When it comes to real estate investor PPC for motivated sellers campaigns, there tends to be a lot of emphasis on the quality and content of landing pages to increase conversions.
Ready To Get More Leads & Close Your Next Deal? Take Your Business To The Next Level
Your landing page is crucial, but to motivate sellers to visit it, you must first persuade them to click on your ad.
The best landing page will do little good if a seller doesn’t see it.
So, how do you make your Google PPC ads stand out from the rest of the clutter on a Google search result page?
Based on the analysis of over 50 Google Ads accounts, we identified the top 10 commonalities with the highest click-through and conversion rates. Here’s a real example of a high click-through (17.39%) converting motivated seller ad (37.50%)…
After their Google search, that little ad has two to three seconds to grab the house seller’s attention.
You get a small headline and a very short amount of copy to convince the seller your site is worth visiting… and that you can solve their problem.
The better your ads perform, the more clicks you’ll get.
The Top 3 Google PPC Ads Get 2-6% click-through rates. Whereas ads 4 and below average 1-2% On A Google Search Result Page
10 Techniques for Creating High Converting Motivated Sellers PPC Ads
As quickly as possible, you need first to grab their eye; second, show them that you can likely help them, and relay a sense of credibility through the ad to make them feel great about clicking the ad to learn more.
Since you only have a few lines and seconds to relay all that, your ad headline and copy need to trigger an instant response.
Give motivated sellers a reason to click. Here are some practical and ethical triggers I use when creating PPC Ads for Real Estate Investors.
These triggers have helped to yield an average 5% click-through rate and an 18.2% visitor-to-lead conversion rate across Carrot PPC accounts that I manage.
People naturally interact with questions. Often that sense of curiosity piques our interest, and it creates an “open loop” in our minds to want to find the answer to that question. When asking a question in your ad headline, you’re triggering this curiosity and making your ad appeal to them personally. Here are a couple of ad headline examples where I used a question:
Other examples of questions you can pose are…
“Did your listing expire?”
“Need to sell quickly?”
“Is Your House In ?”
You get the idea.
Get creative.
2. If Possible, Use Humor:
Sometimes, this is a little harder in the real estate market. People like to laugh. If your ad headline makes them chuckle, they associate your ad with positive emotion. This creates a more receptive message.
A way to do that may be…
“Is Your House A Total Beater?” Sell As-Is. We’ll Pay For Repairs Get A Fair Cash Offer Today www.YOURURLHERE.com
3. Add Credibility
Call out a BBB rating or how long you’ve been in business. Increased credibility equals increased persuasiveness of the ad overall and strengthens your brand’s quality. This can lead to a higher click-through rate.
4. Go Regional:
Depending on your campaign’s demographics, using regional triggers in your ads, such as city or state names, often pays off. Sellers will automatically relate to the area and build more trust seeing a loc ad. Couple that with a local-looking domain name or URL, and that’s even better!
5. Use Power Words:
Several keywords are known as power words. These words are proven to attract attention and sales. They include words like highest, free, fast, super, fair, now, must save, expert, local, limited, and so on. Create a sense of urgency.
Some ways to use some of those powerful words in your ads include…
“Sell Your Boise House Fast”
“Get Your Fair Fast Cash Offer Today”
“Save time and money. Receive an offer today”
“If You Must Sell Now, We Can Help”
And so on.
Again, get creative and test things out.
6. Mention Guarantees:
Guarantees are mentioned in an ad, such as a guaranteed cash offer or a guaranteed offer in 24 hours.
Here’s a quick disclaimer, but never guarantee anything you can’t 100% confidently fulfill.
Don’t guarantee the “highest offer” in the market unless you’re ready to do that.
Don’t guarantee to “close in 7 days” if you can’t do it.
Capiche?
7. Use Personalization:
Similar to ads asking a question, ads that specifically address the audience are much more likely to gain attention. Such as the title Facing Foreclosure?
Here are some other examples…
In Divorce? Sell Your House Fast Avoid costly broker fees. Sell In 7 Days Or Less. Receive a fast – fair cash offer today
Inherited A Boise House? Cash It Out Trade that house for cash today. Receive a fast-fair cash offer
Are You A Tired Landlord? We’re buying local rental houses Get a fair-fast cash offer today
Get creative.
Now… with that said, if you’re going to personalize your ads, you need to make sure you’re also putting these ads in front of very targeted searches. You won’t want to serve up a “tired landlord” ad to someone searching “sell my house fast” or “we buy houses.”
But you may want to test it out to someone searching “tax consequences of selling rental property” or “selling a rental property“… and targeting it to the locations you would buy.
8. Use Benefits + Story:
Searchers are good at recognizing advertising and blocking it out. So your ads can become more effective if they have a storyline and appear less like an ad.
Also, ensure your ads sell the benefit the homeowner will get by working with you. Too many people just mention the service… “we buy houses, “… “local home buyer,” etc. But the benefit they’ll experience is what they’re after.
A fast sale.
Cash in their hands quickly.
Avoid agent fees.
Avoid stress.
You get the idea.
Some examples…
David Sold His Boise House Fast He avoided agent fees and stress. See how you can to today!
Sell Your House Fast-Cash Need to Sell Fast? Close in 7-Days. We buy houses nationwide, No Cost!
Sell Your Boise House Easily Fair Price – No Fees – No Hassle Any Location – Any Condition
Look at the benefits mentioned in those ads that the seller can get working with us.
avoiding stress
avoiding agents fees
no cost
sell quickly (who doesn’t want that!?)
no hassles
fair
I can sell my house fast and be done w/ it
Focus on the seller’s benefits, and you’ll be golden.
9. Use Emotion and Senses:
As well as personalization, your ads can appeal to the five senses of the seller: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Here’s an example where they can feel the money in their hands.
10. Use A Strong And Clear Call To Action:
It is proven that ads achieve the highest click-through rates if they use a call to action. For example, “sell now,” “offer in 24 hours,” or “close in 7 days”… lay out the benefit they’ll get and how they’ll get that benefit with the call to action.
Additional PPC for Motivated Sellers Ad Copy Advice to Attract Sellers Online
Attract Motivated Sellers with Powerful Ad Headlines The ad headline is likely the utmost important element of your entire ad. It needs to grasp the reader’s attention so they will read the rest of the ad.
Include Intent Keywords To create higher converting headlines, include your keyword in your headline. Keywords have been proven to achieve a higher click-through rate. If a motivated seller sees the keyword they have searched for; your ad is more likely to seem relevant to them and encourage them to read on and click.
Effective PPC Ad Text to Attract Motivated Sellers Once the reader has been drawn in with a solid headline, the rest of the ad needs to persuade them to click on the link that takes them to your landing page, ad text needs to be as relevant as possible. Try to use your target keywords in your ad text and your headline.
Fill In-Display URLs With Keywords While your ad headline and text need to do the core job of convincing the seller to click, your display URL should support your message by logically representing your site. For example, if your ad link takes sellers to a page residing on www.webuy.com/get-a-cash-offer, the display URL should read webuy.com/get-cash-offer.
Use Ad Extensions
As we’ve mentioned in other PPC marketing posts on our blog, test using the ad extensions. We’ve found they can, in some cases, boost your click-through rate a lot… just make sure you have conversion tracking in place, so you know whether those extra clicks are turning into solid leads.
Conclusion
Getting motivated seller leads that convert through PPC or SEO is critical to your survival and growth as an investor.
In the end, conversions are about relevancy – does what you offer to match what they’re interested in, and do you clearly and quickly show them how you can solve their specific problem?
Sometimes it takes various A/B tests to determine what works for your market. Once you find it, keep doing it.
Try these PPC marketing ad ideas out, and let us know the results! One thing you’ll find is that testing new ad copy continually is one of the best ways constantly to improve your PPC marketing results.
Get to work… and let us know what you see works well for you with your PPC ads below in the comments section!
Imagine you build a marketing site to pull in buyers, sellers, or investors. Is your website really amazing? Or is it coming up short when the time comes for closing deals and moving people from browsing to clicking to filling out a contact form?
Ever heard of a heat map? We’ll show you how motivated sellers and buyers interact with your website and how to make sure that more visitors are converted into leads while they’re browsing around.
There are two main problems that we often see on real estate websites:
1) The website is a ghost town…getting no visitors, and
2) The website’s visitors aren’t submitting their information.
The first problem is usually solved with SEO content when:
1) The website doesn’t have good, user-friendly content,
2) The content is not optimized to reach the search terms that people in the local market are actually using, or
3) The site’s competitors are ranking higher in a search.
We have many articles and resources that focus on increasing your site traffic by using SEO, social media, and paid ads. But today is all about the second main problem we see.
What are people doing on your real estate website?
You only get one shot to make a first impression, and your website is that opportunity. In fact, it takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for searchers to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they’ll stay or leave.
Conversions are often overlooked when average people create their websites. Too often they hire designers who focus more on aesthetics than results… those folks need to quit calling themselves marketing experts because they’re artists (most art doesn’t sell).
The following key points can help optimize conversions by positioning your services in clear view so buyers and sellers know what’s available… including credibility that builds trust with potential buyers and sellers… and the rest of the content that can help eliminate fears or uncertainty.
Are you trying to create art or are you trying to get leads?
When you’re setting up your real estate site, it’s not how it looks… but how productive and successful the design is.
Listen, I get in this argument with designers a lot – so please don’t send me a bunch of angry emails about how design matters…I know it’s really important. But honestly? It doesn’t matter if something is “pretty” it doesn’t convert visitors into leads.
One of the many tools that Carrot uses to test out its theories about web design is heat maps. Heatmaps are useful because they allow us at Carrot, and more importantly you as a business owner who has entrusted your hard-earned cash with our system, to measure how successful something on the page will be before we commit any resources towards it. We want to know for sure whether or not what works in theory also translates into reality!
So what’s a heat map anyway, and how can agents and investors use it to generate more leads online?
Back to the point, thanks… in this context, a heat map is a generated picture of where visitors to the website move their mouse and where they click on the page.
Below I’m gonna put a few examples of a heat map that we generated for a user’s site, and give you a few key points on what works so well on this design.
Brittany (the owner of http://sellmybaltimorehousefast.com) sent us a quick email after watching one of our webinars, asking for help getting more leads… we were able to increase the conversion rate by 80+% with just a couple of simple changes.
Check out these heat maps (the site is greyed out, with little points of light showing where people have lingered with their mouse or clicked – the “hotter” the click spot, the more often it’s clicked).
What did you notice on that heatmap?
See all of the bright spots? The green and blue spots are where a lot of people click… indicating things that the motivated sellers felt were really important.
First off, 94% of clicks happen on the top of the page. The vast majority of web visitors to any given site don’t bother to scroll down.
Side note: That statistic is valid across websites in general – on our investment sites, we tend to get about 8 seconds per page on average – 4 times more engagement than average, but still a lightning-fast choice to stay or go. You only have microseconds to reach your target audience – just another reason that your content and design matter so much.
There are a few great lessons to learn right away from this click map….
1) People are clicking in many spots across the homepage. The clicks aren’t just happening in one spot, and visitors to this real estate investing website are finding what they need when they click through for more information. This site is designed specifically with sellers of properties as its audience, so it’s a relief that different types of people – those looking for answers about how they can sell their home, found exactly what they’re looking for on the site!
2) Titles matter. The title of a menu is designed to appeal directly to people who need to sell their house, and this top one has some great ones: “We Buy Houses in Louisville, KY”, “How It Works” and a contact form right on the front page that asks people to put in their address, phone, and email first thing.
3) Visitors want to know about your home buying process before they submit their info. Having a solid “how it works” page can be an integral part of your lead generation strategy.
Have a truly excellent “how it works” page that includes:
A breakdown of your service in a series of simple bullet point steps
Include an informative, personal video
Include testimonials to build credibility and trust
Communicate the benefits they gain by working with you
Here’s an example of a well-thought-out “how it works” page
Where is your credibility on your own real estate websites?
It’s a really common problem that hurts a ton of great real estate agents and investors… when people get to the site they need to have a compelling reason to give over their personal information. Think about it… real estate is the largest investment most people ever make in their lives. There’s no piece of real estate more intimate than someone’s home.
And yet…
So many real estate sites don’t build trust or credibility.
In fact, there are 3 key factors that I wanna mention that are critical to successfully designing a site that converts – and I’ll tell you how we’ve used them to design the Carrot sites like this example that are generating great leads.
Credibility, Content, and Contact
Check out this graphic – I’ve broken down the links on the page into numbers so you can see the percentage of page visitors that clicked on each link type.
Even more great lessons for real estate here…
As you can see, 12% of the clicks are for Credibility, 42% is on the Content (which is written to develop trust and credibility while reducing the fear and anxiety that most people buying or selling a home are feeling), and 46% of the clicks on the home page are actually converting – they’re contacting members using the forms.
Keep in mind that the percentages are recording just clicks on the home page – a lot of other conversions happen on the lead pages that we’ve optimized for the local market. That means that people are most often giving their information over to get a free report, such as a home valuation report, or another valuable tool. 46% of the clicks on the home page aren’t always the main source of leads. It just depends on how the site is being promoted, and where the majority of traffic is directed.
The mix of these 3 factors is critical to a successful lead generation site.
Content is a powerful tool to get your message out, but it needs credibility once people arrive or they won’t contact you.
Content has long been seen as the lifeblood of search engine traffic and so much more for businesses looking to stand out online. However, even though content is king, you must know what happens when someone arrives at their site. What can be done after visitors land on your site in order to make them want to work with you?
BONUS: One Tweak That Could Double Your Conversion Rate
One more thing… this one simple tweak that we did on hero sections doubled conversions… it’s so crazy simple that we were totally surprised that it worked so well.
We actually removed content from the hero sections to move the form up on mobile devices.
Yup, that’s it.
Even after doing this stuff for many years, it’s crazy to see what a big difference such a small change can make.
That’s why we’re constantly testing different sites.
We create websites that give your business the edge with a no-nonsense approach.
We’re all about giving clients an advantage, so we design effective and user-friendly sites to stand out from the competition. We want our work to be as engaging for visitors on desktop or mobile devices alike; you never know what device they may use in order to find your site! In fact, over 60% of Carrot member leads come from mobile.
This Is All Built Into Your Carrot Websites Already!
The best thing about using Carrot is that you don’t have to worry about managing any of the technical aspects. We’re constantly running tests with our members and making tweaks in order to make sure your experience on this platform goes smoothly.
We believe in results over anything else and are continually improving our system to help you get better results.
We’re constantly posting tips, tricks, and techniques we use to improve SEO, conversions and get great results for Carrot members. So if you’re not already getting our weekly blog emails, make sure you sign up now! And if you want a website that truly generates leads for your business, go check out our plans to join Carrot and leverage our marketing knowledge and testing to generate more leads for your own real estate company.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “conversion rate” tossed around quite a bit over the years. And that can be a great thing if you’re testing your conversion rates… but not so good if it’s inaccurate and you follow the next “guru” advice blindly without running your tests (or for Carrot members, we do this for them).
Carrot is one of the leading real estate website platforms. We are confident that our members generate 60,000+ leads per month through our platform and nearly 1.7 million sessions each month because we have such an extensive data set available to us from which to conclude.
So first… let’s dive into the basics of conversion rate (specifically for a real estate investor website). Then we’ll dive into why it’s important, how to do it right, and give you a few resources we use to improve our conversion rates.
What Is Conversion Rate?
The “conversion rate” on your website is simply the ratio between the number of people who land on your website vs. the number of people who “convert” on your website to become a lead.
That could be a cash buyer lead, motivated seller, tenant, or private lender.
The “conversion rate” is pretty simple to calculate.
If you have 100 visitors to that page and 15 of them put in their info on that page and opt-in as a lead for you, that is a 15% conversion rate.
In other words, it’s…
Conversion rate percentage = (Number of people who converted on your website / Number of visitors to your website) x 100
At Carrot, we’re constantly testing our customer’s websites to see what converts visitors best.
A Test In Progress On A Carrot Members Website: This is a shot from an actual test we’re running on a motivated seller website.
How Do You Find Out The Conversion Rate?
