One challenge that people in the real estate industry face is realizing the increased profit potential in the market. This year, forecasters expect the value of the real estate market to reach $613.60 trillion. Realtors need an effective real estate marketing strategy to take advantage of crucial opportunities that could lead to an actual transaction.
Geographic farming is an effective advertising tactic for property agents. In this guide, you will discover how this strategy can benefit your business. After reading, you will know the secrets to geo farming to increase profits while helping serve your local community.
Key Takeaways:
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Geographic farming, geo farming, or prospecting are proven marketing methods agents use to promote their real estate practice within a specific neighborhood or local area. Using this strategy, they can boost brand awareness, generate new leads, secure referrals, and get listings.
This is a good option for realtors who want to optimize their productivity. Moreover, its growing economic potential can benefit agents looking to boost their profits.
Real estate is a hyper-localized industry where sellers and buyers work with realtors with in-depth knowledge of the specific area they are considering for their property. While local expertise has always been in demand among homebuyers and sellers, what has changed is the increasing appeal for specialists in the industry.
Modern consumers now have heightened awareness and access to the internet, where they can get information anytime and anywhere. Previously, people relied heavily on their agents to provide them with sales records, data, and comprehensive explanations of each step in the transaction.
However, with the abundance of information accessible to modern consumers, they now expect more than just a licensed agent. They prefer working with someone who can give them valuable real estate information that they need help getting.
While this change might be a terrifying concept to some realtors, it presents a significant advantage for consumers and agents. This change allows them to focus on strategic planning, positioning, and setting themselves apart from their competitors. Realtors need a differentiator to get the most out of this shift, referring to the element that can help consumers distinguish them from other agencies offering the same services.
For real estate agents, geo-farming can be a powerful differentiator.
This strategy typically involves sending postcards to a group of homes in a neighborhood a couple of times a year. It also consists of talking to neighbors, hosting block parties, sponsoring events and open houses, door-knocking, and staying engaged within the community.
Real estate companies could lag behind the competition without a proper geo-farming strategy. If you are one of the realtors without a geo farm, you are missing out on these crucial benefits of mastering this tactic.
By engaging with your local community, you can inspire others to foster connections and encourage the growth of social groups. This community-first approach is crucial in the real estate industry since establishing solid relationships is vital for long-term success.
Instead of relying on impersonal cold calls, you should encourage genuine interactions and deliver value that will spark engagement.
If you want the people within the community to recognize you as the leading real estate agent, geo farming can be highly effective. You are slowly building your reputation by allocating more resources to targeted marketing within a specific neighborhood.
Whether you are a local expert realtor or just starting out as a property agent, focusing on branding within a neighborhood can yield significant results.
Instead of spending your marketing budget across various channels and strategies, adopting a geo-farming approach lets you concentrate your efforts on a certain number of homes. This advantage can help boost efficiency while saving time and resources. Since you use localized and targeted marketing, you can spend less on marketing.
One of the crucial advantages of geo farming is it lets you choose specific areas to focus on. This edge enables you to identify and connect with people interested in those areas based on their price points, lifestyles, and preferences.
By defining your audience, geo farming gives you an effective method for creating connections and building relationships with potential clients.
Experienced and successful property agents may have an advantage over new realtors when getting clients. However, realtors with any experience can succeed in geo farming.
Even new real estate agents within the industry can use geo farming to develop their businesses. This strategy offers equal opportunities for everyone, making it a viable option for all realtors.
Some listing agents still need help finding a marketing strategy that yields consistent results. If you are still considering the best advertising approach, geo farming can be your framework.
Finding the best strategies to invest in can be easier if you precisely define your target audience. Moreover, since you have identified specific areas to target, you are less likely to shift from one real estate farming idea to another. This advantage can help you gain momentum in your marketing endeavors.
To enjoy the advantages of having a geo farm, you must first learn how to create one. Creating your own farm can be easy. However, there are crucial steps that you should remember once you have decided to start your own.
Choosing the correct location is an important factor in real estate. This phrase holds especially true when creating your geographic farm. Remember that a geo farm is not only a target for your advertising campaign but a community you want to grow as your real estate business expands.
So before you make any commitments, consider your answers to the following questions:
This question may sound basic, but some realtors fail because they get this part wrong.
For example, an agent picks a location because it is a “hot area” filled with potential buyers and new clients. However, they fail to consider that they do not want to sell the types of homes there, and they do not connect with the people in the community.
This mistake could lead to a feeling of unfulfillment, discouraging the agent from doing what they want to do. It can be a common mistake, especially for new realtors.
To prevent this occurrence, make sure to pick a location where you think you will enjoy your work. Choose an area where you like the residents and believe you can work well with them.
As a realtor, you make money from people moving in and out of places. If the people in the area move infrequently, getting clients, leads, and referrals will take more time and money.
Remember to choose a location with a significant turnover rate to make a considerable profit without doing too much to get more leads.
Pick a location where you can compete against realtors already farming in the same place. In a place where three realtors have more than 66 percent of the market share, it can be challenging for a new agent to get in on the action.
Ideally, you must choose a location where no single agent has a significant market share. The rule of thumb is to rank in the top five with a 10 percent market share within three to five years.
However, remember that the goal is to pick a location where you can become a dominant agent. You can have a different time frame for your campaigns, keeping your goals in mind.
Aside from these considerations, you should also consider an area of expertise. New real estate agents might think they can help anyone, but this mindset can sometimes lead to failure.
