If you view real estate farming as a real farm, every move you make within that market is like sowing a seed. Crops take time and patience to be fruitful, but if you’re willing to do the work in the beginning and wait for roots to take hold, you’ll find that the payoff is well worth the initial effort.

Geographic Farming
The most common type of real estate farming is geographic farming. By focusing all your energy on one area, you’ll soon know its benefits and quirks like the back of your own hand, which is endlessly beneficial to your clients. Geographic farming is thought by many real estate agents to be the quickest way to see consistent leads.

Choosing the right farm area lays the foundation for your success. Many agents choose to stay close to home for many reasons, beginning with the fact that you are more likely to already know the ins and outs of the neighborhood! Farming your own neighborhood will also make you easily available to your clients who are looking for a last-minute showing.

Other things to consider when choosing your farm area include:

• Local demographics
• Local amenities
• Level of desirability
• Your response to the neighborhood — your excitement is contagious
• Well-defined boundaries for targeted marketing
• Size of the area, or number of homes in the area
• Turnover rate and average sales price
• Competition

Dominate Your Area
After you’ve chosen your geographic farm and done your research, it’s time to cash in on your hard work. Building your presence at this point should feel easy in comparison to choosing your farm; after all, all that research you did surely taught you everything you need to know about the neighborhood and your target audience!

Real estate farming makes marketing simpler and cleaner. Take direct mail marketing for example. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, and still one of the most effective marketing methods. Combine direct mail with a real estate farm, and you’ve discovered a well of opportunity, even without a traditional mailing list!

The same goes for door hangers, knocking on doors (as intimidating as it may be!), neighborhood events, and cold calls. All of these vital marketing tools will be made easier than ever when you choose to use real estate farming as the key to your success.

Real Estate Farming Today
The marketing tactics listed above are still an integral part of real estate sales, but surely you noticed that something was missing — online marketing. Clients expect their agent to have an online presence, whether it’s a Facebook page or a website. But online marketing can be one of the most frustrating and difficult aspects of a marketing strategy. That is, unless you’re using real estate farming!

That’s right, real estate farming even simplifies online marketing. Focusing on a certain geographic area allows you to better use online forums, targeted Facebook ads and other social media, blogs, and search engine rankings. If you’re successfully utilizing online marketing for your geographic farm, leads will be able to seek you out more easily, or even stumble upon your name as they search for their dream home.

Dropping your name onto the internet can be as meaningless as pouring a cup of water into the ocean, or it can connect leads to realtors more efficiently than any other marketing strategy. One way to guarantee the latter is to employ the tactic of real estate farming, and generate your ads based on your farm of choice.

Get Started
It’s hard to read about the many boons of real estate farming and not be itching to get started. Just remember to take the time to choose your farm carefully, and then don’t look back! The most successful real estate farms come from a place of true love for the area and dedication to its promotion and growth. When you combine those ingredients, the benefits to your business can only be positive. Click here to learn more about a customized real estate farming strategy designed just for you. Happy farming!

The post What Is Real Estate Farming? appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

Real estate agent postcards are a proven and affordable marketing tool for real estate professionals. A carefully designed postcard will yield both immediate and long-term results. At minimum, you’ll see an increase in emails and website registrations, perhaps even the same day your postcards are delivered. In a best case scenario, you’ll receive higher call volume with requests for both buying and selling in your real estate farm.

Agent postcards and real estate farming
While postcards are effective within any real estate marketing tactic, agents focusing on a real estate farm will have the best ratio of effort to results. If you’re focusing on a certain geographic area, you won’t even need a mailing list for your postcards; you’ll simply need your defined real estate farm boundaries!

Remember that the best results from direct mail comes from consistency. One mailing will not boost your business enough to make the tactic stand out; however, after a couple mailings, your brand will have found its home in your leads’ minds, and you’ll soon find yourself the go-to agent of your farming area.

Getting the most out of direct mailing
Real estate postcards are especially useful when used in conjunction with a door-to-door strategy. You can either bring a postcard (or flier, magnet, pen, business card, etc.) to hand to people personally, or you can plan a mailing for immediately after you go door-to-door. Either way, people will remember personally meeting you, with the reinforcement of the physical material to make sure you stay on their minds for their future real estate needs.

Aside from using agent postcards to introduce yourself or solidify your name in people’s minds, you can also send literature when you receive a new listing, when you sell a house in the neighborhood, or when you’re hosting an open house. Keeping your postcards topical will make sure people don’t feel “spammed” but will also serve as a consistent reminder of who you are and how you can serve the neighborhood.

A major benefit of real estate postcards is return on investment. Because they are fairly simple and inexpensive to design and print, even mildly effective campaigns will yield a return of at least four times the cost, while most campaigns will yield eight to 12 times the investment.