There are a few ways to determine your website’s conversion rate.
The easiest and most accurate is using a software tool… like the one we use… VWO.com (about $49/month and easy to use).
You have to get a bit of code from the software, put it on your website (really easy to do inside a Carrot account – hit up our support if you need help), and then set up the test in the software. Let the traffic come in; it’ll tell you how many people convert as a lead.
It may take you a few hours your first time to set up a test, and unless you’re getting 100 visitors to your website each month, it’s probably not worth setting up a test (it would take many, many months to come up with any real info because your traffic is so low).
If you’re on a budget and are not a tech person, you can count the number of leads you had in a specific period — then look up the # of visitors in that period on your analytics and divide the two.
*Or, if you’re a Carrot member… and you’re getting over 500 visitors a month to your site and 15+ leads a month, we’ll do your conversion rate and optimization testing for you! Just let us know through support.
What Is A Good Conversion Rate For A Real Estate Investors Website?
One of the biggest misconceptions we hear all the time (and I once thought the same thing) about conversion rates from our members… is that there is a “normal” conversion rate for a website in our industry.
I wish there were.
But in reality… there are so many factors that can affect how many people convert on your website into a lead that a good conversion rate for a motivated seller website… isn’t a good conversion rate for a cash buyer website or rent-to-own website.
Factors include:
Where the visitor is coming from before they hit your website. Are visitors finding your website organically through social media or paid ads? *Paid ad conversion rates can also be deceptive. A Google Ads campaign targeting a state or national can have different (usually higher) conversion rates compared to a local campaign
Whether or not your site is set up to convert well (like all of our Carrot sites are)
Credibility on your website… High-quality testimonials can increase your conversion rate by 34%
Colors
Your logo can sometimes make or break conversions
Button CTA… Changing your CTA can increase the conversion rate by 49.5%
On one cash buyer test we ran… at one point, that website was converting almost 40% of all people who landed on the page to a cash buyer lead (picture of test results mid-way through below):
Cash Buyer Conversion: Results mid-way through a “split-test” on a cash buyer website for one of our InvestorCarrot members. That is a pretty darn high conversion rate… even for a cash buyer website (we’ve worked hard to get our Carrot websites converting high – that’s why so many people LOVE having their websites on Carrot). But later in that same test, the conversion rate settled in the mid-’20s.
Why?
In this case, the website didn’t change… it was mainly a “traffic issue.” She started doing Craigslist marketing which tends to yield a higher volume of traffic but a lower conversion rate.
But on average… we’re seeing cash buyer websites (when people drive the visitor to our home pages which are geared to convert well) convert between 20-40% of visitors to a cash buyer with quality traffic.
Motivated Seller Website Conversion Rates
We’ve heard people ask if our motivated seller websites are converting at “25% as they used to 5 years ago,” and the answer is no, they’re not.
5, 6, 7 years ago, before every investor on the block had a website, before 50%-60% of all searches were on cell phones (and most websites aren’t optimized for mobile). During the recession, when hoards of sellers were in dire straights and just needed out (and were willing to opt into any and every website online they could find to get out of the situation fast), the conversion rates on a motivated seller site could consistently reach 20% or more.
And that’s a stellar conversion rate for a motivated seller website.
But times and markets have changed a lot, even over a year, and conversion rates are a bit softer for motivated sellers.
Sellers today have more choices regarding websites to engage with online and are pickier with who they’ll work with. They want to see a website that feels credible, that they can trust, and that is easy to use.
So we’re seeing motivated seller websites (depending on the quality of traffic they’re sending to the site, and what they have done to their site to improve / decrease the conversion rate) convert from 7% to 20%. 20% is an outlier… and only with organic search traffic (SEO) or direct type in traffic.
What We Consider Average For A Seller’s Website (Your Site Should Convert At Least 8-10%)
Lots of House Seller Leads: This website is a highly trafficked home buyer’s website. We’re building some of our “Carrot Magic” into his website. The same stuff that’s already built into our Motivated Seller websites for our Carrot members.
And another…
What We Consider Solid For Sellers
A Surprising Video Test: This test is on a Carrot member’s website that gets 100% of its traffic from SEO (using our 3 Lead Per Day Training). But we ran a test recently to see if a video would increase the conversion rate on her website — the result is surprising :-)
And another…
What We Consider Stellar (this rarely happens long-term on a website) during this test, this Carrot member got a GREAT stretch of quality traffic. The test is still early… so the rate will likely dip below 20%.
Conversion Rate: This is a shot from an actual test on a motivated seller website.
All in all, you should shoot to have your motivated seller website convert at least 10% of your visitors to leads at a minimum… and work your way toward a 15-20% conversion rate (for a quality lead) on the top end in today’s environment with building solid credibility on your website, great quality traffic.
In a recent conversion test on motivated seller sites, we also found a potential 55% conversion rate increase by making one simple change to the hero section.
Conversion Rate: Hero sections that increased conversion rates by anywhere from 25 to 55%
Rent to Own / Tenant Buyer Website Conversion Rates
Rent-to-own tenant buyers and tenants of rental properties tend to convert pretty darn well when they land on a website set up to convert (like our Carrot sites are). A tenant (or even buyer) tends to be putting in their info on your site to see available properties… so it’s a much lower commitment than a seller’s decision to sell their house to someone.
A Solid (But standard on Carrot) Conversion Rate For a Rent-To-Own Site
Rent To Own Leads Flowing In: In this test on a rent-to-own website of a Carrot member, you can see in the early stages of the test their site is converting on average close to 40%. This isn’t out of the norm on our rent-to-own websites.
Our rent-to-own websites have been performing well. After several rounds of testing (and we continue to test and improve these sites for our customers each month), we tend to see tenant buyers converting between 20-40% on the website.
One member’s website even had a string of several months (and several hundred leads) where their site converted nearly 50%. Their traffic was very high quality coming from a Facebook campaign.
Summing Up The Basics Of Conversion Rates For Real Estate Investor Websites
Improving the conversion rate of our Carrot platform is something we love to do, and it’s fun.
We’re running 50 tests on our Carrot member’s websites… actively working to improve the conversion rate of our platform every month. We do the same thing for our real estate agent websites, too!
Hit Me With Your Conversion Rate Questions Below!
So… do you know the conversion rate on your website? If so, hit me with a comment below! If not, hit me with your URL, and we’ll look at your site and give you some feedback.
And as always, if you feel Carrot may be a fit for your real estate websites and want better results online, we’d love to have you in the Carrot community. Check out our plans and hit us up with questions anytime!
Real estate direct mail marketing is one of the most tried and true methods for investors and agents to generate leads and find deals.
Unfortunately, some mail ends up in the trash without a second look. Mailboxes have become so overcrowded that unopened envelopes get pushed to the side.
Join Our 30 Day Authority Building Challenge: Dominate your market, build a consistent and predictable lead flow, and earn more income.
The average mailbox is packed with junk mail, bills, and other correspondence from various sources telling you about deals or offering their services. It can be easy for an envelope containing information on real estate opportunities to land in one corner, forgotten amongst all this noise – which means missing out on potential leads!
Your only chance of sending successful direct mail is to target the right audience at the right time with the right message. How?
Let’s not waste any more time. Here are 15 tips for getting the most out of your real estate direct mail campaign.
15 Real Estate Direct Mail Tips from Industry Experts
Tip 1: Define Your Target Audience
Importance of Defining Target Audience: Defining your target audience is the foundation of any successful marketing campaign, including real estate direct mail. Understanding who your ideal recipients are allows you to tailor your messaging and design to resonate with them.
By targeting the right audience, you can increase the effectiveness of your direct mail efforts and maximize your return on investment.
Advice on Identifying and Segmenting Target Demographics: Conducting thorough research and analysis is crucial to define your target real estate direct mail audience effectively. Start by examining your current customer base and identifying common characteristics, such as demographics (age, income, location), behaviors, and preferences.
Additionally, consider the specific properties or services you offer and the unique needs of your target market.
Once you understand your audience, segment them into distinct groups based on relevant criteria. This segmentation allows you to create personalized messaging and offers that speak directly to the needs and interests of each segment. Utilize data analytics tools and CRM systems to track and analyze customer interactions, preferences, and feedback, further refining your targeting strategy.
By defining your target audience and segmenting them effectively, you can ensure that your real estate direct mail campaigns reach the right people with the right message, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
Tip 2: Craft Compelling Messaging
Creating Engaging Content for Direct Mail: In real estate direct mail, the content you deliver to your audience is paramount. Your messaging serves as the primary vehicle for communicating your value proposition, highlighting property features, and ultimately convincing recipients to take action.
Engaging content captures attention, sparks interest, and drives desired behaviors, making it a critical component of any successful direct mail campaign.
Tips on Writing Effective Copy and Headlines: When crafting messaging for your real estate direct mailers, it’s essential to focus on clarity, relevance, and persuasion. Here are some expert tips to help you write compelling copy and headlines:
Know Your Audience: Tailor your messaging to resonate with your target audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points. Use language and tone that speaks directly to their interests and aspirations.
Lead with Benefits: Highlight your properties or services’ unique benefits and value propositions. Focus on how your offerings can solve problems, fulfill desires, or improve the lives of your audience.
Keep it Concise: In direct mail, brevity is key. Capture attention with concise, punchy headlines and copy that get straight to the point. Avoid unnecessary jargon or fluff and aim for clarity and simplicity.
Create Urgency: Incorporate language that instills a sense of urgency or scarcity to motivate recipients to act quickly. Limited-time offers, exclusive deals, and time-sensitive incentives can encourage immediate responses.
Use Compelling Headlines: Your headline is the first thing recipients will see, so make it count. Craft attention-grabbing headlines that pique curiosity, evoke emotion or address a specific pain point or desire.
Include a Clear Call to Action (CTA): Every piece of direct mail should include a clear and compelling call to action that tells recipients exactly what you want them to do next. Whether visiting a website, scheduling a showing, or contacting you for more information, make your CTA prominent and easy to follow.
By following these expert tips and techniques, you can create compelling messaging that resonates with your audience, drives engagement, and ultimately leads to successful real estate direct mail campaigns.
Tip 3: Use Eye-Catching Design
The Role of Design in Direct Mail Success: In real estate direct mail, design captures recipients’ attention and conveys your message effectively. Your mailers’ visual appeal can significantly impact their effectiveness and determine whether they are opened, read, and acted upon.
A well-designed direct mail piece grabs attention and communicates professionalism, credibility, and value, instilling confidence in your brand and offerings.
Advice on Creating Visually Appealing Mailers: When designing your real estate direct mailers, there are several key principles and best practices to remember. Here are some expert tips to help you create visually appealing mailers that stand out:
Focus on Branding: Ensure that your direct mailers reflect your brand identity, including your logo, colors, fonts, and overall aesthetic. Consistent branding helps reinforce brand recognition and trust among recipients.
Choose High-Quality Imagery: Incorporate high-quality images that showcase your properties or services in the best light. Use professional photography to highlight key features, amenities, and unique selling points.
Utilize White Space: Don’t overcrowd your mailers with too much text or imagery. Utilize white space strategically to create balance, clarity, and visual interest. White space helps draw attention to key elements and prevents the design from feeling overwhelming.
Prioritize Readability: Ensure that your copy is easy to read and understand at a glance. Use legible fonts, appropriate font sizes, and a clear hierarchy to guide recipients through the content effortlessly.
Add Visual Elements: Incorporate eye-catching visual elements such as icons, illustrations, or graphics to enhance the appeal of your mailers and reinforce your message. Visual elements can help break up text, highlight important information, and create visual interest.
Experiment with Formats: Consider experimenting with different formats, sizes, and folds to make your mailers stand out in the mailbox. Unique formats can grab attention and intrigue recipients, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
Test and Iterate: Don’t be afraid to test different design elements, layouts, and formats to see what resonates best with your audience. Continuously gather feedback, analyze performance data, and iterate on your designs to optimize results over time.
Following these expert tips and principles, you can create visually appealing real estate direct mailers that captivate recipients, communicate your message effectively, and drive desired actions.
Tip 4: Personalize Your Mailers
Personalization in Direct Mail Campaigns: Personalization is a powerful tool in real estate direct mail campaigns, allowing you to tailor your messaging and offers to individual recipients’ specific needs, preferences, and interests.
Personalizing your mailers can create a more meaningful and relevant experience for recipients, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion. Personalized mailers demonstrate that you understand and care about the recipient’s unique circumstances, fostering a stronger connection and sense of trust with your audience.
Tips on Incorporating Personalization Tactics: Effective tactics and strategies are needed when personalizing your real estate direct mailers. Here are some expert tips to help you incorporate personalization into your campaigns:
Use Recipient Names: Address recipients by their names in your mailers to create a more personal and engaging experience. Including the recipient’s name in the headline or greeting can grab attention and make the mailer feel more tailored to them.
Segment Your Audience: Segment your mailing list based on relevant criteria such as demographics, location, interests, or past interactions. By dividing your audience into distinct groups, you can create more targeted and personalized messaging that resonates with each segment.
Tailor Offers and Recommendations: Customize your offers, promotions, and recommendations based on the preferences and behavior of individual recipients. Use data analytics and customer insights to identify relevant offers and incentives likely to appeal to each recipient.
Include Personalized Content: Create personalized content that speaks directly to the recipient’s needs, challenges, or aspirations. Highlight relevant property listings, neighborhood information, or market trends specific to the recipient’s interests and preferences.
Incorporate Dynamic Content: Utilize dynamic content and variable data printing to personalize elements of your mailers, such as images, headlines, and offers, based on recipient data. Dynamic content allows you to create highly customized and relevant mailers at scale.
Follow Up with Personalized Communication: After sending out your mailers, follow up with personalized communication to further engage recipients and nurture leads. Use personalized emails, phone calls, or direct mail follow-ups to continue the conversation and provide additional value.
By implementing these expert tips and personalization tactics, you can create more impactful and effective real estate direct mailers that resonate with recipients personally, driving engagement and results.
Tip 5: Offer Valuable Content
Providing Value to Recipients: Providing valuable content is essential in real estate direct mail campaigns as it helps to establish trust, credibility, and authority with recipients. By offering valuable information, insights, and resources, you position yourself as a helpful and knowledgeable resource in the eyes of your audience.
Valuable content captures attention, keeps recipients engaged, encourages interaction, and fosters positive associations with your brand. Whether it’s educational content, market insights, or helpful tips, providing value demonstrates your commitment to serving the needs of your audience and can ultimately lead to increased engagement and conversions.
Advice on Types of Content to Include: Several effective approaches and content types must be considered when offering valuable content in your real estate direct mailers. Here are some expert recommendations on the types of content to include:
Educational Guides and Resources: Create educational guides, e-books, or resource kits that provide valuable information and insights about buying, selling, or investing in real estate. Topics could include home buying tips, seller’s guides, neighborhood profiles, market trends, and investment strategies.
Market Updates and Insights: Share relevant market updates, industry trends, and local market insights to keep recipients informed and empowered. Provide analysis and commentary on key market indicators, such as home prices, inventory levels, and interest rates, to help recipients make informed decisions.
Property Listings and Showcase: Showcase your available properties or listings in your direct mailers, highlighting key features, amenities, and photos. Include detailed property descriptions, virtual tours, and interactive elements to engage recipients and encourage them to explore further.
Client Testimonials and Success Stories: Share client testimonials, success stories, and case studies to demonstrate your track record of success and the value you’ve delivered to past clients. Highlight positive experiences, outcomes, and testimonials to build trust and credibility with potential prospects.
Helpful Tips and Advice: Offer practical tips, advice, and how-to guides on topics relevant to your audience’s interests and needs. Provide actionable home maintenance, staging, landscaping, and renovation tips or advice on navigating the buying or selling process.
Exclusive Offers and Promotions: Provide exclusive offers, discounts, or promotions to incentivize recipients to take action. Offer special deals on services, incentives for referrals, or limited-time discounts on properties to create a sense of urgency and encourage engagement.
By including valuable content in your real estate direct mailers, you can provide recipients with useful information, insights, and resources that demonstrate your expertise, build trust, and drive engagement. Offering value enhances the effectiveness of your direct mail campaigns and strengthens your relationship with your audience over time.
