Do you hate it when you are in a situation where you are being SOLD non-stop?

I hate that.  And, I think MOST buyers hate it too.

I’ve written that I think there’s a “Hybrid” way to provide information to the consumer – without requiring that they register immediately.  My research and results prove this fact out.

Here are some additional Lead Conversion tips I think we should all be looking at in 2011… because we are in an era where ONE SIZE definitely doesn’t fit all!1. Do all your homework!
Do you have a way to know if the person who registered for your site has been contacted by you or your team before?  In addition to your database search for the email address – you should consider using XOBNI or Rapportive (for Gmail users) to cross check the email address.

How embarrassing if you sent information to this person 6 months ago and then never followed up!

2. Anticipate the objections.

Is this person interested in a home that’s been listed with you for 7 months without an offer?  You should know that the feedback has been

“The House Needs too many updates”

and have your “script” ready when you talk to them!  Ask them if they’ve ever heard of 203K loans (for instance) and mention that the home qualifies for them to update in their own fashion!

Customize the materials that educate and prepare the buyer to BUY by overcoming anticipated objections.  Don’t be ill-prepared!  If 59 people saw the home, you know what the major obstacles are!  Be prepared to immediately send UPDATED market reports and details on that property when you are contacted.

3. Curb the strong arm tactics.

There’s no doubt that getting a “decision-maker” on the phone is as difficult as it is critical to the sale.   Even if someone is anticipating your call, other priorities and events of the day may prohibit them from contacting you immediately.  It’s difficult to endear yourself to a prospect that feels unnecessarily interrupted, or worse, stalked or SPAMMED.  Accept the occasional need to simply leave a cheery voicemail.

4. Offer Complete Transparency

“You must respect the fact that everyone talks…”

If your company offers discounted services for Sellers, but there’s some drawbacks to that service you need to address this upfront. When a brand is in the marketplace, even if it’s for a relatively short amount of time, secrets do not remain secret. You have to face the music head-on. You must be willing to disclose and overcome shortcomings in order to earn a prospect’s most guarded asset, their trust. Once that’s gone, so is the sale.

5. Don’t leave your message out in the cold.

Turns out, selling or buying a home is an all-too-human experience, driven by emotion at every turn. And truly, this is marketing’s raison d’etre!

Value proposition and messaging development, relevant and timely updates, telemarketing script refinements, engaging emails and materials ALL help reinforce why this person is working with YOU!  One email, one telephone call is not likely to convince someone that you are the right person to represent them… and remember that often times you need to help that person speak more intelligently to other decision makers… like their partners and all too often their PARENTS!

You can’t view marketing to a lead as a support function to sales, and relegate it to a mere administrative role that is exactly the same no matter who the prospect is, and what they are looking for. When this happens, sales are compromised. I truly believe that systems, including canned email and Drip Campaigns will help bridge the time between a prospect showing interest and raising their hand to say READY TO BUY!  But truly successful agents understand the importance of integrating a campaign that is TAILORED to that type of lead, is honest and FRESH!

In 2011, Leads Must Turn Into  Customers

Maybe you are one of those folks who is like Fathom Real Estate Agents, and you are getting leads.  Figuring out how to take the consumer from “browsing” to buying can be a challenge!!   No matter “where” your business is conducted (online or offline), here are some pointers on turning LEADS into SALES$$

• Your inquiry response time stinks

You need to contact your sales leads as soon as possible (really – ASAP) after receiving an inquiry. The longer they wait to hear from you, the more likely they are to go elsewhere. I cannot stress this enough. You will be amazed at how much sales leads appreciate an exceptionally fast response.  This means you need to set up an automated response, a dedicated email account for the inquiries and you need to CALL people back.  Just sending someone who is looking on the Internet an email is NOT going to give you a high conversion rate!

• Your followup “campaign” is non-existent

You need a database that is easy to use, and easy to track. If you are getting 25 inquiries a month, and it takes some of them 9 to 14 months to purchase… then you could have 350 people that you are trying to keep up with!  VERY few people are going to talk to you one time, or get an email from you and then buy.  You MUST have a follow up system that is automated and formed into a “Drip Campaign.”

• Ask For The Sale

If you have a website, many “gurus” suggest that you LEAVE OFF any sort of sales message. Their logic flows that the consumer doesn’t want to be “Sold.”  It might be true, but many sites do not ask for the SALE regularly throughout the sales process.  People (site visitors) should not have to dig around your site to find out how to contact you to buy a house, or get their home listed.  Have you looked at your website from a mobile device?  Can you click on the telephone number and reach you?

If you have questions about building your real estate blog as you build your real estate business, give me a call!   Josh Harley, Fathom Realty, 214-228-0301. I’d love to help you, and learn more about what’s working in your market! Are you on Facebook and Twitter?  Let’s Connect!

