From knowing the types of farming to choosing one for you to ideas for marketing to it, we’ve got some great tips on how you can dominate your home turf.
Video Transcription
One of the most important jobs as a real estate agent is to generate leads. Farming is literally the act of taking a target audience of people and marketing to them consistently over a long period to generate leads. Don’t make the mistake that farming is instant gratification. It takes time. It implies you’re growing something. You have to put in the sweat equity, you have to market to them consistently like a farmer does to reap the harvest.
Two types of farming
Alright so now that I’ve explained to you what farming is, I want to talk about two types: geographic farming and niche farming.
Geographic farming is taking a specific location like a neighborhood, and targeting the people with live there. Niche farming is going after a specific group of people, like first-time homebuyers or luxury real estate agents.
How do you choose a farm?
There are three things you should look at when choosing a farm.
Size
Make sure you choose a farm that actually has enough homes to where you can generate leads. Don’t choose a farm with only 60 people. This is especially important if you’re going after a niche. Don’t make the mistake of only choosing a farm that has a couple hundred people. You need a lot of homes to generate results.
Turnover rate
This refers to the percentage of homes in a specific area that sell within a given period, typically one year. It helps real estate agents determine how active a neighborhood is in terms of sales and whether it’s a good area to focus their marketing efforts. Make sure you don’t choose a farm where no homes are selling because now you have no leads for your business or it’s gonna take too long to generate leads for your business. Check out this blog for everything you need to know about turnover rates, including where you can find the data you’ll need.
Competition
How many agents are already going after this same farm? See farming takes a long time, it’s consistency. So, if they have a head start on you it’s gonna be an uphill battle to gain ground in that farm. It’s not impossible, but if you have the chance, choose a farm where there’s not a lot of competition.
How do you communicate with your farm?
You know how to choose a farm, but how do you communicate with them, and what should you send them? So I recommend to agents you should at least be reaching out to your farm one to two times a month, a minimum of one time, which would be twelve times in a year. So, make sure you’re consistently marketing to them.
Some ideas from a marketing perspective you could send them postcards—just listed, just sold. Market reports, market updates. You could send them a newsletter. If you’re targeting a luxury niche, send them one of our personally branded magazines. It’s perfect for that niche. You can also target people through the web using social media, like Facebook and Instagram. Facebook will allow you to target locations. So anything you send in print, you can translate that online, and target that same location through a Facebook ad.
Then third, do sponsorships. If it’s a community with sports leagues, like Little League baseball, sponsor that team. It’s all about spreading your brand so you’re the real estate agent of choice in that farm. This brings me to my last point.
How do you make sure you’ve marketed effectively?
How do you make sure if you’ve marketed to your farm effectively that you’re actually generating deals for your business? This is where you have to put into practice proactive marketing versus passive marketing.
This is the secret the top producers know that separate them from mediocre producers. You must proactively reach out to your farm through door-knocking and phone calls. See if you are sending somebody something once a month imagine if you door knock once a quarter, the impact. Now they can actually put a face to what they’ve seen on your postcard. Not only that, it grows your farm exponentially because as you’re proactively reaching out you’re gonna get your first listing. And when you get your first listing, now you can host an open house in that same farm, you can do a just listed, just sold campaign where you call the closest 50 neighbors and it starts growing your brand exponentially in that farm to generate leads for your business.
The takeaway
So there you have it guys there are some tips and tricks to get you started on farming and to help you blow up your business using the farming strategy. If you like these tips, subscribe to our YouTube channel, comment below, let me know your thoughts, let me know your questions, I want to share it with our audience.
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