Tip 6: Include Clear Calls to Action
Guiding Recipients to Take Action: Clear calls to action (CTAs) are essential in real estate direct mail campaigns as they guide recipients on what action to take next. Whether scheduling a showing, visiting a website, or contacting you for more information, a well-crafted CTA prompts recipients to engage with your brand and move closer to conversion.
Without a clear CTA, recipients may be unsure of what steps to take, resulting in missed opportunities and ineffective campaigns. By including clear and compelling CTAs in your direct mailers, you can encourage recipients to take the desired action and drive results for your business.
Tips on Crafting Effective Calls to Action: Effective calls to action require careful language, placement, and design consideration. Here are some expert tips to help you create compelling CTAs that drive action:
Be Clear and Specific: Your CTA should clearly state the desired action and specify what recipients should do next. Use actionable language such as “Call Now,” “Schedule a Tour,” or “Visit Our Website” to prompt immediate action.
Create a Sense of Urgency: Incorporate urgency into your CTAs to motivate recipients to act quickly. Use phrases like “Limited Time Offer,” “Act Now,” or “Don’t Miss Out” to create a sense of urgency and encourage immediate responses.
Highlight Benefits: Communicate the benefits of action to incentivize recipients to engage. Whether saving time, finding their dream home, or accessing exclusive offers, emphasize the value proposition of taking action.
Make it Visually Stand Out: Ensure your CTA stands out from the rest of the mailer. Use contrasting colors, bold fonts, or visual elements such as arrows or buttons to draw attention to the CTA and make it easy to find.
Keep it Simple: Keep your CTA concise and easy to understand. Avoid using overly complicated language or multiple CTAs competing for attention. Focus on one clear and compelling action that you want recipients to take.
Place it Strategically: Position your CTA in a prominent location where it’s highly visible and easily accessible. Place it near the top or bottom of the mailer, and consider repeating it throughout the content for maximum impact.
By following these expert tips and best practices, you can create clear and compelling calls to action that prompt recipients to take action and drive the desired results for your real estate direct mail campaigns.
Tip 7: Test Different Formats and Messages
Benefits of A/B Testing: A/B testing, or split testing, is a valuable strategy in real estate direct mail campaigns that allows you to compare different formats and messages to determine which resonates most with your audience.
By conducting A/B tests, you can gain insights into what elements of your mailers most effectively drive engagement and conversions. Testing different formats, messages, designs, and offers enables you to optimize your campaigns for maximum impact and ROI.
A/B testing provides valuable data and insights to inform future campaign decisions, helping you refine your approach and improve results over time.
Advice on Testing Strategies and Tools: Implementing effective A/B testing strategies requires careful planning, execution, and analysis. Here are some expert tips and tools to help you conduct successful A/B tests in your real estate direct mail campaigns:
Define Clear Objectives: Define clear objectives and hypotheses for your A/B tests. Determine what specific elements you want to test (e.g., messaging, design, offer) and what metrics you will use to measure success (e.g., response rate, conversion rate).
Test One Variable at a Time: When conducting A/B tests, focus on testing one variable at a time to isolate the impact of each element. This allows you to assess individual factors’ effectiveness and avoid confounding variables.
Split Your Audience: Divide your mailing list into random, equal-sized segments to create test and control groups. Send different variations of your mailers to each group and track their performance separately to determine which version performs better.
Track and Analyze Results: Monitor the performance of your A/B tests closely and track key metrics to measure the impact of each variation. Use analytical tools and software to collect and analyze data, identify trends, and draw meaningful insights from your test results.
Iterate and Optimize: Use the insights gained from your A/B tests to iterate and optimize your future mailers. Implement changes based on successful variations and continue to test and refine your approach over time to improve results.
Utilize Testing Tools: Take advantage of A/B testing tools and software available to streamline the testing process and gather actionable insights. Tools like Google Optimize, Optimizely, and Mailchimp’s A/B testing feature offer robust functionality for designing and analyzing experiments.
By incorporating A/B testing into your real estate direct mail campaigns and following these expert strategies, you can gain valuable insights, improve campaign performance, and optimize your marketing efforts for success.
Tip 8: Integrate Direct Mail with Digital Marketing
Integrating Direct Mail with Digital Channels: In today’s digital age, integrating direct mail with digital marketing channels is essential for maximizing reach, engagement, and conversion opportunities.
By combining the strengths of both offline and online channels, you can create cohesive and multi-dimensional marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience across various touchpoints. Integrating direct mail with digital channels allows you to leverage the unique benefits of each medium while complementing and reinforcing your messaging for greater impact.
From driving website traffic and capturing leads to nurturing prospects and tracking campaign performance, cross-channel integration enables you to create a seamless and immersive brand experience for your audience.
Tips on Cross-Channel Marketing Strategies: To effectively integrate direct mail with digital marketing channels, consider implementing the following expert tips and cross-channel marketing strategies:
Consistent Branding and Messaging: Ensure consistency in branding and messaging across all channels to create a cohesive and unified brand experience for your audience. Align your direct mailers with your digital assets, such as your website, social media, and email, to reinforce your brand identity and messaging.
Use QR Codes and Personalized URLs (PURLs): Incorporate QR codes and personalized URLs (PURLs) into your direct mailers to seamlessly bridge the gap between offline and online interactions. QR codes can direct recipients to specific landing pages or digital content, while PURLs can track individual responses and personalize the user experience.
Promote Social Media Engagement: Encourage recipients to connect with your brand on social media platforms by including social media icons, handles, or hashtags in your direct mailers. Drive engagement by promoting user-generated content, hosting contests, or sharing exclusive offers on social channels.
Retargeting and Remarketing Campaigns: Implement retargeting and remarketing campaigns to re-engage recipients who have interacted with your direct mailers but have not yet converted. Use digital tracking tools and cookies to deliver targeted ads and personalized content based on user behavior across digital channels.
Email Follow-Up Sequences: Create email follow-up sequences to reinforce your direct mail messaging and nurture leads through the sales funnel. Send personalized emails to recipients engaged with your direct mailers, providing additional information, offers, or incentives to encourage further action.
Track and Measure Campaign Performance: Utilize tracking tools and analytics to monitor the performance of your cross-channel marketing campaigns. Measure key metrics such as response rates, website traffic, conversion rates, and ROI to assess the effectiveness of each channel and optimize your marketing efforts accordingly.
You can enhance the reach, effectiveness, and overall success of your real estate marketing campaigns by implementing these cross-channel marketing strategies and integrating direct mail with digital channels.
Tip 9: Monitor and Analyze Results
Tracking and Analyzing Campaign Performance: Monitoring and analyzing campaign performance is crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of your direct mail efforts and optimizing future marketing strategies.
Tracking key metrics allows you to assess your campaigns’ impact, identify improvement areas, and make data-driven decisions to achieve better results.
By analyzing campaign data, you can gain valuable insights into customer behavior, campaign effectiveness, and ROI, enabling you to refine your approach and maximize your marketing investment.
Advice on Key Metrics to Monitor: When monitoring and analyzing direct mail campaign results, focusing on key metrics that provide insights into campaign performance and effectiveness is essential. Here are some expert-recommended metrics to monitor:
Response Rate: Measure the percentage of recipients who respond to your direct mail campaign by taking the desired action, such as visiting a website, calling a phone number, or making a purchase. A higher response rate indicates greater campaign engagement and effectiveness.
Conversion Rate: Track the percentage of recipients who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or scheduling a consultation, as a result of your direct mail campaign. A higher conversion rate indicates that your campaign effectively drives desired outcomes and generates tangible results.
ROI (Return on Investment): Calculate the return on investment for your direct mail campaign by comparing the cost of the campaign to the revenue generated or cost savings achieved. A positive ROI indicates that your campaign generates value and contributes to your bottom line.
Cost per Acquisition (CPA): Determine the cost per acquisition by dividing the total campaign cost by the number of new customers or leads acquired due to the campaign. Monitoring CPA helps you assess the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your acquisition efforts.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Evaluate the long-term value of acquired customers by calculating the average revenue generated from a customer over their lifetime. Monitoring CLV helps you prioritize high-value customer segments and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.
Response Attribution: Analyze response attribution to understand which channels, messages, or offers drive the most responses and conversions. You can optimize future campaigns for better results by identifying the most effective tactics.
By tracking and analyzing these key metrics, you can gain valuable insights into the performance of your direct mail campaigns, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions to enhance your marketing strategy and drive success.
Tip 10: Use High-Quality Materials
Using Quality Materials for Mailers: The quality of materials used in your direct mail campaign can significantly impact its effectiveness and perception among recipients. High-quality materials enhance the visual appeal of your mailers and convey professionalism, credibility, and value to your audience.
Investing in premium materials demonstrates your commitment to delivering a superior experience and reflects positively on your brand reputation. Additionally, durable and well-crafted materials are more likely to withstand handling and transportation, ensuring that your message reaches recipients intact and leaves a lasting impression.
Tips on Selecting Materials and Printing Options: When selecting materials and printing options for your direct mail campaign, consider the following expert tips to ensure optimal results:
Paper Quality: Choose high-quality paper stock that is thick, durable, and has a professional finish. Opt for paper with a weight of at least 100 lbs to give your mailers a substantial feel and prevent them from appearing flimsy or cheap.
Finish and Coating: Select a finish and coating that enhances your mailers’ visual appeal and tactile experience. Glossy finishes can add color, shine, and vibrancy, while matte finishes offer a sophisticated, understated look. Consider incorporating special coatings such as UV coating or spot varnish to highlight specific elements and add a touch of elegance.
Printing Technique: Explore different printing techniques, such as offset printing, digital printing, or letterpress, to achieve the desired quality and effect for your mailers. Offset printing provides high-quality, consistent results for large-volume runs, while digital printing offers flexibility and customization for smaller runs and variable data printing.
Color Selection: Use vibrant colors and high-resolution graphics to capture attention and create visual interest. Choose colors that align with your brand identity and evoke your audience’s desired emotions and associations. Consider incorporating color psychology principles to influence perception and response.
Texture and Finish: Experiment with textured papers, embossing, or foil stamping to add depth, dimension, and tactile appeal to your mailers. These tactile elements create a sensory experience that engages recipients and makes your mailers stand out.
By prioritizing quality materials and printing options in your direct mail campaign, you can elevate the perceived value of your brand, enhance engagement with your audience, and maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Tip 11: Leverage Data for Personalization
Role of Data in Personalization: Leveraging data for personalization is essential for creating targeted and relevant messaging that resonates with your audience.
Data-driven personalization allows you to tailor your direct mail campaigns to individual recipients’ specific needs, preferences, and behaviors, increasing engagement, response, and conversion rates.
By harnessing the power of data, you can segment your audience, customize your messaging, and deliver personalized experiences that drive meaningful interactions and foster stronger connections with your prospects and customers.
Advice on Leveraging Data for Targeted Messaging: To effectively leverage data for targeted messaging in your direct mail campaigns, consider the following expert advice:
Collect Relevant Data Points: Collect relevant data points about your audience, including demographics, psychographics, purchase history, browsing behavior, and engagement metrics. Use internal and external data sources to build comprehensive customer profiles and gain insights into their preferences and interests.
Segment Your Audience: Segment your audience into distinct groups based on common characteristics, preferences, or behaviors. Use segmentation criteria such as age, gender, location, buying behavior, or product interests to create targeted audience segments that allow you to deliver personalized messaging to each group.
Dynamic Content Personalization: Implement dynamic content personalization techniques to tailor your messaging and offers to the unique attributes of each recipient. Use variable data printing (VDP) to dynamically generate customized content based on individual customer data, such as personalized greetings, product recommendations, or exclusive offers.
Behavioral Targeting: Leverage strategies to deliver relevant messaging based on recipient actions, interactions, or engagement levels. Use data-driven triggers and automation to send personalized mailers in response to specific behaviors, such as website visits, email opens, or previous purchases.
Predictive Analytics: Harness the power of predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs and preferences and proactively deliver targeted messaging before they even realize it. Use machine learning algorithms and predictive models to analyze historical data, identify patterns, and predict future behavior, enabling you to tailor your campaigns for maximum impact.
By incorporating data-driven personalization techniques into your direct mail campaigns, you can create more relevant, engaging, and impactful messaging that resonates with your audience and drives better results.
Tip 12: Establish a Consistent Schedule
Consistency in Direct Mail Campaigns: Consistency is key to the success of your direct mail campaigns. Establishing a regular mailing schedule creates a predictable cadence of communication with your audience, which helps build brand recognition, trust, and loyalty over time.
Consistent mailings ensure that your brand stays top-of-mind with recipients and reinforces your marketing message, increasing the likelihood of engagement and response.
Additionally, a consistent schedule demonstrates professionalism and reliability, positioning your brand as a trusted authority in your industry and enhancing your credibility among customers.
Tips on Setting Up a Regular Mailing Schedule: To effectively establish a consistent mailing schedule for your direct mail campaigns, consider the following expert tips:
Define Your Frequency: Determine how often you will send out mailers to your audience based on your campaign objectives, audience preferences, and budget constraints. Consistency is key whether you mail weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Aim for a frequency that strikes the right balance between staying top-of-mind and avoiding over-saturation.
Plan Ahead: Create a comprehensive content calendar outlining your mailing schedule for the upcoming weeks or months. Plan your mailings to ensure a steady flow of content and avoid last-minute scrambling. Consider seasonal trends, holidays, and special events that may impact your campaign timing and messaging.
Stick to a Routine: Stick to your established mailing schedule religiously to maintain consistency and reliability. Set deadlines for content creation, design, printing, and mailing to ensure the timely execution of each campaign. Establishing a routine helps streamline the workflow and ensures that your mailers go out on time, every time.
Monitor and Adjust: Regularly monitor the performance of your direct mail campaigns and adjust your mailing schedule as needed. Analyze key metrics such as response rates, conversion rates, and ROI to determine your schedule’s effectiveness and identify optimization opportunities. Experiment with different frequencies and timing to find the optimal cadence that maximizes engagement and response.
Communicate with Recipients: Keep your audience informed about your mailing schedule and set expectations for when they can expect to receive mail from you. Use email or other channels to communicate upcoming promotions, special offers, or important updates to ensure recipients know your mailings and anticipate them eagerly.
By establishing a consistent mailing schedule for your direct mail campaigns, you can maintain a steady flow of communication with your audience, reinforce your brand message, and drive better results over time.
Tip 13: Follow Up with Recipients
Importance of Follow-Up Communications: Following up with recipients after sending out direct mail is crucial for nurturing relationships, driving engagement, and maximizing the impact of your campaign.
While your initial mailer may capture recipients’ attention, follow-up communications allow you to reinforce your message, address any questions or concerns, and guide recipients toward the desired action.
By staying engaged with your audience through follow-up efforts, you demonstrate your commitment to their needs, build trust and rapport, and increase the likelihood of conversion.
Advice on Follow-Up Strategies: To effectively follow up with recipients after sending out direct mail, consider implementing the following expert strategies:
Multi-Channel Approach: Leverage a multi-channel approach to follow up with recipients through various touchpoints, such as email, phone calls, social media, or personalized landing pages. By reaching out through multiple channels, you increase the chances of connecting with recipients and engaging them on their preferred communication platforms.
Timely Follow-Up: Follow up with recipients promptly after sending out your initial mailer to capitalize on their interest and keep your brand top-of-mind. Aim to follow up within a few days to a week to maintain momentum and reinforce your message while it’s still fresh in recipients’ minds.
Personalized Outreach: Personalize your follow-up communications to resonate with individual recipients and address their needs, preferences, and interests. Use recipient data and insights from your initial mailer to tailor your follow-up messages and offers for maximum relevance and impact.
Provide Value: In your follow-up communications, offer additional value or incentives to incentivize recipients to take the desired action. Whether it’s exclusive discounts, bonus content, or personalized recommendations, adding value encourages recipients to engage further with your brand and move closer to conversion.
