how would YOU market a real estate agency? (20)
hello stackers!
A good friend of mine decided to open his own real estate agency after working in this industry for a few years and building some solid relationships as well as a database. he wants a point to the right direction but it's quite overwhelming so I'd like to hear opinions from my fellow stackers here...
He's paid good money for a nice website. he talked about seo, paid traffic and social media, as well as emailing. He probably needs an expert on each and every of these "channels" (that's why i said it's quite overwhelming)...
but seriously does he need all of that? nobody would click a banner and then a landing page and then buy a property online we're talking about 6-7 figures here.
after giving it a thought, my personal opinion is that he should focus on list building and emailing, instead of spending money all over the place, especially seo and google ads etc. but i could be wrong...
any suggestions would be much appreciated! 
Which country?
He lives in Australia.
let me guess...are you suggesting marketing strategy could be vastly different in another country such as UK, US or Canada, even though they are all tier 1 English-speaking countries?
looking forward to your thoughts on this cmdeal. Again, very much appreciated!
He doesn't need to re-invent the wheel but can just look what the big players are doing. If you look at http://www.engelvoelkers.com which is a huge RE agency with offices in over 20 countries (more than 2,000 listings in the US alone) and these guys do a lot of online advertising.
Of course you need a lof of home sellers so that's really more B2B door knocking (that's what you have your local office branches for) but they also need buyers who could be litterally everyone so I've seen them work with Adsense and on Facebook...and they're very succesful
thanks Christoph!
In his case, I think it's more B2C though...he would get listings from developers and sell them to the general public
i had a look at the site you mentioned yeah they are one of the big players. but the site itself doesn't reveal too much about their online strategy...
as a small player with a team size of less than 10 staffers, my friend needs an online strategy of getting quality leads on a regular basis
Language is not the issue.
The important issues are the level of competitiveness in the market, the presence or lack of MLS (multiple listing service) agreements in a country or market, and the relative importance of aggregators.
Running a real estate brokerage requires that you friend competes on two markets, the first for sellers of homes, and the second for buyers of homes, and hence have a strategy for marketing to both. These are obviously not the same person or represent same markets.
Each of these two markets will have different levels of competitiveness. If your guy is setting up a small brokerage in metropolitan Sydney or setting up a big brokerage in some small town like Kalgoorlie, his strategy for competing in each of these markets will differ, both for sellers and buyers.
Is he trying to advertise to get leads/sales for himself and for his agents? As an agent, I want leads for buyers and sellers. It wouldn't be about selling an actual home online which is why the an agent is important still. The goal would be showing and providing value to a potential seller or buyer.
Or is he trying to recruit agents to join? If I was a broker, I would want to try to increase my office size. Not sure if advertising online would be the best way for that.
What's he trying to accomplish online would be the first question.
thanks majr.
listing is not a problem as he's connected and has already proven to developers that he and his team can sell so let's get this side of things out of the way.
no he's already built a small team so he's not trying to recruit agents to join. and he's already got a decent office.
i think this is what he wants to achieve online:
1) get potential buyers leads
2) some extent of branding so that his company will become more well-known
thanks for all of your help so far!
Go and tell your friend to hunt up courses by:
Craig Proctor
Craig Forte
Terry Hunnefeld
They are all dated, almost pre-internet, yet work as well for residential real estate today as they did back then. Proctor, by the way, was the #2 ReMax agent in North America (he's from Toronto, I believe) for a very long time, while also teaching other residential real estate agents how to make money, selling them websites, recorded messages services, etc. Along with Dan Kennedy, he invented the "Shock and Awe Box" which, when sent to qualified prospects who requested it almost always got the listing.
His unique selling proposition was, "I'll Sell Your House In 90 Days Or Less Guaranteed At Or Above Market Rate Or I'll Buy It From You"
I could teach a class on this. I've worked in real estate for nearly a decade and I'm in my mid 20s. My brick & mortar business is RE sales. I'm getting tired of it and want to travel for the rest of my 20s but I'll need generate income which is why I'm here learning to stack that money
To answer your questions.
