T I P S FO R C O N V E R T I N G
LEADS TO VISITS
Gain Customers
Increase Sales
Spend Less Money
By Rocket Science Integrated Digital
You’re busy. We get that. So let’s not waste time – we’ll jump right into the in-thetrench tips that we see working for us in the communities that we are actively managing day-to-day. Some of this comes from our 28-year experience in the real estate industry and some of it is trial, error, tracking and analyzing. Here you go…
1. THIS IS A CONTACT SPORT. That is what we were told when we entered the business back in 1990, and it’s still true today, albeit the way that we contact our customers has certainly changed. If you spend the money generating leads and expect that those leads will magically turn into buyers, you’re going to miss out on a ton of sales. Leads cannot just sit and go cold. The first step is a mental commitment—or maybe it’s a work ethic commitment. Are you willing to put in the time and force yourself to do the menial tasks that go hand-in-hand with following up on leads? Yes, the systems can be automated today, but you still have to do those tasks that will lead to success. Timely responses, proper grammar in your emails and eblasts, personal attention (it can’t all be corporate messaging on an auto-cycle) are just some of the foundational elements. Some of it comes down to simply making the calls and talking to people. Simple, right? You would be surprised how many sales executives struggle with that. In short, you have to put in the time and effort, with a sophisticated game plan for contacting your customers once they enter your database. Which brings us to #2.
2. HAVE A DATABASE THAT CAN DO THE HEAVY LIFTING FOR YOU. We won’t take this space to promote one over the other. There are plenty out there that are robust enough to handle the communication process in an efficient way. Here is what we will say—make sure you are using the CRM system to its full capability. There’s nothing worse than installing a system, using it to do the basics and ignoring all of the creative and impactful elements that the system has built into it. If you don’t know how to use it all (as salespeople, we’re not always the best at the technical aspects) find someone who is good at that and pay them to setup your follow-up and tracking features. It will be the difference between getting results and getting by.
3. AUTO-ENTER YOUR LEADS. Here’s why. Either it’s your job to enter your own leads or you have a person dedicated to doing it. People take off a few days a week. People go on vacation. People get busy. Heck, if you are a good salesperson, much of your time is spent out of the office with customers. Leads can sit for days, and customers today have too many other choices and, in the age of instant everything, they don’t have the patience to wait for you to get back to them (or get the information out to them). An analysis of more than 2,200 American companies found those who attempted to reach leads within an hour were nearly seven times likelier to have meaningful conversations with decision makers than those who waited even 60 minutes. Autoentering your leads allows you to never miss a lead (yes, they get lost, thrown out, misplaced), and ensures that the customer journey starts immediately, with a creativelycrafted auto response email sent out within minutes (that reads as if it’s coming personally from your sales agent). This key step allows the conversation to begin (also known as the all-important nurture process), and that nurture process is the key to helping leads come further and faster down your sales funnel.
4. DON’T ASK FOR TOO MUCH INFORMATION TOO SOON. Okay, so this isn’t necessarily a tip on converting leads as much as it is capturing leads. When doing online marketing, keep the “ask” simple. If you were a single person looking to date, you wouldn’t walk up to a girl in a bar and immediately ask for her phone number (at least we hope you wouldn’t)? You would first try and find out about her, build some rapport, build some trust, etc. Common sense, right? So why do we ask our customers, who we’ve never met and they aren’t even sure if they have an interest yet, for their phone number, address, level of interest, etc. Only 19% of customers want to engage with a salesperson while they are in the awareness stage of the buying process. So, you’re desire to over-qualify at this stage could be the very thing that keeps people from exploring your offering. Too much too soon and you’ll scare them off. We recommend keeping the requirement to begin the investigative journey as simple as possible. Name, email and zip code (we have even tested some qualifying questions with good success, with the caveat that they must be presented a certain way to show a benefit to the customer). We found that combination to be benign enough to not scare them off, but extremely valuable for us. Here’s why.
