There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Ryan Hartman (page 1 of 4)

Retechulous...

How Are YOU Getting Real Estate Leads?

Let’s get back to it.

We’re all sitting around today, plotting and planning our strategies for 2014…

Writing down goals. Looking over our numbers, canceling the crap that aint working and signing up for stuff that might…

For me, (ever since I read MREA back in 2004) the modus o has always been “If I get a shitload of traffic, and generate a shitload of leads, and set them all up for some kind of semi-automated follow up, I’ll make more money.”

Guessing a lot of the folks reading this agree, though some of us have bigger “balls” then others and are willing to spend a lot more on lead gen then we do on food…

Right now my favorite way to generate leads is with dirty little Facebook ads that drive traffic to dirty little squeeze pages like this.

Screen Shot 2013-12-31 at 9.45.41 AM

How are you doing it?

(I’ll show you more about mine if you show me yours…)

Zillowpress Agent Premier–(Fairly Nifty)

I just fired up one of Zillow’s new Agent Premier sites and poked around.

It’s pretty impressive stuff.

I run a number of WordPress multisite networks for Real estate, and at a glance, Zillow’s done a really good job of offering a really functional wordpress install, with great design options, idx integration, and of course, easy bloggy wordpress content creation…

Out of the box.

In a few minutes.

For Just $10 Bucks A Month!

But Of Course These Sites Won’t Get You Leads (Yet)

Look, for the price Zillow’s agent premier sites are a fabulous deal. You’ll instantly have a site that’s probably better than what you’ve got going now.

But you’ll still be missing 3 very important things.

  • A Traffic Generation Strategy
  • A Core Lead Capture Element [Your IDX Search doesn’t count, nobody will trade an email address for what they can get for free on the Z πŸ™‚ ]
  • And a Consistent Follow Up Strategy

You can find good help and layer these things on.

And Zillow can make implementing a modern (post 2007 real estate lead generation strategy) easier by looking into these 2 feature quick requests.

  1. Add a “below post” widget area so folks can link out to a lead generation squeeze page, or include some kind of opt in form… (for something, anything other than a property search.)
  2. And/Or include a totally blank page template so folks can build their squeezes on the fly.

There are also some minor things missing like Facebook commenting, advanced SEO options, and other minor stuff that can be added via a plugin here and there.

But otherwise… for $10. You kidding me?

I maybe sorta wanted to not like it…

But geez… we all have to admit. Zillowpress is pretty nifty….

“Live Chat” Facebook Capture Trap Magic? (or waste of time?)

Just build a quick prototype for this “247 Floortime” idea that’s been rattling around the noggin…

Here’s how it works.

  • Simple page
  • Autoplaying youtube video of an agent
  • Quick blurb about what that agent specializes in, and how he/she can help you
  • Live chat box — (You have to be logged into Facebook to use it.)
  • Traffic Driving Strategy — Facebook Ads, DEMOGRAPHICALLY TARGETED TO PEOPLE JUST LIKE THE AGENT
  • Incubation Strategy — Anyone who chats, well you just shoot over a friend request with a message and get the relationship going…

You can open the demo in a new window by clicking here.

Thinking that if we only show this ad to 25-40 year old males in the Harrisburg area, folks are going to think… “hey that guys just like me, I like him, sure… I’ll interact with him a bit… ”

Of course the trick will be to properly word/structure the ad so only folks likely thinking about real estate will click thru…

What d’yall think?

Will this flop?

Or work like gangbusters? (will update in a few days once we have some datastuffs…)

Is It Really Just The MLS?

Greg’s post a few minutes ago lit me up.

I’m pretty sure that just like Greg a majority of NAR members pay their dues each year for just one reason: To get access to the local MLS system.

If this is really true, then forcing changes at NAR or killing the organization altogether is likely as simple as building a really solid National Listing system that both pros and consumers would be comfortable with. Of course, the technology already exists and is out there. Adoption is another story, but nothing a souped up modern marketing plan couldn’t overcome.

But maybe let’s not get ahead of ourselves? First… let’s see for sure whether or not most pros equate NAR dues with little more than MLS access?

If you’re connected with a fair number of current NAR members and you want to help get a sizable sample for this poll, please feel free to tweet this, put it on facebook, or copy the widget to your website.

Thanks!

GreenErections.Com

I’ve been having a lot of fun with WordPress 3.0. One of the cool things large brokers can probably be doing with the platform is offering their agents super simple to set up lead generating landing pages.

By taking advantage of the multi user capability and tweaking a themes template files to allow for very little customization, you can build, test, deliver, (and tweak for improvement) sites that do a nice job of converting visitors to incubatable leads.

