’t wait to Live,” Zig Ziglar

Turn off the radio in the car and pop in a CD or listen on Audible. Here’s a few we think you might like:

Ditch the TV for one night a week and watch a motivational video instead:

 3. About that stuff you’ve let fall through the cracks

 As a small business owner, you know that even when you’re not working directly with clients or on ways to do so, there is still work to be done. When you’re busy, those are the things that typically fall through the cracks.

Website – how are those neighborhood pages coming? Is it time to localize your home page and feature a testimonial or two? Also, don’t forget to add a Free Report offer on your website in exchange for an email address.

Testimonials — Do you have a system to generate them? Agents use various methods, from hiring a company who specializes in collecting your testimonials to putting together a questionnaire that you offer your clients at closing.

While the latter is a good way to collect testimonials for your website and other marketing materials, aim to convince them to leave you one at the online review sites.

Then, consider reaching out to past clients who didn’t leave a review. This contact also serves to put you back on the front burner of their memories.

Buyers’ consultation – Does yours need some work? Update any area that needs it. Anything you can do to add value to your consultations helps boost your customer service.

The key to pricing your listings right (available under our Objection Handling Flyers tab)

Listing presentation – If your listing presentation is hit-or-miss, consider taking some time to fine-tune it. Don’t know where to start? You’ll find a goldmine of ideas online, from coach websites to YouTube videos to social media groups where other agents hang out.

Don’t forget the magic of using a Merchandise Review at your listing appointment to help get your listings priced right the first time. Download the Merchandise Review now and keep copies on hand to use as part of your listing presentation.

Get involved – In case you haven’t heard, the generations aging into the real estate market say they check a business’ level of social responsibility before deciding to work with them. What are you doing to better the community at large?

Start small if you need to. Find a cause you can put your heart into and volunteer your time. Plan on promoting your cause on your website, social media and anywhere else you can.

The market is changing from what we’ve grown accustomed to over the past few years. Who knows what the spring and summer market will bring? At least now you won’t be at wits’ end should you experience a lull in business.

Free offers drive interest (available in the postcard section under Free Offer Series)
Start stirring up activity by sending at least 100  Free List of Homes postcards from the Free Offer Series to an area where you want more listings.

Need help targeting the perfect niche of buyers or sellers? Use our mailing list tool to create the ideal list (it’s easy) or call our support team for assistance at 866.405.3638!

PLUS: When you have time…here are Free ways we can help you have an INVINCIBLE 2019!

1. Become a Listing Legend Free eBook 

Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here 

 

 

2. “Get More Listings” Free Online Webinar

 

“Get MORE Listings & Begin to Dominate Your Market!” Free online webinar. Learn the 3-7-27 strategy for explosive growth, why 95% of agents have less than 20% market share, and how to become the agent everyone competes against. – Click Here

 

 

3. The 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 12-Month-Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do when. Four key market segments are included, Niche Marketing, Get More Listings, Geographic Farming, and Sphere of Influence. – Click Here

 

 

4. The Free One-Page Real Estate Business Plan

Treat your business like a business it is vital to long-term success in this industry. Some agents may put together elaborate business plans, yet there’s something powerful about keeping it simple. Check out our one page Online Real Estate Business Plan.  – Click Here

 

 

5. The Free Online ROI Calculator

Consistency and automation are the keys to success. Discover how effective direct mail marketing can dramatically increase your bottom line. Enter your statistics in our Free online ROI Calculator and click the ‘CALCULATE MY ROI’ button to see your results instantly! – Click Here

Congratulations to our $250 Gift Card Winner of our October Strategy Challenge!
Carmen Wieck!

Here’s what Carmen shared as her October Challenge Marketing Strategy!

“To establish myself as a local real estate expert, every month I have a short video about one of the local businesses, sometimes, even with giveaways that encourage engagement”.

“This month the video prepared will be about a well-established local restaurant that was destroyed in a fire 9 months ago and just re-opened this week“.

What a clever and informative way to embrace your target community! Well done Carmen!

To give you a little more insight into Carmen’s other marketing habits we’ve shared a few marketing pieces she’s sent out from ProspectsPLUS! including the Market Dominator, the Free Report, “5 Reasons Why Your House May Not Sell” and the Free Report, “6 Dangers of Overpricing your home”.

For more information on our NEW November Strategy Challenge, Go Now!

Need help targeting the perfect niche of buyers or sellers? Use our mailing list tool to create the ideal list (it’s easy) or call our support team for assistance at 866.405.3638!

PLUS: When you have time…here are 3 free ways we can help you STILL CRUSH IT in 2018!

