Paraphrasing Ben, he says that if you aren’t successful as a real estate agent ..

You -

• Aren’t Saying the Right Things … or
• You Aren’t Saying Them Enough … or
• You Don’t Have Enough People to Say Them To

I was really struck by the simplicity of this idea and agree that if you are talking about lead generation or creating sales from buyers, it really does boil down to these ideas.

But is there more to this business of real estate? (And I’m open to the possibility that there might not be.)

In my opinion, there are three ways to fail in the real estate business. The corollary of course, is that these are the three keys to success as well. For vendors serving real estate agents, these are our pain points, help us solve these problems and we’ll both get wealthy together.

Fail to Keep in Touch with Past Clients / Sphere

You’ve probably seen the numbers before. 87% of real estate consumers like their agent and would use them again, but in reality only 14 % actually do.

I have seen a bunch of variations on these numbers so it doesn’t matter what the percentages are as long as you learn the lesson.

Staying in touch, staying at “top of mind awareness”, is the key for referral and repeat business. It is the advantage than incumbent agents have over rookies and it is the foundation for most, if not all, of the real estate programs out there. (Millionaire Real Estate Agent, Ninja, Buffini, ad nauseum)

Facebook pages, recipe postcards, Home By Design magazine, monthly newsletters, email newsletters, annual calenders, fridge magnets…  these are the widgets we try and use to automate staying in touch with our sphere.

Most of them fail horribly. They tend to be boilerplate and impersonal. They fail to connect.

The agent who can nail down this problem will succeed and so will any vendor who can help them.

Fail To Successfully Nurture Your Leads

Ben Kinney instructs his team to use the phone to help get appointments.  New leads are given an amazing amount of attention “until they buy or they die.”

Most of us probably have a system of some sort for our incoming leads, but the yield is probably really low.

Is it because most of the inquiries “aren’t really that serious”?  I doubt it. It’s because we give up too easily. We call them once or twice and maybe sign them up for automatic emails.

The agent who wants to succeed needs to have a system in place to nurture incoming leads.  It needs to be adhered to religiously and it needs to be adapted for the long nurturing process that many real estate consumers need.  The more customized and personal it can be for the consumer while remaining unobtrusive, the better.

Fail to Actively Communicate with Your Seller Clients

In a booming market it was easy. Sign a listing, put a sign in the ground, take some pictures, and wait for the offers to appear. (Not really..)

In a slow market, successful agents are pulling out all the stops trying to market a home. Over a period of months this means repeating the same tasks, tweaking the messaging, tweaking the price, trying new things to get the desired result.

No matter how hard we work, this work doesn’t count if..

• The house doesn’t sell
• The client doesn’t know we are doing the work

I often get phone calls from frustrated sellers who are firing their agent and looking to hire another agent to help them. Their biggest complaint is not that the house hasn’t sold, it’s that they never get any updates from their agent.

• Is the marketing working?
• Is anyone calling or emailing about the house?
• Why aren’t other agents showing the house?
• Are other houses selling?
• What did the buyers who looked at it think?
• Is the price too high?
• What can we do to entice more buyers?
• Why aren’t you advertising more?

Do you have a system for updating your listing clients? How often do they get updated? Is this enough?

Fail to update your listing clients and they will replace you. Succeed and they will sing your praises, even if you can’t sell their home!

In my mind, these are the keys to a thriving real estate practice. This what separates successful agents from those going back to work a second job. These are the opportunities for vendors to help out agents with new tools and products.

What did I miss?

You see I was posting ads nearly every day but the only responses I ever got were spam. How can that be? I was using professional looking HTML templates, lots of photos and a several paragraph description of the property and neighborhood amenities. I knew buyers were looking at the ads, but why weren’t they contacting me? I decided early this year to find a better way. I spent a lot of time researching what makes CL classified ads effective and this is what I learned.

5 ways not to suck at Craigslist

1. Stop using the same template as everyone else

Take a few minutes and search your local CL and note what kinds of ads and headlines everyone is posting. More than likely most agents are using the same or very similar ads with little different between them. Your ad needs to stand out from the rest and the more your ad looks like a private party ad the better your results will be.

2. Stop posting every picture & detail

The goal is to redirect that buyer away from everyone else’s ads and get them on your real estate website. If you are including 6, 10 or 15 images in your ad and a paragraph of text the viewer already has enough information to eliminate that property if it does not fit their criteria. Give them a taste and make then click through for more photos and details. That way even if they do eliminate that property once they’re on your site there’s a decent chance they will stay and look around.

3. Include 2-3 calls to action

The first call to action should obviously be a link to the listing on your own site. If you have a good idx solution a link to the listing page is even better. The full listing details and photos are all there and hopefully a call to action to save the listing or request a showing.

I recommend you also create a secondary call to action linked to a landing or other opt-in page. In my example below I include a link to Astoria Oregon homes for sale under $150,000. Try to use a generic CTA that will appeal to most buyers in your market (foreclosures, water front properties, ect.).

The 3rd CTA should be your phone number, front and center. Use the format 212-555-1212 so it’s clickable on mobile devices.

4. Track your ads

The big problem with any marketing is figuring out what working and what doesn’t. If you don’t track your ad views, click through rates, and headline variations it’s difficult to improve your ads. At the minimum using a trackable link in your ad will at least show you how many visitors clicked. From there your website analytics take over and you can monitor bounce rates and other metrics.

CL does block some url’s generated by shortening services like goo.gl, a good alternative if you are using a wordpress real estate website is your own custom short link. The free WP plugin Pretty Link Lite allows you to create your own short links and track the clicks in real time. For example if your domain is www.123realestate.com you can create a link that looks like www.123realestate.com/zxy that points to whatever page you want (onsite or offsite even) so you can track your ad clicks.

Bonus ninja move: Any images you insert as HTML can be tracked this way too, giving you a free and easy way to monitor total ad views. In my market CL has two areas that overlap and by using this method I was able to figure out which area got the most traffic.

5. Less is more

From my experience ads with lots of white space, a single image and 2-3 calls to action work the best. I’ve experimented with inserting a logo, website header image and other items to dress up my ads but the ads with a very minimalist look perform the best in my market. Here’s an example:

example craigslist ad

(the required broker contact info was cropped out, make sure you comply with your state and local rules)

Time to execute

Now that you’re creating clean, minimal ads with multiple calls to action that are trackable you’ve already improved your CL strategy 200% over posting generic HTML ads. Testing different headlines, calls to action and the day/time you post your ads will hopefully increase your inbound traffic and leads further.

Stay tuned for another post on how to create CL ads that work.

What’s your Craigslist strategy? Let me know what is working for you in the comments.

MY WIFE WILL VIOLENTLY PROTEST, but is building and marketing a successful site not unlike half of the pain and time of a full term pregnancy?  It starts with euphoria (not always well thought out), it starts growing on you, it becomes a reality, you eagerly wait for any spark of life, you look at it every morning and evening, then… there it is…*gasps*..a very young offspring that needs further care, diaper-changing and baby talk. (I had client share her life story just before signing the buyer broker.)

One of the hardest things about building a site is around the sixth month, after investing low-to-mid four figures in coding and programming, investing six-full-season-DVD-set worth of reading and writing, after essentially talking to yourself (otherwise known as first few months of blogging), you would hear some agent in another city (hopefully not yours!) closing $000,000 deals from his online leads!

The truth is it takes approximately 18 months to really see the fruits of your labor.  Why does it take that long? Here’s a rough overview (if you’re targeting organic rankings):

• Researching domains and keywords (plotting your on page SEO through content positioning.)
• Looking at other sites for inspiration and ideas.
• Coding and programing — even if you hire someone, it still takes time explaining, planning and guiding.
• Content creation and writing filler content/introductions for every page.
• Fixing, tweaking, improving bugs and implementing new ideas
• If you have a blog, content creation on a consistent basis.
• Link Building
• Promotion
• Site aging
• Rankings
• Leads
• Closing

Not too mention when you acquire a good link, say you get accepted at BOTW directory, it still takes about 2-3 months to feel its pull on your rankings.

And yes, you can go the short route of Pay Per Click, which is a viable path especially if you have no time and could afford tens of $6 clicks — could go significantly higher if targeting competitive keywords.  (Actually now that I think of it, a mixture of both organic and PPC is ideal once you feel more confident with your site’s conversion capability )

It takes time...but here is the paradox:  It gets easier and easier.  WHAT DO YOU MEAN?! You get rewarded for what you put in.  And the earlier you start, the better.  The primary example is how major search engines treat an aged site with good content.  In other words, search engines don’t treat all sites equally.  The older you are, the more trusting they become.  (If only that could bleed to real life, I probably would be a Justin Timberlake.)

Search engines, at the end of the day, follow people.

But make no mistake about it, you will need laser-like focus on the first year. Building and promoting a successful real estate site requires vision, endurance and commitment to see it through.

When somebody asks me if they should start blogging or do online marketing, I tell them that if you are serious in producing results, you cannot treat it as another advertising tool.  Online marketing is not just another tool you use; either it is your primary tool (along with sphere of influence) or it is not.  I have seen too many colleagues start and wither away.  Truth is, not everyone is willing to put the time and effort to succeed online.

But it is worth it.  Last month I closed my first five figure commission.  My biggest (from an online lead) since I stared in 2007.  Without the reach of the internet, she is somebody, as my cousin Bob puts it, waaaaay out of my league.  But she bit.

I want to encourage you:  Keep. At. It.  Incremental improvement is key.  Check and balance regularly.  Because it will come.  Hopefully sooner than mine.

I answered a question on Quora tonight

The question on Quora: Will Groupon disrupt the real estate industry? Why or why not? 

My answer:

“Disruption in real estate is on the horizon, but I don’t believe a Groupon model will be the one to get it done. First things first…a little background on the real estate industry.

Real estate laws are state-specific. That means there are 50 sets of real estate laws in the US and they are all different. There are some similarities from state to state, but each state is unique. That, by itself, presents some major challenges to overall disruption in the industry.

Most full-time real estate licensees are also REALTORS, which means they are part of a professional organization (National Association of REALTORS). The National Association of REALTORS has a very strong lobby and fights hard to protect the interests of its members and consumers as a whole. They are well-funded and they are very good at what they do.

The deal mentioned on Daily Deal Media is in Illinois. Illinois makes it fairly easy for real estate brokers to provide commission “rebates” to consumers, given the appropriate rules are followed and proper disclosures are made. Not all states make it that easy.

The general assessment in the article is absolutely correct. The author of the article makes some big assumptions (lead fees, commission rates, recruiting strategy, etc.), but we’ll run with it. The concept of attracting consumers through a coupon strategy who eventually turn into closed transactions is valid.

Statistically, consumers do not choose an agent or brokerage based on the amount of commission charged (the majority of those decisions come from referrals or an agent from a previous transaction). The percentage of consumers choosing an agent or brokerage based solely on the commission rate has been a single digit percentage for at least the past five years, according to the 2010 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

When people are dealing with the largest financial decision they are likely to make in their lives, they want the best representation possible. The vast majority of consumers choose a full service agent who charges a full commission, even when cheaper options are readily available. The “discount” real estate brokerage models have been around for many, many years, and none of them have become the standard brokerage models in their respective markets. The Groupon deal is targeting the same discount market.

I believe the real estate industry is ripe for disruption. Groupon has the opportunity to make real estate interesting by pushing harder on similar deals. If there is going to be disruptive change in the real estate industry based on a coupon or discount model, it will have to come from inside the industry, not from an outsider. As soon as the real estate community feels the Groupons (or similar) are becoming a threat to their way of life, you will stop seeing brokerages offering those deals.”

Would you like to praise me? Or argue with me? Awesome! Do it on Twitter (@mistersterling). I promise to play nice.

Also, don’t forget to check out the previous Groupon discussion.

You only need to understand one principal to direct your QR strategy.  Your end-user, or lead, is using a mobile device.  It is paramount the content you deliver, be mobile format friendly.  Relevancy is a nice bonus.

For many agents, this means a single property website solution offered by an online vendor.  A simple, mobile-friendly landing page with property photos, description and contact information.