Because they are hesitant to miss out on deals, they choose to take on every transaction. However, this practice can be ineffective, inefficient, and detrimental to their client acquisition strategies. By handling too much at once, you might drop the ball on one of the things you are handling.
Picking a niche market can help you grow your business and, despite common concerns, will not slow you down. On the contrary, being an expert in a niche can boost profits since you can provide consistent results more efficiently.
After choosing a location for your geo farm, you must get to know your community from the ground up. Start by doing a quantitative metrics check and document the demographic breakdown of the neighborhood, the rates of transactions, and other data.
Documenting this information can give you a sense of the community’s real estate market health. Moreover, it can help you identify trends as they emerge.
You should also collect qualitative data within the community. To get this information, you must figure out the answers to questions like the following:
Remember that the more you know your community, the easier it will be to find valuable opportunities.
You must invest sufficient money to profit from your real estate marketing ideas. Consider your budget when brainstorming all the creative ways to have a successful geo farm.
Remember that your budget must align with your marketing goals. Focus on profit, cut expenses, and spend as little as possible.
When planning your budget, remember to be conservative and not underestimate your expenses. Plan everything, from your marketing strategies down to your parking tickets, so you avoid any unexpected expenses after every month.
Moreover, if an expense helps directly generate profit, do not consider it a cost. Remember that there are lead generation tools that ensure a guaranteed return on investment (ROI). Look for these marketing tools and buy as much as your budget can take. While these tools can be expensive, the benefits will outweigh the costs at the end of the day.
After you have finished all preparation work, you can now execute your geo farming ideas. Create a plan to deliver consistent and long-term value to the community, and manage and track your leads.
You can execute your communication plans and send postcards, publish social media posts, and share market updates at this stage.
Remember that successful real estate farming combines timely, day-by-day follow-ups and long-term automated communication. If you treat your farming strategy as a set-it-and-forget-it tactic, then it may be ineffective.
Stay active in your local area, provide value to your audience, and your clients will appreciate and seek your services.
Now that you have your own geo farm, you can start promoting your services and establishing yourself as your community's go-to real estate professional. One method to accomplish this is through direct mail campaigns. However, you will need practical tips to help you demonstrate your expertise and get more listings.
The most successful property agents in the real estate geo farming game provide consistent value to homeowners in their community.
Remember that the key to delivering value is planning the “what,” “when,” and “how.” This way, you can allocate your time for conversations that will move your leads closer to an actual transaction.
Examples of real estate farming campaigns include using postcards, social media, market updates, and property websites. Use a calendar, write the messages you want to send in advance and plan when to send them. Then, think of how your campaign can provide value to your target audience.
To make this step more manageable, ask yourself: “How can this campaign contribute to my audience and my overall goals?”
The phone numbers and connections you collect within your geo farming area result from your consistent effort to create relationships with people within your community. Remember that those efforts are also tied to the time and budget you invest in real estate farming.
You need an excellent real estate customer relationship manager (CRM) to be more efficient. This tool can manage your contacts, automate communications, and create a record of the value you have delivered over the life of your geo farm.
A CRM can be an effective system for tracking every reply and ensuring you can follow up on every crucial point of contact.
It would help if you also tried real estate marketing automation tools that can streamline specific processes in your campaigns. These solutions use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to automate repetitive tasks so you can focus on other business areas.
In the final quarter of 2022, roughly 92 percent of internet users worldwide watched online videos. Videos can be the best way to capture and keep someone’s attention. Moreover, creating and uploading videos has become more accessible due to the introduction of new video-sharing platforms.
Realtors can rely on this trend by uploading videos to promote their geo farm. They can upload videos on social media or their websites to inform more people about their services.
One effective way to create a successful geo farm is by producing high-quality newsletters. Write newsletters that are informative, engaging, and relevant to your audience.
Content ideas for your newsletters include the following:
Ultimately, the greater the level of personalization in your newsletter for your audience, the more likely they are to look forward to reading it.
Moreover, if you can establish yourself as a reliable source of information, people within the community will start approaching you with content ideas. This advantage means you can spend less time generating content over time.
Social media can help your geo-farming campaign succeed. Once you have established your geo farm, encourage the people who are part of it to follow you on social media. However, this feat can be easier said than done.
If you want to increase followers on your accounts, you must publish content they will care about. For example, your audience may not tune in if you only post content that highlights your personal life interspersed with your real estate services. They won't have a reason to engage with your content since it does not add value to their time.
Remember that if your profile is about you, only those who know and care about you will care. Meanwhile, if you use your account to post information that affects your community, you give your audience a reason to care and engage.
Instead of sharing a selfie, you can use your social media profile to share deals about a local business. This way, you help the local shop spread its message while giving its customers something valuable. In return, you establish yourself as a leader and create stronger relationships with everyone involved.
Pro-Tip: Effective real estate lead management is crucial to a successful geo-farming strategy. If you want your geo-farming campaign to produce the desired results, ensure an effective lead management process.
Creating a geo-farming strategy can help realtors improve their advertising efforts. This approach ensures that realtors and potential clients get the most value from each other while boosting economic growth within the community.
If you are considering starting your geo farm, consider automation solutions that can help elevate your marketing campaigns. These tools can streamline specific processes in your advertising campaigns to help you save time and money.
To get more listings through personalized homeowner outreach, check out Addressable today! Our comprehensive range of customized and automated tools can provide you with the advantage needed to outperform your competitors.
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