The Two Things Needed To Attract Real Estate Leads For Free?

Wait, did you say…REAL ESTATE LEADS FOR FREE?

Yea I said that.  The best real estate leads for free are referrals!

The million dollar question is, how the hell do you get more referrals?  Sounds easy doesn’t it? It is, but most agents will struggle over analyzing this to the point they talk themselves out of it.

“Will my database think I’m annoying?”

“I don’t want to bother people I know”

“Everyone I know already knows I’m in real estate”

My goal of this article is to breakdown exactly how to generate referrals from your database so you can start obtaining real estate leads for free.

There are 2 things you need to generate real estate leads for free or what we like to call, Referrals.

First, is that you need an audience.  What’s an audience?  An audience is what all businesses refer to their fans, followers, and past customers.  Many times in real estate, we confuse an audience with a database, so let’s explain the difference.

A database is nothing more than a collection of names, addresses, and contact info.

An audience is a database that you consistently market to and have a relationship with.

An audience looks forward to hearing from you.  An audience loves you.  An audience pays attention to your communication. Your audience knows you exist.

Many real estate agents have a database, but they are not marketing to it consistently enough to transform it into an audience.

Take a look at this website. I have a large audience of real estate people who subscribe to my blog, listen to my podcast, or are members our our advanced marketing community, Attracktor. The only reason any of my followers know who I am is because I am consistently creating content like this and sending it to them through Facebook or email.  If I do not stay in touch with my audience, I will lose customers and authority in my niche.

I create content to stay in touch with my readers and listeners.  They look forward to next week’s tip so look out for it. At the end of the day my only goal is to nurture my relationship with them and continue to bring value into their lives.

It’s no different in your real estate business. If you want real estate leads for free, you need a relationship marketing system that transforms your database into an audience who shares your name with their friends, family, and co-workers.

This is the same formula for ALL businesses!

Let’s take Bye Bye baby for example and examine how they market their business.

When I had my first child, I went to Bye Bye Baby to get my baby supplies.  I input my email address for the receipt during checkout and continue to get email messages from Bye Bye Baby.  Bye Bye Baby is building their email list so they can continue to communicate with me.  They also took my home mailing address and continue to send me coupons. Suddenly, I see them on Facebook too.

Bye Bye Baby continues to market me through email, social media, and direct mail.  They are nurturing their relationship with me so I don’t forget they exist. One of their main goals in marketing is to build their relationship marketing lists.

Why would they do this?

Bye Bye Baby understands that by keeping their brand in front past customers that it will increase sales and overall net income because the subsequent sales after the customer acquisition cost are all profit minus the cost of goods.

In other words, it’s more profitable for businesses to create spin off or repeat business from past customers than it is to acquire new ones. 

The other day I I needed to get a client gift for one of my buyers who happened to be prego with their second child.  Where did I buy their gift at? Bye Bye Baby. Was that because I like Bye Bye baby or was it because they were constantly in front of me so it was the first store I thought of for baby stuff?

Let’s Take Another Example Shall We…

I was recently in Mexico a couple weeks ago at an all inclusive resort.  The resort offered us $1,500 in credits if we would attend their morning breakfast time share sales pitch.  We did it to get the $1,500 credit so we could go take the kids to swim with the dolphins, get FREE earrings, and some other stuff.

This hotel is trying to sell timeshares, but they are not doing so by running mass advertising campaigns, but rather concentrating all of their efforts on current and past hotel guests versus trying to sell their hotel packages to complete strangers.

They understand they get more sales from their current and past guests. It is a higher Return On Investment going about it in this way.

Now back to finding real estate leads for free.

It’s no different in your real estate business.  You don’t generate referrals from strangers, you get them from people you know that believe in your service.

However for whatever reason, real estate agents are led to believe that the way to find business is through cold calling and prospecting constantly.  Those methods work, but do you like doing them?

The key to having a long lasting real estate business is creating an audience of relationships that will support you with referral and repeat business, not buy some super duper email autoresponder that’s going to “drip” on people you never met for 30 days. That’s expensive and a far less ROI than it would be to just focus on your relationships and start getting their real estate leads for free.

The question you need to ask yourself is, are you doing enough to stay on top of mind with your database?

The second question is how are you keeping your brand in front of them?

if you want some more ideas on creating real estate leads for free, you might want to check out my Referral marketing library by clicking the link below!

Access the Referral Marketing Library FREE

People use agents they know, like, and trust, but more importantly that are remembered.

It’s not the job of our database to remember what we do for a living, but it is our job to make sure they do!

