There are 2 million people with active real estate licenses. In 2015, over 5 million existing homes were sold.
In order to be successful as a real estate agent, finding new clients is just as important as closing the deal for the clients you already have. Both aspects of your job are time-consuming.
But with the right marketing automation tools, it’s easier than ever to find the right people at exactly the right time. While it might sound too good to be true, it’s not. Here’s why using marketing automation is so vitally important.
You’ll Save Time
Much of the success you find in real estate has to do with timing. It’s not always the best time to sell or buy a house.
Timing is also everything when you reach out to potential clients. Maybe they aren’t looking to sell or buy right now. But in another year, the timing could be perfect. Marketing automation will help you know exactly when they’re ready to enter the sales funnel.
Trying to time everything perfectly is impossible. Unless you have the right marketing automation tools. These tools allow you to reach out to your prospective clients exactly when you want to but without having to put forth any extra effort.
Managing Social Media Posts
You can automate your social media posts and ads rather than posting them at the exact time you want them to be featured. Social media is a handy tool, especially for the real estate market but it can also be a huge time sucker if you’re not careful. Using an automation tool can save you over six hours per week.
Sending E-mails
E-mails are also a huge time suck if you don’t stay on top of them. Whether they’re out-going e-mails or incoming ones, they’re an important communication tool. But only if a good e-mail system has been set up.
One way to ensure you stay in touch with important clients without having to hire someone full time is to use marketing automation tools. These tools can help you increase your reply rate by 250% just by automating your outreach and follow up e-mails.
Appointment Setting
Another task that ends up taking far more time than most of us have to give is trying to set up an appointment with a client. However, when you use the automation tool, your clients will know exactly when you’re free, freeing up 80% more of your time.
Reduces Costs
Time is money. By using marketing automation tools that free up your time, you’ll end up being able to focus on important rather than menial tasks.
You’ll also know more quickly when a marketing strategy isn’t working. And why. Which means you can fix a problem and turn what could have been a costly failure to a success.
There will be fewer mistakes, which will also lead to an increase in sales. Once you set up a system, you’ll know immediately if something isn’t right and you can correct it. Once the problem has been fixed, it won’t happen again.
Also, marketing automation tools don’t require a 401K, a raise, and you don’t have to spend time and money to hire the best person for the job. Marketing automation tools just have to be set up once and then it will continue to provide you with consistent feedback.
Is Highly Efficient
Employees make mistakes. They have bad days and sometimes, they get sick. The same isn’t true for marketing automation tools.
You set up the system once and then you can rest easy knowing that your online audience will always receive the same, consistent experience based on their actions.
If a customer subscribes to your real estate blog, you can set up a workflow that automatically sends them a welcome e-mail. That e-mail can suggest articles or even provide a follow-up offer. You can even have new articles automatically sent to subscribers as soon as they are published.
Best of all, marketing automation tools do this all on its own. You set it up once and its ready to go. No sick days, and no excuses because the system forgot. What this means for your customers is they always receive exactly what they want at exactly the time they want it.
And after it’s been set up, you never have to think about it again. Marketing automation is a great way to effectively build up your brand online.
Eliminates Human Error
Humans make mistakes. When we do, it takes time to locate the mistake and fix it. However, when you using marketing automation tools, it eliminates human error.
All you really need to do is set up the program once. If it’s working correctly, you’ll know because you’ll start seeing positive results. If there’s an error, it’s easier to figure out where it is and fix it.
Without marketing automation, it’s up to you to repeat the marketing process over and over. Most of us don’t really enjoy performing mundane tasks. We also don’t like repetitive tasks. They lead us to make mistakes.
Mistakes that can take awhile for us to even realize we’re making them. Which leads to time and money being wasted. With marketing automation tools, a mistake is only made once and is usually much easier to identify and correct.
Provides You With Great Amounts of Usable Data
Usable data is one of the best features of using marketing automation tools. The data helps you determine who your best prospects are, where they are located, and the best time(s) to reach out to them.
Marketing automation tools allow you to tag all your marketing activities to the campaign they’re associated with. You can then view comprehensive analytics of your customer traffic, conversion rates, and clicks all in one place.
You’ll receive a big picture of all the data being together. This saves time for you rather than having to jump from social media platforms to your blog to figure out which campaigns are working and which aren’t.
This enables you to more easily figure out which campaign(s) aren’t working and why. Knowing where the problem lies helps you make a few tweaks to fix the problems. You’ll no longer have to wait until the campaign ends to find out why it didn’t work. Instead, you’ll fix it during the campaign and enjoy a great return on investment (ROI).
