I’ve seen a fair share of doomsayer real estate headlines lately. My advice: make your decisions subject to the data and disregard scaremongering speculation.
It’s like Tom Ferry says: “The market is the market is the market is the market.” In other words, it is what it is — and, whatever it is, it’s surely no reason to stop executing your marketing plan.
Fact is, markets adjust — the “status quo” ALWAYS ebbs-and-flows.
In 2002, McKinsey published a long-term study of 1,000 U.S. companies in which it analyzed their operations during an economic recession, for instance, and how their actions during that period affected company performance post-recession. In brief, they found that the companies who maintained operations (e.g., marketing, sales, and so on) set themselves up for massive growth during expansionary periods.
The point is, don’t (ever) pull out of the race! And furthermore, the best time to pass your competitors is around a sharp curve — so lean in, friends!
Fast markets, slow markets; up markets📈, down markets📉; strong markets, weak markets – no matter the circumstances – NEVER. STOP. MARKETING.
The market—now and for always—belongs to those who market. 🤜⚡️🤛
7 Nonobvious Ways to Market a Listing (For Real Estate Agents)
Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. Yes, you should market a listing via: email campaigns, listing videos, circle-prospecting, door-knocking, open houses, MLS syndication, social media posts (+ ads/boosts), and so forth.
But how else can/should you market a listing? Scan the images above for A BUNCH of detailed ideas.
As a listing agent, it’s on you to expose a property to the LARGEST pool of ready, willing, and able buyers... So get the word out. 📢
(P.S. Here’s a link to the training I promised on Dynamic Google Search Ads—just copy/paste the URL: https://bit.ly/DYN-ADS.)
Recommit to the Consumer
Social media, in general, has a few different methods and means of producing leads/inquiries:
Inbound Organic: prospective clients, quote-unquote, “discover” your content by way of the Explore Page, hashtags, search, or by some other mechanism. You’ll get DMs like: “We watch all your videos and are thinking about moving to the area — are you working with new buyer clients right now?
Database Nurturing: past clients and sphere of influence contacts see your content, and, in the same way, for instance, a weekly email newsletter confers value and positions you as the agent-of-choice, so it goes with your social media posts. The end result is more repeat/referral business.
Agent-to-Agent: real estate peers engage with and, sometimes, emulate your content—which builds your thought-leadership and influence w/in the industry. As those peers encounter clientele moving to-and-from your marketplace, they set you up with a referral.
Agent-to-agent referrals are certainly a big chunk of the deals arising out of social media. Thusly, I’ve noticed a tendency amongst many agents—because the lion’s share of their followers or engagement consists of agents, perhaps—to pivot their content from consumer-facing to agent-facing. Surely that’ll generate even more agent-to-agent referrals, right? To the contrary, I’m afraid.
IMO, agents and consumers alike are both naturally drawn to the influence of experts. So be the expert -- be the knowledge broker.
The Best Sales Technique
Customer experience isn’t one big thing you do especially well; it’s all the little things added up.
From listing to close, search to sale—the differentiation of your services is in details.
Who Brings Up Real Estate?
Here’s a marketing acid test to mull over… When you call, text, or chance upon your sphere-of-influence contacts, who brings up real estate? — is it you or them? Candidly, if your marketing activities are effectively positioning you as the agent-of-choice, the topic will typically arise on its own, w/o any prompting.
Many agents rely on clever scripts/dialogues to shift a conversation to real estate—but the thing is, if you’re regularly supplying your database contacts w/ valuable insights and information—you won’t have to. Every time you post on social, send an email, mail a postcard, or publish a video that delivers VALUE, in effect, you’re seeding your services.
Some is Better Than None: Operations, Sales, and Marketing
Operations, sales, and marketing — when it comes to running a business, there are a lot of moving parts to manage. But regardless of where you’re at in your business, don’t forget that what got you HERE—though it won’t necessarily get you THERE, so to speak—was nonetheless sufficient to get you this far… and that’s worth acknowledging.