We like to call this having a relationship/referral marketing system set up in your business so you are not forgotten about.

Once you have a system to staying on front of your database that nurtures your relationships you will develop an audience out of them, but that’s not it.

Service, Service, Service

The second thing you need to generate referrals is great service, but that sounds too easy so let me explain.  You have to be more than just a licensed agent.  Anybody can get a real estate license, but not everyone can run a referral dominated business based on free real estate leads from their audience. You need to kick ass in what you do because people don’t refer shitty Realtors.

Think about it.  You go into a brand new restaurant and the food is terrible.  Do you go back? Do you tell your friends about it?  Hell no you don’t!

If you want to start attracting free real estate leads in the form of referrals, you need to be exceptional!  So how do agents become exceptional? You become exceptional by having effective transactional marketing systems in place.

What’s your listing marketing plan? Is it involve more than popping a listing on the MLS and putting a sign in the yard?  

Are you using video?

Facebook ads?  

SEO?

What are you doing that a homeowner cannot do on their own?

Your listing marketing plan is an example of your service.  You should have a workflow associated with each buyer and seller client that defines your level of service so you can bring consistency to your business.  You cannot create a brand without consistency.

Think about the restaurant example.  If you went back to a restaurant you previously visited and they changed the chef and ingredients to the same dish you previously ordered and it tasted terrible this time , could that restaurant survive?  Most likely not.

So let’s go back to Bye Bye Baby and look at their product or service.  They have all the name brands in one spot that I need for my baby buying supplies so it works. They have good products.

The hotel example is a little different.  We did end up buying a timeshare there because I get sold everything. We signed up for 50 weeks of vacation at a HUGE discount.  The only reason we did it because we fell in love with the place and had a great experience.

The salesman told us in the middle of the presentation that their company no longer focuses on trying to sell their timeshares to people who have not visited the hotel before.  Instead they focus all their energy on their current and past guests focusing their entire on sales strategy on the customer experience.

He went on to say that their studies show that one positive review on Travelocity online, results in another 3-4 booked vacations, which then results in another few sales meetings being set up.

“What someone else says about your business is far more powerful than anything you can say about it”

Since I got back from vacation, I told all of my friends about this place because I had such a good experience and am planning on going next year. I plan on inviting more families and friends with us this time and will introduce all of them to the same hotel package I bought into.

So bottom line is that you should define your level of service by installing customer service oriented tasks within the workflow of each buyer or seller client you work with. The only goal is to enhance the consumer experience.  Happy and satisfied past clients leads to future referral sources that create real estate leads for free! Once you do and provide a consistent streamlined level of service you will develop something your database wants to brag about.

Did you like this article?  Help me get the word out and share it amongst your peers.

The 4 Audiences To Target In Facebook For Realtors

What’s the best audience to target in Facebook for Realtors? If you want to have success in Facebook ads, you must be putting your ads in front of the right people!  This article is about how to define the different audiences you can target.

What’s Targeting?

Targeting is who you are defining or telling Facebook to place your ads in front of.  Not specifying your targeting is the number one reason why many who try Facebook for Realtors fail.

“BOOST” or Power Editor?

Power Editor is Facebook’s advertising tool where you can set up your detailed targeting options, run multiple ads at the same time to various audiences, and define more clear objectives.

A post boost is just a button you press on your business page under your post that will “boost” the post so it gets more reach. Most Realtors don’t know that a page boost’s objective is classified as “Page Post Engagement”.  This means Facebook is going to place your ad in front of people who are most likely to engage (like, share, comment) as opposed as driving some other kind of action.

For example, if I wanted to create opt ins, I would most likely choose the “Conversions” objective as opposed to a “Page Post Engagement” boost.

If my goal was running traffic to to a blog post I created I would want to chose the “Drive Traffic”, what used to be known was website clicks objective.

If I was running an ad campaign that had a goal of branding I would choose the objective “Branding Awareness” or possibly “Video Views” if in fact is was a video I was promoting.

I can write another post on this but I think you get the idea. Only in Power Editor can you set the objectives of your ad and dial in your “targeting” so you can clearly define a target audience to place your ads in front of. Using Facebook for Realtors can become a great source of business, but you must start off with the right game plan as every successful marketing campaign has a strategy behind it.

It’s no different than direct mail marketing.  You can go the EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) route and get cheaper postage to reach more people, but it’s a blanket marketing campaign.

Any direct mail marketer will tell you they would rather direct mail a very targeted audience.  It’s no different in using Facebook for Realtors.  If you want to see a better ROI, it’ starts with first defining your audience to place your Facebook ads in front of.