If you’re a dsSearchAgent Mobile customer, you’ll be leaving those agents in the dust, starting today.

I’m going to show you how to use QR codes to link people to specific sections of your dsSearchAgent Mobile interface:

• Individual, Specific Detailed Property Listings
• Nearby Open Houses
• Property Search
• Featured Listings
• Contact Form
• & Every Other Section!

Then, I’m going to give you some specific examples of how to use these QR codes in your marketplace and become that rock star that we talked about earlier.

While your competitors are serving up their static, mini landing page solutions, you’ll be delivering 100% relevant, requested content in a fully interactive, mobile interface, loaded with lead capture routines.  Sounds exciting, right?

For my examples below, I’m using Nashville mega-agent Stephanie Crawford’s mobile interface.  I’ll also be using Google Chrome, and you should too. The direct link to Stephanie’s mobile interface demo, is http://app.dsmobileidx.com/demo/4439/99

To start, we need to visit your mobile application in Chrome or Safari.  When you load the site, you’ll automatically be directed to a demo of your mobile interface (figure 1).

The demo interface loads your site within a frameset.  By navigating to our desired content within the demo (page or individual listing), and viewing the source code of the frame, we can determine the unique URL of the page.

It is this URL that we need to capture, and use for our QR code.

Within the demo interface, navigate to the individual listing or site section for which you wish to create a QR code.  Find an area on the page that is void of text or graphics (figure 2, 3, 4 & 5). The RED dot illustrates a safe area on the screen to view the frame source.

Using your mouse, right-click this section and select ‘View Frame Source’ from options presented (figure 6). If you’re using a Mac and don’t have right-click enabled, click here for step-by-step instructions to enable.

Copy the URL from the browser window (figure 7) and use this to generate your QR code.  That’s all there is to it.  When scanned with a mobile device, the end-user will be properly directed into specific section of your mobile app from where you obtained the URL. Note: Navigating to this URL in Chrome or Safari will redirect you to the main, dsMobileSearch Agent demo screen. You will only be directed to the proper section of your website when accessing the URL on a mobile device.

Figure 7

Here’s the finished output, these QR codes will take you to specific sections of Stephanie’s site when scanned via your mobile device

There are a few ideas that come to mind right away.  For starters, no listing of mine would hit the market absent of a sign rider with DSMobile QR code that links to the individual listing.  I’d seriously consider adding a DSMobile QR code to my open house directional signs that when scanned, shows all of the open houses in the immediate area.

How do you plan to use QR codes with your dsSearchAgent Mobile interface?

I’m starting to hear more and more people in the real estate industry talk and ask questions about Zopim, a company specializing in integrated live chat software for use on websites.

Who’s using it, and is it generating leads for you?

Sphere building is something I’ve spent a lot, and I mean a lot, of time thinking about. Similar to most real estate agents, sphere building is something I spend a lot of time on. Darin is right; the focus of sphere building should be primarily about maintaining existing relationships and allowing your network to grow organically. Way too many people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to build new connections with strangers when, in reality, they should be spending valuable time with their existing network. Strengthening existing relationships will lead to new ones in time — I can assure you of that (if you’re doing it right).

It’s not rocket science. Who do I help the most in life? My closest friends and business connections; not random strangers who reach out to me once or twice.

As Darin says, when it comes to sphere building, take care of your home turf first.

By now, everyone is chimed in with how excited Wall St. is with internet stocks, specifically those that are leading the ‘social’ bandwagon; starting with Google’s failed $6 billion offer to Groupon, LinkedIn’s warm reception and Facebooks’s massive valuation — are you kidding me, $100 billion?!

No, I’m not here to debate about another Tech Bubble, though it’s worth mentioning Frank Quattrone recently baptized LinkedIn as “..the Netscape of its era.” to which he made clear, the 1995, pre-bubble Netscape.

But this got me thinking, what can I do to give me the best chance to sell my real estate site? Here are the factors that I think will help (and that I’ll be likely working on):

• Do you own your real estate niche online? Be it as big as Washington, DC or as quaint as Napa, or even in the hot-then-frigid-cold Reno real estate. Can you show potential buyers if indeed, you are dominating? Start tracking results and leads.  (Note to self.)

