Realtor® Marketing Secrets: Secret #2 Help your Realtors generate buyer leads!

(TheNicheReport) -- Nine times out of ten, a Realtor’s main priority when they get a listing is to go out and promote that listing, and sell it as fast as possible. After all, like you, that’s the only way they get paid – when the deal closes.  So obviously they’re going to want to put together a marketing plan with this objective in mind. Perhaps they will start mailing some Just Listed flyers, set up a “Take-One” box, put a For Sale sign on the lawn, place an ad in the Real Estate Weekly newspaper, etc.  And in most cases, everything pertaining to their marketing initiatives, whether it is print ads, postcards, flyers or open houses, is driving traffic to their cell phone.

Unfortunately, by driving all the inbound inquiries to the cell phone, Realtors are unwittingly enslaving themselves to an electronic leash that tows them around by the nose 24/7.  If you’ve ever had a face-t0-face meeting with a Realtor you know what I’m talking about – you’d be lucky to go five consecutive minutes without being interrupted by an inbound email, text or phone call on their “Crackberry” or iPhone. They're like crack-addicted rats – they only last a few minutes until they need their next fix! This obsessive, compulsive, over-reliance on the cell phone causes them to be “busy” but not necessarily “productive.”

With that in mind, let’s circle back to the Realtor’s primary challenge: they don’t have enough qualified buyer leads for their listings, and without enough buyer leads a property is often slow to sell and, of course, they have a delay in getting paid.  The bottleneck in the whole equation comes down to buyer leads.  If they can just increase their buyer leads, the Law of Large Numbers will work in their favor to increase the chances of selling the property, and in many cases, attract additional buyer and seller clients as well. 

But until and unless they have enough quality buyer leads, that property could be on the market for months. If you’ve been talking with your Realtors lately, you know that it can be a real challenge getting these properties sold quickly at the right price.  So here’s the bottom line: if you don’t bring them a unique solution to help sell these properties faster and for top dollar, they’re going to continue losing precious sleep (and dollars) because they aren’t getting paid until those darn listings sell. And some of your Realtor friends are going to have skinny kids and skimpy bank accounts because they’re not getting paid for months on end.

With that said, how can we deliver real, valuable, workable, proven solutions?

Here are the TOP 4 most effective strategies for generating buyer leads:

Strategy #1: Withholding Price. This is perhaps the most controversial of the four strategies. Realtors typically are very resistant to withholding price on their listing promotional materials. However, if they'll actually put this strategy to the test, in many cases it can increase their buyer lead generation by over 200%! Here's how it works:

• STEP 1: Take your Realtor's default listing ad or For Sale sign and remove the asking price.
• STEP 2: Then add a headline that says something like, "Get free instant property info by text message. Text "Buy124" to 79564 to receive more info including price and financing options." Then of course each listing would have a unique text code so all the buyer has to do is enter the property code and then they instantly receive a text message with more information on the property including price.

NOTE: Every time someone requests property info via text message, you and the Realtor just generated a hot new buyer! Now you can follow-up via telephone on behalf of your Realtor to see if they need help getting pre-approved with a mortgage and/or if they'd like assistance from a top-notch buyers' agent. If they're already pre-approved, you can ask them if they'd like a "free, no obligation cost-of-borrowing analysis" to ensure they are getting the best mortgage with the best rates and terms available.

Strategy #2: Withholding Financing Option. So in this case, you would disclose the asking price upfront but you would include something like this in the call to action: "Get free instant property info by text message. Text "Buy124" to 79564 to receive more info including financing options." In most cases this won't generate as many buyer leads as disclosing the price, but will usually pull better results than the typical Realtor ad.

Strategy #3: Offering 24-hr Free Recorded Tips. This strategy can be used in combination with any of the other strategies to improve results. Here's how it works:

• STEP 1: Activate your own 24-hr Call Capture Hotline. You'll understand why in step number two. You can get a hotline for as little as $20 per month – they're not expensive. Find my recommended vendors at: www.dorenrecommends.com
• STEP 2: Record a selection of "free consumer tips" that can be made available to people when they call your 24-hr hotline. These tips should answer common questions people have when it comes to buying a home or securing financing. Once these audio tips are recorded, you now have a series of marketing assets that work while you're not working. All you have to do is just set it and forget it!
• STEP 3:  Add your "free consumer tips" recorded messages to your Realtor's listing promotional materials. This will add additional "buyer bait" to their advertising, thereby increasing the chances of buyers calling in for more info. When a buyer calls in to listen to a recorded tip, you just generated a hot new lead!

Here's an example of what your tips might look like in the actual ad:

Strategy #4: Offering Free Reports or Consumer Awareness Guides. These are informative guides that educate the homebuyer on mistakes to avoid and important information to ensure a stress-free home-buying experience. Here's an example of what this might look like on the back of your Realtor's Just-Listed Card:

Now let’s get into how this is going to benefit you, the mortgage professional.  I’ve already alluded to some of the benefits, but here’s the essence of it.  You’re going to partner with a Realtor because you know the Realtor’s biggest challenge. No matter where you are, no matter what market you’re in, their perennial challenge is generating enough quality buyer leads for their listings, so they sell them faster and for top dollar.

If you can help them do that using this "Call Capture" and "Text Capture" strategy, boosting their buyer lead generation on every listing they have, and on top of that, pre-qualifying and pre-approving every buyer lead, that’s a huge advantage for them.  Thanks to you, they’re going to get more buyer leads, pre-screened and pre-qualified so they don’t have to sift through all the gravel to find the gold nuggets.

And what if you offered all of this to your Realtor for FREE? How’s that for a unique value proposition!

You can pre-approve those prospects so that when they make the offer, the Realtor has more control over the quality of the transaction – with success-certain financing in place. This will ensure the property sells on time. Everyone in the transaction is going to be happy. ☺

You can even go to a new Realtor you’ve never worked with before and offer them all of these unique advantages for free, provided that, when they set up a listing, they allow you to pre-qualify all the buyer leads.  For example, you would invite them to give you just one of their best, most appealing listings that they want to sell fast and ask them to allow you to integrate one or more of the above four strategies into their marketing campaign. You would also recommend ways to promote that listing in other neglected and/or underused media that the Realtor hasn’t already tapped into.

As buyer leads start coming in for each listing, you can now follow up using a magnetic calling script to find out if they got all their questions answered, to qualify them as a motivated buyer and, ideally, to get them pre-approved for a mortgage. And here’s the cool thing. Regardless of whether they buy that initial listing or another Realtor’s listing, when it comes time to buy a home they're going to need a mortgage!

By using these four lead-generation strategies, you will be able to get your Realtors emphatically eager to work with you so they can get more buyer leads for their listings. As they market their listings using these best practices, you will be able to turn every listing they promote into a little 24-hour lead machine, filling your pipeline with a steady stream of red-hot purchase leads. How cool is that!

In my next article, I’ll reveal why it pays to partner with top-producing Realtors, and the six critical criteria for qualifying them so you don't waste your time with the wrong people! Stay tuned… ¨