Harnessing Automation to Stay Competitive in a Changing Housing Market

Real estate agents value efficiency in a shifting market, but not everyone has the time nor the resources to make this happen.

Thankfully, we at Real Geeks have the solutions to help you stay competitive in a changing housing market. One of these is the Geek AI, which harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to do some heavy lifting.

So, how does it work? We’ll dive deeper into this innovative tech and see how it’s helped our current customers in all stages of the real estate process. Keep reading to learn how it works.

Challenges With Appointments and Leads

The market and environment are changing. The old methods of securing appointments with leads are no longer as effective as they were before — younger generations are shying away from calls, preferring texts as a mode of communication.

This makes it even harder for agents to maintain all of these conversations, as there’s not enough time to “sow seeds” and keep hot and warm leads for the future.

What Tools Are in Place to Address These Challenges?

Thankfully, not all hope is lost. Many real estate firms and agents are meeting these modern problems head-on with modern solutions.

One of the most promising solutions among these is customer relationship management (CRM) software, such as the Real Geeks CRM.

Agents are also taking advantage of their websites and testimonials to enhance the confidence of wary customers.

How a CRM Helps

The Real Geeks CRM has many capabilities that make it an indispensable tool in an agent’s arsenal.

One of the most useful features is the ability to track who’s been actively visiting and engaging with your website. These are the low-hanging fruit — the people who are most likely to respond and set up an appointment with your firm.

CRMs are thus able to narrow down your database so you can concentrate on leads who are more likely to convert. This saves you time that you might otherwise be forced to spend fruitlessly combing over your entire database.

However, the numbers can still be overwhelming — but that’s where automation through AI comes in.

AI Autoresponders: The Future in CRM

An autoresponder is a major integration in today’s CRMs. The Robin Geek AI is the Real Geeks CRM tool that responds to customers for you, allowing you to sit back and only jump in when necessary.

It’s the best way to qualify leads without wasting time communicating with every single one of them.

While it’s highly possible that customers may know they’re talking to an AI, the rapidly-improving technology is making autoresponders even more believable and comfortable to speak to as the years go by.

Meet Robin! Geek AI

The Real Geeks AI, Robin, is still in its beta stages. However, it has already shown very promising results. Real Geek users’ leads didn’t even realize that they were talking to an AI, even if they’d been messaging all day!

That’s because the program developers are constantly improving its responses through script monitoring.

Real Geeks developers assess situations where Robin succeeds or needs improvement.

We’ve found that leads become more and more likely to set appointments as they spend more and more time with Robin — we’re talking months. Of course, that’s not fast enough for a real estate firm. The real magic happens with the agents.

Geek AI hero-1-1

Stay Competitive in a Changing Housing Market

Robin is just a tool. The work still falls on you, the agent. You’ll have the capability to monitor the conversations the AI makes with your leads, but that also means you’ll have to jump in during critical moments to maintain the momentum of the conversation.

In a way, Robin just starts the conversation and brings the ball a few yards nearer to the goal; it’s still up to you to score.

Published on Jul 29, 2022 under , , ,

About

Real Leads by Real Geeks is a highly efficient and effective marketing solution for generating, capturing and managing home buyer/seller leads.

One of the best lead generation and management systems available. A fully integrated custom IDX and marketing solution to drive traffic, capture leads, manage-cultivate them and close more transactions.

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Coaching Keeping It Real

Keeping It Real: The Resources To Equip Your Real Estate Team for Success with Sascha Chatman

Keeping It Real: The Resources To Equip Your Real Estate Team for Success

 

 

In this episode of Keeping it Real, Sascha Chatman and  Frank Klesitz, CEO of Vyral Marketing, break down how you can equip your real estate team for success.

Learn more about the resources needed to manage your own team of real estate agents. Of course, a capable workforce is one thing for generating leads and obtaining success in the real estate world. However, having the right resources available is one of the critical factors needed to equip your real estate team for success.

Recruiting Presentation 

 
 
 
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Transforming Your Success into Their Success

 
 
 
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Creating a Schedule

 
 
 
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Buying this Year vs Next Year

 
 
 
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Discovery Phase

The discovery phase is meant to determine whether or not the agents being recruited are the right fit for their real estate team while providing the necessary details for the agents to know what their team is about. Sascha first discusses their team goals and strategies to ensure agents know exactly what they're walking into. He also discusses other matters, such as expectations from the agents themselves and their commissions.

