I will never forget my first day as a new agent. It was January 1981. I checked in with my broker Monday morning, 9:00 a.m. sharp. By 9:30, we were out knocking on doors talking to people using this as our real estate marketing strategy. Who did they know that might be interested in buying or selling real estate? I spent the next 6 months knocking on doors every single day.
I moved to another office and learned about working floor time as the second most effective real estate marketing strategy. The broker ran ads in the paper, and the floor agent got the leads. As a new agent, it was a terrific learning experience.
I didn’t quit knocking on doors. I just added “floor time” to my arsenal of lead generating activities. However, I had less time to knock on doors because I was now engaged in two lead generating activities, not just one.
The next strategy I added to my lead generating arsenal was “farming” – choosing a geographic area and focusing your marketing efforts on that area. This worked really well for me and allowed me to build my brand. I began to conduct myself as a businessperson – because I started thinking in terms of trading dollars for time and marketing campaigns. I no longer just wandered into the office wondering what the day would bring – but began to track and measure my results.
Farming became a core lead generating activity for my real estate career. I became so successful as a “farmer” that I no longer had time to “sit floor”. Door knocking began to give way to direct mail campaigns. I found I had more money then time – and so I invested in mailing to my farm regularly.
In the mid-90’s, I learned about “relationship marketing”. I learned to be pro-active in asking for referrals – not just wait for them to happen. I learned to focus our marketing efforts on those people that were most likely to send me business – not just broadcast my message to the whole world – or in my case, to my farm area.
Lead generation strategies continue to evolve: when a better idea comes along, the old strategies get “rolled into” the new ones. You don’t stop doing the old things; you just take them to a higher level. For me, knocking on doors evolved into “farming” and “farming” evolved into “working by referral”.
With the evolution of Internet 2.0, we now have the capability of using the computer to do our real estate marketing. Instead of physically knocking on doors or cold calling, now we can use social media to market ourselves. I call it “Farming 2.0″.
Utilizing social media tools, Farming 2.0 allows you:
1. Define your niche. 2. Communicate to that niche in a way that interests them. 3. Provide them with information they need and want. 4. So that when it comes time for them to do hire a real estate practitioner, you are the one they think of and choose to work with.
One thing I have learned over the years is that selling – whether it’s real estate or refrigerators to the Eskimos – is all about relationships. We get caught up sometimes in the technology, but the technology only enables what we as salespeople have always done: build relationships so that people want to do business with us.
And the best part about using technology and social media for marketing is that it allows us to reach more people faster for less money. Sounds like a grand evolution in the marketing tool kit to me!
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