Agent leads university: understanding the 3 different kinds of real estate marketing

This post revolves around three different kinds of marketing, specifically in real estate. It's important for you to embrace these because it's kind of like embracing different kinds of weather. It's like that kind of weather is happening, there's nothing I can do about it, so I really need to just understand how to prepare for it, how to weather the storm, or how to endure it, or go with the flow and use the momentum of that particular kind of marketing so that you can win.

Agent Leads University: Referral Marketing

Depending on the kind of marketing you're doing, if you're utilizing Facebook advertising, that's one of those marketing styles I'm about to talk to you about. There are three kinds. Number one, you have what I call network based marketing or referral marketing. Sometimes that can happen on a larger level, but you might know this as referral marketing or warm market marketing or getting people who already know you or second degree relationships, third degree relationships, kind of that local word of mouth marketing.

There's a lot of ROI there but it's very small scale. You can't scale your income and your revenue that way. You'll pretty much always be stuck at $75,000, $85,000 a year if you get to that spot using just referral marketing. I mean there's obviously the top 5% of agents who use referral marketing who earn more than that, but I'm just saying on average the US realtor is going to cap out, there's a glass ceiling on referral based marketing.

Agent Leads University: Search Marketing

Then you have search marketing. Now the thing about referral and search is that they both have intent. Intent is a massive psychological power that you can bend and use to your will and in your favor. You just don't get to create intent. That's probably the biggest lesson of this coaching call, you don't get to originate the intent. You simply try to bend it and defer it and utilize it and control it to your will. It's kind of like Star Wars and the Force, just using the Force, using the intent of others so that you can be there when they're ready to buy or sell a home.

What is Search Intent?

Search intent is when I go to Google and type in homes for sale in Dallas, Texas, homes for sale in Kauai, homes for sale in Portland, Oregon, and I have that search intent. I've already prospected myself. I've already warmed myself up. I've already gone to the keyboard several times and now I'm searching for the keywords that represent the words in my brain. That's called search intent. You being a real estate agent can market in the search intent realm.

The problem with that is that for example using Google ... Or the limitation, is not necessarily a problem, the limitation is that it's more scalable than referral marketing but it still has a limit because only a certain number of people are going to search that keyword phrase each month, whatever key phrase you're targeting or you're wanting to be first in line for. But if some one's, if 800 people a month are searching homes for sale in Denver, Colorado, or whatever that might be for you, then if you're standing in line, if you're the ad that pops up, hey, that's great, you actually ... Those ads have really good ROI.

The difference is Google is an auction, just like everything else, and there's only a few places at the top and a few places at the bottom that those ads can show up. And you're competing with the deep pockets of Zillow and realtor.com and all the other big platforms who are leveraging and basically siphoning that search intent traffic into their world so that they can monetize that through Zillow contracts.

If you ever wanted to know how Zillow makes their money it's because they're just basically holding hostage the traffic and the eyeballs, the impressions that they are garnering through Google, bottom line. If you ever just want to be really smart and beat Zillow at their own game, outbid them on a keyword auction using Google AdWords. At the same time though it still has a limit to scalability and you're going to have to leverage a lot of spend in order to compete with them in search intent.

Even when I go to Zillow, even if you have a Zillow contract, and give them credit, they took over the hearts and minds of the people of this country and now most people will start their online search with their Zillow app on their phone, they're driving around on a weekend afternoon. Zillow then obviously has the contracts and premier agents and stuff like that, and they're, again, siphoning that traffic or that lead generation and volume over to their contracted members.
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Agent Leads University: Disruption Marketing

Then you have Facebook advertising that is found in the disruptive market. You've got referral based marketing, you got search intent marketing, and you've got disruption marketing. Now disruption marketing is you running out into the middle of the street when someone's passing by and waving your hands at them. They didn't go to Facebook looking for a home necessarily. But their demographic, their geographic, their targeted attributes that you can access only through Facebook's power editor of Facebook ads manager makes them very close to the pin and possibly in the ball park of needing a home, likely to sell, things like that. That's the power of Facebook.

So you're doing two things at once with disruption marketing. This is why I love it so much and why so many people have so much success doing this, is that it's far less expensive than Zillow leads and Google AdWords, it's far more scalable than referral marketing because only people who are your mom and daddy and your cousins and friends at work and friends of friends are the people that know about you, and again, that at some point runs out. Referral with disruption marketing layered on top of it, that is the secret sauce because with disruption marketing like Facebook and Instagram even, you're building your brand as well.

Moving to a Warm Lead

You may have been running your ads for 10 days, 7 days, 5 days, 30 days, 365 days. You can also be retargeting the people who've been clicking, sharing, liking, watching your ad, and they're actually now warmer than they were cold. If you missed a previous coaching call that I did, I talked about cold traffic and warm traffic and hot traffic. Well Facebook traffic, when you first introduce your ads and your campaigns, it's cold traffic, they don't know who you are, and that's great because you can only scale and build larger businesses off of cold traffic. Then once you show your ad and you interact with them and maybe even generate a lead, you move them into warmer waters. It doesn't mean they're ready to sign a contract with you. It doesn't mean that they have a listing agreement in their hands. It means that they represent a far warmer prospect than you had before you launched your Facebook ad and far less expensive.

Guess what? Now you have the law of large numbers that you're leveraging rather than waiting on a referral lead or a search intent lead that is a lay down lead is what you're probably hoping and wishing for, but at the end of the day it's lay down leads are few and far between. If you've been in the industry a long time, there was an era in which you received lay down leads, and that era unfortunately is over. If you are in the modern age of real estate agency, you understand that disruption marketing has to happen because the world and our country and our culture is on social media. They're on Facebook and Instagram more than they are searching for certain keywords per month. They are on social media more so than they know people who know you that's going to make them want to call you as a referral.

Ultimately you have to master the art of disruptive marketing and stay in it for the long game and have awesome patience because it's not a silver bullet, it's not a rainbow chasing gimmick, it's something that's going to build your brand and make you more recognizable so that when your ad shows up for the fifth time, the sixth time, the seventh time, the eighth time, the 12th time, you've got people's eyeballs. In any kind of marketing, follow up marketing or even traditional broadcast media, people don't even start paying attention to you that matter until like the eighth time. The eighth time they see your ad.

So you've got to understand that you got to play the law of large numbers and you've got to fish in the deeper sea in the ocean where the fish have no idea who you are. If you're the fisherman, you don't need to be fishing in the gold fish bowl, which is the referral marketing, and then the search intent bowl is more like the pond or the lake. The ocean where the fish are or the whales are with the big fish with the most fish and the most growth capacity is in disruption marketing. That's a huge thing.

It doesn't mean that any of them necessarily need to be axed or removed from your strategy. As a matter of fact, I would be super impressed with any agent that's leveraging both or two of the three marketing strategies or types of marketing that I just laid out. I'd be super impressed if you are doing two of those at capacity. If you're doing all three of those at capacity, you probably are way ahead of me and already understand the point of my video, which is this: You have to understand and set your expectations correctly around the kind of marketing that you're doing, and you have to understand why you're doing the kind of marketing that you're doing.

Disruption marketing has a long term brand and lead generation value where you can grow your business larger than ever. Search intent is a great place if you have deep pockets to compete with Zillow and the other big spenders per click on a Google ad. And referral marketing is great low hanging fruit, take them when you can get them, but don't sit around and wait on them or you'll find yourself in a painful position and your GCI is not going to be wherever it needs to be.

​Hope this was helpful. Hope it is informative. Comment below if you have any questions and good luck! If you want more answers AND leads schedule your free consultation call with us!

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