The Ultimate Guide To Geographic Farming
Geographic farming allows real estate agents, along with many other industries, to easily generate more leads. This innovative process would normally cost an individual thousands of dollars, but SalesPype customers have access to it with their subscription. In other words, you can do specific neighborhood marketing for as little as $49 per month. Let’s take a closer look at this easy-to-use tool!
What is Geographic Farming?
Although it sounds like an agrarian process, there’s nothing about food involved in geo farming. Instead, geographic farming in real estate involves finding your ideal clients and reaching out to them. You can do this via a direct mailer, voicemail or email. Alternatively, you could even try all three methods of contact. This is better than simply making a cold call, even though the homeowner won’t know who you are at first.
What is Neighborhood Marketing?
Geographic farming enables you to target your potential customers. Neighborhood marketing allows you to break this down even further. Rather than selecting a wide area, you can choose to target a single neighborhood. You can even take this a step further by targeting everyone who lives on one side of the street. Essentially, you decide who you will spend your marketing dollars on.
With SalesPype, you could decide to reach out only to renters. On the other hand, you could choose to send your marketing materials only to people who own their home. This is the true power of geo farming marketing; you can decide everything!
Neighborhood Marketing Examples
If you’ve seen the SalesPype video on Vimeo, then you have a good understanding of how this tool works. For everyone else, let’s go over the basics.
In the SalesPype dashboard, you’re going to select “Find New Leads.” This will take you to a Google Map that shows the area you’ve chosen. From there, you can zoom in, zoom out, scroll around the map and much more. One of the best neighborhood marketing tactics is to zoom in on someone who already uses your services. After all, marketing to their direct neighbors should be easy because they’re likely to have a similar income.
Do you want to make sure that their neighbors have a solid income source? Within SalesPype, you can select “Preview Data.” After which, you will take one of your drawing tools to choose the houses around them. Within a matter of seconds, you’ll gain access to an astounding amount of information about each person within the selected area.
This includes the following:
- Name
- Phone Number
- Address
- How Long They’ve Lived There
- Income
- Owner/Renter
- Square Feet of Home
- Occupation
- Do They Own a Boat?
- How Much They Paid for Their House
- Credit Rating
- Home Value
- Marital Status
Of course, these points of data alone can’t determine if they’re your ideal customer, but they can certainly give you an advantage. Imagine for a second that you sell a high-end service that people who make more than $150,000 usually purchase. With “Preview Data,” you can choose to select only the people who meet this metric. This will save you a lot of wasted marketing money, and it will increase your list of viable leads.
An easier version of this process can also be completed in SalesPype. Instead of selecting “Preview Data,” you can opt to simply choose a neighborhood. From there, you can decide whether to send everyone a message, add them to a specific campaign or create a new list. No matter what option you go with, you’ll quickly see how useful these neighborhood marketing ideas can be!
How To Farm in Real Estate
The process is the same for real estate geo farming. Whether you’re looking to pick up properties for your realtor list or trying to sell specific properties, you can use SalesPype’s tool to break any neighborhood down for you. For instance, if you want to target real estate to everyone who rents, it’s really easy to do thanks to the many points of data the system generates. On the contrary, if you’d like to pick up listings, you can ignore renters altogether. If you think about how much money this can save you, you’re probably going to get really excited.
What is Circle Prospecting?
Another method you can use to find new customers is circle prospecting. This uses similar techniques, but it relies primarily on ringless voicemails. Using the same tool, you can gather the phone numbers of as many, or as few, people as you’d like. Don’t make a mistake by choosing too many numbers, though. This could leave you with way too many people calling back!
When an agent does circle prospecting, they’re usually looking for new listings. Select a neighborhood where you’ve recently accepted a listing. From there, you can go circle prospecting for phone numbers. As soon as you’ve got your phone list together, be sure to run it through the Do Not Call registry. This is important as it will keep people from making a complaint about your company. Next, record a voicemail message that you’d like to share with everyone left on your list. Here’s an example:
“This is X with RE/MAX. We just listed a home in your community that has received lots of attention from buyers. If you know anyone who is interested in selling their house, give us a call.”
Yes, that’s it! You don’t want to inundate people with information until they’ve shown interest. The good news is that you’ll almost certainly receive several callbacks by circle prospecting for real estate. You’ll need to take them the rest of the way, but since you’ve already broken the ice, the next step should be considerably easier.
