From listing a home to closing a sale, the process of selling real estate has gone digital. And while digital real estate means fewer in-person meetings with potential buyers and sellers, it still requires the same level of consistent nurturing (if not more) – just on a different platform.
Nurturing buyers as leads, for example, requires making several points of contact with those searching for a home and ultimately gaining their trust. Whether it’s through a social media post, an email sent to a broad list, or a more personal email, each point of contact is an important opportunity to move them closer to a sale – an opportunity you can’t afford to miss because you’re too busy to respond. Automation is a tool that guarantees you’ll never miss one of those crucial opportunities.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is the use of software to automate your marketing activities. In most cases, an action taken by a prospective buyer or seller will set off a chain of one or more actions that move them closer to your goal, without you doing any of it manually.
Take this example: Say a person finds your real estate website on Google because they were searching for available homes in your area. The person sees a home they’re interested in, so they click on the button on the page that says “Get More Information.” After filling out an information capture form and submitting their email address, they await a response.
Here, the real estate agent or company has two options: 1. Attempt to write response emails to each inquiry as they come in or 2. Create a preset email that is automatically personalized and sent to every potential buyer when they take this action. In option 1, you do the work every single time an inquiry comes in, and there’s a chance it will take you a while to get to it, giving your buyer a window to connect with a competitor first. With option 2, you do the work once, the software automates a more prompt response, and by the time the buyer responds, you have a much more qualified lead to spend your time on.
This is the beauty of automation. It makes your job easier and makes you better at your job at the same time. And it’s why more than 68 percent of businesses are using automation in some way. Here’s what we love about using automation to generate leads in the real estate industry.
Automation Helps You Identify the Most Promising Leads
When it comes to real estate, many people are simply browsing for fun – casually looking at homes they could buy or looking to see what they might be able to sell their home for. That’s great, and you still want to nurture those people, but probably not to the same scale as you would someone who is actively trying to contact you about being their agent. Automation allows you to scale your efforts depending on their level of interest, which is indicated by the actions they take.
If you have separate marketing and sales teams, the marketing team will be able to easily vet which leads are qualified enough to be passed on to sales. Your sales team will thank you for not wasting their time.
Automation Makes Your Life Easier When the Market is Hot
When the real estate market is hot and competitive, a faster response can give you the edge you need while also preventing your staff from becoming overwhelmed. In our experience working in one of the hottest markets in the country, we’ve found that automation helps agents move their eager leads through the sales process faster, which can help retain those leads and keep their attention. Especially for buyers, they want to move fast when time is of the essence, and they expect an agent who can keep up.
On the other hand, if you’re a developer looking to sell through your latest subdivision, automation can help you move through a higher level of interested buyers at one time. And even if you don’t have current availability, you’ll be able to continue nurturing those leads to keep them interested for the next available property with little effort on your part.
Automation Allows You to Nurture Leads With Minimal Effort
With marketing automation software, you can easily develop drip campaigns to keep your leads engaged and moving down the sales funnel. Drip campaigns generally consist of a series of emails sent out at specific times or following specific actions. These campaigns can be as simple or complex as you want, and they aim to follow and feed a customer’s interests based on the actions they take. A triggering action might include signing up for a newsletter, subscribing to your blog, downloading an offer on your website, or clicking on a particular link in one of your emails. So, no matter where someone is in their buying or selling process, you can meet them where they’re at and engage with them in a way that’s relevant.
These are just a few of the things we love about real estate marketing automation. For our clients, we use powerful automation tools like HubSpot to elevate their marketing processes and, ultimately, make more sales. Interested in automation and want to learn more? Reach out to us at PRIME – we’re happy to answer your questions and recommend solutions that can help you elevate your marketing.
If you enjoyed this edition of PRIME Pulse, take a look at some of our other related articles:
- 4 Steps Toward a Better Content Marketing Strategy
- 5 Reasons Your Website is Never Really Done
- Inbound Marketing for Real Estate Offices
- The How-To on Facebook Marketing Campaigns
