Are you sick of spending thousands on listing leads? If so, you should consider building a real estate farm because it could effectively cut your lead spend down to zero.
Just take a look at real estate agent Scott Himelstein; he gets dozens of listing leads for free because of his farm. Recently, Scott appeared on Real Estate Rockstars to share the tools and methods that have helped him the most over the years.
To learn about the tools that Scott recommends for building a real estate farm, read on. For information on the scripts and strategies that he swears by, listen to the podcast below.
Recommended tools for real estate farming
When you’re building a farm, what you’re really doing is building relationships.
Obviously, constantly building and maintaining relationships can be a challenge, especially if you’re busy with listing appointments and other tasks associated with running a real estate business.
Fortunately, with a little help from the tools listed below, it’s possible to build new relationships and maintain existing ones even if you don’t have more than an hour or two to spare per day.
Top Producer
Himelstein uses Top Producer as his customer relationship manager (CRM). While it’s not the fanciest CRM on the market, it is one of the more affordable ones. Also, and most importantly, it’s completely compatible with the other real estate farming tools he relies on.
Vyral Marketing
Once you have a solid list of contacts, you need to follow up with them regularly in order to stay top of mind.
Some people do this by running standard email-marketing campaigns, but instead of sending out some boring email blast describing your business, send out something that’s going to get — and keep — people’s attention.
Scott’s found that market-related videos are great for this, and Vyral Marketing makes mass emailing videos a breeze.
Unfortunately, Vyral Marketing isn’t cheap. But according to Scott, it’s worth every penny.
BombBomb
Like Vyral Marketing, BombBomb is great for sending videos out to contacts. But Scott doesn’t use it for mass emails. Instead, he uses it to send personalized videos to his clients.
On a client’s birthday, for instance, Scott will shoot and send them a quick video wishing them well. He sends these videos out because he knows that most agents won’t, and this really helps him stand out.
The benefits of building a real estate farm
Like anything else worth doing, building a real estate farm takes time — but once you’ve built it, your efforts will pay off in two major ways.
First, it increases your chances of connecting with eager buyers and sellers. Since you’ll have multiple listings in a relatively small area, the people who are seriously looking to buy or sell in your farm will quickly realize that you’re the best resource.
Second, by sharing information on upcoming listings with hopeful buyers, your value proposition is absolutely huge. Unlike the majority of other agents, you aren’t just sending properties straight from the MLS. Instead, you’re able to provide information on listings that potential buyers can’t find anywhere else.
To learn more about what it takes to build a real estate farm that generates buyer and seller leads, listen to the complete podcast with Scott Himelstein.
Pat Hiban sold more than 7,000 homes over the course of his 25-year career in real estate. Now, he dedicates his time to helping others succeed as agents and investors. As host of the Real Estate Rockstars Podcast, Pat interviews real estate experts to explore what works in today’s markets. He also founded Rebus University, an online training platform for real estate agents and sales professionals.