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Agents need a quick but effective way to nurture relationships within their sphere. COVID-19 postcards for agents are an economical and efficient solution.
If you listen to some of the top real estate podcasts that have been streaming during the last six to eight weeks, you’ll hear experts advising their listeners to keep their marketing efforts going strong.
Experts are all in agreement… Keep moving forward with your real estate marketing plan
Tom Ferry on May 5: “In this environment, we’ve got to up our game, up our belief, and become an appointment-setting machine.”
Kim Angeli on April 16: “This is not my first rodeo in pivoting a business. I survived 2008 as a business owner. This is the time to really pour into your existing client base. This is the time to over communicate and reach out and say how many I serve you; how many I help you?”
Andy Dane Carter on April 17: “What most people do in these kinds of times is they collapse their marketing budgets… I could not disagree with you more. This is the time when you market like crazy… Market your face off and provide value to your clients.”
Luke Acree on March 20: “There are people that want to thrive in this, whether you’re an insurance agent, financial advisor, or a real estate agent, there are people who still want to buy homes, who still want to invest, and who still want to move forward—it just might be a little harder to find them. The strong are going to survive. Do not retreat. Engage.
Follow these steps in this order and you’ll come out ahead of the competition.
These consultants, coaches, advisors, and others in the industry are generally repeating the same advice:
What every smart agent should be doing during this pandemic is reaching out to everyone in their sphere of influence. One, you need to show you sincerely care. Two, you need to educate people about the market and build trust by providing them with useful information. Then, and only then, can you move to three—ask for the business.
Nurture Relationships in a Meaningful Way with COVID-19 Postcards
An effective way to reach out to people in your sphere of influence, especially now, is to use postcards. And COVID-19 postcards–ones that provide uplifting, useful, and relevant information to past and future clients stuck at home—are an economical, efficient, and effective way to stay in touch.
Check out these examples of postcards that acknowledge the COVID-19 crisis and remain sensitive to people’s concerns, while still appropriately keeping the agent sending them top-of-mind.
Bored Jar
COVID-19 postcard featuring activity ideas for bored families in quarantine will be a blessing for parents and their children.
Not many of us can handle being cooped up for two months. And it’s worse for kids. They get frustrated, irritated, and their pent-up energy needs to be directed in ways that don’t include torturing their siblings.
Postcards that offer clients fun activities your clients can share with their kids demonstrates real empathy. Letting clients know you understand how hard things are right now and offering some useful ideas to help will win you a bucketful of goodwill.
Beat Your Cravings
COVID-19 postcards that address healthy snacking are going to have wide appeal.
The call of the wild is a mere whimper when compared to the call of the refrigerator. We all know that binge watching our favorite shows is so much better while munching caramel corn, eating a “sharing size” bag of M&M’S® by yourself, and sucking down a two liter. But guilty pleasures are okay for a day or two, not weeks on end.
Postcards with tips for healthy eating can be a godsend for anyone who isn’t sure how to eat for health, is looking for tasty alternatives to oily chips, or is trying to come down from a sugar high. Add a sympathetic note that says, “Hey, I get it” and you’ve got a very relatable way to connect.
Make Your Own Cleaning Supplies
Can’t find what you need in the store? Here’s a COVID-19 postcard with instructions for home-made cleaning supplies.
Cleaning supplies are not only expensive but right now may be hard to find. And with concerns about spreading infectious germs, you can help clients save money and bring them a little peace of mind by offering useful information to help them beat a problem.
If you can send postcards with valuable tips and solutions to problems your clients are facing right now, they’ll be grateful and will remember your act of kindness when it comes time for you to ask for a referral.
Desk Stretches to Stay Fit
Rejuvenate a sleepy mind with a good stretch. COVID-19 postcards showing easy desk-side body stretches will keep the blood moving.
With company doors closed, millions are now working from home. It can be a challenge for those who are forced to hold Zoom meetings in their kitchen, keep the dog from begging for yet another walk, and not being able to get to the gym to work out the kinks and stress that accompany a long day at “the office.”
A client who receives a postcard with some simple coping activities, like desk side exercises, can trigger an “I’ll give that a try” response. And what’s an easier follow up than, “Did those stretches help?”
