From generating new sales leads to finding the perfect buyer for a home or apartment, your sphere of influence can be the driving force behind your success as an agent.
Many agents make the mistake of building their sphere of influence — networking with influential people, connecting with customers to ask for referrals and more — only to let their network grow cold and inactive.
Your sphere of influence is the fundamental marketing force behind your real estate success, and just like any other business keeps its fundamentals warm, you need to keep your sphere of influence warm for it to keep producing benefits.
Here are four simple but effective techniques to keep your sphere of influence engaged and interested. These tactics will help you steadily produce new leads and create opportunities worth capitalizing on.
Connect on social media
Social media is a great way to connect with your sphere of influence. From business groups to your real estate agency’s Facebook Page, we know social media tools have made it easier than ever to keep in touch with your network.
The key to increasing engagement on social media is authenticity. Instead of posting irrelevant updates purely to appear in your audience’s newsfeed or inbox, give them real updates about your business and local area expertise that demonstrate your value.
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Updates mentioning you’ve recently sold a home and notices that a new home is currently available for sale can keep your messages targeted, relevant and focused on the value you can deliver.
Reconnect with important people using direct mail
Direct mail is another great platform for keeping your sphere of influence engaged and interested. Like social media, it’s convenient, inexpensive and highly personal, letting you customize your message with each person’s name and other variables.
Unlike social media, however, direct mail is easy to notice. Today, most people’s online newsfeeds are more cluttered than their offline mailboxes, making direct mail a far more effective option for maintaining engagement with your sphere of influence.
The best direct mail messages are targeted, simple and relevant. Remind people that you have a property for sale or notify them of a recent sale to keep yourself — and the value you can create for them — top of mind.
Schedule your marketing to generate optimal results
Frequency is the key to engagement, and it’s one aspect of successful lead generation that many agents struggle to perfect. Connect too infrequently and people will forget you — too often and you’ll annoy them.
Schedule your mailings ahead of time to ensure continual communication without being overbearing. Create a consistent schedule — one mailing a month, for example — and stick to it over the course of the year.
Over time, your audience will grow accustomed to your marketing, and it won’t be seen as an intrusion into their lives but a friendly and effective reminder that you can help them with any of their property-related concerns.
Produce remarkable results that keep people talking
The greater your results, the more engaged your sphere of influence will become — and more importantly, remain — after it’s built. When you consistently produce great results, you gain two powerful tools:
- You create a proven track record for your sphere to talk about.
- You gain great content to share in your marketing postcards.
Sharing positive results creates more opportunities, and sharing your successes keeps your sphere of influence at attention and aware of your track record.
Eric Cosway is the EVP and CMO of QuantumDigital. Follow him on Twitter.