Persistent Engagement: Be persistent in your follow-up efforts without being pushy or intrusive. Follow up multiple times over a reasonable timeframe to increase the chances of getting a response or conversion. Use a mix of follow-up tactics, such as reminder emails, follow-up calls, and targeted ads, to maintain consistent engagement with recipients.
By implementing strategic follow-up strategies, you can extend the reach and impact of your direct mail campaigns, nurture relationships with recipients, and drive higher conversion rates over time.
Tip 14: Stay Compliant with Regulations
Adhering to Legal Regulations: Compliance with legal regulations is essential when conducting direct mail campaigns to ensure ethical practices, protect consumer privacy, and avoid potential legal repercussions. Direct mail is subject to various regulations and laws governing consumer privacy, data protection, advertising, and marketing practices.
Failure to comply with these regulations can result in fines, penalties, damage to your reputation, and even legal action against your business. By staying compliant with regulations, you demonstrate your commitment to ethical conduct, build trust with your audience, and safeguard your business from potential risks.
Tips on Compliance and Best Practices: To maintain compliance with regulations and adhere to best practices in direct mail marketing, consider implementing the following expert tips:
Understand Applicable Regulations: Familiarize yourself with relevant regulations and laws governing direct mail marketing in your jurisdiction, including the CAN-SPAM Act, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation), and industry-specific regulations. Stay updated on regulation changes and seek legal guidance to ensure compliance.
Obtain Consent and Permissions: Obtain explicit consent and permissions from recipients before sending them direct mail, especially for marketing communications. Ensure that recipients have willingly opted in to receive your mail and provide clear mechanisms for opting out or unsubscribing from future communications.
Respect Consumer Privacy: Respect consumer privacy rights by handling personal data responsibly and transparently. Safeguard sensitive information, such as names, addresses, and contact details, and adhere to data protection principles when collecting, storing, and processing customer data.
Honor Opt-Out Requests: Honor opt-out requests and unsubscribe requests promptly and efficiently. Provide recipients with easy-to-use opt-out mechanisms, such as unsubscribe links or preference centers, and respect their communication frequency and content preferences.
Disclose Relevant Information: Disclose relevant information in your direct mail communications, including your identity, contact information, and the purpose of the communication. Provide recipients with clear and accurate information about your products, services, offers, and terms and conditions.
Monitor Compliance: Regularly monitor your direct mail practices to ensure compliance with regulations and best practices. Conduct internal audits, review your processes and procedures, and implement controls to mitigate compliance risks. Stay informed about industry standards and emerging trends in direct mail marketing to adapt your practices accordingly.
By staying compliant with regulations and following best practices in direct mail marketing, you can build trust with your audience, protect consumer privacy, and maintain the integrity of your brand while maximizing the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Tip 15: Continuously Improve and Adapt
TheNeed for Ongoing Optimization: In the dynamic landscape of direct mail marketing, continuous improvement and adaptation are essential to staying competitive, maximizing results, and meeting evolving customer needs and preferences.
By continuously optimizing your direct mail campaigns, you can identify areas for improvement, refine your strategies, and enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts over time. Ongoing optimization allows you to stay ahead of the curve, capitalize on emerging trends, and maintain relevance in an ever-changing market environment.
Whether refining your targeting strategies, improving your messaging, or adopting new technologies, embracing a culture of continuous improvement ensures that your direct mail campaigns remain effective and impactful.
Advice on Staying Ahead of Trends and Changes: To stay ahead of trends and changes in direct mail marketing and continuously improve your campaigns, consider implementing the following expert advice:
Collect and Analyze Data: Gather data from your direct mail campaigns, including response rates, conversion rates, and customer feedback, to gain insights into their performance. Use analytics tools to analyze this data and identify patterns, trends, and areas for optimization.
Test and Iterate: Implement A/B testing and experimentation to test different variables, such as messaging, design, offers, and timing, and determine what resonates best with your audience. Iterate your findings and refine your strategies based on the results to improve campaign performance.
Stay Informed: Stay informed about industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies in direct mail marketing. Keep abreast of changes in consumer behavior, regulatory requirements, and technological advancements that may impact your campaigns. Attend industry conferences, workshops, and webinars, and engage with thought leaders and experts to stay ahead of the curve.
Embrace Innovation: Embrace innovation and leverage new technologies and techniques to enhance the effectiveness of your direct mail campaigns. Explore options such as variable data printing, augmented reality, personalized URLs (PURLs), and interactive mailers to create engaging and impactful experiences for your recipients.
Seek Feedback: Solicit feedback from recipients, customers, and stakeholders to gain valuable insights into their preferences, needs, and expectations. Use this feedback to refine your campaigns, address pain points, and deliver a more personalized and relevant experience for your audience.
Stay Agile: Remain flexible and adaptable in your approach to direct mail marketing, and be prepared to pivot quickly in response to changing market conditions, customer feedback, or competitive pressures. Adopt an agile mindset and embrace change as an opportunity for growth and innovation.
By continuously improving and adapting your direct mail campaigns, you can stay ahead of the curve, drive better results, and maintain a competitive edge in the market. Embrace a culture of experimentation, innovation, and learning to unlock the full potential of your direct mail marketing efforts.
Best Real Estate Direct Mail Providers
If you’re a beginner at real estate, you might wonder what tool you should use to create and send your direct mail.
Here are the four of the best direct mail providers:
Given our reader’s interest in sending direct mail, we thought it appropriate to discuss what direct mail strategies work for our clients today.
And then we thought to ourselves, “Hey, we know a lot of real estate investors” (also known as all our AMAZING clients).
So, we asked them what strategies they use when sending direct mail. This is a compilation of their techniques, results, and advice. Here’s what they’re doing.
Frequency
Brad Chandler
Brad Chandler, a real estate investor at Express HomeBuyers, sends direct mail to prospects monthly. To manage high volume, he splits their mailing list into groups and sends a batch of mail to one group each week.
This is a postcard that Brad sends to his list.
Front:
Back:
Daniel DiGiacomo
Daniel DiGiacomo, owner and investor at Baltimore Wholesale Property, sends 10,000 pieces of direct mail every month. Additionally, he sends between 1,000 and 1,500 yellow letters each month. On the yellow letters, he has them designed to look like they’re written by hand.
These are some pieces that Daniel sends regularly.
Response Rate
Emphasizing that direct mail is a numbers game, Brad said,
“Sending out a couple hundred postcards probably won’t get you a deal. We typically see response rates of 0.5%-1.5%. Our leads convert at around 3%.”
Those percentages aren’t uncommon in the direct mail world, with the average across all industries at 4.25% for postcards.
Daniel has somehow surpassed the average response rate with his direct mail campaign. He sees a 7%-10% response rate on his postcards and a 20% response rate on his yellow letters. Appropriately, Daniel claims that his success comes from choosing his mailing list wisely.
Build a Quality List
“List quality is the most important part of direct mail,”
says Daniel,
“I like to target absentee, out of state owners that are likely older (55 and up).”
As for Brad’s list, his data suggests that the best performers are homeowners with 70% and higher equity, out-of-state homeowners, and probate.
Also worthy of note, Brad says,
“Response rates will be highest when you first mail a list. There will be a lot of people asking to be removed from mailings. As you continue to mail the list, response rates will decrease but you will get high quality leads.”
Quality Leads
Edward Beck
As a tip, real estate investor Edward Beck from Quick Sell Buyers explains why quality leads are more important than quantity of leads.
He says,
“The main difference I have from all the others is that my stuff is honest and not smoke and mirrors.”
He believes that honesty matters to prospects today because, in the marketing world, they see so little of it.
“I’m not leading the seller to believe I’m going to pay full price or that they would get a better deal not having a middle man (agent). I believe this is the biggest shortcoming with other mail pieces.”
Indicating that dishonest marketing techniques bring in low-quality leads, he continues,
“Yes they will have a higher response rate but when they make an offer the sellers are in a different frame of mind… The market is flooded with [dishonesty] and I believe [prospects] can smell it.”
Test & Iterate
As with all marketing, testing is key. You can test the copy, images, and postcard style for direct mail.
For A/B testing, Brad explains that sticking with a single postcard makes it much easier to test accurately.
“We think it is smarter to stick with one postcard. The reason is that sticking to one postcard makes it easier to A/B test new ideas.”
But it’s not just testing that counts. The application of the test’s findings makes the difference. On this, Brad says,
“We continuously iterate our copy and design to improve the conversion rate of the winning postcard.”
Supplemental Marketing
Don’t forget to follow up your direct mail campaigns with Facebook Ads, phone calls, and whatever outreach is appropriate.
Having several marketing touchpoints is critical with direct mail. As Brad explains,
“When you target prospects through direct mail, you also want to target them on other marketing channels. To do this, make sure you get emails and phone numbers with your lists. Have VA’s call the prospects right after the mail is delivered. Also, upload your lists onto Facebook as custom audiences spend some money running Facebook ads to your mail lists.”
Additional Real Estate Direct Mail Resources
The real estate direct mail masterclass playlist. Four videos with direct mail experts, Todd Swaggerty of Yellow Letter HQ and Christina Krause of Postal Impact.
Play for the Long Run
All marketing endeavors, including direct mail, are a long-term play. You won’t send your first postcards and overnight spike your sales. But you will steadily increase your brand awareness and lead generation.
Like anything worth doing, it takes time.
Keep that in mind as you apply these tips to your direct mail campaign.
Even though your mail will get thrown in the trash, it’s what happens immediately before that counts.
In this post, we’re going to be diving into a different topic than we usually cover here at Carrot. We usually cover Google organic, Google paid ads, Facebook paid ads, and our clients generate a little over 60,000 organic leads every single month.
Most of those motivated sellers. So we’re going to be tackling from the other side of it, especially since we work with a lot of real estate agents now as well.
Our topic today is how can real estate agents actually use social media better? We dive in with Jason Pantana, coach, trainer, and speaker for Tom Ferry International.
Listen to the podcast
Video Transcript
Trevor:
When we started to pull back and ask ourselves, “Well, shoot, who knows social media better than anyone that we know or have seen?” There’s only one name that popped up for me. I’m like, “We’ve got to get Jason Pantana on.”
Jason works with a mutual members of ours, the Farr Group, who we’ll talk about the Farr Group in this post.
It’s been really cool seeing Aaron and Krista from two years ago even when I first had gotten contact with them. It was within their first year, they weren’t really that big on social.
Farr Group Leads Dashboard with 100s of Leads from Social
Now seeing them become one of the top 10 agents in their whole area in less than three years pretty much using social media and referrals.
And now they’re stacking on the Google organic, it’s amazing stuff.
But I’m going to officially introduce our guest today. Jason Pantana, he’s with the Tom Ferry group, but here’s one of the big things y’all. Tom Ferry has a lot of amazing coaches.
Jason is the guy that I’ve seen referred to over and over again as their social media and online marketing guy. It’s like when they need someone to go in and really talk in a deep way about the online marketing side of it for retail real estate, that’s where Jason comes in.
I’m going to toss over to you, man. For those of you who are maybe in the investor side of our business and aren’t familiar with Tom Ferry International or with you specifically, or if they’re on the agent side and they don’t really know, they’re not familiar with you, who are you, what do you do daily and how did you get into the game of educating agents on growing their social media followings and turn them into elites?
Jason Pantana:
I’ll keep this brief. One, I’m super delighted to get to be here with you. This is going to be a fun conversation I expect. Thank you for inviting me. Again, my name is Jason Pantana, I’m a business coach and marketing trainer for Tom Ferry International.
We provide coaching services predominantly in residential real estate, but just real estate profession as a whole. I’ve got thousands of clients all over the world. I personally coach every day of the week, so I have about 40 clients I coach personally. That’s typically my mornings. I just finished up my morning of coaching, and then I’m here with you guys right now.
In terms of day to day, I spend every morning just in the trenches with agents and I tend to focus my coaching specifically around marketing, all things marketing. I love hearing that you guys talk about Google organic SEO and paid traffic.
I talk about those things too. I spend an extra bit of time, I would argue, on the social media side of content, which is why we’re here today and we’re going to have a blast.
But really the thing I’m focused on, I think you’ll get a pretty quick glimpse of it. If you go check me out on Instagram, for instance, I just post content that I believe is going to help you as an agent in your business. Most of my content is focused on helping you build your sales business.
I’ll be candid about that. As you said, I work with Aaron and Krista Farr. I think you and I started working with them around similar times. It’s been about three years for me, like right when they first started.
One of my first orders of business was getting Krista licensed so she could come into the mix and start being social media amazing, which is what she is.
I love helping agents grow their businesses, by all means digital, but in particular that a lot of success with social, specifically, Instagram has been sort of a wheelhouse for a lot of my clientele.
Just generating bottom of the funnel, inbound, organic leads, which is what I will get into today. I hope that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about marketing.
Unlock Your Instagram Marketing Knowledge
Learn everything that Real Estate Agents need to know to get started with Instagram marketing.
If you are coming in from the Carrot world where we talked about what we call Evergreen marketing.
Evergreen marketing is how do you get off of what we call the marketing hamster wheel long-term and take a lot of that content from your social media and make it evergreen through Google and YouTube so people can find it for a long time.
What we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about how do you come up with great content topics on here with Jason.
We’re going to talk about how to get better reach with your social. Because we use social here at Carrot, even though evergreen is always our foundation, to build that momentum over the long-term with Google.
We use social media big time to build the audience, which then fuels the Evergreen and vice versa.
We’re going to talk about the content topics. We’re going to talk about mistakes agents and likely investors probably make the same mistakes in social. We’re going to talk about big opportunities on the different platforms because Jason is really tuned into all of those.
Where should a real estate agent start with social media?
Jason, let’s dive in first. Starting at the top, we’re going to teach specifically for agents right now, but investors take this and apply this over on the investor side.
Where should an agent start with social? Should they start on Facebook, Instagram? Where should they start where they’re going to get the biggest bang for their time?
Jason Pantana:
All right, so where should an agent start when they’re going to get involved on social?
I would say that the obvious place to start is where you’ve already got your account set up. There was a reason that led you to sign up for Facebook. There was a reason that you got on Instagram.
Whatever it is, I think there’s a component of just go where the crops are already growing.
But the other component I would say is where do you want to dominate? If you want to dominate on TikTok, go dominate on TikTok. Go make your heart sing. If you want to own Instagram, that’s a great spot too.
I will tell you, candidly, I’m a huge fan of Facebook and Instagram. I have clients who do both, so we typically will get into content within those.
I’m a cross-channel distributor of content, so my idea is, getting content mileage. I am not one of those people who thinks you should create content specifically for LinkedIn, specifically for TikTok, specifically for YouTube.
I think you have to take your content, build it in a lab and then optimize it for delivery across those different channels.
But I want to say from the starting point your content should be representative of your brand, your objectives in terms of what you want out of social and can go everywhere.
In terms of a platform to get started, I would personally pick Instagram. I teach my clients on Instagram the everywhere strategy.
The reason I choose Instagram is twofold.
One, it’s pretty democratic in the sense that it has a wide array of different types of posts. I can do photo posts, I can do carousels, I can do short-form vertical videos called reels. I can do long-form videos called IGTV. It has DMs, it has comments and shares and stories.
It’s got the whole types of content I might create. I like to use it as sort of my starting point and then distribute from Instagram to everywhere. I also like it because it sounds better to say Instagram to everywhere, then Facebook to everywhere. But if you want to go to Facebook first, be my guest. That’s going to work for you as well.
But I would also encourage agents to actually shift their mindset from saying, “I have to pick a platform,” and instead say, “You know what, let’s create a space where I’m optimized across all the channels I want to be on.”
Right now we don’t know where the consumer is. It could be anywhere and everywhere, and in fact, I would love for them to see me on multiple channels because that’s going to create a frequency illusion where they think they see more of me and I have more top of mind awareness.
My advice to you would be is focus, not on the platform so much as what’s the content you’re going to produce.
What are you committed to?
What makes you excited in terms of content to make?
Then just get your accounts set up and lay out the distribution path from Instagram to everywhere.
Post it natively to Facebook, to LinkedIn, to YouTube, you name it.
Trevor:
That’s perfect because, all too often, we’ll hear someone say, “Hey, this is the path.” But, like you’re saying, everyone is a little bit different.
