Download The Top 10 Real Estate Agent Marketing Mistakes

The Top 10 Real Estate Agent Marketing Mistakes &
How To Correct Them
Here's a top 10 list you can't afford to miss.
1. Not Cultivating Referrals
Only a small percentage of agents run their business like a real business by
implementing systems and procedures that will keep their transactions flowing;
during both good times and bad.
The rest flit from one prospect to another, only latching onto the prospects who show
high motivation to buy or sell something right now. The rest of the people they've met
along the way are pretty much ignored, unless and until they step forward on their
own.
That's a very big mistake, because as you can see from this latest NAR surveys on
buyers and sellers, business from referrals is by far the most important marketing
segment.
2. Ignoring Past Clients
These two NAR surveys show that neglect of past client relationships is costing
agents a ton of repeat business.
Sure you might have to wait 3-5 years or more to get repeat business from a past
client. Stop making the mistake of neglecting past clients and you'll find yourself
doing a lot more business with a lot less effort 3-5 years from now.
How long did you say you plan to be in the real estate business?
3. Inattention to "Mets"
People you have met are your very best source
of new business, repeat business and
referrals. Gary Keller reported in "The
Millionaire Real Estate Agent" that top agents,
on average, generate one transaction for every
six "Mets" per year; while only one
transaction was generated from every 50 "UnMets". That's an eight times better result from
marketing to Mets as opposed to Unmets.
It's a huge mistake to ignore "Met" marketing,
yet I see a lot of agents making it.
4. Scattered Database
Since marketing to "Mets" and past clients with an eye toward new, repeat and
referral business is so obviously important, it only makes sense that agents would
have all of their contacts' information organized for fast and easy marketing touches.
It's a huge mistake to not have your contacts organized in a database; yet this is
another mistake I see a lot of agents make.
5. Lack of Database Segmentation
Getting all your contacts into a computer is the first step. Creating a way to segment
them into target niches is the next step. This enables you to send much more
personalized and appropriate communications, rather than the typical one-size-fits-all
approach so many agents take.
Database segmentation is the foundation for targeted relationship marketing
automation. It's another huge mistake to ignore it.
6. No Database Building Strategy
Since such a huge proportion of business comes from referrals and referrals come
from people you've met, it only makes sense that a sound business building strategy
would include comprehensive procedures for continually building your "met"
database.
If you don't consistently execute a plan for adding at least two "newly met" people to
your database every week, you're making a very big mistake.
7. Insufficient Contact for Relationship Building and
Maintenance
Think about your family, close friends and the rest of the people you know. Now
think about how often you "touch" those people. I think you'll agree that your closest
relationships are with those who you touch most often.
Now think about how close you feel to people you haven't touched for a year or
more. In lots of cases you probably feel that the relationship is now lost or broken.
Frequency of contact clearly has a great deal to do with how close we feel to people,
and how close they feel toward us. The huge mistake many agents make is they aren't
contacting people nearly often enough to maintain relationships at a level that will
generate repeat and referral business.
8. Inappropriate Marketing Communications
Beware of high contact frequency, however, if your content is not likely to be
welcome. Agent Web sites are chock full of content that is appropriate to people who
are currently in a house buying or selling frame of mind. People who are currently in
the market will welcome frequent information related to buying and selling houses.
But what about the people with whom you want to build and maintain relationships
who are not currently in the market. Frequent distributions of purely buyer and seller
oriented communications are likely to annoy them; the exact opposite of the response
you want from your relationship building efforts.
How many people in your "Met" database are currently in the market? Well national
Census data going back 50 years shows, on average, about 10% of homeowners move
each year.
That means for any given 3-6 month period about 2.5-5% of your database could be
in some kind of active frame of mind. A more critical way to look at it, however, is
that 95-97.5% of your database is not in an active frame of mind and is likely to be
annoyed by the content typically found on most agent Web sites.
Homeowners need to be touched with information that is of ongoing interest and
relevance to homeowners.
There is one other important point regarding the appropriateness of communications,
and that has to do with general content strategy. These four NAR surveys clearly
show that agents absolutely need to communicate that they are knowledgable, skillful,
highly responsive and trustworthy regarding everything to do with real estate. Recipe
postcards and refrigerator magnets have little to do with demonstrating these critical
agent selection criteria.
It's a huge marketing mistake to distribute the wrong communications, to the wrong
people, at the wrong time.
9. High Cost/Low Return Marketing Investments
The latest NAR survey information shows the dismal returns from the most expensive
kinds of marketing; i.e. direct mailings and advertising.
Given that very high quality content can be quickly and easily distributed at little or
no additional cost via email and the Web, it's a very expensive mistake to keep
pouring money into marketing expenses that clearly are not paying their way, while
missing opportunities for doing more frequent, higher quality, automated electronic
marketing.
10. Lack of Marketing Automation
Relationship marketing promises to be the most productive marketing you can
possibly do; but make no mistake; it is very difficult to sustain high-touch, highrelevance, relationship marketing campaigns without an automated system.
The frequency, large content libraries, niche targeting and sheer volumes required to
achieve you income goals are going to be substantial. It would be a fatal mistake to
attempt to do it without automated marketing systems.