Think Conversations Not Campaigns
Lead nurturing is simply having conversations with a prospect to take them from where they are in the buyer’s journey until they close on a transaction. The buyer’s journey is extremely important in real estate because the sale cycle is typically long. Most lead generation companies such as run campaigns that provide you a lead that has filled out a form with their contact information. This methodology makes it difficult for the Realtor or LO to convert the leads because they have to jump into the buyer’s journey without even knowing where the buyer/seller is.
Take John the Realtor for example. John receives a buyer lead (Sally) from Zillow and gives them a call to follow up. Sally then asks a question about 1234 Main Street. John answers her question and asks if she wants to see the property. Sally declines. Then John quickly tries to set up an in-person meeting. Sally declines. Then John tries to sell her on why is the agent of choice. By this time, Sally is ready to hang up. She had her question answered and will continue her research online for the next few months. John was flying blind and left to figure out where she was in the buyer’s journey, all while trying to educate her on his services. John’s office looked at his numbers and encouraged him to make more cold calls, check in with more past clients and do more advertising, but the real problem was Sally wasn’t nurtured.
Let’s walk through another scenario with Realtor John. This time he does proper lead nurturing for Sally… The moment Sally dips her toe into the market, John is there educating her each step of the way. He is the one explaining the benefits of working with a Realtor. He is the one educating her on the common pitfalls in real estate transactions. He is the one providing valuable information about the home buying process such as obtaining a mortgage, where to search for homes, home insurance, etc. Overtime as John stays top-of-mind with Sally a relationship has been built with a result of relevant trust. When Sally is ready to buy or sell, she submits her contact info into a form on one of John’s ads. John gives her a call, but this time has months of rapport built with her. They can get down to business and move more quickly to close the transaction. Through this example, John had what is called frame control. He was able to frame the important aspects of working with a Realtor through his lens using his value proposition. At the end of months of research with John as her guide, Sally wasn’t going to work with another Realtor.
Relevant Trust – trust built upon consistently demonstrating your expertise that directly applies to the prospect’s needs.
Top-of-mind – being the 1st Realtor/LO that comes to mind when a prospect thinks about real estate.
Being top-of-mind is becoming increasingly more challenging in our modern culture. There are 100’s of communication channels such as email, Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, text messaging, phone calls, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, etc. Another problem is the sheer amount of ads we see each day. In the last 24 hours, you have seen 100-500 ads. How many ads can you name? Can you name their value propositions? In order for you to stay top-of-mind with today’s customer, it’s not humanly possible. You need a system in place that can continually deliver valuable content to prospects so you build relevant trust and you need to be able to reach them on multiple channels so you stay top-of-mind until they reach the moment of decision to buy or sell. Contact us if you are interested in hearing how we are able to stay top-of-mind on multiple communication channels, provide valuable content to prospects, and spend less time on it.
Stay tuned as we are developing additional blog posts that detail what content should be included within your lead nurture messaging and how to walk prospects down the buyer’s journey. For now, know the messaging focus is on your prospect’s problem. Your messaging should answer how they get from A (where they are) to B (where they want to be).