The real estate agent’s success is becoming increasingly dependent on new technologies. Nowadays most property searches are done online and, as in any other sector, the biggest advertising investments of the real estate agents are made on the internet. Agents get most of their potential clients from the main real estate portals and search engines.
Competing against the investment of the agent are the big budgets of the main real estate portals which, because of their size and expertise, don’t make the small agent’s activity easy. This is not necessarily bad. The real estate agent does not need to be an expert to take advantage of the internet.
Let the portals do all the hard work and then, catch their ride. This is the smartest choice a small agent can take. If you can’t fight them, join them.
A qualified lead – a valid enquire from a potential customer – can cost 50€ for buying and selling opportunity and 35€ for a rental one. These values cannot be wasted because of bad follow-ups. They should rather be invested on the real estate agent’s relationship with the client. To do so, you don’t need to be an online, Social Media, Email Marketing, SEO or Webdesign expert. An excellent salesperson is the one who ‘grabs’ the client until his need is fulfilled.
Real estate agents should be surrounded by the best technological partners and use them to find the solution that best suits their business. The focus of the agent should be on the leads. These are bought and come at a price. The agent should concentrate his efforts on the leads to successfully close the largest number of business opportunities.
It is essential that you know how much each lead is costing you, how much you can get from each deal, how many leads were required to close a single business and how many were marked as lost.
You should invest time in analyzing the channels that give you a higher return, by effectively measuring the success of each one. Those who think they can do it with a superficial analysis should think again. There are suitable tools on the market, that help you to analyse the return of your investment in each channel. This analysis should be based on a minimum period of 6 months. The more extended the period under analysis is, the more real the average cost per lead for each deal is.
You don’t need to be an online expert to succeed online, in the same way that you don’t need to know how to build a house to know how to sell it. Still, you need to do an online investment if you want to ensure the success of your business. This investment is part of the current real estate activity.
