Real estate agents are constantly looking for new ways to gain leads and build business. This is necessary for those who plan to make a living as a realtor. Overall, there are two types of leads: paid and earned. Paid leads are exactly as they sound – you pay another person or online resource to find leads on your behalf. Although this saves an enormous amount of time and energy on the realtor’s part, these lead generation sources can end up costing a fortune.

Earned leads, on the other hand, are also highly effective and much less expensive than the paid ones. However, you will be paying for these leads, not with money, but with your time, energy, and dedication. How much effort you put into gaining your own leads generally corresponds to how much you will get in return.

Tom Ferry, a highly-ranked real estate educator, noted that in 2014, NAR reported 87 percent of real estate agents fail or quit within the first five years. We don’t want that to happen to you! We hope that with some of these tricks to earn your leads, our realtor followers will be in the 13 percent that are successful.

There are plenty of creative ways you can earn leads for free, but we’re going to focus on six to get you started: special events, networking, email newsletters, social media, taking advantage of resources already available to you, and thinking outside the box.

Through these six avenues, you should be able to expand your sphere of influence by a large margin. Your continuous goal should be to make new ‘touches’ every week and expand your influence in a way that makes people remember you.

Special Events
What is something you are passionate about? Take that and turn it into party! Begin hosting special events at your house, a local bar, in the park, or wherever you feel comfortable where the main attraction is something you’re really interested in. Regularly invite your family, friends, former colleagues, neighbors, members of your church or country club, and acquaintances.

For example, someone who truly has a taste for wine can have a Wine Share. He or she can invite their friends and family to bring one bottle of their favorite wine and everyone tastes and shares each other’s. They can discuss which ones they like, which ones they don’t like, flavors, texture, and notes they’re palate is sensing. Also, this is a way to save money as you only provide your one favorite bottle and maybe some cheese and crackers.

Special events are amazing opportunities to simply start conversations with those in your community. Host your events regularly enough that keeps people coming back and, hopefully, bring their friends to the next one. Eventually, you’ll get to the topic of real estate as you are consistently reminding these folks what you do: helping others buy and sell their homes. Always, always, always have information about yourself and your listings on hand to give out when the opportunity arises (and it will).

Networking
Strive to make new touches every single week by attending networking groups and other social events (that you’re not hosting). This can include art shows, charity events, book talks, happy hours, craft fairs, and networking groups that meet regularly. Network with both the general public and other real estate professionals.

Having a difficult time finding a networking group? Simply get on Google, Eventbrite, or Meetup and search for “real estate networking” or “real estate classes”. The amount of classes and events available to realtors is very encouraging. Seriously. Go look it up now!

Again, always have your information on hand and be ready to take others’ information as well.

Email Newsletters
Begin an email database, whether you use Excel or an online tool such as Constant Contact, where you can keep track of everyone’s email address that you come into contact with. Send out a weekly or bi-weekly email newsletter to these emails you have collected over time. This keeps you in the forefront of their minds as they see your name constantly pop up in their email.

Highlight your listings, upcoming open houses, your special events, recent testimonials or success stories from past clients, and anything else happening in your market or area. Try not to send out a newsletter more than once a week or else risk overwhelming your followers. But really, who has time for that anyways?

Social Media
Everyone talks about social media because of one reason: it works! By now, you should already have a Facebook page, whether it is a personal one or professional business page. You know the importance of being on social media, so we’re here to encourage you to engage your followers.

Simply having a page is not enough. Again, you want your followers to remember you. Do this by asking them to comment on your posts, promoting your special events, posting Facebook live videos, and asking them to share your content. You could even do a photo contest where the best photo wins a gift card or have your followers like and share a post to win a random giveaway. The possibilities are endless.

Take Advantage of Your Resources
There are countless resources already available to you simply for being a real estate agent. You could not even have made one sale yet, however, classes, events, mobile apps, and other software are there for you! It’s up to you to seek out these opportunities.

First International Title offers real estate courses every month and other various events. Seek out your local office for upcoming classes and other resources available to you!

Think Outside the Box
It’s time to get creative. Ask yourself some questions. What are some local businesses you could potentially partner up with? Is there a divorce lawyer nearby who could refer their clients selling a home to you? Are the local banks willing to work with you with buyers applying for a home loan? What are some other ways you can get creative with the opportunities at your doorstep?

Leave Your Fear at the Door
Don’t be afraid to go looking for new ways to gain leads and don’t be scared to ask others for help. Every First Western/International Title office has a business developer dedicated to helping you find ways to grow your business. Reach out to us with any questions and we would be happy to help you brainstorm!