The discovery phase may be one of the most important parts of knowing how to equip your real estate team for success. In order to succeed, you need to have a reliable workforce on your side that shares the same goals and is willing to cooperate with the rest of the team to move forward. Having a compatible and efficient team is one of the best resources you can have in real estate, as it can significantly affect your business' productivity.

Ad Educated Buyer is Easier to Work with!

 
 
 
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Agent Utility Belt

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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This is the highlight of the entire video. Sascha compares his utility belt of resources to Batman's belt of tools and trinkets. This belt essentially exists to store all resources and keep them within reach. Don't get the wrong idea, though. It's not an actual belt. Instead, it is usually a cloud or a compilation of all your valuable resources, such as videos, links, and other agent tools. Having a utility belt that is curated specifically for your team and your needs could help increase the productivity of your workflow because you won't have to scavenge for resources when you need them.

Not only does it make you more productive within your workplace, but it also gives off the sense that you are reliable and organized. When clients ask for something, you will easily have it within reach. 

Clients understandably have many questions before closing the deal, so one of the best ways to answer them is to grab a resource from your utility belt. For example, you're talking to a client about title insurance. Instead of answering their questions yourself, you could take an informative video from your utility belt and ask them to watch it. This makes it easier to understand and relate to.

Having a utility belt is a great way to equip your real estate team for success. It also comes in useful during business transactions. All in all, it's one of the best resources that a real estate team can have.

Having the right resources is essential in equipping your real estate team for success. Create an agent utility belt that caters to your team by signing up for the Real Geeks platform today. We provide valuable resources that you and your team can use to achieve the best possible outcome in every situation. Get started with us today!

Coaching SEO Keeping It Real Real Estate Lead Generation IDX

The Power of SEO and Area Pages w/ Bob McCranie

 

 

The Power of SEO and Area Pages With Bob McCranie

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Do you want more lead traffic to your website? In this latest episode of Keeping It Real, we explore the latest SEO best practices with Bob McCranie. Bob is the Broker Associate & Team Owner at Texas Pride Realty Group - HomeSmart Stars and an expert on utilizing SEO best practices and Area pages in his strategies.

Join host Frank Klesitz, CEO of Vyral Marketing, in breaking down the strategies and best practices behind a robust, high-conversion online presence in today's evolving digital landscape.

Bob on Why Real Geeks:

 
 
 
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Bob on Organic VS Paid Advertising:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

If you need some help optimizing your site, tips on how to turn up the volume on your current lead flow, insight into different strategies that have provided wins for agents across various markets, -- Check out Bob's Area Page lead generation strategy!

Bob on Optimizing Your Real Geek's IDX Website:

 
 
 
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Bob on Attitude & SEO:

 
 
 
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Bob on virtual companies & online work:

 
 
 
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Top 3 Ways to Generate Lead Traffic & Boost Your Sale Funnels' Visibility in Your Market

Bob, a Brokerage Associate & Team Owner at Texas Pride Realty Group - HomeSmart Stars, shares the techniques and strategies he deploys to increase overall visibility to prospective clients in his market. 

According to Bob, he deploys three unique strategies to get leads. These strategies roughly refer to attraction marketing, SEO & optimizing his website based on popular search engine optimization guidelines, and demographic farming/cultivating his existing audience. 

Let's dive more into these strategies and find out how Bob executes them to get as many leads as possible.

Bob on Attraction Marketing:

 
 
 
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Attraction Marketing

Attraction marketing, also called event marketing, is Bob's number one strategy. This strategy is based on the idea is that you don't have to run Ads all the time or cold calls but have people gravitate towards you because of who you are in the community. In the case of Bob, he's a well-known Broker Associate with long years in the industry. Newer agents can begin working on their community visibility by hosting events. 

Bob on the fun of event marketing:

 
 
 
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You can draw people to you by hosting events, posting about them on social media, and generally being a social connector. It doesn't have to be a real estate event, but any event that serves as a lure to connect with people.

Bob on marketing his events:

 
 
 
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Some of the events you can host include:

  • Kite Flying, BBQs, & Outdoor Events
  • Theater Events, Movie Nights, DriveIns, Concert in the Parks, etc. 
  • Recycling Events, Food Drives, Community Service Events, etc.

