This is a hard time to be a real estate agent.
But there is good news. People are still shopping for homes online, and economists are predicting that the market will bounce back quickly. Here’s how to make sure your business does too.
The Real Estate Customer Journey
There are three basic phases to every customer’s journey: Gathering Leads, Nurturing them and Converting them into clients.
For many agents, converting leads is tough right now. But there are two very important steps in this process you can still be focusing on: Prospecting and Nurturing.
- Prospecting Leads: online advertising, cold calls, landing pages, website, social media, etc.
- Nurturing Leads: emails, texts, phone calls, social media, etc.
When this passes, the agents who have done these things will be ready to start back up where they left off.
Analyze and Revise Your Lead Generation
As their trusted real estate expert and advisor, your sphere of influence is looking to you to answer some tough questions, even if they aren’t openly asking them. And while talking and explaining things to your sphere is important, 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, how you can still conduct business during this uncertain time, your virtual buying and selling process, etc., show them.
Here’s how to do it:
- Go to some of the recent graphics that we have emailed to you, shared in our KR Facebook Group and recent blog posts like 5 Simple Graphs Proving This Is NOT Like the Last Time, 3 Simple Ways To Calm Fear In Your Market, 3 Reasons Why This Is Not A Housing Crisis and FBI Warning: ‘Don’t fall victim to stimulus check scams’ . We encourage you to also research and use your own topics and graphics that might serve your spheres.
- Save the images, graphs, etc. to your desktop or phone.
- Copy and paste talking points from each of the graphs, blog posts, emails or social media posts.
- Create a new Instagram, Twitter or Facebook post.
- Upload the image, graph, etc. and insert copy from the blog, email or social media post into the caption. Also add the link back to the blog post or where you got the information from.
- Publish and repeat.
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. When the market picks back up, you’ll have a solid list of promising prospects that you can hit hard.
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 entertained, educated, informed and promote engagement.
These are all parts of your business you typically might not have the time and energy to focus on, but they are extremely important for your brand and lead generation. There’s never been a better time to tackle all the projects you’ve been wanting to.
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.
There have been a lot of frightening headlines and many people expect the worst, but recent data shows that buyers are still looking for homes at nearly the same rate that they were before.
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 when the market returns.
Bottom Line
With all the uncertainty surrounding today’s economic volatility, people are searching for answers about where the housing market is headed. Anxiety sparked from memories of the Great Recession is in full swing, and your clients are looking to you to calm their fears. This is an important time to connect and correct any misinformation with research-backed facts so when everything is said and done, you standout as a real estate expert that can be trusted.