Yes, innovate. Yes, evolve. Of course!—test, measure, and grow your business. But never forget that the results are in the repetition.
It’s like what Bob Dylan said (paraphrase): “Everything worth doing takes time. You have to write a hundred bad songs before you write one good one… you have to follow your own star.”
Technically speaking, things only ever get done after they get started -- so start something, execute relentlessly, and scale-up. 📈
Marketing Channels: Where the Leads Call You
You’ve got two choices: generate leads you’ve gotta call to convert OR conduct marketing strategies whereby the leads call you.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with either approach, of course—but in all seriousness—leads that call you sounds like a pretty sweet deal. 🤷
Top 5 Ranking Signals Instagram Measures to Prioritize Posts (2023)
This post was updated on January 9, 2023.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, published a video in which he shared the 5 most important “interactions” IG measures to calculate whether or not a Post, Video, Reel, or Story is worth prioritizing in the feeds. I’ve outlined (and strategized) all five.
End of day, the performance of your next post on Instagram is tied to is ability to generate interactions. Interaction = Visibility. In other words, a post that fails to generate any sort of response/feedback, like views, hearts/likes, swipes, comments, and so forth, simply isn’t going to be circulated widely through the feeds. And, frankly, if your your post isn’t getting shown, it’s as if it was never even posted.
Additionally, Instagram is testing/releasing a couple new filters that’ll enable its users to rearrange what they see in their feeds. The first filter has been dubbed, “Following” which will simply sort the posts of whomever a user follows into a chronological feed. The second is called, “Favorites,” which will enable users to manually select their favorite accounts and prioritize only those accounts’ posts in their feed.
That said, these are additions, not replacements. By default, your Main Feed will continue rank and personalize what you see as it does presently.
So, going forward, there’s gonna be a Main Feed with sorting options (i.e., “Following” and “Favorites”), a Story Feed, an Explore Page, and a Reels Feed. That’s A LOT of feeds!
My thinking is… it’s all the more important to understand the ranking signals IG prioritizes no matter the feed in question. Hence, the top 5 interactions to get your posts to rank:
Top 5 Instagram Interactions
Time-Spent: Just like money is the currency of economies, attention is the currency of algorithms. Literally every algorithm out there—Google, Facebook, etc.—prioritizes content that holds viewers attention. Attention signifies relevance. So, obviously, make content that captivates. But beyond that, utilize post formats that innately hold attention: e.g. subtitled videos, swipe-through carousels, “meatier” captions, and/or talkative comment threads.
Hearts/Likes: Attention speaks volumes, but action, arguably, speaks louder. For example, a user watching a video start-to-finish is definitely a HUGE algorithmic consideration... but a user willing to go, quote-unquote, “on the record” with a "Like"—now that’s next-level. Here’s a simple (or not so simple) question: are you publish-ing content that’s “Likeable?” If you don't know for certain, visit your IG Insights to calculate your Reach-to-Likes ratio.
Comments: Comments put the “social” in social media.” So if a post doesn’t spark much of any dialogue in the comments thread, then chances are, its reach will be comparatively underwhelming. For that reason, when a user comments on your post, always reply! In fact, reply with a question or tag other Instagram users in an effort to stir up a bigger discussion. Conversation cultivates Community.
Saves: People Save (i.e., “bookmark”) posts they want/plan to revisit. Instagram is continuously observing and inferring the presumed interests of its users so that it can prioritize what they see in their feeds respectively—and the Save button is a dead giveaway. People save posts that are useful or offer a lasting value, worth coming back to over-and-again. My advice: if the post warrants it, write-in a recommendation to Save it in your post caption.
Profile-Taps: If a user taps to visit your profile, odds are, it’s someone who doesn’t follow you. Of course, it could be somebody who does, looking to peruse your posts. But regardless, does your profile deliver? As a non-follower scans your page, for instance, do they opt to follow you? That's why it’s critical to dial-in Profile Name, Bio, Link, and Highlights to help convey your story! And, arguably more important than that... it’s ALL about your content—does it compel or repel?