Perfecting your postcards
One of the main keys to a successful postcard campaign is creating the perfect card design. Potential leads won’t take a second glance at your postcard if it’s messy, missing critical information, or just plain boring. Here are a few things to focus on:

• Consistent branding with your logo, a consistent color scheme, fonts, and layout
• Photos of recently sold homes, or homes for sale
• Your photo on both sides of the card
• A specific and concise message to your market
• Calls to action

Perfecting these key elements in each of your postcards will create a clear picture of who you are and what you do. Combined with consistent mailings, a well-designed postcard will ensure that your name becomes synonymous with “real estate” in the minds of your real estate farm leads.

WIIFT
Before you stamp those cards, remember WIIFT: what’s in it for them? Put yourself in the shoes of your future clients, and give each campaign a unique spin based on what’s happening in the market or your real estate farm. Are your leads concerned or excited about the housing market? Is local employment affecting the neighborhood’s view or buying or selling? How can you offer them something different to meet their needs?

Sending out an individualized campaign focused on what’s in it for them will all but boost your return on investment. If nothing else, speaking to the hearts of your target audience will help them feel heard and understood, which are two excellent things to be remembered for.

Let the results speak for themselves
Even with years of proven success, new agents are often uncertain about using a “dinosaur marketing” tactic like direct mailing postcards. After all, isn’t this the digital age? It’s true that postcards will never take over the importance of an online presence, but the fact remains that direct mail yields results.

If you’ve never used a postcard campaign before, it’s time to give it a try and let the results speak for themselves. Be sure to take five minutes or so a day to record the responses you receive as a direct result of your mailing, whether it’s an email, website registration, or phone call to discuss buying or selling.

After a postcard campaign, you’ll certainly see some immediate results, but the big payoff comes slowly over time as you continue to see leads responding to campaigns that happened weeks or even months ago. It’s helpful to ask all new leads how they heard of you, and keep track of the marketing that’s working best for you. Chances are you’ll be surprised by how many leads reached out due to your real estate postcards. Click here to learn more about a real estate postcard strategy designed just for you.

The post Real Estate Postcards Work! appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

Data shows that 84% of real estate professionals use social media for marketing. Of that 84%, only 55% say that they are comfortable with using social media. That means the agents who take the time to become proficient in Facebook marketing will easily take the lead and reap the many benefits a strong social media presence can provide.

There are a million and one how-to guides for using Facebook as a real estate marketing tool, so that’s not what you’ll find here. Instead, here’s a look at why it’s worth your time, energy, and money to excel in the world of Facebook marketing.

Unique benefits
A successful marketing campaign will always include traditional tactics like postcard mailings and referral programs, but there are certain things you can only achieve through social media marketing.

First off, Facebook is the best way to let potential clients see a bit of who you really are. By making your personal profile public (or making certain posts public), people can get a great feel for your personality, your values, and your life in general. Leads will be much more likely to reach out to you if they feel like they already know something about who you are as a person.

One quick note on Facebook profiles: Facebook is very strict about their rules regarding personal profiles vs. business profiles. It’s very important that you use a business page for conducting your business on Facebook, posting paid ads, etc. However, when it comes to your personal page, that’s where you’ll be able to let your personality shine through and really connect with people on a personal level via networking.

While networking is certainly not unique to social media, Facebook is by far the easiest way to make network connections. By simply “liking” the pages and posts of your friends and clients, you’re building a strong web of people who feel supported by you, while simultaneously getting your name in front of the eyes of a whole new group of people. You’ll do even better if you follow-up that “like” with a personal, genuine message or comment!

Using Facebook as a marketing tool also allows you to easily group your friends into lists. For example, if you have a list of local friends, a list of clients, and a list of leads, you’ll know how to reach your target audience with a simple sort feature. Utilizing these lists is the perfect way to make sure no single group feels inundated by your posts, but you’ll still be able to reach your target audience when it matters to them.

These great “pros” of Facebook marketing don’t even touch on the integrated marketing that Facebook actually provides, including paid ads, customizable business pages, and even a “likely to move” behavioral category to track potential leads. Learning to take advantage of both types of Facebook marketing will be the key to your success, but it’s is also the reason why most agents find it hard to become comfortable using Facebook as a marketing tool.

Full package
At the end of the day, the simplest reason for incorporating Facebook marketing is to complete today’s version of the full marketing package. If you’re without a Facebook presence, you’re likely to be passed over in favor of your more available competition. Think of it like forgoing business cards — unthinkable, right? Now apply that thought to Facebook marketing!

Choosing to make Facebook marketing a key element in your overall marketing plan may take extra time and energy at first, but as soon as you see the remarkable effect it can have on your business, you’ll be willing to do it all again. Click here to learn more about a customized Facebook marketing strategy designed just for you.

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