Here are the 4 best audiences to use in Facebook for Realtors

I target primarily for sellers so you will see that consistent through my audience selections here because I believe that it is only worth spending money on marketing activities that go after sellers.

Facebook For Realtors Audience 1-Farming 

One of the first Facebook audiences you can create is one that you would apply a farming concept to.  The goal on marketing this audience is to create awareness. This is a long term brand awareness type of campaign where your goal is most likely to create a market presence.  I call it Facebook farming.

I would focus my marketing efforts on this audience to the following marketing campaigns;

• Any kind of Videos
• Holiday Greetings
• Neighborhood news
• Just Listed
• Just Sold case studies
• Any content you create

Once you get into Power Editor you follow these instructions:

First narrow down your zip codes or city.

Now select “homeowners”. You need to go to the “Detailed Targeting” section and click, Demographics>>>Home>>>Home Ownership.

This will create an audience that can now be used time and time again to place your “Farming”marketing efforts in front of. You can additionally select “income” targeting if you want to get a little more dialed in.

Facebook For Realtors Audience 2-“Likely To Move” + Homeowners

In this audience you are going to place your ads in front of current homeowners who are likely to move.

First, select all cities or zip codes in which you work.

Then, select the same the following, “Homeowners” and “Likely To Move” in the Detailed Targeting section.

There are many other audiences that can be created in Facebook for Realtors, but I hope this was able to spell out the basics.  Facebook marketing is not hard when you break it down very simple.

Hope this Helps

Nonbanks Thanked for Picking Up Slack in Mortgage Lending

Independent mortgage banks forced to the sidelines following the housing bust are making a comeback.
At a conference in san Diego Thursday, officials at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae all heaped praise on nonbank mortgage lenders for stepping up to provide loans for home purchases at a time when many banks have scaled back. The message: without them, many recent home buyers might still be renters.
"If you guys had not stepped up we would have had a hole," Ted Tozer, the president of Ginnie Mae, told 500 independent mortgage bankers at an industry conference. "The numbers prove that if you are driven out of the industry and we don't support you, the industry can't operate."
The government-sponsored enterprises are purchasing more loans than ever from nonbank mortgage lenders largely because big banks have pulled back from selling to Fannie and Freddie after getting clobbered with repurchase requests. Large banks have also dramatically scaled back their Federal Housing Administration lending after paying huge fines to FHA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to settle claims of improper underwriting. JPMorgan Chase Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said earlier this year that the banking giant would be "very, very cautious" about originating FHA loans, given the risk of paying out more claims.
Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have all lost market share in the past four years to independent mortgage bankers, Tozer said.
"Those three organizations pulling back created a hole of one-third of our capacity," he said. "The landscape for banks has changed."
Indeed, following the crisis nonbank lenders were struggling to find new loan business because their main source of funding — bank warehouse lines of credit — had largely dried up. That funding has returned even as banks themselves have pulled back on mortgage lending.
Wells Fargo's share of Ginnie's loan volume fell to 24% this year from 38% in 2010. JPMorgan Chase's share fell to 3% this year, from 9% in 2010. B of A now has 2% share, down from 16% four years ago, he said.
By comparison, independent mortgage banks now have a 50% share of Ginnie's business, down from 14% in 2010.
Ginnie does not originate or purchase mortgages. Rather, it guarantees the timely payment of principal and interest on securities that are backed by loans insured by other government agencies, primarily the FHA and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
To be sure, there is concern that nonbank mortgage lenders may be picking up too much of the slack. A report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency's Office of Inspector General in July concluded that nonbank lenders pose a risk to Fannie and Freddie because they have limited oversight from regulators and are not as well capitalized as banks.
But at a panel discussion here, Paul Mullings, a senior vice president at Freddie Mac, seemed to dismiss the report's findings.
"We do not see this as a risk that cannot be managed," Mullings said.
Independent mortgage bankers now make up 33% of Freddie's business, up from 9% in 2010, he said. Mortgage banks now account for 40% of sales to Fannie, up from just 4% in 2007.
Tuck Reed, a senior vice president of corporate strategy at Fannie Mae, called the growth of nonbank lenders "phenomenal" and vowed to provide more liquidity and improvements in policies and tools. Fannie is now allowing mortgage banks to use its collateral underwriter tool to evaluate appraisals, and an early check automated tool for checking data on the delivery of loans.
"We appreciate your business, we want your business very much and we are committed to earning your business," Reed said.