Realtor Marketing Strategies that GAIN VALUE Over Time ⏳
Candidly, one of the major annoyances about marketing, in general, is that it’s seemingly “here today, gone tomorrow.”
Gotta keep posting on social, keep running ads, keep mailing postcards, keep sending emails, and on-and-on it goes -- the never-ending hamster wheel 🐹 of marketing.
To some degree, that’s just in the nature of marketing -- but not ALL marketing. For example, some marketing avenues and channels gain “marketing value” as time passes⏳. I’ve gotta be honest, I like the sound of that!—let’s do more of that kind of marketing. For example:
Reviews, photos, and videos published on your 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞 (GBP). As would-be customers discover your GBP by way of Google Search and Maps, by extension, they’ll peruse the contents of your profile—including (but not limited to) its reviews, photos, and videos.
Keyword-rich videos hosted on your 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗧𝘂𝗯𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 that rank top-of-page in customer searches. High-quality YouTube videos have a wayyyy longer shelf-life than videos posted on other, scroll-based social platforms.
In a way, your 𝐓𝐢𝐤𝐓𝐨𝐤 videos. When a new viewer discovers one of your videos, for instance, TikTok will start to show ‘em more of your videos. What’s more, with TikTok, you have an option to “pin” key videos at the top of your profile grid.
Your 𝗕𝗟𝗢𝗚! Every post on social should ALSO be published as a blog on your website, living on in the afterlife 😇 of SEO. A post (photo, video, or whatever) on Facebook or Instagram, for instance, burns through the feeds w/in a day or so, and then—poof!—it’s over. It’s like the life expectancy of a fruit fly 🪰. A blog, on the other hand, is more like a turtle 🐢— it can rank in Google searches for a good-long while!
What Realtors REALLY Sell (and It ISN'T Houses 🏡)
“If you’re called a great salesperson, you’ve lost.” (Phil Jones, Exactly What to Say)
I just love that quote – because it’s true! Your best sales experiences, no doubt, occurred when you didn’t realize you were being sold. It just felt natural and intuitive.
So if you’re coming off as salesy or pushy, candidly, it’s because you aren’t clear on what you’re selling.
I’d love your feedback to this question: 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗱𝗼 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂?
Instagram Testing a New Pinned Posts Feature
Instagram is testing a new feature: PINNED POSTS.
TikTok has long enabled its users to “pin” videos to the top of their respective pages, and, of course, “pinning” Tweets or Facebook posts is old news. Welp, evidently, it’s time for IG to catch-up.
The question is—assuming the feature gets officially released—what should you pin? My advice: either pin content that provides an ideal first impression of what your page is all about content-wise OR a post/video that outlines the value proposition of of your business.
2 Types of Marketing: Brand-Building VS. Lead-Generation
Let’s talk #MarketingStrategy… Marketing has 2 main purposes: 🅰️ Brand-Building. 🅱️ Lead Generation.
But the question is, in what order?—meaning, are you supposed to build a brand that attract leads OR run campaigns to lead generate and then brand to nurture?
What’s your objective for marketing? Would love to hear in a comment below ⏬
5 Overlooked Channels for Distributing Your Social Media Content in 2022
The fact is, making content entails A LOT of work. So failing to distribute/syndicate that content across the web to be seen by the widest possible audience is, IMO, a crying shame 😭.
Having said all that… publishing content properly (on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and elsewhere), is, in its own right, a MASSIVE undertaking. My advice is to implement a solid distribution system: e.g. a virtual assistant, a third-party publishing software (Sprout, HootSuite, Buffer, Sendible, Creator Studio, et al.), an admin/coordinator, or a combination of any or all three.
Content creation is ½ the battle; content circulation is the balance—and, perhaps, you’re overlooking a few key placements for posting your content.
Here are 5 channels you may be missing:
Make every social media post its own BLOG
Recap the content you publish across social in a weekly EMAIL DIGEST
Publish all your content (photos, videos, etc. — linked to your blog entries) on PINTEREST
Share your content in relevant FACEBOOK GROUPS (but don’t violate any Groups’ rules)
Upload your pictures and videos (30-seconds or less, up to 75MB, and at least 720p) to the Photos section of your GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE
Top SEO Keywords for REALTORS to Rank on Google
Get this… nearly ½ of Google Searches are conducted w/ local📍intent. What’s more, 93% of ALL those “local searches” are, in fact, looking for a local business -- like yours! Question is, does your business rank?—on Google, in Maps, on YouTube, and beyond.
My advice: build-up your SEO by focusing on the right types of 𝗸𝗲𝘆𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀. Details in the video ⤴️
5 Home Buyer Objection Handlers for Realtors (Spring, 2022)
You don’t need me to tell you that it’s a competitive real estate market 😥. Agents have been hustling like crazy: showing properties, writing-up contracts, loosing multiple offers (far too often), and on it goes 🔂. Frankly, it’s all a bit maddening.
Home price escalation, rising interest rates, and limited inventory have caused quite the predicament. And, as a result, lots of home-buyers have grown rather apprehensive about moving forward or not.
No doubt, buying a home is a BIG decision—always has been. And no script or dialogue can quote-unquote, “make” somebody buy a house. (Nor should it.)
Nonetheless, in the midst of a “tough market,” in my opinion, a (respectful) dose of “tough counsel” is appropriate.
Truth is… nobody can go backwards to buy a house in yesterday’s market—nor can anyone assuredly predict how tomorrow’s market will or won’t turn out. Fact is, we only sell houses in today’s market—not yesterday’s or tomorrow’s.
FREE PDF DOWNLOAD: 5 Home-Buyer Objection Handlers (for Realtors)
Objection Dialogues/Ideas
Home-Price Sticker Shock 😱
I can appreciate that… Real estate certainly tends to go up in value. I wonder… What do you think this home will cost, say, a year from now? [Listen] So I guess what matters in the future is whether or not you purchased the property today, right?
This isn’t my “Dream Home” 😔
I can appreciate that… Ever wonder how some people afford houses like {Dream Home}? [Listen] In many cases, it's because they bought a home like {Subject Home}, later sold it, and then reinvested the gains into their dream home. Most people don’t "buy"a dream home—they "trade-up" to it.
Waiting on Interest Rates 📉
I can appreciate that… By nature, rates always rise and fall. The good news is you can refi a mortgage if/when rates go down again. What you cannot do, however, is go back in time to buy a house at today’s prices. Historically speaking, home values nearly always go up.
Looking for a Good Deal 💸
I can appreciate that… In my experience there are two types of home buyers—those who are looking to get a "good deal" versus those who will do whatever it takes to "get the deal." The only question is… how do you define a "good deal," in say, a year from now?
Friend Only Paid $$$ Last Year 🤨
I can appreciate that… In my experience there are two types of home buyers—those who are looking to get a "good deal" versus those who will do whatever it takes to "get the deal." The only question is… how do you define a "good deal," in say, a year from now?
Mindset to Gain More Social Media Followers in 2022
Follower and subscriber counts are important — as long as you’re not buying ‘em. When someone subscribes to your channel or follows your page, it indicates a perceived value in what you’re publishing content-wise.
That said… don’t get hung-up on numbers AND don’t expect the growth to happen overnight. Focus your attention on producing value-packed videos, posts, and stories—and, over time, the pace of growth will quicken.
On the other hand, if your pages are stagnant month-after-month—and you’ve never paid for followers or engagement—perhaps take a second look at WHAT you’re posting, WHEN you’re posting, and/or HOW you’re posting. Not that it’s the same for everyone, but, at the end of the day, your audience is whatever your content attracts 🧲. So perhaps test new types of content.
In addition, here are some simple best-practices for posting to put into effect:
Always pin/tag your location on Instagram and YouTube: e.g. Nashville, Downtown Nashville, etc. Show IG and YT where you content is the most relevant.
