Generating consistent stream of real estate referrals is crucial to your career and sanity. Staying in touch with your database isn’t optional, it’s a necessity. However, how do you do it without always talking about real estate?
Good news is you don’t have to. Actually, you shouldn’t really ever talk about real estate with your past clients and database because it could get annoying.
If you want to get generate a consistent stream of real estate referrals in your real estate business, you must stay in touch with past clients and everyone else you know! I’m not talking about boring them with market updates either.
Real Estate referrals are the easiest type of client to generate and the highest return on investment you’ll make in marketing your real estate business.
The question is how do you stay in touch and what do you say?
Past clients don’t want you real estate related content when they are not in the market, but they do want your relationship.
There is one thing you need to understand about creating more real estate referrals before you can implement any kind of system. Referral marketing is all about keeping your name in front of your database in a sell without selling type of way. It’s about being top of mind so that when real estate comes to mind, you are the only agent they think of.
WHY?
Because it’s impossible to be referred if people forget about you. Here’s the formula to why people refer Realtors.
- They have to notice a conversation about real estate.
- They have to think of you.
- They have to introduce your name into the conversation.
If these three things are in place, then you should get plenty of referrals…
But they must remember who you are and what you do.
Referral marketing is not rocket science, but it requires consistency and a system to do it the right way. Many times agents overthink referral marketing, but it’s really simple.
So what do you talk about?
The best part of creating more real estate referrals is that you don’t ever have to talk about real estate if you don’t want to. All you need to do is remind your database you’re in real estate. We’ll get into more details as we talk about the three channels you should be using to do that.
You need multiple ways to communicate to your database to get the most out of your referral marketing efforts. The right way to market for referrals is to use a combination of social media, video email, and direct mail consistently.
3 Must Have “LISTS” To Create More Real Estate Referrals
Your “lists” are comprised of total number of contacts or people you can reach within direct mail, email, and social media. You need to create an email list, a direct mail list, and ultimately a social media following full of people whom you’d expect to send or do business with you.
Generate More Real Estate Referrals on Social Media
The best thing to ever happen for real estate referrals is Social Media.
Every social media platform serves as an additional channel to market your brand. Your “friends” on Facebook are part of your database because they live somewhere, which means they all have the potential to refer or do business with you. Think about how many old friends you don’t have time to keep in contact with anymore, but know what they are up to because you see them on Facebook. If you want more real estate referrals you have to be remembered!
Would you expect your social media friends to use you for their upcoming move? Then you need to keep reminding them that you are in real estate.
There is a right way to use social media and a wrong way. It’s not meant to be a classified ad section, don’t be cheesy. If you do it right, your “friends” will REMEMBER and REFER you. The proper way to do this is by sharing pictures or videos while telling a story about your business.
Social media is one huge relationship center! There is no better way to remind others what you do for a living than to make real estate related social media posts during your typical workweek! I recommend no less than 10-15 real estate reminders a month although that’s not a ton.
Remember that all of your connections on social media are all nothing more than a bunch of online relationships that will eventually move. Facebook and Instagram have been the most dominate social media platforms used by real estate agents for referral marketing, but you have to use them the right way to make it work for you.
The key is to consistently let others know what you do for a living without sounding like a sleazy salesman. You want to build your reach, friends, connections, and followers are much as possible with any social media platform you use.
Anything you share on social media is referred to as content. Share content like cool pictures of houses, cool views, client closings, final walk throughs, reels, or anything else that will reinforce what you do for a living to your friends. That’s how simple this is.
Generate More Real Estate Referrals With Video Email
Video Email marketing is also necessary to keeping a consistent presence amongst your audience. You should have an email list comprised of all the relationships you currently have. As long as you have a relationship with someone who you have implied consent to broadcast content to, they should be nurtured monthly with video email content.
The key to email marketing is not having the largest list, but one made up of quality relationships. To have an effective email referral marketing strategy, the content of your emails SHOULD NOT be generic.
Don’t Spam Your Database With Crap Content
There are many platforms that “Automate” email campaigns for real estate agents to their “database”, but the problem I have with it is that it’s not very engaging. Most people can tell they are pre-written emails and they are not very personable. The key to having referral success from your email marketing is to nurture your audience with very personal messages so that your content is more engaging.
Pre-written templated emails appear like spam and your people are more likely to unsubscribe or even be annoyed.
How good is your marketing if it never gets read or opened and feels like more of a nuisance receiving?
The national average open rate for emails is only around 13%. If you want to have a better strategy, you need to independently write your emails and make them personal. Don’t forget the main point of sending an email to your in the first place.
It should be to stand out and nurture your relationship.
We’ve seen open rates average over 40% using video based emails and creativity, which turns into a whole lot more real estate referrals. Email is also great because it has a 100% deliverability rate. This means that as long as you have the right email address that your intended recipient will receive it, but that doesn’t mean they will open it.
You need to create engaging content with your emails.
How Do You Create An Email List?
If you don’t already have an email list, you can easily get started by logging into your Gmail you are already using. Export all of your email contacts and then go through them and determine who should be on your list. If you feel like you would say hi to this individual walking down the street then they should be in there.
You will not have a relationship with every contact you export, but at least you have a large list to start with. Go through your contacts and delete everyone you don’t feel you have a relationship with. Once you are done, then BAM, you are in business.
Once you have your email list ready to go all you have to do is create a schedule that has consistency and follow it. The content of your emails can be whatever you want, but please make sure that you are providing some kind of value to your recipients. Don’t forget the point is to stay on top of mind of your audience so that you are remembered when they or someone they know may you need your services.
Generate More Real Estate Referrals With Direct Mail
This is going to be the hardest list to build, but only because it’s time consuming. Your direct mail list will be comprised of your closest relationships. We are not farming a strange community, but we are farming your relationships.
Who Should Get Your Direct Mail?
Your list should consist of anyone you would invite to your wedding or funeral. Your direct mail list is all about quality and not quantity. It’s not about buying a list of names and numbers to market to. If you do that, I am telling you right now, this is not going to work for you. We are marketing to our relationships, not farming strangers. Remember what needs to take place.
Anyone who says direct mail is dead has no idea what they are talking about. Direct mail is the most powerful list of the three. One of the reasons your direct mail list is so important is because everybody will receive it and physically touch your marketing message. You cannot say the same thing about social media(only roughly 17% of Facebook friends see your posts) or email (national open rate is 13%, but if you create consistent valuable content you can average 40-50%).
Yes, your direct mail will eventually get thrown away, but not before they acknowledge receipt of it. No other channel can provide a physical engagement with marketing other than direct mail!
To be honest with you it doesn’t really matter what the content on the mailing piece is, just as long as it’s entertaining or informative without and reminds the recipient that you are in real estate.
Once you have compiled a direct mail list of qualified relationships you can set up your direct mail referral marketing system. Your campaign can be a monthly newsletter, postcard, or even holiday card. Don’t forget that the point is not to push your service as much as it is to remind them of your existence. When you are remembered you are more likely to be thought of when they or someone you know needs your services. Make sure you use technology to automate all of your fulfillment so that you are not stuffing envelopes or stamping postcards. That is a waste of time.
Conclusion In Referral Marketing Tips
I hope this helped you see how keeping a consistent presence amongst your database encourages referrals. Don’t over think the strategy here. Using a 3 prong attack for your referral marketing generate more real estate referrals.
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If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you might want to check out Referral Sweet.