5. A BEST-KEPT SECRET REVEALED. While we don’t advocate violating customerprivacy or crossing the line without some opt-in permission (which we have to EARN through our nurture process), we do want to add in as much data on the front-end of the relationship as possible. Partly to be able to GENTLY market to our leads on multiple platforms (both online and off), and also to track analytics. If we can find out their address, we can drop them a quarterly postcard (an inexpensive way to get in front of them in a different way, as some just prefer to see and touch the marketing material to have it resonate stronger). We also want to know what part of the country they’re from (city and state). This helps us find pockets of interest, dial-in our marketing with more precision and also be able to relate to their current life situation (you start to know what people from different areas like and don’t like about that area—and it can let you plan your feature/benefit discussion with a head start). If I know they’re from New Jersey and I’m selling in coastal North Carolina, I can guess that weather, lower taxes and less congestion might be something I should be prepared to highlight, so I can get my plan together as to how the conversation might go. The way to get their information on the initial lead form is to ask for name (first and last), email (low cost and effective way to start the discussion) and zip code. Why zip code? Because it’s less intrusive than the address or even the city/state, so there’s a higher probability of them filling out the form if you ask for the zip as opposed to full address or city/state (our research shows almost all people will give you their real zip code). If you get all of this information, you can use www.fastpeoplesearch.com (it’s free) and look up the first name/last name and zip and you’ll have a very high probability (95%) of finding them. The site returns their address, multiple phone numbers and usually their age. Again, we’re sensitive on how we use this information—never to overstep the bounds of privacy. The main takeaway here is more information lets us market to them on more channels (direct mail, email, postcards, social media) if we choose to do that, but it also gives us the metrics we need to track the effectiveness of our marketing dollars, and it allows us to get the highest engagement by keeping the “ask” to a minimum.
6. FIND YOUR COMFORT LEVEL WITH RESPECT TO VOLUME. What we’re referring to here is how often you reach out to your database. It’s an art as much as it is a science.
Different platforms have different best-practices. For social media it could be several times per week. For email marketing it might be once or twice a month. For direct mail it might be monthly or quarterly. This is where you have to experiment, track and analyze. Yes, there is a line where it’s too much and there’s a line where it’s too little. The only way to know for your community/product/price point is to experiment, track and analyze, because there is a sweet spot that will make a difference in conversion. It just takes trial and error (and time) to find it.
7. JUST BECAUSE YOU SAY IT ONCE DOESN’T MEAN THEY REMEMBER IT. If you put out an offer to come and visit or advertise an event, just because you delivered that information to the customer doesn’t mean they retained it. To get someone to visit, you have to put that visit offer in front of them consistently (again, see point #6 above— this isn’t meant to encourage bombarding someone over and over again). The distinction here is that when you do find your ideal cadence level on each platform, make sure that you end your message with that same call-to-action…the visit. Nothing happens until they get in front of your sales person face-to-face (for the most part, of course). So, encourage or entice them to visit with special offers, special visit incentives and messages on multiple platforms. Eventually, you will hit them at the right time.
8. ADVERTISE A SPECIFIC PROPERTY. Maybe this goes without saying, especially in the builder world, but sometimes we see ads for the community (again and again), when a singular home can be what catches someone’s eye. We like to use Matterport virtual 3D walkthrough imagery to catch the attention of our database customers, which gets more engagement than most 2D collateral materials or photos, so that engagement helps convert more visits. See example here: Matterport 3D Experience. Of course, there’s a myriad of ways that you can do similar, creative outreach to increase the probably of getting a higher level of engagement (video, live streaming, 360 photos, etc).
9. TRY BOMB BOMB. This is an eblast software that lets the sales agent record a personalized message, insert it right into the e-blast and send to the customer, all in one easy-to-use software package. The video stays in the eblast (clicking it doesn’t take the customer away to another page where the video is embedded, thus increasing the
chance they won’t come back for the call-to-action). Instead, the video stays on the same page and the customer can read the rest of the message (if there is a written message) or can easily reference the sales agent contact info. The customer can even reply back by video message, although most don’t. The engagement rates and open rates are two or three times the normal rates for regular eblasts, so it’s worth looking into. We’ve seen an increase in customer engagement, which leads to more visits. www.bombbomb.com is their site.
10. GIVE THE CUSTOMER A REASON—PLAN EVENTS. We see a big uptick when we have a dedicated or themed event. So, naturally we spend a lot of time when doing our budgets thinking through and planning events throughout the year. Some are BBQ’s on the event lawn, some are chili-cookoffs, wine tasting, food truck Fridays…the sky is the limit (but the budget is not, so creativity goes a long way here). When you market the event, it allows you to get creative there too, so your messaging takes on a fun and energetic tone, which also helps leads convert to tours (everyone has some degree of FOMO, right)?
There you have it, ten ways to increase your chances of turning the leads you generate into tours. While these may seem simple, what really moves the needle is how well you execute on each one. If you ever want to get some help with getting the most out of your database or if you need help in getting more leads INTO your database (especially leads that are already warm and further down the funnel), we can help. We have two cutting-edge programs, both using enterprise-level data, that the real estate industry has never seen before. Click below for more details or contact us anytime to discuss. We hope you found this helpful and feel free pass this along to anyone looking to make more real estate sales.
To learn how to use science, data and predictive analytics for your lead generation efforts, visit our interactive page, complete with our short video, case studies and the science behind Rocket Science ID. Rocket Science ID