Spread Referrals, Not Germs
Only after you’ve established trust and provided value to your clients should you use a COVID-19 postcard to request referrals.
A message directly asking for business is an excellent lead gen device but should be kept in your back pocket. Not until after several gestures, like those above during which you’ve taken action to demonstrate genuine care and offered useful information to help your clients, should you think about using this approach.
Make sure your postcard remains on point and properly acknowledges that what’s going on isn’t business as usual.
There are other equally appropriate themes you could select—motivational quotations, reminders that we’ll get through this together, keeping productive, and how to support local businesses are suitable.
Postcards are ideal at this moment because they are an effective, efficient, and a relatively inexpensive way to keep your relationships fresh. They’re easy to design, print, and mail and as with all direct mail, the more you buy the cheaper the price of each piece.
Why now is the time to double down on your marketing
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything. And given that so many agents quit after only two years, it’s reasonable to assume real estate agents are going to vacate the industry in droves.
Sadly, these agents are missing the bigger picture and as a result, will miss out when this ends.
Don’t give up and end up regretting your decision. The opportunities are out there. You just need to take action.
But not you.
You’re going to recommit to your chosen career because it promises a chance to live a life of freedom.
It’s not going to be easy; you’ll need to work four times as hard. You may need to give up some things you really like but don’t need. You’re going to sacrifice. But you’ll get through this because history proves we’ve have gotten through it before.
The market has seen dips before. We’ve come out of recessions, survived other pandemics, and the granddaddy of them all—made it through the mortgage fiasco of 2008.
And each time, agents continued to buy and sell.
When things pick up again will largely depend on how long the crisis lasts. But there are industry experts encouraging optimism. They forecast that when this crisis is over, there will be a glut of home buyers and sellers itching to make their move.* Among the reasons given are:
- Prior to the crisis, there were more interested buyers than inventory.
- Mortgage rates are at an historically low level.
- When the job market recovers, so will the housing market.
- While it may seem quiet, agents have been hosting virtual open houses and buyers will be ready to pounce.
- The reasons for the 2008 market crash are unlike what created the current situation. It’s apples and oranges.
Even if 2020 does become a less than stellar year for the housing marketing, if you want a piece of the action when it improves, you need to lay the groundwork now. If you wait, you will miss out.
You will be left behind if you choose to remain behind
During this pandemic, the impulse among many real estate agents will be to pull back and play defense. The agents who are quitting now see home prices dropping, sellers holding out for prices to rise, and buyers too anxious to buy while their jobs are uncertain, and unemployment keeps rising.
These agents are understandably nervous. And they may be reluctant to invest any additional money into their business, especially if they don’t understand what’s at stake.
And what’s at stake is huge.
In the end, success is all about relationships.
Real estate is a relationship-based business. Agents rely on satisfied clients for referrals that could bring in their next hot lead. And it’s the strength of these relationships that determine the ultimate success of their business.
But like any relationship worth having, building strong, long-lasting business relationships takes time and effort. You’ve got to commit to making a genuine, trustworthy connection. And you need to be in it for the long haul.
Borrowing an idea from Gift Gugu Mona, the prolific South African poet, “You will be left behind if you choose to remain behind.” For agents this means if you don’t consistently nurture the relationships you have with the people in your sphere of influence, they will forget you.
No one can provide a reference to an agent whose name they cannot remember.
And no business that relies upon referrals can afford to be forgotten.
While others pull, you need to push
Especially now, during this pandemic, the smart money is with those agents who understand the critical importance of continuously nurturing the relationships they have with their clients. These are the agents who are playing offense. And they aren’t in it to survive; they’re in it to thrive.
These are the agents who are going all in.
They’re doubling down on their marketing efforts.
They’re investing in ways proven to strengthen their relationships with their clients and grow their business.
Make sure a light bulb goes off in your clients’ minds any time someone asks, “Do you know a good real estate agent?”
And they’re doing all this because they know in their souls that to get that next lead, they need to ensure when someone asks one of their clients, “Do you know a good real estate agent,” theirs is the first name they think of.
To make sure you remain top-of-mind, it’s in your best interests to move forward with your marketing. Postcards always, and those that target COVID-19 now, make for a wise investment in your continued success.
*To read about housing market predictions, see:
