By 
It’s about as easy finding leads in today’s market as it was finding toilet paper a year ago. According to a recent report for CNBC, there’s about a 2:1 ratio of listings to agents right now, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. That means that if you want to stay competitive, you need every advantage to win listings, convert clients, and keep your business going. The market is in your hands. Here’s how to make it happen.
The Real Estate Customer Journey
There are three basic phases to every customer’s journey: gathering leads, nurturing them and converting them into clients.
Here’s the breakdown:
Prospecting Leads: online advertising, cold calls, landing pages, website, social media
Nurturing Leads: emails, texts, phone calls, social media
Converting Leads: Seller signs contract, buyer purchases home
For many of you, converting leads is more difficult due to general apprehension about the future of the real estate market. But there are two very important steps in this process you can still be focusing on: prospecting and nurturing.
Analyze and Revise Your Lead Generation
As the trusted advisor, your sphere of influence is looking to you to answer some tough questions, even if they aren’t openly asking them. A picture says a thousand words, and visuals are the single best way to communicate data and hard facts. Instead of trying to explain why the housing market won’t collapse, show them.
Take advantage of tools like Neighborhood Snapshot™ to share market updates on social media. Make sure to add local hashtags and engage with your followers. Not only are you boosting your social media marketing and growing your following, you’re providing relevant market data that educates. It’s a win win.
CRM and Database
There won’t be a better time to organize your database. Don’t have one? Create one. Make sure all your leads are labeled appropriately. That way you have a solid list of promising prospects that you can hit hard and don’t waste time.
The same goes for your email campaigns. If you use an email marketing platform, now is a great time to do a deep dive and see who opens your emails. If they’re interacting, that means there’s potential. If they aren’t, you can probably write them off as a cold lead. On that note, a tone-deaf email could make or break your brand right now. Make sure you go through all of your campaigns and pause any that may send the wrong message.
Website
You should also be taking this time to update your website with the latest information. Create a new landing page addressing the needs of buyers and sellers in the market right now. Update images, include SEO-charged language. Comb through every piece of your site to make sure it reflects your brand and is easily navigable by prospects.
Social Media
This is especially true for social media. If your strategy usually consisted of sharing your listings, this is a good time to pivot. Fill your feed with graphs, charts and quotes that keep your followers informed and promote engagement. Just about every major media outlet has written articles speculating what appreciating home values mean for the market. And odds are, your sphere has seen at least one of them. Now is the time to get in front of speculation and battle doubt with facts, data and expert projections.
For instance, a recent J.P. Morgan report noted that while housing prices have spiked during the last six to nine months, they don’t expect them to fall soon. In fact, they are most likely going to keep rising. However, mortgage rates are also anticipated to keep rising. That means waiting to buy or sell could directly impact a homeowner’s affordability. The key to creating balance in the market and helping inventory catch up with demand is building seller confidence.
Amp Up Your Lead Nurture
Now more than ever, your leads, clients and sphere need to hear from you. They need a trusted advisor. It’s your job, and frankly your moral obligation, to educate them on the market and what it means for their real estate decisions. By keeping your contacts informed with facts and insights about what’s really happening in the market, you’re helping to calm fear while building trust and credibility with your clients.
You can do this by:
- Creating market update videos
- Sharing on social media
- Sending emails
- Sending texts
- Making phone calls
Consumers are out there. The digital space is booming. The agents that are able to adapt and create new business in this environment will not only survive, they’ll thrive as listings pick up.
Bottom Line
With all the uncertainty surrounding today’s housing market, people are searching for answers about where real estate is headed. This is an important time to connect and correct any misinformation with research-backed facts so when everything is said and done, you stand out as a real estate expert that can be trusted.