Some early Retechulous stabs at this wp 3.0 mulitsite squeeze page concept include:

  • PropertyBuzzer.Com
  • 247Property.Info
  • FixerUpperLoan.Info
  • and… the site I’ve been wanting to build for years (I even bought the domain once, let it expire, then waited for it to come back available)…..

    GreenErections.Com!

    …An eco friendly squeeze page for real estate pros that sure to delight, offend, and most importantly differentiate!

    Anyway, full disclosure. I’m letting folks fire these sites up for free as a bit of a retechulous lead generation ploy… so if you’re interested in grabbing one for yourself, there’s a form that’ll let you start the process within the eco friendly real estate squeeze page (anchor text) blog post I just fired up on the subject.

    Very interested to hear whether Anyone else out there is having similar fun with WP 3.0?



$5 Real Estate Marketing At Fiverr.Com!

I’m giddy. Really giddy.

The other day a friend told me about Fiverr.Com.

The first thing I noticed on the site was that some dude would be willing to write my URL on his arm and sport it for a week…. for only $5.

So, I gave it a shot, and Here’s the result…

Real Estate Leads

Then, I noticed someone would actually write a jingle for my little company… for only $5. I wasn’t expecting much, but had to give it a try of course.

Here’s the little jingle that has me trip tripping right now:

LINK TO THE JINGLE I JUST PAID $5 FOR. [compliments of this guy.]

and I’ve got a Twitter background on the way for the same price…. $5!

Where Are You Going With This?

Yep, that’s the $5 question of the moment… where are you going to go with this? I can’t wait to see other ways that the Bloodhounds around here to promote (or get cheap labor for) their ventures using this awesome resource.

But in the meantime…the ability to find quick inspiration for fun goofy marketing ploys aside, here’s the biggest way that I can think of for Real Estate heads to benefit from Fiverr.Com on the quick:

Say you invest $20, and get 4 jobs done via Fiverr.Com.

Then say you’re happy with a few of the results… Could you see hiring the provider to do more stuff for you on an ongoing per-task basis within your practice. Not assuming it’ll always be $5, but at least you’ll have the opportunity to interview a few different folks with a few different skill sets quickly…re-utilizing the services you like, as you need them. Seems a much better alternative to hiring a full or part time assistant who you’ll have to train and manage?

[Please do send me a copy of your jingle once you have it made πŸ™‚ ]

And here’s mine again… something about the douche in me can’t help but post this link everywhere I can right now πŸ™‚ –> LINK TO THE JINGLE I JUST PAID $5 FOR.

Pimping Tomato Real Estate Video Class…

Hi All,

I just got an email from Jim Cronin, (Tomato Head) asking me if I’ve pimped the class I’m doing at 2PM East today over at Tomato University.

Well Jim, I guess here’s your answer:
I’m a total procrastinating slacker…. this blog post is part of my last ditch attempt at doing my part πŸ™‚

For anyone not familiar with Tomato U. It’s a pretty cool concept… a menu of one-off workshops/classes that’ll let you brush up on real estate tech stuffs.

Disclosure: I’m getting paid to teach the class today…


Text Messaging Real Estate Lead Generation Template (with Renter Focused Mobile Squeeze Page)

Here’s a fun one that’s sure to please and could be easily posted in the following places:

  • Above your Craigslist Property Ads
  • In Your Facebook Sidebar
  • On Postcards to Renters
  • On the back of your Biz Card
  • At The Top Of Your Blog
  • (and just about anywhere else you can drop a quick sentence)



SEE WHAT YOUR LANDLORD IS DOING WITH YOUR RENT MONEY RIGHT NOW! Text “4528” To “411669” FOR THE PHOTO SLIDESHOW!

Click Here To Skip Sending The Text & See The Mobile Website Prospects Will See


AreaAtlantaHomes.Com – Touring A Newly Hatched Broker Market Domination System

One of my favorite recent projects has been AreaAtlantaHomes.Com.

What’s most exciting for me is that the project itself is being cooked up with some ingredients that are really conducive to it evolving into the Broker Market Domination System I talked about here a few months ago:

  • The Marketplace is a large Metro Area with lots of interesting geographic niche opportunities and a naturally progressive audience of prospective buyers and sellers.
  • A small brokerage not shackled by the unwillingness to abandon an ineffective website it paid big bucks for a few years ago. (Starting fresh with a flexible cms like wordpress is very key here, why any entrepreneur starting a business would opt for something other than wordpress is beyond yours truly)
  • A very forward thinking Bloodhound of a Broker/Owner who’s committed both philosophically and financially to providing ultimate value for new agent partners and has the patience to consider and actually execute tasks that may take months or even years to pay off.