Bob on building collaborative events:

 
 
 
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Starting successful community events takes consistency and patience. Make a schedule and stick to it when promoting your events. You can put up physical signs around your area. Put up flyers at your local coffee shops and gyms, and utilize social media ads. These have proven very effective no matter which markets you are located in. 

Bob on using creative postcards for marketing:

 
 
 
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Putting in a constant effort will build attendance over time, and before you know it, you will have collected a community of regulars at your events that can also serve as a potential client base. Networking greatly helps get leads, even if not by a massive count at first.

Your Website

Bob on the importance of having your own IDX website: 

 
 
 
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Bob on making IDX websites work for you:

 
 
 
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The second and perhaps most important is internet marketing, specifically SEO. Your primary medium is your Reel Geeks website, which helps you draw in more organic leads. You still run Google ads, which brings you steady business.

However, you must have a website to lead your potential leads and provide them with the information they need.

Of course, just having a website is not enough – you need area pages. Bob stresses the importance of area pages and being specific about where you want your leads to go. He combines social media and SEO, focusing locally on his pages.

No one looks for real estate in the main city. People always look for the suburb or neighborhood they are looking into.

You create business pages for each suburb of the city you're covering. Each page must have a call to action that takes the reader to the actual area page on your website. It has to lead to the direct page for the city or suburb, not the homepage. It helps to pre-fine all searches as much as possible, directing leads where they want and giving them satisfaction.

 

Bob's Take on Ads & Real Leads

 
 
 
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How Bob Determines His Area Pages

 
 
 
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Building a Backlink Strategy

 
 
 
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Backlinks & Area Pages

 

 
 
 
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Demographic Farming

Bob's last strategy has to do with demographic farming, which is about cultivating or nurturing your lists.

Using Funny Postcards in Demographic Farming:

 
 
 
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In this example, he developed his holiday list using postcards sent creatively and in good fun. For instance, he would send a holiday postcard in June or Valentine's Card with a humorous caption. Of the many postcards he sent, the most creative and successful is the tagline, "No, I don't want to buy your house." Bob doesn't want to buy your house, but he can sell it at a 30 to 40% better price than others in the market. The idea is to keep it fun, so people will look at the cards or mail and know what Bob has to offer.

Per Bob's experience, the strategies that can help you bring in leads are – attraction marketing/events marketing, SEO and area pages, and demographic farming. Add them to your process, and you can turn up your current lead flow to the highest volume.

 

Keeping It Real Real Estate Lead Generation

How To Generate Seller Leads in Low Inventory Market w/ Lisa Chinatti & Jason Posnick.

How-to-Generate-Seller-Leads-in-Low-Inventory-Market-w-Lisa-Chinatti-1

We are excited to welcome back one of our favorite guests, Lisa Chinatti, for this episode of Keeping It Real. Lisa is a top producer based in Westford, MA, with over ten years of Real Estate experience. 

Jason Posnick, the Sales Manager for the Chinatti Realty Group, also joined and has an enormous passion for developing others, solving problems, and conveying positivity into people’s lives.

The market is hot right now. A shortage in housing inventory has been a problem faced by real estate agents for years. As times change, you also need to adapt and learn how to generate seller leads even in low inventory areas. Lisa gives you her tips and shares what she and her team are doing to maintain their seller lead flow.

Lisa and Jason break down the most effective approaches to 5 different lead sources and how to create a plan that meets your needs regardless of which market you are in.

 

 

 Online Home Value Leads

People want to know what their home is worth. For this, they usually go to a landing page or web form where they have to input information that will help them discover just how much their home is worth in the market. How do you lead traffic to this page?

Lisa shares that the best way to get online home value leads is to be diligent with retargeting and email work. Some strategies you can do to approach this lead source is to also take advantage of Google Pay-per-Click (PPC) and Google My Business.

Having a lot of photos and geotagging them will increase your visibility as Google tends to favor local experts. Google reviews will also help drive traction, as well as links to your other content or social media pages.  

