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What does farming connect to Real Estate Business? Does a Real Estate Professional sow lands and grow crops? This is the funniest thing that you will ever hear, can’t blame you though because it makes sense. Farming is one of the oldest ways of scaling your real estate business, this is where you cultivate your branding/business inside the neighborhood and make yourself or your business renowned. Most of the new agents skip this part because of the pros and cons that lie with this strategy, but what I can assure you, this will help your business in long term success and it will outdo the cons of implementing it. From this topic, I’ll help you understand how to effectively execute farming with the intention of scaling your business, how you can use the available technology to farm the neighborhood, pick the right neighborhood to farm, and how to maintain that relationship as your business progresses years on the road. Pretty exciting right? You should be! Especially if you are on the peak of its success. Let’s jump in!
How to effectively farm neighborhood
- Ever heard of “hammering the nail in the head, nailed it good”? Of course it sounds familiar to you, but I did make it out, funny right? Anyway, hammering your advertisement and marketing efforts into one single neighborhood nailed it better than hammering on all the neighborhoods that you see around the prospect area. Studies show that 7x-9x is needed for the possible leads to recognize your branding once they see it in different types of efforts you make; door-to-door, giving business cards with your photo with it, handing out company flyers, and online advertisement. Leads will recognize you better with your face not your name, so I totally advise you to invest in your business photos. See how much I tell you that this will help you in your long term run of business? If you have this single neighborhood recognize you, if they are doing business like selling or buying properties, you will be the first person they will think of—ain't that a big opportunity that you opened up through farming?
How to pick the right neighborhood to farm
- You might know how to farm effectively now, but you also need to figure out if the neighborhood that you want to farm is actually feasible for business, right? I summarize the things that you might want to consider.
- First, you wanted to know % turnover (how many units were sold in a span of a year) within that neighborhood. Play with MLS and seek for a neighborhood that has at least 10% of turn-over sales or even higher, this will help you filter if that the area is good for your business just by looking at this. Then we can talk about the sub-factors that you want to check to solidify that decision.
- Once you confirm that the area has the desirable % turn-over, make sure to check % of expired listings and % withdrawn listings in that area. This will help you understand if the properties in this neighborhood are marketable.
- Checking the average sales price. Looking at these metrics will help you if the market in this area suits your type of business. For example, if the average sales price in the neighborhood is $50,000, you might be thinking twice about that neighborhood after considering the commission % that you’ll only get from that average sales price.
- Scan the days on the market. This will help you know how fast sales transactions happen in the market. Imagine if the property stayed in your MLS less than a week, or even less than a month. Then you will know how fun it is to do business with this neighborhood.
How to market in your farm area
- You have the metrics at hand, you know how to start, and we also need to know how to implement and execute those plans and convert them to $—which is what every business’ ulterior motive right? I do have 3 things
- Mail (USPS) - this is an old way of marketing which was successful before and it is working ‘till today. You might ask what postcard ideas send? No worries, let me feed you with that; 1. Just sold postcards, 2. Just listed postcards, 3. Coming soon postcards.
- Facebook Ads - if there are old ways of marketing, definitely we are going to use advanced tech marketing methods. Facebook Ads allow you to choose a certain audience to send your facebook ads to, which helps you make your branding and business grow out through the internet and get leads by using compelling ads headlines, and cool looking photos that will make viewers make their eye-twitch and think “this is something I needed”.
- Google Pay Per Click - this is one of the advance tech marketing method that you wanted to use and you just need to have a landing page with a compelling headline and call to action to make this generate leads for you.
How to turn your market leads to clients
- Just like what I mentioned at the first part of this article, this is a long term process which will be fruitful once you execute with persistence. With that being said, this will most likely not give you clients right away within 3 months of operating, you need to be consistent with implementing this kind of method. Once you get the leads coming in, you will need to know how to convert these leads into clients, and this is how you will do that.
- Long term plan - considering how we phrase it earlier, you may not get clients within 3 months, but it should be leads at least. If you are not getting any leads from that time frame, you need to change something with your marketing process. You may need to change your ads, your script, your headlines, and call to action from time to time.
- Following Up w/ Inquiries - you need to have in mind that, most of the possible leads that you’ll have doesn’t have their hands in the trigger at that exact moment. That’s the reason why you need to do follow ups with them, inquire if when they are ideally going to do business with you, how much are they looking forward to getting, and how fast they want to have the property float in the market. These are some of the inquiries that you may want to check up with your leads to understand their needs and wants. Another way of this is, signing them up with your newsletter, this way you can give them updates with how your business is going and what are the plans that you have. At the end, this is just you utilizing your leads' contact information like their address, phone number, and email address.
- Keep Track of the Data - constantly checking up with your leads will give you more data that you wanted to keep track of. This will give you an upper-hand when your leads want your business and you already have their data with you. This will lead to trust and a good reputation for you because they’ll feel that you really understand what they need and want.
Farming is an old and still working method that will ensure you long term success if executed well and consistently. Now you might think twice of skipping this method before starting your real estate professional career.
This information is brought to you by the Success Center at TSRE | Tampa School of Real Estate.
TSRE was founded upon the idea of being MORE than a required class. When starting a real estate career, there's so much more than just passing a class. At TSRE your success is our success, and one of the ways we're here to help you every step of the way is the TSRE Success Center. Whether you're just starting out or are trying to take your business to the next level, we're here to help you build your real estate empire.