1) get potential buyers leads
- He needs to get listings. It's the easiest way to get buyer leads via signs, online listings, etc.
- Update his zillow profile and throw some money at their foreclosure ad product (if he's in an area with a lot of these). That is the best ROI at this moment and he'll get exclusivity on every single pre-foreclosure & foreclosure. A lot of buyers have no idea what these are and inquire on them.
2) his company will become well known when he closes more deals and gets more business.
In real estate, a customer may be 2 years out from making a purchase if you capture them through SEO, social media. You're going to have to nurture those leads for such a long time. The best way to see faster returns on advertising spend is through zillow/trulia/realtor.com. Valuation websites/"whats my home worth" running on facebook are so two years ago.
What I would recommend is:
1. Improve his Z/T/R profiles. Get as many reviews as possible. I'm slacking on the reviews so my sales are what's keeping me ranking on the first page of all agents in my city:
2. Don't waste money on a website - every other agent in the world has their own website that captures emails and sends listings. It results in buyers receiving listing emails from multiple agents. Instead, work on a newsletter that provides valuable information on buying your first home - see outboundengine.com. He's going to need to stay top-of-mind when idea of real estate pops up in his past clients heads. An email newsletter for previous clients and current leads will do just this.
3. Throw money at facebook ads for open houses for his agents
This is probably the most profitable advertising I have ever done in my life in real estate. I spend nearly 6 figures a year on real estate marketing (not something that can scale like affiliate marketing) and this has been the highest ROI for me in real estate.
Have him hold an open house. 3 days prior to the open house, launch a campaign on facebook advertising the listing and the open house date & time targeted to the zipcode. Throw $20/day at it. I GUARANTEE you he will pick up at least one client. My ads are getting a 15% CTR on nice homes.
edit: sorry for being so scattered, I'm really excited to see a real estate post.
This is the ad I run to get people to my open houses. I dumped $100 on this ad, wrote an offer to double-end my own listing from someone who saw my ad on facebook. I also managed to pick up another buyer.
You'll also get a lot of comments on the ad of people tagging others (intent). If you really wanted you could start engaging those people.
Originally Posted by johna5150
This kills on radio targeted towards older demographic. Not good for the younger demographic/stations.
edit2:
I just realized you're talking about a brokerage/agency, not an individual agent. Whoops.
edit3:
Just saw you're in Australia. I'm not sure if zillow exists there, whoops, my bad.
If I had to do this for a friend/client here in Germany, my only concern would be to get properties at all, not trying to get more people to a showing. There are some areas here where everything rents/sells on itself with just a single ad in a directory. You'll get like 100 interested people to choose the right one. So it will comes down to getting owners to let you sell their property. And this has been very tough with my first tries.
thanks very much for all the advice and suggestions!
johna5150: my friend is *already* a brilliant agent and that's why he took the next step of opening his own business and hired other ppl to work for him; i don't think he'll love the idea of learning someone else's "how to sell real estate" course
spokesz: you are in your mid-20s and already have worked in RE for a decade!? wow that's impressive, my two thumbs up well, yes my friend is in Australia (I'm not) and zillow is not applicable there. According to what he told me today, realestate.com.au and domain.com.au controls almost 99% of all the listings in Australia so in theory he can put all his listings on those two sites (he's already doing that) and doesn't have to have a site of his own company; but that sounds "dodgy" so he just went ahead and have a site built for him.
ajtothec: that's a completely different situation in Germany. As i said earlier, my friend has no problem getting listings. he wants more buyer leads for his company on a regular basis. the more the better.
he told me property market in Australia, especially in Sydney and Melbourne, has been hot for the last 2 years and may peak in the near future. Sure, real estate has been selling like hot cakes but when the trend changes, it won't be as easy. that's why he needs quality leads on a regular basis. and since he's already got a website built, he wants to know how to generate quality leads from the internet.
apart from FB ads suggested by spokesz above, any other suggestions? thanks again!!