Improves Customer Experience
We all get junk mail. Whether it comes in our mailbox or into our e-mail, if it’s not addressed to us personally, most of us just toss it into the trash after barely glancing at it.
This is not the action you want people to take when it’s your marketing campaign. That’s why marketing automation tools are so helpful. It’s incredibly easy to use those tools to personalize every piece of marketing you send to a potential client.
Personalizing your marketing makes it much more likely people will want to engage with the information you’re sending because they feel it’s meant for them, rather than them and 1,000 other people.
Personalizing your outreach efforts means you’ll find six times higher reaction rates than you would if did nothing. And it’s so easy to do.
With marketing automation tools you can reach the right person at the right time using the right message. You’ll be able to send a prospective client content that provides them with the solutions and tools they need at the exact time they need them.
Making your customers happy means you’ll expect to see better online reviews. All of those will help more people find you online and trust that you’re the real estate agent they should work with.
Integrates Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing are not the same. Often, you have one team working on sales and another team focusing on marketing.
The problem is, if they don’t talk, important factors that could increase ROI can easily slip through the cracks. The right marketing automation tools can help your sales and marketing teams start working together.
You’ll be able to easily save crucial contact information. You’ll automatically check where your contact is in the marketing funnel. You’ll know what resources they’ve downloaded and which web pages they’re interacting with.
You’ll even be able to set up processes that automatically perform crucial tasks for you based on your customer’s online interactions. If you combine tools with the right software, you can view your contact’s sales and marketing activities all in one place.
Knowing exactly what a client is doing, when, how often, and what they’re responding to gives you a full picture of their relationship with your brand. With that knowledge, you can then align your outreach according to their behavior.
Effective for Lead Nurturing Strategies
In the past, if you wanted to know exactly where a potential customer stood in terms of the sales process, you would need to ask them. This meant either setting up an appointment to speak to them in person or on the phone.
Both strategies take up a lot of time, especially if it turns out the potential lead wasn’t really interested. Times have thankfully changed.
Pinpointing the Sales Cycle
Using marketing automation, you can now easily determine exactly where someone is along the sales cycle based on what information they’re reading and how often. They’re also receiving information consistently without you having to spend extra time sending them anything.
This keeps your company in the forefront of their brain often without them even realizing it.
Most people aren’t ready to buy or sell anything immediately. It takes them a few times of seeing your business before they feel comfortable reaching out to you as someone who can help them achieve their goals.
Providing Consistency
However, consistently sending them helpful information will continue to help them see you as the professional they’d want to work with when they are ready to take action.
In terms of the sales process, you’ll know how far along they are and what types of information they’re looking for. You can then contact them already prepared to deliver exactly what the data is telling you they want to know.
Marketing automation data might even tell you exactly what your prospects objectives and which tactics would be best to help you close the sale.
Marketing Automation Tools Provides You With Greater Flexibility
Working in real estate requires you to have a great amount of flexibility. One day a client absolutely has to see that specific home and the next day they’re too busy to even view an e-mail.
Which is one reason why marketing automation tools are so brilliant, they allow you greater flexibility.
Customers can open an e-mail exactly when they’re ready and have time. it’s all set up automatically so you’re not wasting time wondering whether or not someone has read what you’ve sent them.
You’re able to see when they viewed your marketing materials. You also know exactly what they viewed. Since it’s automatic, you can focus on the people who are showing a keen interest, rather than wasting your time with people who are only a few steps into the sales funnel but aren’t yet ready to make any commitments.
The Next Steps
There are so many reasons why marketing automation makes sense for real estate agents. However, before you rush out to buy a program, do some research first.
Determine your goals. Figure out which marketing activities you’re currently using. Note if you have any new strategies that you wanted to start using in the future. This will help you determine the best software for your needs.
You’ll also need to figure out what needs to be connected to your software. Most people want their website pages, blogs, e-mail marketing, social media, forms and landing pages, search engine optimization (SEO), keywords, and reporting tools to be part of the software package.
Doing so will allow you to see where you’re having the most success and where your marketing could use a few tweaks. You’ll also be able to view all your data in one place, making it easier for you to create new and effective marketing strategies.
Talk to the Professionals
Most real estate agents are great at selling and buying houses. Their niche isn’t in the latest SEO practices, digital platforms, or marketing software.
That’s where we come in. We’re invested in helping real estate agents save time, money, and experience more success. Keep reading our blogs to see how you can make the most out of your online presence.