1. Become a Listing Legend Free ebook.

Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here 

2. The 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan.

The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 12-Month-Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do when. Four key market segments are included, Niche Marketing, Listing Inventory, Geographic Farming, and Sphere of Influence – Click Here

2. The Free Online ROI Calculator. 

Consistency and automation are the keys to success. Discover how effective direct mail marketing can dramatically increase your bottom line. Enter your statistics in our Free online ROI Calculator and click the ‘CALCULATE MY ROI’ button to see your results instantly! – Click Here

Also…check out these cool tools 

 Three Click Postcards – Just snap a home photo & create a postcard all from your mobile phone

MLSmailings.com – Automated Just Listed, Just Sold Postcards

Market Dominator System – Become a neighborhood brand

Want to Refer a friend or colleague? Refer them, Here. THEY get a Free $25 Gift Card and YOU become their hero. BTW, you also get a $25 Gift Card too (now that’s what I’m talking about)!

At the risk of sounding cliched, content is even more of a king now than when Sumner Redstone coined the “Content is King” mantra.

Gone are those days when a 100-word post, unartfully packed with keywords and links, ranks anywhere near Google’s first-page search results.

It’s not merely content that is king, it’s quality content. Writing for the reader and not the search engine, with relevant, valuable and shareable content is today’s challenge.

If you struggle with content creation, read on.

Determine a content strategy

Your content strategy is best determined by first figuring out your goal in writing it. Sure, we all hope to generate leads with content, but go deeper than that. Are you looking to close more deals, build a referral base or maybe set yourself apart as a niche expert?

Once you’ve nailed your ultimate goal, you’ll need to figure out your target audience or audiences. Creating personas helps you narrow down your audience and helps you provide more relevant and, thus, valuable content.

Need help? Hubspot.com has available, Make My Persona, as a fun tool to help you build your target audience’s persona.

All of your content must be appropriate and of value to this audience. Kelton Ried at Coppyblogger.com calls this an “audience-first mentality.” He goes on to suggest that “Without a deeper understanding of the needs, hopes, desires, and dreams of your audience, you’re doomed to turn them away.”

You have your goal in mind and you know who to target, so let’s get started creating a content strategy action plan.

Creating content to help you meet your goal

If you’ve taken our advice and you are clear on your target audience’s persona, you’ll find that writing becomes a whole lot easier.

If you specialize in a niche, writing content is even easier. An agent who specializes in military relocation, for instance, has an endless number of topics to write about. The same holds true for condo, ranch, waterfront, and luxury real estate specialists.

Generalists, on the other hand, just need to keep the focus on what type of information is valuable to their target audience. Buyers naturally want to know about mortgage rate changes, how to get a mortgage, the mortgage process broken down into layperson’s terms, information on the area’s neighborhoods and, of course, they want to see listings.

TIP: Ask the pros in other industries to write guest posts. This might include your home inspector, favorite title company representative, and lender. Hang on to these for those days when you’re too busy or too writer-blocked to come up with a post.

Make your content work hard

Content should act as a magnet to draw people to your website and it can’t do that if you don’t promote it. The best place to do that is on social media.

Remember, posting a piece of content to your website isn’t the end of that piece. Push it out on social media.

Since most social media platforms are visually oriented, repurpose your content into quick, easy to read infographics. The most commonly shared post on Facebook, by the way, is an image.

Whatever you post, ensure that it grabs the eye – use Canva.com or a graphics program to create compelling photos.

Create a content schedule

 Ask any SEO specialist how often to post content and you’ll get a ton of different responses.

We think it’s important to come up with a posting schedule that meshes with your business schedule. Sure, you can promise yourself that you’ll write and post content three times a week, but if you don’t have an assistant or you get busy, the posts won’t get written, posted or promoted.

The best time of day to post and promote your content is another hotly contested issue. Many of the big SEO pros we follow to claim that mid-day or lunchtime is ideal.

The name of the game when considering a content schedule is to bite off just enough that you can chew and stick to it. Consistently.

Start by writing some content centered around the Free Report, “How to CHOP $24,000 & 4 Years OFF Your Mortgage”. Order 100 of this Free Report today to have on hand for requests.  

Need help targeting the perfect niche of buyers or sellers? Use our mailing list tool to create the ideal list (it’s easy) or call our support team for assistance at 866.405.3638!

PLUS: When you have time…here are 3 free ways we can help you STILL CRUSH IT in 2018!

1. Become a Listing Legend Free eBook.

Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here 

2. The 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan.

The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 12-Month-Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do when. Four key market segments are included, Niche Marketing, Listing Inventory, Geographic Farming, and Sphere of Influence – Click Here

2. The Free Online ROI Calculator. 

Consistency and automation are the keys to success. Discover how effective direct mail marketing can dramatically increase your bottom line. Enter your statistics in our Free online ROI Calculator and click the ‘CALCULATE MY ROI’ button to see your results instantly! – Click Here

Also…check out these cool tools 

 Three Click Postcards – Just snap a home photo & create a postcard all from your mobile phone

MLSmailings.com – Automated Just Listed, Just Sold Postcards

Market Dominator System – Become a neighborhood brand

Want to Refer a friend or colleague? Refer them, Here. THEY get a Free $25 Gift Card and YOU become their hero. BTW, you also get a $25 Gift Card too (now that’s what I’m talking about)!