Neighborhood Real Estate Marketing
Whether you’ve used circle prospecting or geographic farming for real estate prospects, the odds are that you’re going to receive a response. In today’s market, people are selling all over the place. The great thing is that buyers are as interested in buying as sellers are in selling. This gives you an advantage, and there’s nothing wrong with using it. Before you can do this, though, you must first decide what type of marketing you’re going to send out.
It’s a good idea to use a direct mailer that’s colorful and will capture the attention of your prospects. The idea is to stand out from the other mailers. Perhaps you should make your mailer an unusual size, which is all but guaranteed to make people take a look. Another really useful idea is to not overly explain yourself. The reality is that the more words a mailer has on it, the less effective it’s going to be. Keep your message short, simple and to the point. You can get into the nitty gritty with a prospect later on.
If you’d like to use a little psychology on your prospects, be sure to indicate that you’ve recently accepted other listings from their neighborhood. Nothing makes a person decide to move faster than finding out that several of their neighbors have done the same thing.
Taking Your Geographic Farming to the Next Level
A good way to stand out in the minds of your prospects is by following up with an actual conversation. You can do this by visiting them in person or by picking up the phone. Remember: you’re offering a service that could enable a prospect to improve their quality of life. Therefore, don’t come off as desperate. Instead, speak to them with confidence, and don’t be afraid to allow the conversation to veer off course for a while. The whole point is to have quality conversations that make people feel more comfortable with you.
To make your efforts really bloom, you’re going to need to dedicate two to three hours per day to prospecting. This requires a lot of energy, but it will also give you the biggest reward. Getting into the areas you’re targeting will also provide you with better ideas about how to advertise in their neighborhoods. Ultimately, you want to use every tool in your toolbelt to attract the largest number of prospects possible. So, don’t forget to keep sending direct mailers and ringless voicemails too.
Geographic Farming Real Estate
When it comes to selling a home, geo farming can really help. Have an open house and invite everyone within a one-mile radius. This might seem a bit silly, especially when you consider how close these people live to the house. However, even if they just show up to eat free cookies and have a look around, you’re still actively geo farming them. How does this work? It’s really simple and completely ingenious.
Basically, you’re showing them your skills as a realtor. Once the house sells, this is going to give them a lot more confidence in your abilities. It will also provide them with the name of a realtor right at the tip of their tongue who can sell their house too. When that time comes, who do you think they’re more likely to go with? If you said yourself, that’s exactly right! As always, you must play the long game when you’re trying to attract clients. After all, just because they’re not ready to sell today doesn’t mean they won’t be ready in six months or a year.
Share Local News and Tips
Aside from advertising, you should also be prepared to share local news and tips. This will set you apart from the other realtors, which is always a good thing. For example, if you live in an area that has a big art fair, you could send out a mailer a week in advance that talks about how noteworthy this is. Or if you live in a tourist town like Salem, MA, you could send out a calendar of events every October.
No matter what you do, remember that the entire point is to get people used to seeing your name. When you send them something useful that doesn’t have anything to do with you, they might even put the mailer on their fridge. That means they’ll see your name every single day. Mission accomplished!
Geographic Farming Definition
By this point, you should have a really good idea about what geographic farming means and how it can help you. If you’re still on the fence, though, let’s take a look at the definition of geo farming:
Geographic farming provides a powerful method for growing and maintaining a successful real estate company. It enables you to centralize your listings and to establish your brand. To succeed, it’s imperative to stick to a specific location. Even if you don’t get listings at first, you must look at the process as a marathon instead of a sprint. If you stick with it, you will ultimately succeed.
This definition definitely describes what real estate farming is like. It’s especially true that your listings and sales will not all happen at once. However, if you keep plugging away at it, you’re going to get more than enough listings to make it worth your while. If you utilize patience along with proven neighborhood sales and marketing tricks, there’s basically no way you won’t succeed.
The SalesPype Difference
As you can now see, geo farming is the way to go. However, when you choose to go with SalesPype, it’ll be just one tool in your toolbox. Our dashboard also makes it easy to do customer retention management, along with providing a full marketing automation platform.
Want to learn more? Try out our free trial! This no-cost option is the best way to see if SalesPype works for you. You’ll be able to use the geo farming tool for 14 days without spending a penny. When you see how much it can change your business, we’re confident that the low monthly fee will become the best money you spend on a monthly basis.
