3 Reasons Your Electronic Marketing Is Making You Look Like a Crazy Person

There is a general rule of thumb that we find to be true when looking at most agents' electronic marketing efforts. No matter how much they plan, no matter how detailed they get, there always comes a point in their one-on-one communications with their clients and prospects that comes off making them look as if they are either crazy, or not involved in the day-to-day goings on of their communication with their clients.

It's understandable. After all, you are just one person, and there are only so many hours in the day. Having some sort of automated platform is clearly a must, given the sheer number of people you come into contact with on a regular basis.

Additionally, though, it's the nature of the game. The real estate business can best be described as a moving target. The minute you think everything is settled and agreed upon, something changes. Those changes then change everything else that is downstream.

So what's an agent to do?

Today I would like to share with you three common reasons we see agents' electronic marketing efforts fall apart and how you might look to avoid these pitfalls.

1. You take a "one size fits all" approach to your electronic marketing

Coming up with educational, value added content can be very labor intensive. It is understandable that you have only so many hours in a day, but one thing you want to avoid at all costs is coming up with one simple electronic drip marketing campaign that you will use for everyone.

Why is this, you ask? It's simply because there is no one type of real estate client. You have people that are interested in buying, some interested in selling, and even people you already know and have relationships with.

All of these people are at different points in their lives, have different needs and are interested in different things. Sending them all the identically same message will work for a small segment of your database, but the majority of the people in your database will think you either don't care about their needs or have no idea what is going on. That is not good.

When we set up electronic marketing campaigns for our clients, we take a multi-channel approach and use the concepts behind the Keller Williams 8×8 and 33 touch campaigns. We've created content specifically geared towards buyers, towards sellers and also past clients. Each campaign is separate and unique to that particular focus group. This gives a custom, hand-crafted experience for each group that makes our clients look informed and involved in the lives and needs of their prospects and past clients.

2. Your communications with clients are self serving and not value added or "outbound" in nature

This is a very simple concept, yet something we see agent after agent fall victim to, and, in turn, destroying all the good will and rapport they have built with their prospects and clients. Simply put, as humans, we are all selfish, to a certain extent. If you send out marketing pieces claiming you are the "Top x%" of this, or "President's Elite" of that, it's going to fall on deaf ears. After all, how do either of those things describe what is in it for the homeowner?

Even worse, if you are constantly sending them communications asking if they want to sell, or if they know anyone that you can help, and nothing else, you will start to look desperate. The fact of the matter is people want to do business with someone they feel is an expert. They want to work with someone they feel comfortable with. Someone that they have a reasonable expectation that can help them, no matter what curve balls are thrown their way.

How do you do this? Educate people. Everything you craft for your prospective and current clients should be geared towards addressing a specific point in their life and educating them about the options they have at their disposal. This will solidify in their minds that YOU are the expert they need to work with.

3. You are sending messages to clients and prospects without tracking how they are actually interacting with your messages and your content

This is a tougher one, but, nevertheless, a super important one. The reason it's important, again, is because there is no one size fits all in real estate and things are always changing. For instance, maybe you are working with a prospective client that wants to purchase an investment property in a town nearby where they live. As a result, you start sending them educational emails about property investment, listing alerts for the types of homes that would fit their criteria, and offers to go out and preview some properties.

What happens, though, if all the sudden they start searching other cities and even other types of properties? If you don't take notice of these things, the automated processes you are using to communicate with this person are completely missing the mark.

Even worse, what if you get a brand new prospect via your website? Maybe you reach out to them and qualify them as someone that is looking to sell, but not for the next 12+ months. As a result, you will put them on a slow drip follow-up campaign.

What if though, they start visiting your site more frequently, or clicking on links in your emails that show they may be looking at actually selling faster? Without a way to track lead behavior, you would not know this and, as a result, may lose the opportunity to do business with this person, due to the lack of attention you are paying them.

While it is practically impossible to do this manually, given how busy you are and how many contacts you likely have in your database, there is an automated way to make this happen. If you'd like to learn more about this automated way, stay tuned. I have a surprise for you in the coming weeks.

To view the original article, visit the Leading Agent blog.