Update Your Community Pages

What if we told you that you can increase organic traffic to your site by as much as 40 percent just by updating old content?

“It’s one of the quickest (and easiest) ways to make Google recognize you and bring your rankings back from the graveyard,” according to Neal Patel. He goes on to explain how the co-founder of Ninja Outreach increased the site’s organic traffic by 40 percent just by resurrecting old content.

The best content on your site to bring back from the dead resides on your community or neighborhood pages.

Why?

Because these pages, if done right, are your most valuable when it comes to showing up in organic real estate searches.

Let’s find the walking dead posts
  1. Find the posts that have been bringing in the most traffic. The Google Search Console website is a handy tool for this step. We prefer the old version, which you can reach by clicking the link on the bottom left side of the page.
  2. Go to “Search Traffic” and then click on “Search Analytics.”
  3. Now you have a list of your most popular content. Click on “CTR,” located above the list.

To identify the posts that will “give you the most bang for your buck,” according to David Schneider, co-founder of Ninja Outreach, look for the following on your most popular pages:

  • A CTR lower than 1 percent
  • A high impression rate
  • A “position” between 1 and 30
What to change

It can be pretty embarrassing looking at your old blog posts but you’ll need to do so before going into the site’s backend to tweak them.

First, check the page’s overall appeal. Does it include enough photos, subheadings and white space? Then, check the page for broken links.

Make note of any issues you need to fix and then head over to the backend of your site.

Next, look for the following:

  • Fix or update links on the page. Cyrus Shepard suggests that you should update the text surrounding the links as well, claiming that it helps search engine spiders more readily see that the page has been updated.
  • Consider removing any content that isn’t evergreen. This includes mentions of the community’s average home price, which, as you know, can become quickly outdated.
  • If you haven’t yet added alt text to your images, do so now.
  • Consider adding additional text to the page to make the word count longer. Have there been changes to the area since you wrote the original content? Any changes planned for the future? Longer content tends to rank higher so if there is anything you can add to beef up skimpy content, it’s worth it to take the time to do so.
  • Is there enough white space on the page? Break up paragraphs so that each contains no more than five sentences, add bulleted lists, subheadings, and additional photos.
  • Ensure your CTA is clear and compelling.
  • Check the copy for grammar, punctuation and spelling errors.

Once you hit publish, head over to your social media pages and post your new and improved content.

One additional note: Patel suggests checking that blog posts don’t compete with your community pages for “SEO authority.”

“For example, you create an amazing page for your primary neighborhood focused on ‘real estate-centric’ keywords,” such as ‘homes for sale in (name of community).

Then, you later publish blog posts for the same neighborhood using the same keywords in prominent locations, such as the title, URL & headings – that would be a mistake,” Patel cautions.

Keep track of the pages’ progress

SEO experts suggest taking a screenshot of the Google Console results we walked you through earlier. Then, when you check for changes in a month or two you’ll have something to compare the new results too.

Keep tweaking as needed until you get the results you’re looking for.

Homebuyers demand local knowledge and neighborhood or community pages are an ideal way to meet that demand. But letting information go stale isn’t a good strategy.

In fact, it could be costing you money.Realtor marketing postcards for neighborhood updates with a free offer

A great way to keep your Geographic farm updated with local knowledge is to send the Neighborhood Update postcard with a Free Offer.
Send out at least 100 in an area where you want more listings.

Need help targeting the perfect niche of buyers or sellers? Use our mailing list tool to create the ideal list (it’s easy) or call our support team for assistance at 866.405.3638!

PLUS: When you have time…here are 2 free ways we can help you CRUSH IT in 2018!

1.  The 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan.

The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 12-Month-Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do when. Four key market segments are included, Niche Marketing, Listing Inventory, Geographic Farming, and Sphere of Influence – Click Here

2. The Free Online ROI Calculator. 

Consistency and automation are the keys to success. Discover how effective direct mail marketing can dramatically increase your bottom line. Enter your statistics in our Free online ROI Calculator and click the ‘CALCULATE MY ROI’ button to see your results instantly! – Click Here

Also…check out these cool tools 

 Three Click Postcards – Just snap a home photo & create a postcard all from your mobile phone

MLSmailings.com – Automated Just Listed, Just Sold Postcards

Market Dominator System – Become a neighborhood brand

Want to Refer a friend or colleague? Refer them, Here. THEY get a Free $25 Gift Card and YOU become their hero. BTW, you also get a $25 Gift Card too (now that’s what I’m talking about)!