Circle Prospecting/Door Knocking

While circle prospecting or door knocking are considered older, traditional techniques, they will never die. How to generate seller leads through this lead source requires some timing and knowing the five touchpoints for circle prospecting. These five touchpoints include:

  • On the day of signing the listing

  • Before the listing goes to the market

  • Once the offer is accepted

  • On the day of the inspection

  • When the deal closes

Each of these five touch points necessitates a different message from which you could build your business. Instead of feeling like they’re talking to a company, which may be off-putting, consumers can view you with trust, which will convince them to do business with you.

Buyer Leads From Buyers Who Have a Home To Sell

Using ads strategically in your follow-ups can lead you to discover that a lot of buyers have a home to sell before they can make any purchase. There’s a big chance you can get buyer leads who have homes to sell by marketing Facebook posts towards listings and open houses.

In a low inventory market, it can be effective to market every new listing as a “coming soon.”

However, there are some workarounds that won’t get you in trouble with laws concerning coming-soon marketing. Along with Google PPC, this can prove to be an effective way to generate seller leads.

Google Local Services

When using Google services to generate seller leads, reviews are crucial. Reviews don’t just get you credibility, but they also tell Google that you’re a local business or service, which is more favored by their algorithm. Many potential seller leads also rely on Google reviews to see if an agent is right for them.

That said, building reviews increase your chances of being more visible while also convincing seller leads to contact you directly — especially when they want to know the value of their home.

Agent-to-agent Referrals

Agent-to-agent referrals are all about nurturing relationships with other agents regardless of your industry. Usually, people who want to sell their house will be moving to a different state, so they contact an agent in the state they’re moving to.

This agent can then send you a referral, so you can help them give the client a smooth transition and experience. This is only possible if you build relationships with other agents by giving value and sharing knowledge.

Put Yourself Out There

Learning how to generate seller leads in a low inventory market can take some time, but the effort is well worth it when you start generating an incredible amount of leads.

Begin by putting yourself out there and taking advantage of online tools like Google PPC, Google My Business, social media marketing, and email marketing.

Real Geeks' Real Estate Cost Per Lead Breakdown

Throughout our masterminds, exchanges with real estate industry professionals on The Keeping it Real podcast, and our every day, — a metric that everyone agrees is key to formulating your route to success as a real estate professional is the cost per lead metric.

Understanding your cost per lead metric will help you assess the amount of inventory in your market, understand your clients’ and prospective clients’ needs, assess where clients fall in their buying or selling cycle, and better understand your market. With your cost per lead metric, you can create a budget and a plan for any market or season you find yourself in.

Fill out the form below to receive an instant download of The Real Geek’s 2022 CPL Report that breaks down the cost per lead in the top 10 most prominent markets of the last year, the top 10 lowest cost-per-lead markets of the previous year, and the cost per lead breakdown of the 50 largest markets of the previous year.

Through our work managing Google and Facebook ad accounts for hundreds of real estate teams across the USA and Canada, Real Geeks can get a unique perspective of the market as a whole. Based on what we’ve seen, now is the best time in history to start investing in PPC leads.

Once you have assessed the cost per lead in your market, there are many ways to apply this metric to your strategy. Last week's Keeping it Real: How to Generate Seller Leads in Low Inventory Market w/ Lisa Chinatti & Jason Posnick, Lisa and Jason address the current issue of low inventory markets. As well as, break down the most effective approaches to 5 different lead sources and how to create a plan that meets your needs regardless of which market you are in.

 

 

In addition to constructing a strategy in response to low inventory markets and examining different lead sources, lead flow is also a factor to consider. If you have a small real estate team or have become overwhelmed with the number of incoming leads, you can deploy a texting assistant like Real Geek's Robin Geek AI to your workflow. Also, check out Keeping it Real's: How to Hire a Virtual Assistant to Cold Call Homeowners for Seller Leads w/JP Wells.

 

 

If you are getting started with building a workflow, check out: 4 Drip Campaigns You Can Activate Today and Get Huge Response, where Greg Harrelson & Abe Safa break down their favorite drip campaigns you can activate today using your Real Geeks workflow library, as well as a drip campaign of their own. 

There are plenty of ways to take your cost-per-lead metric and create a bulletproof lead workflow that works for you or your team. Check out our Keeping it Real: Bulletproof Real Estate Lead Follow-Up Plan w/ Brendan Bartic. We sat down with Brendan to discuss how his Denver real estate team sold 230 homes last year. He broke down his "bulletproof" real estate internet lead follow-up system.