Use a variety of these tactics and others that you come up with to grow your business. Don’t focus on one idea because it can only get you so far. Your earned leads can be highly effective but will take a large amount of time, energy, creativity, and your dedication. Are you dedicated?

Questions? Comments? Email shannonw@firstwesterntitle.com

So you’ve recently tackled the world of social media to help grow your business. You have a flourishing Facebook page and the leads are starting to roll in. We all know Facebook has many benefits as it is easy to use and it’s full of potential clients. But let’s talk about Instagram. Contrary to belief, Instagram is more than food shots and selfies! With over 700 million users, this platform is actually a very beneficial tool for your real estate marketing efforts.

This visually heavy medium is ideal for showcasing photos and videos of your listings, happy clients, and behind the scenes of your day to day grind. But here’s the catch: you must post original content. Remember, your followers are following YOU. Actively posting original and unique content will catch the eye of your next customer. This will also show potential clients that you are working hard to sell or find that home fast.

Instagram is a great tool to drive client engagement. Actively posting content and responding to comments is a start but you must do more than that if you want a successful page. I encourage you to start engaging with content posted by your community and local influencers. It is kind of like networking, the more you do it the more you will gain. Not only will you build a strong online presence, you will attract new customers, increase word of mouth referrals, and maintain client loyalty.

The next step to Instagram victory, is to hashtag, hashtag, hashtag! If you have no idea where to start, I suggest researching the trending real estate and local hashtags. By picking industry appropriate and popular hashtags, you will place your posts right in front of your target audience.

Instagram can be easy and fun! With a little bit of effort and some creativity, your page can increase your business in no time. Just remember, there are many Realtors out there but only one you! Let your personality shine.

Did you love this blog? Stay tuned for more real estate tips and tricks at the one and only First International Title.

Social media is a wonderful thing. You can stay in touch with friends on a daily basis, follow current news stories, and even use it to promote your business. Facebook has become the ideal platform for real estate agents to increase their marketing efforts and make more money. But why Facebook?

The number one reason you need Facebook for your business is reach. Facebook remains the largest social media platform as there are over 1.3 billion members worldwide. You could join every networking group in your area and cold call all day long but still not reach half that amount of people. Tell me where else you have the ability to connect with a billion people? Go ahead. I’ll wait…

Now that we know why you should use Facebook for your real estate business, let’s discuss how to use it. Just having a Facebook account will do nothing for your business. You have to actively engage with your audience. This is much simpler than you may think.

The first step is to create a Facebook business page. According to Facebook’s Terms of Services policy, it is in violation of their policy to create a Facebook profile page for conducting business. You wouldn’t want to use your personal profile anyhow. A Facebook business page has way more benefits than a profile. For example, let’s look at Facebook insights. This is where you can see your hard work and efforts pay off. Not only can you see how many people have ‘liked’ your page, you can see how much reach your posts are actually getting.  Facebook insights helps to see what works and what doesn’t.

Now that you’ve created your business page, you want to give it curb appeal. Make sure to update the profile and cover photo with high quality pictures. I suggest putting a professional head shot as your profile photo. We all know you’re cute but let’s keep the selfies for your personal profile page! The next step is to fill out the ‘about’ section. This is not a resume. Feel free to be yourself and show some personality.

The call to action button is relatively new to Facebook but I highly suggest you add one. There are several options such as ‘Call Now’ or ‘Learn More’. Pick whichever is best for your business. In order for you to optimize the reach in your area, be sure that ‘Similar Page Suggestions’ is checked within your settings. This will enable your business page to be displayed as a page that Facebook users might like.
You’ve finally completed your business page. Now what? It’s time to create some content and post! The million dollar question remains…. “What do I post?” You want to share engaging content. Do not, I repeat, do not solely post listings. While it is great to give your listings exposure, you want to present content your audience actually wants to read. About 20 percent of your content should be business related. The other 80 percent should be entertaining. After all, you don’t want to just sell. The goal is to build relationships with repeat customers. For the business portion, share listings, industry related advice, open house announcements, or whatever you see fit. For the rest, post news articles, funny videos, life hacks, etc. Pay attention to what your followers post and like. I guarantee you that your impressions, shares, and likes will increase exponentially. And if you get brave enough, start writing your own blogs and creating videos to share.

Social media marketing can sometimes be a chore. It takes a lot of trial and error, adjustment, and effort. But you may grow to love it once you start seeing the results! Hard work truly does pay off.

Did you love this blog? Stay tuned for more real estate tips and tricks at the one and only First International Title.