Someone might really resonate with Facebook and how it’s used and vice versa. You’d mentioned the content side. That’s where I’m sure you see it every day, especially, with your new coaching students but we see it all the time too, is people go, “Shoot, what do I create content on?”
We’ve got a model here at Carrot that’s mainly aimed around the organic side of things. But what would you suggest for an agent or an investor in this case too, what should their first pieces of content be? What should that cadence look like? Is it mostly personal stuff, mostly business stuff, is it a mix?
Jason Pantana:
Okay, so let’s talk about the personal versus professional dichotomy first, which a lot of people have cited Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Right Hook concept, which was a brilliant concept. But it was pre some algorithmic changes that occurred a couple of years ago.
What I’ve noticed is when people are still operating on the, “Okay, I’m going to do three personal posts and one professional post.” Like clockwork, it’s nothing but crickets when it comes time for the professional post.
So at the end of the day, every post is judged by the algorithm. It’s not so much about like, “Well, I got so many hearts and likes on this kindergarten graduation picture, but nobody cares about my new listing or whatever it is.”
That doesn’t work anymore, so instead what I about with people is you got to blend the story of your business and your life.
They got to be blended together.
Some of my best clients who are really like they’re cleaning up on social media, I’m thinking of Glenda Baker, for instance. She’s in Atlanta, Georgia. She’s probably close to a million followers on TikTok now. Her TikTok growth has been insane. She’s got about 50,000 on Instagram, growing like crazy.
She’s getting DMs and PMs and all kinds of pings for people who want to list their properties, buy their properties, agents making referrals.
All kinds of that inbound lead generation happening, and all she talks about is real estate. In fact, that’s the thing that I noticed most about her is I see her personality emanating through what she does for a living.
There’s no distinction, so my thoughts are, at the end of the day, your brand is your voice, your mind, your heart, your face. You’re the one that’s for sale, so I think you’ve got to put you on camera, you’ve got to be in the feed, so your audience gets a sense of your personality.
Now, I’m not saying everything has to be about trying to sell a listing or whatever, but I’m also not saying that you can never do that. I come across a lot of social media experts who are constantly trying to tell agents to not post about real estate.
I look at that and I’m like, but when I see the agents who are actually making money off of social, it’s the opposite of your advice. Like look at the Farrs’, for instance, I know we’re cleaning up on social media.
They post about their lives, but they’re never more than an arms reach away from their business, ever. There’s no shame in social proof.
Unlock Your Instagram Marketing Knowledge
Learn everything that Real Estate Agents need to know to get started with Instagram marketing.
What type of social media content should I create?
Trevor:
So let’s dive into that content topic side of it.
I think that’s really helpful what you’d said in a big way because a lot of people are taught 60/40, 60% business, 40% personal, and the personal are just personal. It’s the dog I got this week, which is fine. Versus, like you’re saying, melding it together. One really good example that I’ve seen in the investor world, so for all you investors you say social media is just for agents, which it’s not.
We have an amazing client, they came up to our event we called Carrot Camp last year, and they’re an investor. They go back there and they’re filming restaurant reviews. He calls it lunch with Lance, but it’s always him, the home buying guys. He’s going out there, he’s bringing some of his buyers and sellers that they work with.
It’s like on HGTV, everyone loves the shows that show people what people are doing for a profession. Watching people fish, watching people flip houses, watching people be real estate agents.
So it’s mostly business with some personal stuff mixed in.
Jason Pantana:
I would also just chime in on that, I love the idea of touring local restaurants, getting to know local business owners. But I would say there’s a lot of agents who they figured out they’re going to create the diners drive-ins and dives food network show because in their head I suspect a lot of them are like, “This isn’t salesy, this isn’t real estate focus. This is community focused.”
I don’t want to be that guy or that girl who’s costly about real estate. But I always ask my clients the question, “What does your mom watch more of, food network or HGTV, or is it a tie?”
The answer is usually it’s probably a tie or something like that. But my point is don’t overlook the fact that touring houses, talking about houses, people are obsessed.
SNL did a sketch recently on Zillow because people love to look at houses. There should be no shortage of ideas for content when you sell houses for a living, or when you flip houses or a wholesaler, whatever you do on the investor side of it.
Where do I find great content ideas for social posts?
Trevor:
Let’s say it’s an average week for an agent. What are some types of things that they should start to turn that brain on to be aware of to document a great content?
Jason Pantana:
I teach going back to the Instagram to everything strategy. The first thing I do is I establish a minimum cadence in terms of how much content, what’s the frequency minimum standards per week.
It’s one IGTV a week and you press the share to feed button. When you’re uploading to IGTV, there’s always the option to share to your main feed. Absolutely a must. If it’s only distributed through the IGTV feed, which you may not have known this, IGTV is its own app.
If you don’t click the share to feed preview button, you’re pretty much invisible. So it’s one of those a week and one reel a week as a minimum.
I’m almost ready to adjust my own strategy. I was looking at my Instagram insights, which you should do from time to time and I was breaking down, “Okay, what types of posts of mine reach the biggest audience of followers versus non followers?”
So they actually have charts and graphs in the insights tab assuming that you have either an Instagram business or creator profile.
They show you unbelievable analytics, including, your average IGTV gets this much reach with your followers, and this much reach with non-followers. Reels was off the charts doing about 80% non-followers.
We’re finding because reels is the new prized feature that Instagram is touting and wanting everybody to adopt.
I’m getting right now crazy reach, and I’m generating a lot of followers because they’re finding my content through the reels feed because they did build the reels feed straight into the mobile app. That should give you a kind of optics on what they’re trying to do at Instagram.
I would say, recapping, here’s a sample posting schedule:
One IGTV a week,
One reel a week,
And, at least, three supporting posts a week.
They could be photos, they could be carousels. They have three supporting posts and then never don’t have a story. That’s actually my cadence. It’s one IGTV, one reel, three supporting posts, never don’t have a story.
Let’s dive into the content “what.” I typically teach to think of content like a restaurant menu. You go to a restaurant and they hand you the menu, this is their way of saying, “Order something off of the menu.
We don’t make things that aren’t on the menu. We make things on the menu. We have appetizers, we have entrees, we have desserts. Pick from the menu.”
I think a lot of agents, wake up and, they look at the look hamster wheel of social media. I’ll admit, it is totally a hamster wheel. I think you’re smart to listen to this man and try to convert that into some evergreen content. Evergreen content isgoing to help make it more worth the while, which is part of what I teach too.
But back to this hamster wheel. I think a lot of agents look at the 365-day calendar and they think, “Oh, what am I going to post today? What am I going to post tomorrow?” As if you’re having to reinvent the process every stinking day and that’s daunting. I think the hamster wheel feeling is more of a feeling that’s psychological than it is strategic.
What I teach is the menu, it’s got three parts to the menu.
Section one, we call it shows and series,
Section two we call it deal data,
Section three we call it the vault.
Section one, shows and series are basically your video shows. This is your IGTV, your reels. I would create weekly video shows. It could be a pro tip series, it could be a market update series, it could be a quick answer series where people ask you questions and you do 30-second Instagram reel answers that stuff.
It could be home tours, it could be interviews with local businesses like you talked about. You should have your shows and series lined up episodically week-by-week.
Again, my minimum standards for my clients is one IGTV a week, one reel a week, which basically means we’re talking about two shows a week for all intents and purposes.
Section two is deal data. It’s just listed, just sold, listing video, under contract, offer accepted, open house. It’s those types of things.
The whole idea of deal data is it should be templated out. Let’s use the Farrs’, for example. They use Canva. If you go to their Canva, they have templates for what a just listed post looks like, what it just sold post looks like, and they literally just sub out the address and change the photo.
Rinse, repeat.
That’s what needs to happen to streamline some of the production of content with this deal data. I talked about three supporting posts per week, here we go. It’s in your deal data.
This stuff’s critical. I also think like if you look at the Farr’s feed on Instagram, just Instagram, for instance, I’m going to see the matchy-matchy nature of, “Oh, there’s another sold, another sold, another sold, another sold” because they match up with each other.
So because of that, it really creates this feeling of, “Wow, the Farrs are really selling a lot of houses,” and they are, they are selling a lot of houses but there’s also a perception component too. How do you take that into effect?
Lastly, section three is the vault. The vault is basically just things you do every now and again. You may not do them always, but I’d like you to have a word bank or a vault that you can pull from, from time to time.
Like testimonials, what does a testimonial look like when you post one? Do you do stock shots or behind the scenes shots?
Stock shots have been a popular one for a lot of my clients lately. Basically, what we’re doing is when they have a new listing, they pay their photographer a little extra to basically do some headshots at the property lifestyle photos at the top view while they’re getting the shots for it.
They just pepper those photos out from time to time with some the melodramatic caption that’s maybe related, maybe not related.
Unlock Your Instagram Marketing Knowledge
Learn everything that Real Estate Agents need to know to get started with Instagram marketing.
That tip right there is awesome because if you guys are already doing listing photos, or if you’re an investor going there and doing photos of properties, like Jason said, why not just have that camera person just turn the camera on you for a few shots. You’ve got the concept right there.
Jason Pantana:
Show up in the last 15 minutes, they’ll film you. Like I have a client in Little Rock, Arkansas, Ray Ellen, he does this.
He’s got probably 90 days of content already lined up.
He’s at the point now where he has to be aware of seasons. That’s how far ahead he’s getting with doing this, and so he has this spreadsheet where he writes out captions and they just play the matching game.
I’ll use this caption for this post, this one for this one, and they don’t always relate. It’s very personal blogger style where it’s a photo of you and then whatever you’re thinking about. I mean, invariably, those photos and those posts do really well. That’s a no brainer to me.
Recapping, you’ve got the shows and series, the deal data, and the the vault.
Trevor:
I want you guys to write those down. The reason this is important is because just like Jason said, oftentimes when we’re going to go with step into doing something, when we don’t have a menu, when our options are limitless, your brain explodes. You go, “Oh, shoot, what do I do?”
We start to actually get paralyzed when we have too many options. If you go into a grocery store and there are 75 types of ketchup, and there have been actual studies done like psychological studies.
If you have three choices, you’re going to be able to pick, and so I love it. By the end of this week, what I want you guys to do is write down those three things.
Then begin to carve out an hour maybe, half an hour and start to dream, “What type of deal data can I start sharing next week? What show or series can we do?”
Jason Pantana:
I’ve been encouraging my clients I love in the field videos. I love house tours, I love restaurant interviews, I love business interviews, neighborhood tours, but there are bottleneck in terms of getting them done.
If you’ve got to go in the field and plan logistics and coordinate, coordinate, coordinate, the clients of mine who are really killing it with video are the best.
They typically film one time a month and do everything in bulk, they get like a paper background like this set up, they’ve got a camera, typically, a videographer.
Some of them rent the runway to get multiple outfits picked out, and they show up ready to film for a half or full day and they knock out 20, 30 videos in a day and they’re done for the month. Move on to the next month.
That content gets packaged and released and dripped out throughout the month. That’s the way to play it.
Trevor:
The thing about doing that too is it takes you out of that daily hamster wheel thinking because then it is strategic. It takes you from tactical on the day-to-day going, “Oh shoot, I need to find something to document today.” Which you can do in the stories.
That’s where bring out those stories, document that stuff. But then everything else are used strategically to chunk it up.
Guys, listen to Jason because he’s teaching you the path here, but then he’s also teaching you the way to make it so it doesn’t own your life. Where you own the strategy, the strategy doesn’t own you.
Jason Pantana:
The best agent video creators are filming once a month to create. That should be your objective, film once a month.
How much time should you invest in social media?
Trevor:
How much time would you suggest setting aside for social? The people that are crushing it, like the Farr Group, like that other guy you mentioned, the people who are crushing it, how much time are they investing into social per month? Then the people who are doing so-so, what’s your best guess in how much time that they’re investing into it?
Jason Pantana:
Let’s use Glenda Baker as an example. She’s in Atlanta, Georgia. She’s the one who’s got like a million followers on TikTok.
She films one day a month. She comes ready to the studio. She’s got her hair and makeup, her clothes, her scripts, what she’s going to talk about. She comes in ready to roll and film. Cameras on, lights, camera action.
She’ll get 35 videos in 11 hours, so she films an 11 hour day once a month, but she knocks out 35 videos. Taya DiCarlo in Manhattan Beach, California, client of mine too.
She does the same thing, she films for a half a day and she’s knocking out about 20 videos.
In terms of time, if you already have the big content created in advance, there’s a releasing feeling. Now, the idea of running and gunning, is to your point, you’re going to be subject to and controlled by social, which is not a good state.
Trevor:
One thing we talk about a lot here at Carrot, is our state admission at Carrot has helped to build a businesses of freedom and impact. We really want people to be free from their businesses.
That’s where the Evergreen comes in, so that they can make the impact they want to make.
What Jason’s mentioning here, let’s say you guys wanted to go on a two week vacation or a month long vacation or whatever it is, which is normally unheard of for most real estate agents right now.
If you could have that content batched, you can still record like the Farr Group. They still took pictures and did stories from their vacation, but they were still cranking through the deal data. They weren’t posting the deal data, so that stuff was batched.
Jason Pantana:
Yeah, they now have a marketing coordinator who works for them, so she’s taken on some of the load. But that’s recent.
A lot of the stuff is just scheduled and ready to roll. I think you’ve got to… don’t be a slave to your social media, that’s the goal.
Control it, not it to control you. That’s a matter of we need a plan, experts say, I don’t even know who said this, but I’ve heard it said before that for every minute you spend planning how to use your time, you’ll save seven minutes on the implementation.
I think that’s true in a lot of walks in life, especially, in social media. If you just say, “Okay, Jason said I’m going to do one IGTV, one reel, three supporting posts. Never don’t have a story. That’s my minimum cadence.”
That’s the output of content.
Now I’ve got to fill, “What are those pieces of content?” Well, I’ve got my shows and series, my deal data, the vault, fill in your little menu.
Then come up with, “Well, how am I going to film it?” I would say if you can figure out how to film once a month, if you can try to figure out through Canva or graphic designers or whomever you need to streamline the other posts, get these things as turnkey as possible.
So that really when you’re on social, you’re just posting stories and you’re engaging with other people’s content. That should be more or less what you’re doing on social.
Team or contractors? How to build a team to record videos
Trevor:
I love it. One thing that people might be thinking is like, “Oh shoot, so Jason mentioned his videographers posting for him. That other girl, she records videos once a month and probably someone posts it for him.”
But also you mentioned right there, and a lot of people probably saw it slipped by them was the Farr Group didn’t have anybody for the first year and a half, at least.
Jason Pantana:
Well, I didn’t have anybody until a month ago, so it’s me too.
Trevor:
There we go. If someone is going to have a team member and is it a full-time role? Is it just a contractor? What type of investment may people be able to get someone who can run the posting of the stuff and maybe the videos for?
Jason Pantana:
I’m going to take this two different ways. It depends on the channel you want to go after. If we’re talking about like Instagram and Facebook, that’s a little bit simpler. YouTube is a little bit more sophisticated. YouTube is more of your evergreen content, so YouTube is more of a search engine, less of a social network.
So because of that, there are some nuances to the distribution on YouTube that will make or break what you’re doing there. Sliding that off to the side, I typically have my clients usually look for an hourly part-time, either a marketing coordinator or a marketing admin, whichever title you like better.
This is somebody who’s paid somewhere between $15 and $20 an hour, generally speaking, and they’re basically following orders and instructions.
The mistake a lot of agents make is they say, “I want to hire a social media director for $35,000 a year.” I’m like, “Do you realize director titles typically are six figures. Senior executive level people in companies.”
A, they’re not going to work for that money,
B, if you hire a social media director and they go to Glassdoor and they plug in what they’re supposed to get paid, they’re going to assume you’re ripping them off.
But I think the biggest difference is strategy comes from the top down. If you’re going to hire somebody who’s administratively going to take action, they’re taking action on what you tell them to do.
I think like that’s what the Farrs’ did really well. Krista manages their marketing coordinator. She says, “Do this, do this, do this, do this,” and it gets done. I don’t think there’s any way around that.