Only use 3 - 5 hashtags (in the caption) of your IG posts — and make sure they’re super descriptive of the content you’re publishing. Avoid hashtags you’d “like to rank on” and stick with only what’s relevant to each respective post.
For videos, nail that opening line! Absolutely no dead-time or no self intros because it's mission-critical to hook viewers attention immediately!
Post tons of Reels and TikToks — you really can’t overdo ‘em.
Strengthen your captions and ALWAYS include an engagement-CTA, such as: “Tell me what you think in a comment below.” And reply to each and every comment—no ifs, ands, or buts.
Trending Audio Gives Your Instagram Reels WINGS 🛫
Trending Audio 🎵 gives your Instagram Reels, wings! If you wanna get MORE views 👀 — add (or layer-in) music out of IG’s audio library.
To find trending music/audio:
Tap the “+” button to create a post, choose “Reel,” then tap the 🎵icon and surf through what’s in your “For You” feed.
You can also search audio from w/in IG’s Story creator. Once in your Stories, tap the stickers icon, select Music, and then press Browse option where you can see even more trending music options.
And last, if you stumble on an audio clip you like in someone else’s Reel, just tap the audio artwork in the lower-right corner, and then press the “Save Audio” button.
In the Reels feed, Instagram algorithmically prioritizes what you see based on:
Your historical activity
Past interactions you’ve had w/ the author
Elements w/in the Reel—like its audio, for instance.
If you wanna get the best results out of any social platform, you’ve gotta leverage the latest features and formats.
5 Email Marketing Tips for Realtors (in 2022)
I’m willing to bet you’re not sending enough email. I know, I know—that’s a big statement, especially considering how much email each of us receives on a daily basis. What I mean is, we’re not sending enough VALUABLE email. The fact is, if you poll any group of marketers, chances are, they’ll unanimously vote email as their best performing sales/marketing channel.
Question is, what should you send? Answer: CONTENT 😉. Start to think of email marketing as another channel to distribute your blogs, videos, and social media posts. If you immerse yourself in creating valuable content—tips, advice, and updates about your local marketplace—then no matter where you publish that content, it’ll be received with great enthusiasm. Email included. Why? Because it's valuable/useful.
Now, what to send is one matter—best-practices around HOW to send your email is another. Scan through the stack of images for tips on how to get better performance out of your email marketing campaigns.
Everything Clickable: Since Apple’s release of its Mail Protection Privacy program, Open-Rate metrics are virtually unreliable. Nowadays the Mail app on iOS devices preloads ALL your emails on its “proxy servers,” which email service providers interpret as an open—even if the recipient never did so. So hyperlink your images, text, and so forth so that you can get a better read on who’s consuming your campaigns.
Smartphone Optimized: Year-over-year, mobile email adoption rates continue to soar. That being the case, it’s critical to ensure your email campaigns are outfitted and optimized for smartphone consumption. For example, make sure text is sufficiently sized so it's readable, avoid multi-column layouts in which viewers have to pinch-and-zoom in order to see properly, and make all buttons extra BIG for an easy tap.
Preview Text: When you send an email campaign, there’s an option to customize the “preview text,” which is the sentence-or-two snippet that appears below the sender name and subject line in recipients’ inboxes. If you don’t modify it, by default, it’ll usually say something unfortunate, such as: "Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list." Nooooooo! My advice: customize it!
First-Name Personalization: When someone says or writes, JASON—as would be expected, it get’s my attention. Why? Because that’s my name! It’s simple psychology. My advice: utilize your email service provider’s {FIRST-NAME} merge tag feature so that your bulk emails send out personalized to each and every recipient. It’ll increase your campaign's relevance and, by extension, its performance.
Drop the ”Newsletter:” Not literally. In fact, I think the concept of a newsletter—that is, a recurrent email campaign sharing news, tips, advice, and/or updates related to your business—makes for a fabulous email. However, that being said--whatever you do--DON’T incorporate the word “Newsletter” in your subject line. It’ll get deleted faster than you can type DELETE.
