23 Oct 2 critical areas for lead gen

From an online perspective, if someone is looking online in your market, if they can’t find you, unfortunately, the lead won’t come to you. Your website needs to be found, whether that’s in ads, whether it’s in the organic section. Wherever you can be found, the better.

Topic – Getting found online

Mentor – Matthew Josefs

• The single biggest mistake agents make with their site
• You need to be seen to be heard
• Nonspecific information is a killer

Property Management Matters with Tara Bradbury – Wanting to do more video but scared it will take for ever to get right and won’t look professional.  Check this out – https://bigvu.tv

Transcript:

Kasey:   Hi, Kasey McDonald here from the Property Management Training Academy. I’m on tour in the US with the Box Brownie team, and today I’m at NAGLREP, which is the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Realtors.

Kasey:   We’re in Palm springs, and I’ve got the pleasure of sitting with Matthew Josefs from TORCHx. Thanks, Matthew, for joining me.

Matthew:   Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Kasey:   If you could just explain a little bit about, obviously, what TORCHx is, I think it would be really good for you to share some of those online marketing tools that you’ve got certainly experience with, that we could maybe investigate and research back in Australia.

Matthew:   Absolutely. Perfect lead in there. We are an all-in-one online marketing platform. We build a custom website, do lead generation, have an automated CRM on the back end, so it’s kind of an all-in-one product; really just helps realtors grow, get more exposure, help with a lot of the nurturing that seems to be a big problem in the industry.

Kasey:   Can you talk me through some of the do’s and don’ts around online marketing, and you mentioned there around some lead generation. Of course, as an agent, whether that’s in property management or it’s in sales, we want to get leads in, so what are some of the tools out there that we’re not utilising well?

Matthew:   Specifically in the online world, sphere of influence is naturally going to be your best pull. However, outside of that, you still need a faucet of leads coming in, and there’s two things that are as important as, really, anything when it comes to lead generation.

Matthew:   First is visibility. From an online perspective, if someone is looking online in your market, if they can’t find you, unfortunately, the lead won’t come to you. Your website needs to be found, whether that’s in ads, whether it’s in the organic section. Wherever you can be found, the better.

Matthew:   The biggest mistake that a lot of the agents I work with make is that their website isn’t built to convert that click into a lead. Someone will click on your website. You spend, maybe, $5 for that click. They’re not finding relevant information. It’s a clunky website. Just like you when you’re looking for whatever it is you’re looking for, if it’s not relevant to what you’re searching for, you’re going to go off and go back to Google. Those two things are super important; you need to be found and you have to have a website that converts that click into a lead.

Kasey:   What are some of the tips, specifically around the website, that can support them getting clicks? How, I suppose, when building a website, if we can kind of digress and go there, what are some of the functions that realtors and companies, overall, could actually have on their website, because I do agree; even with clients that I work with in Australia, you look at their website, and it’s quite poor. They still don’t have photos of their stuff, all of those types of things. I think it’s we’re here to build relationships and this is a tool that we can use, but we’re not using it well. What are some of the functions on our websites that we absolutely should have?

Matthew:   That really does lead into the conversion aspect. If you digress even a little bit more and put yourself in the buyer’s perspective or the seller’s perspective, they’re going to search something on Google, whether it’s “homes for sale Manhattan, NY” or “buy a home in … ” whatever the area is, so if you think about what that buyer wants to see, they want to see homes for sale in that specific area.

Matthew:   The issue that a lot of websites have is it’s not specific information, meaning they might have five or six different areas as opposed to that specific neighbourhood or that specific city, but, even taking it a step further from that, a lot of those area pages might just have what Zillow offers or what Realtor.com offers, where there’s nothing unique about someone visiting your website. They can get that information anywhere, so the more specific you can get in terms of the areas, but also the data and the content that’s on that specific page, will really, really help.

Matthew:    I guess, from how you’d go about attacking that, put yourself in the buyer’s shoes or in your end customer’s shoes as often as possible, and what would you want to see on your website? That’s typically the right answer.

Kasey:   Does that include specific wording around that for them to, obviously, easily find you? To be quite honest, I think we all kind of start at Google and we go there. That’s where we search, so that’s not unrealistic to assume that’s what everyone does in the world. In going to Google and I’m typing in “Property management in Manhattan,” we want to be at the top of the page if that’s what happens to be, so what kind of things should we be having on our websites to allow that?

Matthew:   The more content, the better, and the more specific in Manhattan, the better.

Matthew:   When it comes to the actual search engine optimization, getting the website seen is relevant in Google’s eyes. Certainly, the more specific content, the better, so photos, things that mention Manhattan … there’s a long, laundry list of things that I could certainly go into on it … but to keep it as basic and as just high-level as possible for this conversation, just the more specific to Manhattan, and, as terrible as an answer as that might be, but that’s really what it is.

Matthew:   If you look at a lot of your competitors out there … and do it; type in on Google “homes for sale” in a specific area and find the actual agents that are showing up, so skip over the realtor and Zillow and Trulia … they’ll have an individual page for that area, and they’ll have better content, and here’s the MLS, and here are the properties for sale. It’s really, to your point, building those relationships, and it starts with offering a unique experience on the website.

Kasey:   We can now dive into a little bit around conversion. You touched on it very briefly before. What are some of the best practises around those lead conversions? When I say best practise, I mean we get a lead in and it’s coming from our online tools; I still feel that some of us don’t do that or don’t respond very well. Talk me through that, around some of those conversion rates.

Matthew:   Absolutely. In terms of the rates themselves, a lot of it has to do with how you set your CRM up.

Matthew:   It’s no longer a manual game. When it comes to online marketing, there’s not enough time throughout the course of the day as a realtor, if you’re a successful realtor not sitting by your phone, which most aren’t, there’s not enough time in the day to respond as quickly as you need to or as often as you need to. Having an automated system set up, it’s, in my world, a non-negotiable. Whether it’s with us or, really, with any of our competitors, an automated CRM that works for you is the best.

Matthew:   A text, nowadays, as soon as that lead comes in or within two minutes, definitely makes a huge difference, but also the content of the message makes a huge difference.

Matthew:   There’s technology out there … ours has this … where, when a lead comes in, it’s able to see how it registered. Let’s say it was 123 Main Street, there would be a text sent out a minute later, whether you’re on an appointment or driving, “Hey Matt, this is Kasey, I saw you’re interested in 123 Main Street. Let me know if you have any questions. I hope you enjoy the site.”

Matthew:   Something like that is great. For me, it’s almost a more personal approach. Something where a lot of buyers, if they’re searching, they’re going to be getting messages along those lines, and it’s going to be a little bit overwhelming in a lot of cases, so something that I’ve really been preaching over the last few months is more of a “Hey, Matt. This is Kasey. No idea where you are in the buying process now, but I know that I wanna be the agent you end up working with. How can I be of service today?”; just something that’s real. Starting to build the relationship off the bat, I think, is the right move, and I think that’s a really, really strong way to start off with your conversions … and if it’s just, “Oh, thanks. I’m just looking right now,” easy enough. Put them on a two month drip campaign, or whatever the case is.

Matthew:   As many people as you can get in as possible, getting in touch with them quickly, and then finding out which ones are warmer than others, and touching base with them at the right time. CRMs that are out there can really automate that process.

Matthew:   I even have some clients that use this, and I can preach best practises all day, but like any other programme, it comes down to the agent making those steps. It’s shocking to me how many agents that I work with and that I know that work with other CRMs that buy it, they’ll spend thousands a month on it and they use whatever the company puts out there in terms of a welcome message.

Matthew:   At the end of the day, it’s taking ownership and really understanding, Okay, this is my business, and these are tools to really get you to where you want to be, but you do have to put the love, the TLC into it, as I like to say about it. The automated messaging is certainly the biggest conversion factor.

Speaker 3:   Wonderful.

Kasey:   Thanks so much for your time.

Matthew:   Thank you very much.