 

 

If you’re spending money to generate online buyer and seller leads and are not happy with how many people respond to you or book an appointment, you’ll learn how to improve your results with our Keeping it Real: How to Convert More Online Buyer and Seller Leads to Appointments w/ Anna Krueger.

 

 

Coaching Greg Harrelson

4 Drip Campaigns You Can Activate Today and Get Huge Response

Greg Harrelson & Abe Safa break down their favorite drip campaigns you can activate today using your Real Geeks workflow library, as well as a drip campaign of their own. 

 
 
 
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Mind the capture to contact ratio.

“So many people focus on the conversion ratio between the contracts that they get meaning: their new leads and the contracts that they write – But I’ve always believed that there's a different ratio you got to focus on … All of us want to write more contracts … but sometimes don't realize how to influence that number.” [Greg Harrelson]

“How many [leads] are you actually talking to? Within those conversations, you are able to determine where those people are in their buying or selling cycle, which gives you a much clearer picture of whether your Ad spend is working or not. It gives you a better picture of how full your pipeline is, which will help you make better decisions.” [Abe Safa]

This is particularly important to keep in mind, especially when using this first drip campaign.  

Buyer leads no contact after the first attempt

“This one campaign, in my opinion, we have tracked more influence on our ROI and our conversion, because of this one campaign.” [Greg Harrelson]

The campaign: 8 steps. 8 messages. 48 hours. 

Regardless of which drip campaign strategy, you adopt the goal of all outreach should be to personally talk to as many of your leads as possible. 

“My opinion is we shouldn't use auto-responders … I understand sometimes we are on appointments and we cannot take calls … but I’m not a believer in using auto-response all the time … I rather you be the person that communicated to them. ” [Greg Harrelson]

Greg and Abe both suggest using the Double-Dial technique (Call a lead – if they don't pick up, then hang up and call them back immediately.) This will help your pick-up rate tremendously as most people who screen their calls pick up on the second call. Both Greg and Abe note to always double-dial prior to deploying any drip campaign. 

Buyer leads- inactive last 6 months

“We kick off this workflow every single week to anyone who meets [the] criteria, and there's not a week that goes by where these two things don’t happen: 1: We identify a lead that we can now work with that we thought was inactive. 2: We identify a lead that we thought was inactive but was active and bought through our competition.” [Greg Harrelson]

Set the leads that purchased with someone else up on a market report for where they bought and they can later become a seller.  

“Just because someone is inactive in your account, Let’s not assume they are inactive in general. I assume they are active, I’ve lost their attention, and I need to win it back ” [Greg Harrelson]

Select this workflow from the Real Geeks library, set the advanced search filter to: all leads inactive last 6 months, and begin the workflow. This workflow gives more attention to the leads you already have, bringing your ROI up and your cost per lead ultimately down. 

Buyer Leads - Active Buyer Unresponsive (no follow-up)

 
 
 
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This is for those leads who are active, you can see their actions on your Real Geeks site, but they are not picking up the phone whenever you call them. 

This workflow is 5 messages over 24 hour period. 

“Every person that we call a lead, I believe someone else has the same lead if not  3 or 4 more websites have the same lead … You’ve got to do something to stand out and this workflow would be a way we would do that. ” [Greg Harrelson]

General | Follow up Workflow to database

Unlike the above, this drip campaign is not found in the Real Geeks workflow library. Greg and Abe both use this workflow in-house. 

This simple workflow consists of two text messages, and one email. The messages whether text or email should contain a video component.

“You really need to start incorporating some video in your texts, in your email templates, in your workflow templates, because that really helps you stand out. ” [Greg Harrelson]

Greg and Abe both highlight the use of the Real Geeks’ video tool where you can embed introduction videos, FAQ videos, and other information you want to send your leads in text and email templates.  

“When it comes to using workflows don’t get attached to their response … I see a lot of agents get frustrated when they get a lot of ‘No’s … all that means is they're not interested at this present moment. The whole objective of using these workflows is to get someone engaged in a conversation … Engage them over time and then be there when they are ready.” [Abe Safa].

Ultimately, adapting each one of these workflows and personalizing them with embedded content of your own will not only extend the reach of your pipeline, but it will assist in maintaining and providing value to the relationships in every part of the buy and sell cycle. 

Powerful, simple & easy-to-use, sign up for Real Geeks today.

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