5 Database Marketing Ideas for Real Estate Agents
Your DATABASE of past clients and sphere-of-influence contacts is probably your BEST source of business. Question is, are you, quote-unquote, “working it” sufficiently?
Swipe through the images above to review FIVE marketing ideas to effectively nurture your database.
Weekly Email “Roundup” - Email marketing is WAY underrated—and I know why. It’s because far too many agents are sending out canned, pre-written emails that don’t work. My advice: start to view email as a channel for distributing your content. As you publish blogs, videos, and more, assemble and send out a weekly email digest. It’ll improve your performance metrics and, more importantly, it’ll nurture your database.
Educational Webinars - I'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill "first-time homebuyer" or basic "seller" seminars. I'm talking about much more nuanced, relevant topics. Imagine offering your database contacts monthly (Zoom-powered) webinars, tackling topics like ew construction, negotiating through multiple offers, buying/selling at the same time, and more. Be the knowledge broker!
Outbound Handwritten Notes - Let’s face it: some marketing channels give off a phony vibe. Like, I don’t feel warm and fuzzy when I get a mass text message. “Reply STOP to unsubscribe,” haha 😂. But handwritten notes, I must confess, are pretty-darn touching. Trouble is, they’re high effort!—or, at least, they were. Look at bulk-sending plat-forms like Audience.co, HandWrytten.com, or HandWrite.io.
Google Display Network Ads - Position your brand across the web via the Google Display Network—i.e., the banner ads you see scattered across sites & apps in side-bars, pop-ups, footer-bars, and elsewhere. This’ll help to keep you top-of-mind w/ your database. Head over to Ads.Google.com, create a new ad campaign, and upload your database contacts to the Audience Manager, thereby enabling Google to retarget your peeps.
Home “Equity Updates” - Homes have been & are still appreciating at record pace. That being said, what’s your pro-cess to keep your database contacts in the loop? Perhaps try sending out quarterly “Equity Up-dates”—not as a straight-up sales pitch to list, per se—but as a professional courtesy. After all, they’re your database contacts and so it’s on you to keep them informed about the market. Use an automated tool or run your own comps—either way, it's about sharing the data.
Simple Video Strategy to Output a TON More Videos (for Realtors)
My advice… don’t view VIDEO CREATION as someone else’s job and step in front of that camera 🎥
I not saying you shouldn’t build in layers of support: e.g. videographers, editors, or social media management/distribution. However, at the end of the day, it’s YOUR content—and, in my opinion, you’re not making enough of it! (Granted, I’m not either 🤪)
@MoveMetoTX, for instance, is posting an Instagram Reel daily and @ByronLazine is up to publishing three TikToks per day. And, because of that, their pages are growing rapidly—and, by extension, so are the number of inbound leads and referrals they’re generating.
I know what you’re thinking: “How on earth 🌎 am I supposed to make that many videos⁇”
Thing is, not all videos require the same level of effort/time to produce. Neighborhood tours, on-site interview with local business owners, and videos like that, for instance, tend to be a bit more involved. Contrarily, some types of videos are quick and easy to shoot/edit. Here are a couple of ideas:
🟩 Green-Screen News: Setup news alerts for all-matters real estate as well as anything that impacts your local community. Next, screen-shot or screen-record the article on your phone. After that, head over toto IG to film a Reel, tap the effects ✨ icon in the Reels editor, select Green Screen, and then set the subject article to the background. Finally, press record and “react” to the news. E.g. @therealjeremyknight.
🗣Quick Answers: Write-out a list of like 30+ real estate questions—they sort of questions to which you can extemporaneously riff an an answer on the fly. Also, pick super specific, intriguing questions and stay away from overplayed, “vanilla” topics. Then, set up a camera, tap record, and just start answering the questions one after the next. Once done, send the recording to an editor who can slice ‘em up into individual video files—ideally, vertical videos for Reels and TikToks.
IMO, video is the best marketing medium of all time. If you're w/ me, leave a comment below ⬇️.