Anyone who is truly brilliant in their field diligently studies what other successful people are doing...school is never out for the pro. I don't claim brilliance in my field, but I do make it a point to study other direct marketers who are successful....hence my ongoing paid membership to STM, where I have thoroughly loved reading and studying information posted by other successful marketers. In fact, investing in Zeno's first 6WAMC gave me a very thorough foundation in campaign management I have translated over to Google Display Network, and it has paid off nicely.
The guys I mentioned are selling marketing courses for real estate agents...how to attract qualified prospects on both the buying and listing side using all sorts of direct marketing methods.
Hey, great question! And one I can hopefully shed some light on! My brick and mortar is an equity firm that owns a brokerage and I've spent a lot of time working on the marketing aspect for it.
Couple caveats A) This is for RE in TX, so I'm not sure how applicable it will be for AU (but it can't be too far off... I mean a house is a house, right?) and B) We are in the high end game, buying/selling 1 mil+ only, which is a completely different marketing strategy from regular real estate in that its a little bit more selective with clientele and not as direct marketing focused (like you said, nobody is gonna wanna pay you 3% of 3mil just bc they saw an ad on facebook).
1) Network like a mofo. Boring I know and maybe not the answer you're looking for, but that was honestly the biggest break for us. Sure we marketed a ton, but the biggest boost was just talking to everybody we know (without giving a sleazy car salesman vibe) and making a ton of PERSONAL connections. Make friends, take people to lunch, grab beers after work, and talk to everyone. We got lucky early on and got a couple high-end listings, which turned into 3 more (did open houses where we met people without realtors and scooped them up), which snowballed further (talked to past clients friends, eventually became go-to realtors in certain areas)....and now XXX mil in sales later we're sitting very pretty.
2) Market smartly. I have a tech background and put together lists of targeted direct mailers using online sources. So for instance, using an alumni database and public tax records we were able to market to people 1mil+ homes with branded college stuff. So for Texas A&M graduates, we sent personalized letters to all the rich alumni introducing ourselves as Aggie graduates and played that card hard... that might be a Texas thing since Texans take their unis and respective football teams very seriously... but you get the idea!
Another example is using the previous sold houses to rank all the buying/selling realtors and then becoming friends with the top ones. They'll pass you deals, be a little easier during negotiations, and some of the nicer ones will even help you out (although not necessarily in the high-end game... some of those realtors are cut throat jerk offs). Also every time we have a big house for sale in their area, we'll give them a call a few days before the open house to invite them. One time we did that and the realtor already had a hot buyer looking for a house like ours. They offered day of, closed 2 weeks later and we got our big fat commission check for about an hour of work.
Anyways the internet is a big wide place with tons of public info, use it to your advantage!
3) Email often, but not so much that its annoying. We try to send out an email blast every two weeks. Sometimes its listings, often time its just tips and news. And my secret tip: remember nobody actually reallllly cares all that much. I know it might seem blasphemous/stupid, but bear with me on my reasoning: nobody is going to read your email and say "HOW MUCH HOUSE FOR HOW MUCH PRICE??? KAREN GRAB THE CHECKBOOK WE'RE BUYING THIS THING TODAY!". You're not sending anything earth shattering, you probably won't get a ton of buyers, but you will maintain that personal connection and be in the back of peoples head, which is what you're really going for! Again, I've found that a solid email list is just icing on the cake when your business is built on solid personal connections. However take this with a grain of salt, as again, we're mostly in the high end market where an email list isn't as effective as it normally is (we did wholesale/investing real estate before this and an email list is literally F**KING GOLD).
4) Work your open houses! There are lot of nosy neighbors and looky-los who have zero intention of buying, but there are also some hidden gems and lots of potential buyers to be found! All of our big wins come from buyers without realtors who just showed up to some of our open houses. We try to have as many open houses as possible, the more the merrier!
Anyways, I'm just kinda rambling at this point. Sorry, I really like this stuff, particularly coming up with clever ways to market to certain demographics. Please feel free to PM if you have any questions or any thoughts.
p.s. Tim Kellers books were/are like our bible. Having a tech background made me dismiss a lot of it as mumbo jumbo (gimme an algorithm I can run, gimme an objective plan I can work with), but the stuff works. I'm now a believer.
Also, I noticed you mentioned he has no problems with getting listings but is looking for more buyers. Just curious but do you know why? I try to go for all the sellers we can get - a lot of time it is way easier money in my opinion.
thanks a lot for your insight natedl98!
the answer to your question is: majority of what he sells are apartments instead of standalone houses and since he's already had a good track record, the developers love him and that's why getting listings is not an issue
Originally Posted by spokesz
3. Throw money at facebook ads for open houses for his agents
This is probably the most profitable advertising I have ever done in my life in real estate. I spend nearly 6 figures a year on real estate marketing (not something that can scale like affiliate marketing) and this has been the highest ROI for me in real estate.
Have him hold an open house. 3 days prior to the open house, launch a campaign on facebook advertising the listing and the open house date & time targeted to the zipcode. Throw $20/day at it. I GUARANTEE you he will pick up at least one client. My ads are getting a 15% CTR on nice homes.
edit: sorry for being so scattered, I'm really excited to see a real estate post.
This is the ad I run to get people to my open houses. I dumped $100 on this ad, wrote an offer to double-end my own listing from someone who saw my ad on facebook. I also managed to pick up another buyer.
You'll also get a lot of comments on the ad of people tagging others (intent). If you really wanted you could start engaging those people.
Originally Posted by spokesz
3. Throw money at facebook ads for open houses for his agents
This is probably the most profitable advertising I have ever done in my life in real estate. I spend nearly 6 figures a year on real estate marketing (not something that can scale like affiliate marketing) and this has been the highest ROI for me in real estate.
Have him hold an open house. 3 days prior to the open house, launch a campaign on facebook advertising the listing and the open house date & time targeted to the zipcode. Throw $20/day at it. I GUARANTEE you he will pick up at least one client. My ads are getting a 15% CTR on nice homes.
edit: sorry for being so scattered, I'm really excited to see a real estate post.
This is the ad I run to get people to my open houses. I dumped $100 on this ad, wrote an offer to double-end my own listing from someone who saw my ad on facebook. I also managed to pick up another buyer.
You'll also get a lot of comments on the ad of people tagging others (intent). If you really wanted you could start engaging those people.
I live in Canada and I do strictly residential sales (average $275k price point) so it might be a little different. I am a firm believer that you control the market if you have listings. They're in contract and aren't as fickle as buyers. And with listings, buyers come for free. You don't even have to market for them , they come to you. PPC is another option that is giving me results outside of Facebook.
IMO, even though the internet is huge, he's better off spending that money marketing his listings and advertising offline. I've had much better results though print (direct mail and newspapers) and radio. Networking, past clients, calling FSBOs/expireds. Real estate will always be local and the point of an agent is to have someone in person helping you buy/sell a house in person. There are places like Zillow, trulia, etc but I think that is the reason why the internet hasn't killed the real agent yet. I think it's boils down to networking, working on past clients, and follow up. Having the right follow up systems is important.
If he wants to do something online, he can try marketing to his database online through something like this. I haven't tried it myself but know of people who are getting good results: http://www.getvyral.com
If he really wants buyers he can always set up website with an IDX and do ppc, facebok with it. boomtownroi.com and commissionsinc.com seem to get recommended a lot. They're in the US but the concept is all the same.
I am also a partner in a small brokerage that was started last year. We have about 10 agents. In my market, people chose the agent mainly and not really the company so we don't do much marketing for the office. We only only market to other agents and don't focus on marketing the office. The agents do that on their own when they meet clients so we invest in their training to get them more productive which in turn promotes our brokerage.
If he's not looking for new agents, does he have a team structure set up? Has he looked into coaching? I get coaching from http://www.naea.com/ and they have helped my business a lot. It's $1297/month but they go over everything. How to set up the team, brokerage, the business as a whole. I highly recommend them. Their coaches are also real estate agents with teams and are actually producing.
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