I will admit one thing: I have an unfair advantage delivering this plan and kicking off the “public” plans with this section. In addition to owning this business, I also do some realtor coaching and training at Harris Real Estate University. So, I know–first-hand–a lot of what works today (and what doesn’t). Having had 100+ agents go through the program and learn how to connect and help on social media is a huge advantage. I also actually sold real estate & mortgages to customers I met online, amassing over 10 million in sales from social media.
That said, this kicks off a new Monday focus for us: we’ll be doing real live business plans for the core businesses that we serve. Some actions steps to take, and some thing that really, you know, sell. I thought I’d make it easy on ourselves….without further ado:
Real Estate Agent Social Media Business Plan 2010-2011
Objective: to net +25 transactions from real estate via efforts in social media. In most markets, with an average commission of 2.7% and an average house price of $180,000, this will create Gross Revenue of $121,500. We always track ROI from social media, so this number is the expected gross result. Anything that we spend in terms of time and energy has to be measured against this.
Further, we’re going to cap expenses at $5,000 and 8 hours per week. This means that we’ll have a solid ROI from the efforts that we take here. This means we’re not spending a fortune to get good results.
Declare Identity with a microbrand:
Now, Mike Ferry does a good job of making fun of a lot of what’s wrong with Real Estate Agents/Brokers these days. Still–you’ve gotta be someone online. You’ve gotta consider some personal branding ideas and declare your identity. It’s not because people are watching, they aren’t. It’s for your sake. It’s because if you start with a foundation of the salesperson you aspire to be, you’ll be a lot more likely to stick with it, and it’s there.
Doesn’t matter what, but declare an identity. For more info on this, see Al and Laura Reis’s blog or Dan Schwaebel’s blog on identity. You’re doing this for YOU, but you want to be focused on how YOU and YOUR TEAM help OTHER PEOPLE. Being “The man with the dog,” is worthless. Being “the person to call when your house HAS TO SELL,” is not.
Cost: Zero, time 5 hours. Weekly time = Zero.
We’ll get into microbranding more soon, but bottom line: YOU are doing it for YOU, so you deliver a long-term, coherent message.
Start building your audience on social media.
Most people rush out to get a blog first. We do it a little differently. Getting a blog is important IF you don’t yet have ANY website on the web, since a blog does everything that a website does and more. It can be both, and yes, it can look highly professional.
But, the step here is to get on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter & Youtube (yes, youtube) and check ‘em out. You want to see where you fit in, and how to do things. You’ll probably want to upload a lot of your contacts into Facebook and put that on a schedule. You might want to check out guest blogging at some of the local-ish blogs.
The goal here is to get your personal contacts engaged, and to start engaging and following local businesses. You’ll probably want to create a schedule of things that you’ll be doing so it doesn’t overwhelm you. Here, you might learn that a site like LinkedIn or Twitter just doesn’t make sense for you. That’s fine. You’re learning.
Cost: Zero: Monthly Cost: Zero: Time: 1 hour/week.
Next: You’ll Want to Build A Blog, or (Hint-hint) Have Us Do It.
Your blog website is your central hub. All roads lead there. Everything you do is designed to get people to your blog and interacting with you on YOUR turf. Yes, it’s great to have a Facebook page, but it’s better to have a blog. When you have ‘em both, you’ll win.
With your blog comes some responsibility. You’ll want to add content to it regularly, and this takes weekly time. We’re gonna say 2+ hours a week for this.
Build a Blog with the following components:
- Home/Landing Page/Squeeze Page For Leads (we charge a bit or this)
- MLS/IDX Search
- Contact Capture Component (Aweber)
- Able to embed video/pictures/slideshows
- Able to generate printer friendly forms
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) (more on that in a bit)
- Your Phone Number
- WordPress
You’ll drive traffic to the blog. You’ll convert some of it into leads. You’ll convert some of the leads into customers. The math will work. (Let’s say you get 500 hits/month. 10 become leads, 3 become customers and you close 2/3 of the customers, that there is 2 deals a month and it’s a normal percentage with a well executed blog).