• Who are your potential buyers? I’d love for my parent broker company to buy me off someday.  I like my mother and believe in their vision. But…

• Will they? Why will they spend five to six figures to buy you out? What’s in it for them? I’m actually hitting this in  my stubborn head in my next round of improvement for my sites.

In general, I’m thinking of ways that would make my site simply unattainable for potential buyers.  Meaning, when they look at my site, I want them to say things like:

“Man, that Joe guy did something real special here,”

“Whow, Joe gets a solid $50,000 yearly revenue off the site, “

“It’ll cost too much to build something like Joe’s and I don’t even know where to start,”

“Even if we spend the same amount of money and hire talent, his site (and links) is already 4 years aged.”

What would you do in your site if you new you were going to sell 4 years from now? What’s your high target price? Realistic price range? Who will be your potential buyers? (No seriously, I want to know…)

Wild idea: how about allocating two closings worth of cash for an online asset?

Real estate investing will always be my first love. I grew up watching my father buying, renovating, leasing and flipping 25-20 homes; I’ve owned a couple of my own the past 5 years.

But lately I’ve diversified to online assets. I couldn’t resist the 15-20% per year return on my investment.  For most online business models, maintenance is minimal after a year,  costs are manageable through efficient small business outsourcing and imagination, creativity is put into best use.

Mind you, it took me a full 3 years before I put serious money into it.  In those 3 years my sole purpose was to incrementally improve my knowledge.  When I started earning cash flow (however small) then I aggressively re-invested my profits back to the business.

Here are some things I’ve learned:  4 ways to make money from a website

1) Leads (ex: niche real estate sites.)

2) Adwords / Adsense (people clicking on your site’s ads. Need a LOT of traffic. Like EHow.)

3) Sponsored ads (would be helpful if you had a good ground game — sales guy, good relationship with people in vertical businesses and most importantly, good branded site that attract good traffic and loyal followers. Ex: Copyblogger)

4) Affiliate (selling  someone else’s product.  Make sure you get the best product to sell.  Tough market to crack but can be very lucrative after you gain credibility and strong following.  Ex: BBgeeks.com, affiliate for blackberry phones)

Some thoughts…

• Start with something you love and have  adequate experience in, be it pink gems, creating an Expat site for Americans in South Africa or creating the best exotic Asian cuisine site.  There’s so much stuff to do to build a great site, so make sure you like the topic.  And know it’ll take at least 1 year to really earn money, usually more.  It’s a marathon.

• I’m all for action over too much analysis. But if you are really serious about an idea.  Create a solid simple plan backed with solid knowledge of online marketing (SEO, PPC) — start reading the top SEOs, Affiliate, PPC (pay per click) guys out there. If you go with the brand route (Yelp, Yahoo!, HomeAway) make sure you know what you’re getting into.  It’s extremely hard to create a solid brand from scratch.

• If you got no time but have capital. Learn the business model and a clear understanding of what you want to do.  Outsource day to day management of site (link building, content creation, coding).  But keep a close eye on your baby.

• Have an “exit mechanism” to face the brutal fact that the idea, however exciting and fun, is unprofitable. Move on to the next one, you’ll have a higher chance of success, I promise you.

There’s so much great ideas out there, but the real money is made in the execution of the idea. Follow through.  Incremental improvement.  And your $10,000 investment can earn you about $1,000 – $3,000 a month after 3-5 years.

My parents’ clients were from San Francisco where Yelp originally started, and is immensely popular (not that it’s shabby elsewhere, they did 39M unique visitors in November).  Despite Yelp not having a stronghold in Lafayette (a suburb of San Francisco), that’s how people look for many local businesses in the big city.  It’s natural that as these people started to expand their home search outside of San Francisco, they’d still use their go-to service to search in neighboring cities as well.  I suppose this illustrates the point that you should be where your potential clients are looking, even if it’s not the #1 local search resource for your town.

So take a few minutes out of your busy day to sign-up for a Yelp listing for your business (and any other local search sites in your area).  The internet is a big place, you never know where that next lead turned to real business will come from…