Trevor:
So, if you are looking to buy back that time, get more freedom so you can make more impact, it maybe won’t start that way. You got to hustle and get the work done that first year, first 18 months to get momentum going.
But cast that vision for buying back your time, and that’s always something I want to have our community look at is whenever we start a strategy, just really dig in and make it happen.
Even search engine optimization takes work. Either you’ve got to do the work a few hours a week or hire it out, but your vision should always be to buy back the time over the long term.
Jason Pantana:
I think we can work backward too. Facebook and Instagram burn cheap gas, not the premium stuff. You need more. I’m not saying make bad content, but I am saying making more content, there is an element and I’m being somewhat cynical here, but quantity almost matters more in some cases.
I’ve had clients buy basically chess clocks, or they set little timers where you’re going to say, “I’m going to give myself 15 minutes to do this, 30 minutes to build this post”, whatever it is.
You time yourself so that you can basically predict, “Well, if I want to do one IGTV, one reel, three supporting posts, never done of a story, and I’m going to block an hour to record this video or 30 minutes for that.”
You can literally map out how much time it takes and then say, “Can I do that for a year?” Then once I’m established, then I’m going to bring somebody on to keep rowing for me while I move up to the next level, so to speak.
Trevor:
Let’s talk about make the transition from we’re building the audiences, we’re getting content out there, we’re resonating, to now we’re building authority because that’s really what we’re after here.
Getting in front of people, building that authority. What are you guys finding right now, Jason, that’s working great to turn those people watching you from afar into leads, into people that you work with?
Jason Pantana:
A couple of things I would say, one, is social media has two elements.
It’s like a two-sided coin, it’s got the side of content and the side of the conversation, so you got to do both. I think one of the mistakes I see is agents who are only doing the conversation side, which does work better on Facebook than on Instagram.
They’re DM-ing, they’re commenting, they’re engaging, they’re not creating content. They’re not being a knowledge broker. That’s a gap.
Or the flip side of it, and this is the more common is they’ve figured out how to make content or they buy the content works, but they’re just not really there. They seem unapproachable.
I think like, again, let’s use the Farrs as an example, they’re putting out a cornucopia of content. They really are, but they’re also DM-ing and messaging and engaging, and they’re active in groups on Facebook and so forth and they make themselves approachable.
I would say that there’s an element of content and conversations that really has to be a part of it. I also think this is where, like going back to the early thing, is it professional or is it personal content? It needs to be the right hybrid.
We teach that there are five themes of content that you need to be able to address. It’s not even parts. You can decide how much of this or how much of that.
But there are five ingredients or five themes your content should speak to.
We talk about real me, or if you’re a team, the real us. We talk about agent behind the scenes, these two can be married sometimes. We talk about social proof, so like just listed, just sold, under contract, offer accepted, new listing, blah, blah, blah. We talk about knowledge broker, which is big for me, and then hyper-local. Where do you do business? Are your boots on the ground?
If you have those five themes present in your mix of content, the net effect is people will come to you. I think that’s the thing I’ve noticed most about the clients I coach, and I have a good number of clients who get a lot of business off of Instagram. People are direct messaging them, they’re commenting.
In other words, they’re creating content that invites that conversation, and then it just starts going. Even me, like if you ask me, why am I creating social media content, I’m going to tell you because I really like to contribute and things like that, just like you do. But I’m also going to tell you because I’m generating organic leads for Tom Ferry every day of the week.
I was going to do a 100 webinar challenge for myself.
So I started taking a selfie of me every time I was doing a webinar, which I need to get back to doing. But I was like this is going to make social proof. This is going to make people like Trevor say, “I should get him on my podcast. I should get him to speak for me.”
Then, bam, it works. It’s that, it’s real me, hyper-Local, knowledge broker, social proof agent behind the scenes. If those things work together in some kind of a shape, you’re going to attract people to want to work with you.
Trevor:
One thing I want to pull out right now, I just came to the realization so you were mentioning the posts that I engaged in. Let’s relate this over to an agent or an investor now.
The reason I engaged in that, is number one, I’d seen Jason for probably a year because the Farr Group, one of his clients, posted about him or tagged him to it, so I started following him.
Then I see him post, before all your content’s amazing, but I’m not an agent. I’m like, “Okay, it’s great. I’m going to learn from it. But I’m not an agent.”
That one post struck out to me because I’m like, “Oh, I can help him here. Also, this might be an opportunity for us to connect and I can help my audience.” I’m like, “Let me take all this stuff that he’s been teaching.
As we’ve been growing a bigger and bigger user base on the agent side, let me take his knowledge and plug it over here to help serve people.” If you hadn’t have done that “Hey, here’s my journey I’m on. Here’s the challenge I’m on” post it might have a different outcome. Instead, I thought” I’m going to dive in, serve him, serve my community and be able to meet an amazing dude.”
Don’t be afraid to do that.
How do I get more comments and DMs?
Jason Pantana:
But I would tell you if your content is not sparking comments and DMs, you need to adjust it because that’s where the money gets made is in the inbox.
Trevor:
How can people do that? Let’s get tactical a little bit, what are some of the ways that people can do that to spark themselves?
Jason Pantana:
Well, you can ask yourselves why? Let’s go easiest, the simplest explanation or the easiest way to do it is reciprocity.
Start commenting on their stuff, start messaging them, and you’re going to actually reverse prioritize yourself where they’ll probably do it one just because it’s human nature to reciprocate.
But also because when they reply to your DM, when they reply to your comment, that’s actually a signal to Facebook and Instagram that they want to see your content too. You’re prioritizing yourself in the feed. I would say out of the gate, you need to be engaging with their content to invite them into yours.
They’ll return thefavor.
The other thing is ask yourself a rhetorical question, “But, hey, when I post this, what response am I expecting to get from it? What is somebody likely to comment, or they’re going to scroll past? Will this get them to when I stop and like it, when I stop and comment, when I say it, what I share it?” And so forth.
I know that’s a surface long answer, but it’s the truth. The other thing, a lot of agents are just trying to phone it in like, “Oh, I just got to get it out there.” Yeah, you do, but what’s the point of doing that if it doesn’t actually get out there?
Because we know the way these algorithms work is they don’t serve dud content in the feeds. I would argue in the first 10 minutes to an hour, Facebook and Instagram have decided that they’re investing in your post or not. If you can’t get conversations, so like we’ll talk about this, but you should optimize your content.
Like for Instagram, out of the gate, I would do a couple of things. I would tag a location when you post, when you can. With Reels you can’t really do that.
But when you can, I would tag a location. I would use hashtag strategically. They give you up to 30, and we don’t copy and paste hashtags. They don’t like that. We vary our hashtags. We don’t spam with hashtags, we’re careful that our hashtags aren’t actually what we think are innocent, but aren’t innocent hashtags.
Because if those hashtags are blocked, you’re screwed. I tend to like hashtags that are between 100 to 500,000 other posts using them.
That’s a sweet spot where I stand a chance to populate in the explore feed. I don’t care if the hashtags are in a caption or comment, but you got to use hashtags.
I would also tag people when it’s relevant. I’ve done this two different ways. Sometimes if I have a post and I want to just give it a quick blitz into the feed, I’ll tag four or five other people like the Farrs’ because there’s a good chance they’re going to comment on it quickly because they get notified.
Now, don’t overdo this one, but every now and again, it’s enough to spark like get a little flame lit on your posts.
Then sometimes I actually private message it over to people, and that can help do it too.
Trevor:
I’m going to riff on that a little bit. Here’s a couple of thoughts that popped up on what Jason had said. Let’s say I’m a real estate agent, I’ve got a house on the river that is being listed. Maybe it’s not even my listing, maybe it’s someone else’s.
And I have four people in my database I know are looking for a house in the river. Take that picture. I’m not an attorney, I don’t know what’s going on with your guys’ local MLS, and so check this.
But you take that picture of the property, maybe the carousel or whatever it’s called, tag those four people, “Hey, this amazing property is just beautiful.” Is something something that you would do, or educate people to do, or is that something that would not be a good one?
Jason Pantana:
As far as, again, I will echo you in terms of, “Hey, make sure you understand what your real estate commission and your MLS will and won’t let you do.” But if you’re onsite at a property, even if it’s showing somebody else’s listing. Your clients don’t want it, or maybe it’s a broker preview, but you’re like I have three buyers who would love this.
You can private message it to them.
I don’t see any issue with private messaging it to them. In fact, I have a lot of my clients who are really pulling back from text messaging and they’re using more DMs because the by-product of that is actually I’m signaling Facebook and Instagram to prioritize my content organically based upon these exchanges happening in the DMs just using it as a substitute.
But as far as like taking photos of other people’s properties, obviously, follow the rules.
Trevor:
Here’s one more that I’ve seen work. It was a while back when I first saw it working, and I don’t know if it’s the same now, but this one your real estate agents would post something like, “Hey, just did a search of the MLS.
There’s 85 properties that you could buy for less than $800 a month. $800 a month. Hey, everyone down below, post your rent, and if you want the list that I came up with for properties you can buy from us at $800 a month.”
Jason Pantana:
Yep, so we’ve done those. We have the DM us your rent. That’s what we used to do. We haven’t done it in a while, so I call them calibrated stories. Basically, it’s a calibrated question, “Do you want this? Yes or no?” Based upon that, I can message them.
Another one was are you thinking about selling your home or planning to sell your home this year or next? Yes or no. Sometimes people say yes, and if they say yes, you DM them. You start talking to them, have a conversation.
I like the idea of what’s your current rent, and I’ll tell you what you could get this property for? What you could afford in terms of a purchase price? That’s one that would probably work really well right now except it’s super competitive. I would want to be careful around clear co-operation and MLS stuff, but you could theoretically. Don’t do this if this is against the rules.
You could theoretically ask the calibrated question like imagine a story poll where it’s a yes or no, or an ask me anything that can input a question. Are you searching for a home and can’t find one? Would you be interested in somebody who is looking for off-market properties for you? Yes or no?
Because that would solve, like that’s a pain point that a lot of consumers are feeling right now. Our terminology is off-market matchmaker, the terminology. You got to be very careful that you don’t violate the clear cooperation or MLS rules and stuff. Just be very careful around that.
But, to me, it’s like I have a script that some of my clients are using, this is a little bit off topic though. They get a lead from Zillow or something like that, and the person wants to go see 123 Main Street is already under contract.
The script is…
“Hey, can I be blunt for just a quick second with you?” They’re say, “Sure, would you please be? and you come back with “Listen, you know the market’s super hot right now, candidly, anything you’re looking at on these portals, for all intents and purposes, is just the floor model. It’s not the one you’re going to buy.
The one you’re going to buy is not on the market yet, which is why you need an agent like me who’s willing to circle prospect, door knock, and go find properties that meet the specifications of what you’re looking for. Would you be interested in that? Yes or no?”
Unlock Your Instagram Marketing Knowledge
Learn everything that Real Estate Agents need to know to get started with Instagram marketing.
That’s gold right there. So all you real estate agents who are struggling with listings, that right there is an amazing mindset shift, but also it’s a great positioning. It’s an amazing positioning shift because so many people are struggling with, “Oh my gosh, I’m making 20 offers for these houses.” If you can shift towards more of the off-market, then that’s a whole other call that would be really fun to dig in with you on.
That’s what we focus on here. Carrot has been all off-market stuff, so as we’re trying to work more and more with agents and investors together, it’s like, “All right, how do we take the retail seller leads that come in for our investors and teach them to work them into their strategy by pairing up with agents.
Most of the investors are taking those and throwing them away because they’re like, “Oh, they’re tire kickers.” Or they’re not realistic with their values.
We see this an opportunity to take those and pair up with agents.
Become an off-market matchmaker. Go look in Jason’s contents on Instagram because he teaches that, and I’m sure in your guy’s YouTube channel you guys have videos in that.
Jason Pantana:
One of the posts on my Instagram will link you to my website. There’s actually an email you can send your entire database. Here is a videos designed to generate seller leads via Facebook:
I’ve got one question from an investor, so this will be an interesting one from Heritage Home Buyers. What about an investor wanting content for sellers and buyers, both? Do you mix it, segregate best practices?
I’ll add a little bit of color on the investor side. Since on the investor side, most of the time, the buyers and sellers aren’t the same person. It’s like it’s a highly motivated person, they’re not also looking to buy investment properties. I’ll show you guys what you guys can do on the outside.
Jason Pantana:
I assume then, just asking a question, I assume the challenge is you’re trying to find folks who want to sell their properties so that you can then resell them to a buyer and it’s a different value proposition.
Trevor:
Yeah.
Jason Pantana:
The seller wants to sell because they probably need to, or want to make it easy and painless. And the buyer is probably going to pay, they’re probably going to flip the property, which means they’re going to pay a little bit more. So you don’t want to turn people away. You don’t want your buyer content to make people not want to list and sell their home with you.
One thing I would say out of the gate is most of my clients, we just talk about the market. Because when you talk about the market, it will naturally lead you to share, “Well, here are the pros and cons for buyers and sellers. Here are the pros and cons for buyers versus sellers.”
The market is the market. I’m just the messenger of the marketplace. So I would then focus my content for sellers saying, “Look, selling your home right now is an amazing opportunity.”
Trevor:
What you had said before was really, really important because you were saying talk about the market, and that’s something I think investors in general have that disadvantage versus agents.
Because agents are so tuned into knowing what’s going on in the market. Investors know micro markets here or there.
Jason Pantana:
A couple of campaigns were running. So I have some clients who do this one, we call it the search, stay, sell campaign.
What that campaign is, is, “Hey, would you love to cash out in this unbelievable seller’s market but you’re not ready to move yet? Maybe not for a year or longer? Would you be interested in selling your property to me, and I’ll lease it back to you at a very good rate for as long as you want?”
I’ve had folks like that’s a pretty decent angle to get in and find some folks who maybe they’re about to retire or they want to move to Florida or something like that, and they’re interested in cashing out and what they think might be the height of the market, but they’re not ready to go yet.
I’d be talking to those folks and saying, “Can I provide you with a solution?” I know EasyKnock already has a program called sell and stay, so we called ours sell, stay, search because that gives you the ability to stay while you search.
It’s the same idea. I think that’s a powerful campaign to talk about, but also I’m waiting for someone to do this video. I’ve had this video in my mind for awhile, asking the question, how much were you paid to live in your house this year?
That’s the pattern into our question, “how much are you paid to live in your house this year?” People are like, “Well, what do you mean?” I was thinking about this actually came from a call with the Farrs’. We are talking about when should you be reaching out to your past clients or past buyers to see if they’ve had any thoughts of selling?
The debate was well if they’ve only been there for a year or two, it’s too soon. There was somebody who worked for the Farrs’ on their team who had bought with them within the last year. I was like, “Well, hey, how about you? Have you had any thoughts of selling?” She’s like, “Every day.”
I was like, “When did you buy the house?” She goes, “Nine months ago.” I’m going to make these numbers up. Okay, I’m going to make them up. I go, “What did you pay for it?” She’s like, “$250.” Then I asked Aaron, I’m like, “What do you think it’s worth today nine months later?” He said, “About $350.” So call it $100 grand in nine months.
Really, the truth is the number was $90,000 in nine months.
It was at that point it actually worked out too. I was like, “So, literally, you’ve made $10,000 in equity every month you’ve been living in that property.” I think there’s content around the idea, but also this one’s for your investors who want to pick up some listings.
I have this other vision of a video where there’s a table that’s empty and you walk in with a duffel bag and you unzip the bag on the table and you dump out a ton of different poker chips. Just poker chips all over the table, and you hold up the poker chips to the camera and you say, “The thing about poker chips is they’re worth nothing until you cash them out.”
If you’re thinking about the equity in your property is it’s worth only whenever the market sets it’s worth when you sell and cash out. Is this the time to cash out?
I just think helping people see like, “Okay, I have a choice to make. The market is what it is, is this the right time for me in talking about the market?”
Trevor:
I like it, and that’s a huge shift for everyone to make. There’s always something going on and that’s interesting in the market.