If an effective campaign is supposed to speak to the recipient’s needs and every person has different needs then how can one campaign speak to everyone? That was more of a statement and less of a question. I would like to challenge you this month to devote time to creating a campaign for each of the following:

• Local Buyer Campaign (never met/spoken)
  the only way to know if they are local is to require the phone number field during registration. Even if the phone number is fake, the first 3 digits are usually accurate. If the number gives you no clues then assume they are local for email purposes.
• Relocation Buyer Campaign (never met/spoken)
  must require phone number field to know. Offer incentives like city and neighborhood information or a special relocation packet.
• Buyer Campaign (spoken with, buying in 2+ months)
  touching base type emails in addition to emails of “just-listed” properties matching their criteria.

• Seller Campaign (spoken with)
  not every seller will be ready to sell immediately. Emails touching base in addition to a fresh CMA every 2 or 3 weeks.
• CMA/Seller Campaign
  leads from CMA form on site, can be same campaign as above with additional emails in the beginning regarding their requested CMA)
• Past Buyer Clients – 60 months (ouch, how long?)
  ask how they are, ask for referrals and offer a CMA every few months. Make sure you are the listing agent when they are ready to sell or when their neighbor sells!
• Past Seller Clients
  see above if they also bought from you, otherwise, ask how they are and ask for referrals! A newsletter can be used after 12 months.
• Newsletter – 12 months repeating FOREVER or until the world ends, whichever comes first
  pre-written, month/season specific info with a blank spot left for current events. This goes to EVERYONE, past clients, future clients, friends, family and inmates… okay, I know what you’re thinking, family might be a stretch.

TIP: To make this a more attainable goal with immediate results, do not pick one campaign at a time. Write out the first week for each campaign and then move on to the second week for each and so on. Yes, that’s what I said. It goes against all that is natural but you will find this tip will help you implement each campaign faster while keeping you fresh with ideas for writing. Buyer campaigns can feed you ideas for seller campaigns and vise versa. If you pick one campaign and attempt to write out a whole year’s worth of emails then you will discover first hand what writer’s block means. Plus, if it takes you a week to get through writing out one campaign then it will be months before you finally write out the last campaign missing out an opportunity to reach more people.

TIP 2: Services like Constant Contact, Mail Chimp and iContact are great ways to implement your campaigns and help ensure they arrive in the intended inboxes. They also give you the ability to monitor the open and click-thru rates for improved lead conversion tracking.

Did I forget anything? Are there any other campaign types you can think of? Campaigns for Investor maybe? Please share your list or ideas below. *Disclaimer- drip campaigns should NOT be the only source of long-term communication! They have a greater probability for getting caught in email filters of an unspeakably horrific nature. It should be used to supplement your communications, not replace it.

Let’s first look at each side of the debate to gain a better understanding of each and the value they bring.

ARGUMENT- Capture Your Hard-Earned Website Traffic As Leads – Force Registration!
The argument makes sense given the fact that most visitors will NEVER register if they are not forced to. If you truly understand the life-cycle of an Internet home buyer then you will understand why they will not register voluntarily… at least not without some significant motivation. Where this argument falls flat is when you step back and look at the percentage of bogus leads that are created and the wasted man-hours determining that they are garbage. The bogus leads are not always as easy to identify as “mickey@mouse.com”. Then there is also the point that visitors who refuse to register will simply never come back reducing your overall website traffic significantly. Still, despite the number of bogus leads, good leads are still generated and you will still close a few deals which is the whole reason we even bother driving traffic to our website.

ARGUMENT- The Internet Must Be Free!
On the opposite side of the debate is the argument that the Internet must be free. Their argument’s strongest point is that if the largest real estate sites online, like Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia are free, then why would anyone want to register on a small local site. Or rather, why register for something that you can get free elsewhere? This argument is very hard for many people to accept. If you are only receiving a few hundred people to your website each month and paying dearly for it, how can you be sure they will register when they are ready? That’s a huge risk for anyone to take but don’t worry, I have already taken that risk for you… to the tune of $15,000.

So what’s the answer? Who’s right? Unfortunately the answer is not as simple as A or B but I can give you the formula needed to gain the greatest lead generation from your website IDX efforts. Let me begin by explaining how I tested and achieved my results.

In the beginning, like almost every other real estate professional with a website, I was nervous about leaving my website traffic to fate. However, unlike most agents, I decided to run a test to determine the best scenario. I started out with a 3 month budget of $5,000 per month. My site was brand-spanking new so the only traffic I received was through PPC from search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and even Homegain. I ran the following three tests and tracked the micro-conversions.

TEST 1 – Forced Registration
I started my new site by forcing every lead to register for their home search during the first 30 days. The results were very close to what I had expected. I received 3,448 visitors of which, 7% converted into a lead. Of the 241 leads, 62% had a bad phone number but only 47% had a bad email address. That left me with 128 viable leads for my team to work. I waited 9 months to measure the return on investment (which is not really long enough if you are truly managing your leads for the long term) and found that we were able to convert a reasonable number of the viable leads which paid for that first test many, many times over.

The downside to this scenario is that I discovered (as I had expected) only a small handful of the people that bounced/refused to register ever came back.