Refi and Purchase Activity Drop in Latest MBA Application Survey

Mortgage applications decreased last week as both refinance and purchase activity fell.
The Mortgage Bankers Association's market composite index was down 4.3% on a seasonally adjusted basis for the period ending Nov. 21. Loan application volume increased 4.9% the week before, which included an adjustment for Veterans Day.
The refinance index dropped 4% week over week, while the purchase index plunged 5% during this time period, the Washington-based trade group said.
Refinances accounted for 63% of total applications, up two percentage points from the previous week. The adjustable-rate mortgage share of activity increased one basis point, to 7%, of all activity. Federal Housing Administration applications made up 9.4% of the volume, which is down five basis points compared to a week earlier. The Veterans Affairs share decreased 12 basis points, to 10.3%, while USDA applications held steady at 0.8% of all mortgage loan applications.
The average contract interest rate for a 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgage was both down three basis points respectively at 4.15% and 3.35%. FHA-backed mortgages saw average 30-year fixed rates rise five basis points, to 3.9%. Lastly, the average 30-year fixed rate jumbo loan remained unchanged at 4.1%.
The MBA survey covers over 75% of all U.S. retail residential mortgage applications.

The Rise

Mortgage rates across major loan product types rose nationally this past week, up from their lowest rates of the year, according to a Freddie Mac survey.
Rates were helped by increased demand, according to Freddie Mac chief economist Frank Nothaft.
"New-home sales grew at an annual rate of 467,000 sales in September, the fastest rate observed during the recovery," Nothaft said in a press release.
The survey, Freddie Mac's regular weekly snapshot of mortgage markets called the Primary Mortgage Market Survey, found that average 30-year fixed mortgage rates climbed to 3.98%, up from an average of 3.92% the week before. That's still down from the same time last year, when the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 4.1%.
Rates for 15-year fixed mortgages averaged 3.13%, up from 3.08% last week, but still below down from 3.2% last year.
Five-year Treasury-indexed adjustable-rate mortgages saw a 2.94% average, up slightly from last week's 2.91%, and two basis points off last year's 2.96%. The one-year Treasury-indexed adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 2.43%, up two basis points from last week but still eight basis points lower than last year's 2.51%.

Stocks are down a bit and Bonds are higher this morning.  The news of the day was Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which was reported up 2.5%, lower than expectations of 3.1%.  This was a lousy GDP number, and shows the US economy is sluggish.  And that’s with this incredible amount of stimulus and Quantitative Easing (QE). 
Remember, QE, while specifically is the government purchase and reinvestment of Treasury Bonds and Mortgage Backed Securities, has dramatic ripple effects.  Think about this – if you were lucky enough to have accumulated $1M in savings, three years ago you could have invested this money in a “no risk” investment like 3-Yr Treasuries and given yourself a nice $50k per year income.  But today, that same investment would only give you $2k per year in income. 
The government’s QE has made it very difficult for people to receive any sort of meaningful “no risk” income, even if they have accumulated millions of dollars.  This is forcing so many of us to search for alternatives… all with higher risk.  People are flocking to the Stock market, many without experience, because there are few other places to put your money.  It’s no wonder why Stock prices have risen in virtual lockstep with QE (See the chart below).




When the music stops, it’s going to get ugly for Stocks.  And this is why we may be entering a strange news environment regarding employment.  The Fed has made it clear, at least for today, that the trigger for stopping QE is a 6.5% rate of unemployment.  In a normal world, good news for the Job market would be good for Stocks and bad for Bonds.  But in the newly created “world according to Fed”,  the closer the unemployment rate gets to 6.5%, the more concern there is that QE will end.  This leads to a selloff in Stocks, which leads to improving Bond prices.  This makes it more difficult to navigate through some of the upcoming Job reports, including the releases next week. 
And an important takeaway from this is that real estate has been, and will continue to be, a beneficiary of the present environment where there are no longer any “risk free” trades that offer a meaningful return. 
We will continue the same floating stance we have adopted since April 11^th.  This philosophy has helped us to gain almost 100 BP, as well as 15 days of time.  But there may be some overhead resistance from the highs reached on April 5^th, which is a bit higher than present levels.  We will watch this carefully throughout the day

Market Commentary for 9/27/12 -  Mortgage bonds are weaker this morning after a better than expected initial claims report for last week.  Initial claims dropped to 359,000, the best number we have seen in a while.  In other important news GDP was revised all the way down to 1.3%, and durable goods sank by over 13%... the worst drop in over 3 years.  Overall the economic news is concerning, to say the least  but GDP and durable goods look backwards, while initial claims is a more forward looking indicator.  This likely explains the market’s reaction, at least initially so.