Talk about it from your authority point, from your advantage, or from your vantage point. The biggest thing, like Jason talked about before going back to Heritage Home Buyers is I don’t think you really have to split up your content between the wholesale buyers and sellers. You come from, “Hey, here’s our mission, our vision for our company. Here’s the impact we want to make locally. Let’s document how we’re in business together.”
People will see that you buy houses. People will see that you flip houses. Then at the end of the day, one big mindset shift that investors need to get over, and the successful ones do is the sellers who sell to you know that they’re selling at a discount.
You’re not pulling the wool over the eyes, nor should you. That’s not the game. The game is speed and convenience, and just like when we go down to a car lot, we go buy a new car retail, and then they ask you the very next question they ask us, “Hey, do you have a car to trade in?”
We know that we could sell that car for more on Craigslist, but we choose not to because of speed and convenience.
If that’s the mindset gap that you’ve got on Heritage Home Buyers that you think, “Shoot, I don’t want them to see the other content.” They should see it so they can see your business model and see that you’re a true, honest, ethical business that goes out there and service people, and just talk about the market, which is great.
Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you’re passionate about talking about? Whether it’s related to real estate or not, but is there a topic that’s really helping agents we didn’t touch on?
Jason Pantana:
I’m scanning my list here. Yeah, so get reels going. Again, it’s a great way to grow your following.
You need more content. I made a note to increase your content by an order of magnitude. Like I said before, Facebook and Instagram burn cheap gas, which means you need to start filming and creating content in batches.
That’s going to be critical. Dig into hashtags and location tagging. Start or continue story sharing reciprocity, you share their stories, they’ll share yours. That’s just an idea of reciprocity in terms of networking on social. It is a social network, comment, share their stuff and they’ll do the same for you. Lastly running Instagram promos and then boosting your Facebook posts.
Don’t be afraid to put some money behind your best content, so use the promote button on Instagram, use the boost button on Facebook.
Use the old, “This is Dennis Yu’s Dollar a Day method.” Which basically says everything you post on Facebook, just spend a dollar for seven days and see how it does basically with a low spend, and should I promote that content further?
That way what’s happening is you’re paying Facebook and Instagram to show your content to a wider audience. This means if the content is good and if their algorithm is working effectively, they’ll choose to follow you.
I have a client who she’s got like 18,000 followers. How did she do that? She promoted every post for five bucks or something.
Buy your followers, but you’re buying them in the best way possible.
Contribute to key Facebook groups. Go live on Instagram with influencers because when they go live with you, it notifies their followers, and then you get floor time with their followers.
If there’s an agent that’s got a good following, go live with them. Use your email list. You should be promoting your content through your emails. You should be paying attention to the analytics and insights on Facebook and Instagram in terms of when to post content.
You’ll get all the content there. In your stories, use the clickable stuff, the yes-no polls, the AMAs, the slider scales.
Anything interactive, use that tag your location. That’s going to help your stories go to a farther, wider audience. Stop phoning in your captions, get serious about your captions. They need to invite a conversation.
Your video thumbnails need to look good and pretty. That needs to be standardized. I would encourage if you want to get serious about content, hire a graphic designer to say, “Build me the templates that I can just rinse and repeat.”
That’s what the Farrs meant, build me the templates, put them in Canva and I’ll rinse and repeat all the live long days. Then the rest is there some other odds and ends, but I just think it’s a matter of, A, your content is the most important thing.
So don’t be stuck on the idea of I have to create content for every platform.
I’m going to create my content and I’m going to distribute it across my platforms. But if I choose to be active on a platform, then I must be active. I get less out of LinkedIn because I don’t work LinkedIn. I get more out of Instagram because I work at the most. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
Trevor:
One thing on that too, if that is going to be your active social channel and you’re not active on there, what happens when your prospects see it and they go, “Shoot, that person must not really be doing a lot of things or whatever it is.”
Jason Pantana:
Yeah.
Trevor:
Dude, we’re right up against the hour, and I appreciate you spending time with us. Like I said, the energy that you put out into the market, absolutely love it. One of my favorite core values here at Carrot is “Be a Beacon of Positivity & Possibility.”
You embody that, Tom embodies that, so I appreciate you guys doing what you do in the real estate space. Not just teaching tactics and strategy, which is very important, but the mindset behind it, the energy behind what agents do is not just listing and selling properties, it’s actually serving people.
You guys really serve the community well, man. So I appreciate you spending the time with us.
Jason Pantana:
Thank you for having me. It’s been a blast. I look forward to connecting with everybody else online, and we should do a follow-up part two on this at some point about the market matchmaker stuff.
Trevor:
That’d be killer. Now, I’m going to wrap with this right here. That’s a great segue is we have a lot of investors and agents, and we’ve got about 8,000 customers here at Carrot, about 7,500 or investors, about 600 or so are agents. We’re building the agent side of it, and here’s the thing, y’all.
The reason I say that is this, is I really believe we’ve been saying it for three years and now it’s accelerating. The retail side and the wholesale side are scrunching together, and you’ve got the iBuyers in the middle that have pulled it a little bit faster.
The better that you guys and girls, whether you’re an agent or an investor, can serve your sellers and your buyers, the better you can serve them. With not just building the authorities the way that we get in front of them and we build the trust, the way we build the credibility is crazy important.
But the way that we serve them is going to be really, really important moving forward. Are we truly serving them with the options that sellers, all the options that sellers have so we can compete against the iBuyer, so we can compete against the other agents that actually are making offers.
Then on the other side of it, y’all, is on the evergreen side, take everything that Jason said here and implement it, deploy it to build the authority, to build connections, to pull in people.
Because this is where you get the relationship. You don’t build a relationship from a Google or from a blog post on your website. You build authority there, you could build relationship. The relationship is right inside of this phone. It’s on your Instagram, it’s on your Facebook.
So mix the two worlds, y’all, mix your social and building authority through that. Take that content as we teach, put it onto a Google, put it onto YouTube to build evergreen, and it’s going to be an amazing, amazing match right there.
I appreciate you coming on here. Let’s connect for sure after this. Guys and girls, we’re going to post up his Instagram handle again. But just go follow him, Jason Pantana.
Go follow Tom Ferry as well. Whether you’re an investor or an agent, you guys should follow them.
Unlock Your Instagram Marketing Knowledge
Learn everything that Real Estate Agents need to know to get started with Instagram marketing.
Video has completely taken over the internet. According to MechDope, there are 3.25 billion hours of video watched on YouTube each month.
Video content is the most engaging and easily consumable form of content and can be very beneficial for building your credibility and brand within your market when used correctly.
Featured Resource: Our Free Video Marketing Playbook For Investors And Agents!
In a world with smartphones, Facebook Live, GIF-, Vine-, and Boomerang-creation tools, the territory belongs to anyone who will claim it.
And that includes real estate agents.
As Hubspot reports, “90% of users say that product videos are helpful in the decision process.”
And real estate is all about helping people make BIG decisions.
As part of your agent content strategy, we’re going to cover 12 real estate video marketing ideas that you can easily replicate, no matter where you stand in your real estate journey.
The examples we provide are far from mediocre, but don’t let their quality of them discourage you.
You simply need to have videos that are high-quality for the stage you are currently at.
The worst thing you can do is allow perfectionism to get in the way of producing content. Rather than use the examples as a standard by which to measure yourself, use them as a guide for inspiration, allowing technique, idea, and cadence to inform your own videos.
The Real Estate Agent’s Video Marketing Playbook
Attract your most motivated prospects in under 20 minutes a week, no gear or tech expertise is required.
In real estate, video marketing is the process of creating video content for the purpose of building brand awareness, generating leads, getting listings, and helping homebuyers.
Video is currently the most popular form of content on the internet — and by executing a consistent video content marketing plan, real estate agents can rise head and shoulders above their competitors.
How to Create a Real Estate Video Marketing Plan
Soon we’ll give you 12 ideas for creating video content (with examples).
But before we get into that, let’s talk about how you can create and execute a video marketing plan that works.
Follow these five steps and you’ll be on your way to building more authority in you market.
Step 1. Choose Your Platform
There are a lot of different video content platforms.
YouTube is the most popular, but video content runs rampant on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
And while you might publish your videos to all of those platforms, it’s still best to focus on just one.
Which platform will be your main platform?
It doesn’t matter which one you choose. But once you make a decision, you’ll want to optimize your content for that platform. If you’re doing TikTok videos, make them short and sweet. If you’re doing YouTube videos, create longer-form content that is still valuable but also entertaining.
Step 2. Create Your Calendar
Creating videos can be time-consuming. And if you’re not careful, it can quickly become overwhelming.
That’s why it’s important to have a content calendar. This will help you batch your content creation so that you’re not trying to film, edit, and publish a video daily.
Your calendar doesn’t have to be fancy. A simple Google Calendar will work just fine.
Make sure you stick to the calendar you create. But if you miss a day, don’t try to make up for it by filming two videos the next day. This will only lead to burnout.
Set aside days for creating lots of content and then schedule that content to publish periodically throughout the following weeks.
Step 3. Document Your Journey
Later we’re going to give you 12 ideas for video content.
But here’s the best way to create content: simply document what you do on a daily basis.
Did someone just sell their house? Pull out your phone and shoot a quick video to talk about it.
Do you have a new listing? Drive by and shoot a quick video tour.
Attend an interesting real estate event? Shoot some B-roll and get interviews with the attendees.
The key here is to be consistent. If you can document your journey and share it with your audience on a regular basis, you’ll quickly become the go-to expert in your market.
Step 4. Track Engagement
Once you start publishing your videos, it’s important to track the engagement and leads they generate.
There are a number of different ways to do this.
If you’re using YouTube, make sure you have Google Analytics installed so you can track the traffic your videos generate.
If you’re using TikTok, track the number of views and likes your videos get.
If you’re using Facebook, track the reach and engagement of your videos.
The key here is to track your progress so you can see what’s working and what’s not. This will help you adjust your strategy as you go.
Step 5. Repurpose Your Video Content
One of the best things about video content is that it can be repurposed into other types of content.
For example, you can take a video you filmed of a listing and turn it into a blog post.
(In fact, we have a super cool tool called VideoPost here at Carrot that will help you do that!)
Or you could take an interview you did with someone in your market and turn it into a podcast episode.
The key here is to get creative. There are endless possibilities for repurposing your video content. So don’t be afraid to experiment.
Best Real Estate Video Marketing Gear
If you’re just getting started, don’t overthink it.
Use your smartphone to record video and upload it.
But if you decide that you want to take your video content to the next level, here’s the gear we recommend getting.
This microphone is affordable, easy to use, and great for beginners. It has omnidirectional sound settings so you can adjust from which direction the microphone picks up audio. Just plug it into your computer and get started!
Here are some more details from Amazon:
Custom three-capsule array: This professional USB mic produces clear, powerful, broadcast-quality sound for YouTube videos, Twitch game streaming, podcasting, Zoom meetings, music recording and more
Blue VOICE software: Elevate your streamings and recordings with clear broadcast vocal sound and entertain your audience with enhanced effects, advanced modulation and HD audio samples
Four pickup patterns: Flexible cardioid, omni, bidirectional, and stereo pickup patterns allow you to record in ways that would normally require multiple mics, for vocals, instruments and podcasts
Onboard audio controls: Headphone volume, pattern selection, instant mute, and mic gain put you in charge of every level of the audio recording and streaming process
Positionable design: Pivot the mic in relation to the sound source to optimize your sound quality thanks to the adjustable desktop stand and track your voice in real time with no-latency monitoring
Plug ‘n Play: Set up the computer microphone in seconds with the included desktop stand or connect directly to a mic stand or boom arm and instantly start recording and streaming on Mac or PC
This camera is easy to use and great for shooting YouTube or other video content. Here are some details from Amazon:
The advanced video capabilities of the PowerShot G7 X Mark II camera can capture moments in the quality they deserve
Features a large 1.0 inch, 20.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor that helps capture high quality images and videos with a wide dynamic range. Autofocus system features tile autofocus and manual focus. Operating temperature is 0 to 40 degrees Celsius. Note charging time varies considerably depending on the remaining battery power
An aperture value of f/1.8 at the wide angle and f/2.8 when fully zoomed to a factor of 4.2x (24-100 millimeter), this lens equipped to capture a variety of situations with precision
High resolution, 3.0 inches LCD monitor that tilts up 180 degrees and down 45 degrees is ideal for self portraits and capturing pictures at high and low angles with ease
Built in WiFi for on the go convenience and the ability to easily post your images to select social networking and media sites
With the ability to shoot continuously at up to 8 fps, it can help you capture incredible images with nearly no time wasted
ADJUSTABLE, PACKABLE HOOD | Attached, adjustable hood can be rolled into collar when not in use
Lighting makes a big difference in video quality. And this ring light will take your video quality to the next level.
Here are some more details from Amazon:
Sensyne selfie ring light features a high sensitivity touch panel design that has a longer life than traditional mechanical buttons. It provides full control to easily adjust the 3 color modes (cool white, warm yellow and daylight) and 10 brightness levels to meet your different needs. Perfect for Photographers, YouTubers, Vloggers, TikTokers, etc.
The USB-powered control helps protect your safety while improving the ring light’s brightness. The phone holder is spring-loaded and extends up to 5.3″ wide, it is compatible with almost ALL smartphones with or without a case.
Extending from 15.7 inches to 50 inches, our tripod can be adjusted to any height within seconds as needed, short enough to stand on tabletop, tall enough to fit your height. This compact circle light set comes handy when you do makeup, artworks, beauty & fashion live streaming, video calls and more.
The pocket-sized Bluetooth remote allows you to take selfies or group photos easily from a distance up to 30 feet. Compatible with most Apple/Android smart phones like iPhone 8/7/6 Series, Samsung Galaxy Series, etc. No app download necessary.
We will provide you with a high quality after-sales, 12 months After-sale service. Please contact us anytime if any question.
Shotcut is free and easy-to-use video editing software that works on all different types of operating software.
12 Real Estate Video Marketing Ideas
What should your videos be about? Here are 12 ideas (with examples)!
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #1: Home Buyer Advice Videos
The house buying process is not a simple one. At least, not for the inexperienced home buyer.
While most homebuyers have some idea of what they want in a house, they don’t know the potential dangers they face, the kind of things that improve a house’s value, or the sort of timeline they should expect when purchasing a home. But… they wouldlike to know those things.
Short, informal videos offering advice to the homebuyer are not only helpful, but establish your brand as the expert to answer your prospect’s questions and, eventually, sell their house.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #2: Home Seller Advice Videos
House sellers want to know the best way to present their house in online photos. Of course, that’s only one example of what house sellers want or need to know before moving forward.
Luckily, you have all (or most of) the answers.
By providing valuable advice and information to homeowners, you can build rapport and nab more listings.
In Beth Day’s video below, for instance, she uses her knowledge of what sells and what doesn’t to build a successful relationship with her potential clients.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #3: Real Estate Whiteboard Videos
The whiteboard video is for the coach, the person who enjoys illustrating ideas with a dry-erase marker in hand. At Carrot, whiteboard videos are one of our closest companions. Trevor Mauch, our CEO, puts these together, teaching on topics that range from optimizing your marketing budget to website design.
The idea is the same as the previous one: you teach buyers or sellers something while illustrating it on a whiteboard.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #4: Client Testimonial Videos
Most of you are probably utilizing real estate testimonials on your website, but video testimonials pack an even stronger punch. Like any well-placed and reliable endorsement, the video version offers social proof — that sense of “this worked for someone else, so it will work for me too” — to combat the prospect’s doubts.
Basically, a video testimonial is a shorter and less thorough version of a case study. But they’re just as powerful.
From real estate agent, Beverly Barnett, this video testimonial offers a relatable, authentic, and reassuring foundation upon which new clients can stand. Yours should do the same.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #5: Case Study Videos
Everyone loves a good story.
Not only are they powerful, but they’re also educational (and when they’re both, it’s lead generation gold). From the moment humans discovered fire, stories have inspired, evoked emotion, and driven decisions.