TEST 2 – Free Home Search
This test was scary for me which is why I started with the forced registration. I wanted to make sure we had some leads to work and some money coming in just in case this second test failed to produce. During the second month we had 3,603 visitors (thanks to a little tweaking to our campaigns) of which less than .05% registered. Yes, you heard me, I had 18 people register. I still had about the same percentage of fake phone numbers since that was a required field but I had only 1 fake email address. Percentage-wise, that was an incredible percentage of real leads however the overall number of leads made me want to throw up. I felt sick for days.

Of the leads that we did capture, most registered to save their search or receive e-alerts of just-listed properties. Only one registered for more information a property and as luck would have it, she was a Realtor that LOVED my map-based home search feature and preferred to use my site over the MLS system.

The real question here is, how many people kept coming back to my site and eventually registered? It’s hard to tell since I was unable to track their IP past 60 days but during that 60 days, I didn’t have as many return visitors as I would have liked. Consider the following, unless they bookmark your site or your site shows up on the first page of their search term ALL the time, it’s easy to forget the domain name. Let’s be honest, how many times have you found a site you loved and forgot to bookmark it just to spend hours looking for it again? Needless to say, a “Free Home Search” was far from “free” for me. Ouch. On a side note, we ended up closing almost the exact percentage of leads as we did in the first test scenario but the actual number of closings was still very small.

TEST 3 – The Hybrid Model
After that dismal second month, I was happy to start testing my “Hybrid Model”. I was originally going to start out with this model but I knew I could never be sure if it worked the best unless I tested all three and at a volume where the results could truly be measured. This model consisted of allowing the visitor to search for a given number of properties or conduct a specific number of searches before asking them to register. I believed that if they saw the true value of my site’s search over Zillow or Realtor.com then more visitors would register, even if they were forced to.

To my satisfaction the results were very good (though I think they could be better). We had 3,821 site visitors (more tweaking of course) of which 13% registered. Of the 496 people that registered, 65% had bad phone numbers but only 8% had a bad email address. That is a HUGE improvement for email addresses over the first test. That gave my team 456 viable leads to work and cut my cost per lead drastically.

TEST 4 – The Hybrid Model, 2nd Edition – Not Ready
I have one more model I would like to test but have yet to request either of our IDX providers to make this custom change to their registration. My idea is to use the Hybrid Model but not actually force registration. Instead, the registration box would pop up after viewing the first four homes but they could close it and continue searching. The box would pop up two more times during their search, each time with a different benefit to registering. In the end, if they chose not to register then … I haven’t gotten that far but would like to.

What do you think? If you tested this fourth model would you force registration at the third pop up or would you simply let the Internet fly free? I would love your thoughts and opinions. Have you tested any of these models and if so, what kind of success have you had?

As stressful as a bad lead can be, some valuable information can come from the bad information. Did you know you can use a bad phone number to improve your email communication? There are times when you will receive a new home buyer lead where the name looks real, the email doesn’t bounce but the number is a fake (per the irritated person on the other end of the line when you try to call). Thanks to human nature, most people lack creativity. When they input a fake phone number, the first three digits are usually accurate. For example, if your phone number is 972-867-5309 (sorry for the 80′s reference), then most people will enter 972-555-1212 or something similar. The beautiful thing is that now you know if they are local or a possible relocation. This will help you determine which email marketing campaign to place them on. If you do not have different email campaigns for local or relo buyers then take a moment to read my article, “Drip Campaigns: Something For Everyone“. A campaign that speaks directly to the recipient’s needs will greatly increase your conversion rate.

What if the email address and phone number is bad? Well, unfortunately it’s a lead destined for the trash but if you are doing a good job in tracking the micro-conversions of your visitors, then this lead can still bring value. Insane I know! I grew up in Alaska and if I learned anything, it was to waste nothing… not even that nasty whale blubber. Who knew whale blubber could be worth so much?

So how does this relate to bad home buyer leads? To answer that, I first need to explain what I mean by micro-conversions. A micro-conversion is a single step a visitor takes on the way to becoming a client. To track “on site” micro-conversion you must have website analytic tracking set up (e.g., Google Analytics). Here are some examples of micro-conversions:

• Click-thru rate from your pay-per-click ad
• Visitor bounce rate
• Desired actions by visitor
• Visitor registration or form filled – Lead

So now that we are on the same page, let’s take a step back and think about the four micro-conversions listed above. What does this bad lead tell us? First, it tells us which source and ad successfully brought that lead to the site. Second, it gives us trackable website data to help identify which landing pages are working and which ones visitors fail to connect with. Third, depending on the phone number given and whether their IP address was recorded, it helps us identify what part of the country our ads are connecting with. This lead may have been compelled to give bogus info but that doesn’t mean the next visitor will. The fact is, your ad worked in getting a visitor through the pipeline and into your inbox. Count that as a partial success.

TIP: If you notice that you have a lot of leads originating from one part of the country, consider creating an ad geo-targeted specifically for that area with language speaking directly to them. You will notice your click-thru rate skyrocket for that ad. As a result, what you were paying $1.47 per click to be in the 5th position, you may find yourself spending $1.21 to be in the 1st position.

Do you have any ideas on how to turn a bad lead into useful information? Please share your thoughts.