Here below is a quick tour of AreaAtlantaHomes.Com in its relative infancy. I hope it’s entertaining and maybe a little clarifying for the folks that thought my little Broker Domination spiel was interesting…

Forgot to mention in the screencast… on that last part about the Agent Technology Package. The idea is to get prospective agents to consent to receive more info on the agent technology package, then drip them with emails designed to further sell the company. Seems that in most cases, brokers take a hit or miss approach to recruiting and few have a longer term, automatic relationship building system like this in place….

CFORMS->Heap + Aweber = Finally, The Perfect Real Estate CRM Smashup?

Heap CRM’s recent announcement that you can now fire off Event templates from an email got me jizzing a little.

Here’s why:

I’ve played a lot with the CForms wordpress plugin and knew that it allowed for 2 interesting things to happen after a form submission.

1. Cforms will show a custom thank you message directly after form submission and this message will take html.
2. Cforms will fire off a custom message to any admin email address of your choosing.

So, starting with the latter…

Knowing that Heap allows a series of events to be scheduled based on some code inserted into an email, I created a CFORM and got to tweaking a custom email message that would be sent to my heap dropbox address for creating a new lead.

You’ll see in the example below that the Subject of the admin email is configured to display the “Name” field entered by the visitor. And the body of the email is configured to include Heap’s code for firing off an event template (along with some other variables, of which there are delightfully many to choose from!)

So in this example, a new lead is created in Heap and a follow up series of events that I’ve pre-configured is kicked off, along with the scheduling of any number of email messages.

The lead could have also been auto assigned to a teammate based on the short code, which might be a nice feature for any broker considering building a multi agent contributor, multi niche focused blogsite. (Imagine embedding a different agent branded cform for on pages created for each neighborhood in your market area. Then consider reaching out to a prospective recruit and promising them that all leads from that page will be routed into the custom CRM solution you’re going to be giving them. [at the whopping cost of an additional $5/month!]

And Then… the Lead Gets Subscribed to an RSS Based Blog Broadcast!

At this point there were already excitement streaks in my undies, but then I realized that I’d also want all of these “leads” to be subscribed to Read more

What’s Your Niche Biche! – Could Broker Pimps Just Mandate Agent Created Content?

So, if a broker owner really wanted to build a mega monster traffic magnet lead generation machine, couldn’t he or she just mandate that team members create a regularly occurring piece of content around some theme?

Maybe the agent entrance interview would so something like this?:

Broker Pimp: So, what’s your niche biche.

Agent: I don’t really have one.

Broker Pimp: That’s ok, we’ll help you come up with one. Then we’ll help you work it In a way that generates copious lead flow for you.

Agent: Sounds great, so what do I have to do?

Broker:Well every agent here at Cosmodemonic Realty is required to contribute some form of content to our company blog on a weekly basis. All you have to do is create the content and email it in to our in house technomarketer Nick Burnsy editor guy. And we’ll take care of the rest: Syndication to your social profiles, some paid click advertising, seo… All you do is create that juicy content on the regular then wait for the phone to start ringing. Our weekly E-Newsletter goes out every Saturday morning and most of our agents generatlly get some kind of healthy interaction based on the content they’ve recently contributed.

Agent:But I’m not really that great of a writer.

Broker PimpThat’s ok… Can you take a picture or a video from your fancy phone?

Agent:Sure.

Broker Pimp:Cool. We’ll set you up with a secret email address that you can use to send area photos to. What town do you live in? Could you see emailing in a “Yourtown” Business of the Week” on a regular basis? Maybe with a quick sentence or 2 about the business? Or perhaps you’ve got the stones to just stop a neighbor on the street and ask them what they like about where they live?

Agent: Sure I guess, but I don’t want to limit myself so narrowly to one area.

Broker Pimp: That’s great! You’ll never be asked to only work within your designated niche focus, you’ll be free to contribute as much extra stuff as you want. In fact, most of the Read more

DS Drops A WP Spider Bomb…

Looks like DSIdxpress,a wordpress idx plugin that allows indexaspiderability of mls listings, is in beta.

Neat stuff. I really like DS. Enjoyed tapping their feeds to autofeed content and game search engine results in my own practice late last year. Enjoy integrating their solution in client sites today. They’ll probably make a bunch of sales based on this innovation, which is cool. “You’ll have thousands of listings indexed on google” is a great pitch…

Or at least it used to be?

What I think this really means is that the days when IDX works as an effective lead capture tool are actually coming to a close. Spiderability doesn’t seem like it’ll be such a big deal anymore when everybody’s hip and got it implemented.

Retechudamus says: As older school brokers scurry to grab the next “get rich quick” property search tool thats better than the guy’s down the street, the steady and sure content creators will continue to build a loyal fan base, poaching said brokers’ referral bases along the way.

Either way, good shit DS, this is still a nice move and I look forward to playing once it’s ready!

(Shit bomb inspired by Ken Brand, who’s dropping some eloquent “douchebags” and “bullshits” over at AG..)