As a real estate agent, case studies are just that: stories of clients who have fallen in love with your passion for helping, your drive for excellent service, and the solution that you offer. A case study is simply an overflow of the customer’s excitement about who you are and what you do. Much like a fire, it’s a spark to start more fires.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #6: Neighborhood Videos
From best parks to the top places to eat, what we’ve deemed Neighborhood Videos puts your city knowledge on the treadmill. As you well know, selling your city is just as important, if not more, than selling a house. If people don’t love your city, they won’t buy a house in your city.
Neighborhood videos are your way of helping prospects fall in love with wherever it is you buy and sell houses.
In StellarRealty NW’s video, Kaira West talks about bike paths, food pods, and taverns. Let this neighborhood overview video guide your own.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #7: Community Videos
Shemeika Fox of Fox Realty Group in Santa Cruz California does an amazing job with calling out her community by interviewing other local business owners. Use these videos to establish yourself as a friendly, interested, and involved real estate agent. Here’s one of Shemeika’s interviews with Sandy Novembre; Owner of Monarch Pilates in Santa Cruz.
One of the beautiful parts about video content is that it builds relationships.
And while all types of content can be used as a friendly get-together, year-end review videos, in particular, are an opportunity to have some fun, be transparent about the local market’s health, and put your brand’s stamp on the coming year’s sales.
In this example, notice how RISE Realty in Utah uses its video to strengthen their brand’s voice as a friendly and knowledgeable realtor.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #8: Market Update Videos
When buying or selling a home, your clients want to follow the current local real estate market, but they don’t want to put in the work.
Do your clients a favor, roll up your sleeves, and produce video updates of the housing market. Keep your presentation concise and easy-to-understand. Upload this content to your website monthly (or whenever you feature a new update) and keep an archive on your YouTube channel.
As an example, we love the personability and knowledge that McDonald Residential presents in the video below.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #9: Tips and Tricks Videos
Tips and tricks videos can not only educate your audience but also boost your credibility within your market. Give your audience nuggets of wisdom each week or month and they’ll surely tune in for more.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #10: Listing Videos
You’re a real estate agent. No reason to hide it.
Into your content, sprinkle an appropriate dose of house listing videos, beautifully displaying what you currently have for sale.
This example from Pienovi Properties is of high quality. But don’t let that intimidate you. It’s okay to work with what you have.
Invest in some basic editing apps, such as Filmora or iMovie. And check out Paradym visual tour. With these tools, you’ll be able to start creating your own house listing videos.
Remember, just do the best you can.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #11: “About Me” Videos
Especially for smaller real estate businesses, this video should replace the Company Brand Promotional Video as the front and center introductory clip to your business.
The most important thing to remember when recording your “about me” tape is that you’re not trying to sell anything… other than you. You’re not selling houses or an easy process or low rates. You’re selling a relationship. And that’s it.
People want to know who they’re working with — the real person behind the curtain of business talk. This video is your way to show them.
As inspiration, consider this professional, yet casual video made by Koki Adasi.
Real Estate Video Marketing Idea #12: Promotional Agency Videos
If you have peanut butter, you need jelly. And if you have a real estate business, you need a promotional video.
On YouTube, this is your front and center introduction video. It’s the one that teaches prospects about what you do, who you are, and how you do it.
The example we provide is a little formal, but don’t be afraid to de-formalize your promotional clip. Formality has its benefits, for sure, but so does casual speak. Depending on the brand image you want to create, your video could fall either way. Overall, make sure that you are consistent with the voice you’re using and the message that the tone is sending.
Here’s the promotional video from NAN & Co. Properties where they articulate what they can offer and why anyone watching should choose them.
Your Videos Don’t Have to Be Perfect
With all these real estate video marketing examples, there are ways they could be improved. And with some of the above examples, there are LOTS of ways the video could be improved.
But we can’t forget one important thing.
Within that imperfection and lack of polish is something more sacred than any Steven Spielberg or Woody Allen blockbuster could ever produce.
Authenticity.
The wonderful thing about video in real estate marketing is that it offers a medium to cultivate relationships. It shows more of you than any other type of content. More of the genuine you.
Videos allow people who are sitting at home a look into your life, your work, and, most importantly, you. The true, authentic, unedited you.
Because, when all’s said and done, that’s really what you’re selling: the best version of yourself that you can possibly muster.
With bandit signs, you can’t measure your reach. With Facebook ads, you can see exactly how many people saw your ad, tracking it down to the cent.
– Chad Keller
The 5 Biggest Facebook Ad Mistakes in Real Estate + How To Get Started
What better way to kick off a series a new series on Facebook ads than with a guy who spends MILLIONS of dollars on ads? Seriously.
Through working with big companies like Dish, Macy’s, Chewy, TheChive, Sprint, and more – not to mention successfully running ads for his own investing business, Chad Keller has been testing, optimizing, and teaching others how to turn cold traffic from crappy ads into sellers that are more motivated than Tony Robbins on Red Bull.
Today, we’re looking at the most costly mistakes investors & agents make. Then, in the next 3 episodes, we’ll dive into the copy, creative, budget, targeting, and how to scale campaigns.
Stop blowing your marketing budget on under-performing ads & Listen to the podcast.
At Carrot, we often talk about the power of evergreen content. Providing valuable information to your readers builds credibility and trust, making you the go-to source for your target audience.
Your content needs to be created just one time but has the potential to reach buyers for years to come. But what do you do while you are building that momentum? Many savvy investors and agents will turn to Google and Facebook ads.
These ads can help you not only get leads in the door right away, but they can also help you add to your organic content as you build up your SEO. They are measurable vs. bandit signs and other forms of traditional advertising, allowing you to get down to a granular level.
Today, we are diving into the world of Facebook ads and how to use them to target your ideal client.
The Power of the Pixel
The most important part of advertising on Facebook is putting the Facebook pixel onto your website. A pixel is “an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website.
You can use the pixel to make sure your ads are shown to the right people.” Before spending a dime on Facebook ads, be sure to set up this tool to see who is visiting your site, enabling you to define audiences for your ads.
Targeting Your Audience
When setting up your ad campaign, there are several objectives you can choose from. Awareness, reach, traffic, engagement, lead generation, messages, and conversions to name a few.
When boosting posts, for example, these are typically just to build awareness, and may not give you the conversions you are looking for. After a potential client visits your site, you may want to refine the advertising you are showing to them. Don’t reserve the same ad, instead, show them new content that will blast their objections!
In the past, many people utilized lead form ads to collect the interested party’s contact information then and there. And while these sorts of ads may be cheaper, getting the lead off of Facebook and onto your website, has proven to increase your conversion rates.
The 5 Biggest Facebook Ad Mistakes People Make
#1 – Not having the pixel installed on the website at all/properly
#2 – Not understanding the goals of each campaign objective and how they are used
#3 – Using leads form ad units instead of the conversion objective for leads
#4 – How important good creatives really are
#5 – How to properly segment and set up audiences
I really enjoyed diving into this episode to discuss Facebook ad mistakes with Chad. Look out for episode 2 in this series where we will dive into what makes for great copy, creative, and how to create ad campaigns. And later, we will get into setting a budget, scaling, and optimizing for better results.
If you happened to check out carrot.com lately, you’ll notice a lot has changed!
Here at Carrot, we’ve been working intently for the past year refreshing things behind the scenes. We’ve been going through our site, organizing, rebuilding pages using our new Visual Editor, and on top of all of that, updating the Carrot look and feel to better reflect the Core Values that we live and breathe by!
Bright colors and fun illustrations embody the Carrot spirit and our mission to add humanity to business and help you regain time for the things that matter most in life.
But don’t worry; we are still the same great product and nothing will change how you use Carrot in your day-to-day workflow. You’re going to continue to receive the same great service you’ve always gotten from us and a promise that we will always do our best for you!
Being design-led is a smart investment
But why a design refresh? The reality is that design-led companies do better in business. Many people have calculated the ROI on design and there is a lot of data to back it up. According to the McKinsey Quarterly, who created their own design index to measure the success of design-led companies, companies that invested in their design had 32% higher revenue growth and 56% higher shareholder returns than their counterparts.
According to the Design Management Institute who also measures the ROI of “design-centric” companies, there was a 211% return over the S&P 500. According to a report by IBM, design-thinking resulted in a 301% ROI.
What does it mean to be design-led? There are a lot of definitions out there, but for Carrot, it means we prioritize the people we serve. We value constant iteration and improvement in our product, always focusing on the customer needs first. We wanted to make sure that our look and feel reflects our Core Values and our design-led company philosophy.
The Carrot Core Values are: Be a Beacon of Positivity & Possibility, Have Fun & Be Different, Take Initiative & Show You Care, Craft Amazing Experiences, Adapt, Evolve, & Always Improve and Add Humanity To Business. These phrases bring to mind design that has energy, dynamic colors and lots of fun and creativity!
What does this mean for you? We want to continue to grow as a company and bring our product to as many real estate professionals as we can because we believe in our message about regaining time back for the people we serve. This design refresh means that we are committed to always growing, innovating, and bringing the best product we can to our members.
Oh! And since our story has evolved over the past few years, we thought it was about time for a new video to help tell it!
The updates to the Carrot Visual Language
There are a lot of things we did to the Carrot look and feel in order to embody our Core Values visually.
We started with the color palette; we added more complementary tones and more fun and energizing options.
Our previous color palette was a bit limited and used a lot of dark gray and black tones. Dark gray and black is great in a lot of contexts, but it didn’t complement our signature orange as well as we wanted anymore.
The new palette is more robust with more bright options that all work together utilizing complementary colors. We also added tints and shades to round it out and give the design a look with more depth and a brighter tone.
We refreshed the logo.
The carrot logo is still the mark that you know and love; we just removed the gradient and updated the carrot top color with our new Carrot teal! This new teal directly complements our signature orange on the color wheel.
Personal touches matter in our business, and we wanted to show that in our designs too.
We replaced generic stock photos of software and dark overlays that had started to look drab with bespoke illustrations, colors, and textures utilizing our new color palette to convey the energy and positivity that we already exude.
We gave our illustrations and icons a facelift to better represent the concepts behind our software.
We value clarity and creativity and wanted it to shine, so we made some custom Carrot Buds to show our team spirit and the trend just grew from there. Our new digital Carrot Bud is our Carrot team mascot! He leads the way through our software with a little flair, adding some fun moments throughout the site.
From a practical perspective, utilizing illustrations to demonstrate our product offerings has a more contemporary vibe, doesn’t require we update imagery every time there is a new device released, and can help us more easily emphasize the parts of the software that we are trying to highlight.
A little bit of effort goes a long way
How is this relevant to you? Many small companies don’t think their brand matters or that they can focus on other areas of the business and be successful. This is true, but putting even a little bit of effort into your brand has a lot of benefits.
A thoughtful brand builds credibility. We’ve all been to those websites that are poorly designed, and we don’t trust them. By not putting effort into what your brand looks like, it paints the picture that you don’t care about other aspects of your business either.
A clear message makes everyone’s job easier. If your vision and core values are clearly laid out, then your whole team can get behind it and your unified message means marketing and advertising is in alignment with the rest of the company.
A unified vision builds brand advocates. Think of the brands that you love. Have they put energy and effort into their messaging, look and feel? We all have brands that we support and those companies have put a lot of thought and time into how they are presented to the world in order to keep people loyal. Your company should be no different.
A well-designed brand drives a higher price point. The service you provide is obviously important, but if you can nail your brand from a messaging and design perspective, more people will value what you offer and will pay a higher price for it.
How to get started with refreshing your own brand
A design refresh can certainly seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Even putting a little effort into a few things can bring great results.
Think about your business’s mission and vision. Write it down, share it, edit it and hone it in. This is the foundation of your brand. Until you think about this, you won’t be able to nail the visuals. There are a lot of great resources out there about writing this statement. Hubspot has some great examples.
Once you have your mission and vision completed, take a look at your logo and color palette. Do they align with your company statements? Do they represent how you want your company to be viewed? A really great logo is usually simple, easy to read, and works in multiple sizes. You can have versions that can be used to post to social media or print on letterhead. Many successful logos are just typography and don’t even have any imagery associated with them.
Once you have your updated mission and vision, logo, and color palette, you can take it a step further and think about the types of photography you might want to use to represent your brand. Don’t be afraid to source stock photography on your website and have some fun!
All of this can certainly be overwhelming, so don’t be afraid to hire a professional to help you. We have a Design Refresh Service or a full Concierge Setup to help you get your site updated and in alignment with your company brand!
Plus much more!! Check out the other services Carrot has to offer to help our members generate more leads in our new marketplace.
Don’t bother with a bunch of spam backlinks. You’ll only end up penalized. The algorithm is smart.
– Bryan Driscoll
5 Backlink Building Pro Tips for Faster SEO Results w/ Keith Sant & Bryan Driscoll
Part four in our SEO series came from feedback we received from Carrot users who wanted to know exactly what to do if they were only putting in an hour a week on their sites.
We brought in two of our favorite guests, Keith Sant and Bryan Driscoll, to dive into using valuable backlinks and creating consistent content for your website. (Pssstttt… it’s easy with our SEO Tools add-on.)
So listen in or read on to find out how to get the most out of your website in just a couple hours a week!
I am super excited to share this installment of our SEO series. After customizing your website, creating content, and getting everything dialed in, the next step is to send out some signals to let Google know you’re there. You can do this by utilizing backlinks, which will help to drive your rankings forward.
What Are Backlinks and How Many Should You Have?
Backlinks are when your website is mentioned on another person’s website, with a link directling them to your URL. This is crazy important to Google as it enhances your credibility. If other people are talking about you, then you must be good.
The number of backlinks you will need will vary depending on the size of your market. Some small towns may not need any backlinks to do well, whereas larger, more competitive markets, will need quite a few.
You don’t want to go from zero to 1,000 backlinks. Keep it natural because the algorithm is smart. A few places to get backlinks are…
Local places to list your business – your local chamber, business directories, etc.
Yelp, YellowPages, and other, larger, directory sites
Vendors and other businesses you’ve worked with in the past
You can create strong, useful content and distribute it to relevant sites
Guest post on other relevant blogs and websites
Check out what your competition is doing – there are many tools out there that can help
Doing outreach may seem like a lot of work, but it will be worth it. A little effort now can offer rewards for years to come.
How Much Time and Money Will You Spend?
Again, this will depend on the size of your market and how many links you will need to see results. If it is a competitive market, you may want to spend an hour a day for a couple of months on outreach, creating content, and building relationships.
For those who simply want to understand it, but not actually do it, you can hire an SEO firm to help. You can also pay to have your content listed as a guest post on a relevant website, typically paying somewhere around $150 for the post.
The Basics of a Good Backlink
You want your links to be real, to offer value, and to be on relevant websites. It is better to look for something local and highly targeted, as opposed to larger sites that may be more generalized. You want the links to be high quality.
Buying 5,000 links from Fiver can have an adverse effect, which could get you blacklisted completely. Avoid spam, and make sure your links offer value to your potential clients.
The Importance of Internal Links
Internal linking is linking to other pages that are in your domain. While Carrot sites come with many of these in place, it is a good rule of thumb to go in there and mix them up a bit. If you are using our automated content, be sure to add some internal links within your website where appropriate.
In addition, it can be a good idea to add some external links to your different pages. This shows Google that you aren’t trying to get all of the focus on you, rather you are trying to help your reader get the best information possible.
Keith likes to add a hyperlink to Google Maps when he is showing off properties he has purchased in the past. He has seen great results from this small trick.
What to Avoid With Backlinks
There are a lot of mistakes people make when it comes to backlinks. The biggest is buying fake links that will make your site appear spammy. Adding these links can drop your rankings, which is the opposite of what you want.
Avoid anything spammy, where you are just coping and pasting. Just like your business, your links should be there to add value for the reader.
All of this may seem like work, and it is. However, stacking these evergreen bricks now will offer you rewards for years to come. You can either spend your time running on the hamster wheel or refocus some of your time on creating great content and building those links!
![[Heat Map Results] Where Are Buyers and Sellers Clicking On Your Real Estate Website](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/heat-map-test-featured-image.png)
![[Backed By Data] What is a Good Conversion Rate for Your Real Estate Investing Website?](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/what-is-a-good-conversion-rate-featured.png)
