In this real estate careers topic we cover 2 basic ways real estate teams go about their online marketing.
The first strategy is called forced interaction marketing. With this approach, a website user is asked to give up their contact information in order to view online content. On a lot of real estate websites this means users are asked to register in order to view a property listing. This practice is commonly referred to as forced registration.
Our team's strategy is attraction marketing. With attraction marketing, we create a lot of great online content and give all of it away with no strings attached. As a result, the people who contact us online do so through voluntary registration.
How teams convert forced leads
Some real estate teams collect a dozen or more leads each day through forced registration. That's a high number for sure, but because the relationships are forced, trust is low.
Teams who use forced registration are playing a numbers game. Because trust is low, they need to spend a lot of energy in order to convert a small percentage of their leads into clients. Typically an "inside sales agent" (or ISA) is hired to contact the leads. The ISA will call, email, and text the leads in order to get a small number of them to commit to an in-person consultation. Usually the ISA doesn't have much real estate experience, so the conversion strategy relies a lot on sales scripts.
How we nurture voluntary customers
With voluntary registration, we attract only a handful of registrations each day - but from people who are highly engaged with our site. These are high-trust customers.
Because trust is high, we focus on nurturing, rather than converting each customer. With this more consultative approach, the first team member to contact each customer is a licensed real estate agent. The agent doesn't rely on sales scripts. Instead she uses her experience and judgement to ask good questions and guide the customer toward their end goal.
Why we choose the attract and nurture approach
We choose to attract and nurture because this approach enhances client relationships and our overall reputation in the community. It's also a rewarding way to go about our day-to-day work.
Attraction marketing does require more up-front work in order to create online content, but over the long haul it pays off like compounding interest. By investing in our message and reputation each day, we create many more opportunities to serve clients down the road.
Are you someone who believes in doing the small things every day that add up to big results over time? If so, check out our real estate careers section on our blog. Our blog provides some great information on what it's like to work on our real estate team.