Cost:
$797 For the Blog, $497 to develop a landing page. (We’ll account for Aweber in a minute). IDX Cost: $35-$100 a month (we’ll use $50). 4 hours a week! (We only have 3 hours left, but plenty of money!) Blog’s monthly fee = $15/month.
So we’ve spent: $1294 + $600 (IDX Search) + $180 (hosting fee for blogs) = $2074.
Still money left to spend.
Add An Autoresponder To Your Business Plan
Let’s get something straight: an Autoresponder isn’t a CRM. They are separate systems–for good reason. An Autoresponder basically allows you to stick webforms on the internet, have people respond & confirm their addresses, and then BOOM they become your customers. It’s pretty cool the way that it works. I use Aweber for mine, and I’m an affiliate of theirs.
The Autoresponder is a nice catch all. You can build a newsletter list. If you have 500 contacts, you should be generating transactions from 6% of them. The Autroesponder is where EVERYONE is in, under different lists:
- Newsletter only
- Web Contacts
- Blog Comment Leads
- Hand Entered.
More on that in a bit, but that’s the way that I’d do things. Trying to consolidate the CRM with the Autoresponder is a fool’s errand. Don’t fight it, don’t insist on one system, or else you’ll wind up with scam artists.
Cost: $20/month = $240 Year. Time: 1 hour/ week (we’re running out of time!) I’d argue here that this will save time in other areas of marketing, but you get the gist.
Add A CRM To Your Business.
I use HEAP CRM. (http://crmondemand.biz). It’s not perfect–I reviewed it a couple years ago and most of its shortcomings are intact. But it’s pretty damn good. And it’s easy. And I’m using it, sort of. That’s the key. You can create templates of “what has to happen” on your CRM, which can grab most of the good parts of Basecamp and integrate them into a CRM. Using this allows us to get our contacts anywhere we have a smart phone, and allows us to generate all the things we did all the time.
Heap’s got a lot of really good systems, and really can be bent to your will. It’s powerful and flexible (and it has a bad interface, but most Realtors won’t notice that).
Heap costs $9 for the first user per month and $6 for the second.
So let’s say $9 = $108. You’d be managing contacts anyway, so I’m not going to ding the time. We have spent $2422, almost half our dough.
Add A Presence on FaceBook
In addition to the rest, now it’s time for you to add a presence on Facebook. You can use Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to get Facebook traffic, and you can learn how to get a lot of bang for your buck there. Facebook fan pages are a good way to interact with people, and they share a lot of functions with a CRM/Autoresponder. Anyone can make a page on Facebook, but we need a specific set of calls to action in order for this to work long-term. And so it is: FB Fan pages that are done right will convert visitors into lifelong fans.
A nice social place to interact (go see ours: 200 fans, very little effort to maintain). You want to be careful with this and make sure you get to critical mass fast. Nothing’s worse than a Realtor with 42 fans. You also probably want to take advantage of Facebook’s ubiquitous coupons on the internet to build your fans: they have coupon codes for free advertising and that way you don’t have to request competitors to become fans of yours.
We set up Facebook fan pages for you that actually have design. We can probably bundle ‘em with your blog as well. We’re currently selling ‘em for $399, but we’re going to be at $497, so we’ll use that price.
Time: 30 minutes a week. Price: $497. You should get 5-7 customers out of this per year. It’s not going to be a home run, but a solid base hit.
Now, we have some assets. We can continue to work the social media channels. But we need to realize something: Google is #1 for a reason. Realtors would be dumb not to take advantage of PPC advertising.
We have $2,000 roughly left, and the balance will be spent on PPC. Why? Because it’s that important. I’d recommend having some Autoresponder emails professionally written, but honestly, the best use of the money is going to be PPC. If you choose not to purchase email copy written by our copywriters, you should check out PPC with the rest. $160/month should create 30-40 respondents for a Realtor.
5 of those people should call.
One of those should close.
That’s a good yield. 12 transactions for $160/month & 90 minutes a week.
Now, I’d recommend getting some help to put this together in the beginning, and having all the soldiers on the field as quickly as possible.
Every quarter we should revisit this plan to see how we can shift assets towards what’s winning, and to plow more money into the things that are creating easy, pleasant transactions.
The balance of the time that’s left should be spent on YouTube making videos that describe the market.
Photo by Mr. Bill
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