- Geo Farming is a marketing strategy that real estate agents use to target specific neighborhoods.
- There are many benefits to geo farming.
- Learn the best geo farming methods by reading the article below.
In This Article: - What Is Geo Farming?
- Why Geo Farm?
- Send Out Postcards
- Make Social Campaigns Work For You
- Stay Connected
- How To Succeed In Building Your Geo Farm
- Cultivating Your Geo Farm
- Final Thoughts
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What Is Geo Farming?- Geo Farming (or geographic farming) in real estate is a strategy that allows a real estate professional to market their business to a specific area such as a neighborhood. By geo farming, real estate agents can brand themselves as professional experts in a specific neighborhood or area. In turn, a professional can access new clients and will build reputation and repertoire.
Why Geo Farm?
If an agent is successful, a geo farm (or multiple geo farms campaigns) will open the doors for them to become the main real estate agent in that particular neighborhood or area.
Word-of-mouth will also create a buzz and generate new clients that come into the geo-farmed area as well.
What are the best geo-farming methods?
With more and more people using mobile phones, social media platforms, and ads placed on the internet can be the way to go.
There's no doubt that these areas of marketing work, but remember that old-school marketing like realtor postcards still has its place in the real estate marketing arena. These postcards still do the trick when it comes to real estate geo farming.
Furthermore, you can combine both methods (which will often yield the best results).
Let's take a look at the best geo farming tools.
If you're a real estate agent, realtor postcards are an affordable marketing tool you should consider using.
A creatively designed postcard can have both immediate and long-term results. Just watch carefully after you send your postcards and likely you will see your emails increase and your website registrations multiply shortly after your new postcards are delivered.
Any agent who's been in the real estate field for some time can vouch that postcards do still hold a marketing value.
When sending out postcards to your geo farmed area, expect an increase for both buyer and seller clients.
|Key Takeaway: The benefits of real estate postcards can be seen in a return on investment.
Why?
Postcards are easy and affordable to design and print. The cost is relatively low and often produces successful results that can yield returns that are multiple times the cost.
The key to doing postcards is to be consistent and efficient. When choosing to target a specific area, continue to target it and the doors will open up as you continue to build relationships and cultivate your geo farm.
Look at it like this: View your geo farm as a real farm that you need to cultivate by sowing the right seeds so your farm can grow and thrive. It takes time to yield good crops; you'll have a successful real estate crop with some patience and proper care! A successful farmer knows that a plentiful harvest takes patience and effort.
|Quick Tip: Pay attention to your yield and, most importantly ...do what works for you. Every crop is different, and so is the farmer caring for his geo farm.
Make Social Campaigns Work For You
Let's begin with social media platforms like Facebook. Facebook allows you to target certain people in your ads. Although this technique is more candid than generating a board where community members can engage, you can still offer a service while informing potential clients you are there for all their real estate needs.
A neighborhood search can generate a homeowner's names, addresses, and contact information for the 100 closest homes in a certain area. This is a useful service because you can transfer this contact list to your Facebook Custom Audience.
Social media platforms are great marketing tools for prospecting potential clients. While you shouldn't throw away your old marketing techniques, such as cold calling and knocking on doors, adding social media to your list of marketing procedures can prove to be effective.
Stay Connected
Whether it's Facebook or another social media platform, staying connected means accessing prospective clients. Community groups are perfect for keeping engaged. If your geo farm utilizes these groups, it might be a good idea to become involved in community questions and conversations. If your community doesn't have one, it's another good reason to start one.
How do you get people interested in joining your new community group? First, you'll need to try everything you can to spark the interest of others, including flyers, making phone calls, and even going door to door. You can take things even further by inviting your prospects to connect with their family and friends.
One thing to remember is that you shouldn't use these social platforms strictly to promote your business. Instead, think of using social media as your chance to build relationships as your goal is to provide a service for members of your geographic farm. You'll go much further by connecting with others and building lasting friendships.
Also, it is important to pay attention to the rules about ads or promotions on whatever community forum you decide to use. If you're sincere about your goal to help people, you'll acquire a following.
Here are a few more geo-farming strategies:
- Create Just Listed And Just Sold Flyers: Mail out these flyers to homeowners in the community, notifying them of recently listed or sold homes.
- Free CMAs: Provide a free CMA (comparative market analysis) by either door-to-door, cold calling, or direct mail. This is a great way to build your geo farm. Take the time and do your homework about the neighborhood. It will pay off in the end. Stay on top of the property values in that area and know the comps for your demographic market. A simple bit of information such as divulging how much a person's house is worth may spark their interest in selling.
- Open Houses: Build your reputation by showcasing an open house. This is a great way to drive traffic to your listings.
- Local Events: The success of geo farming is connecting with the community. This is time to become a social butterfly. Remember to meet in a neutral location for your safety.
- Door Knocking: It's time to get personal and build relationships in your neighborhood. Being shy as a real estate agent won't help you land those referrals. It's time to get to know your neighbors. Start knocking on those doors.
- Market Analysis Infographics: Gathering infographics for your particular area can only give you the upper hand. Collecting data such as the number of homes built and sold and the average price per square foot can help you build your geo farm. Use your MAI as a tool to broaden your marketing techniques. Disclose your infographic to your geo farm through direct mail or the neighborhood newsletter.
- Neighborhood Newsletters: Providing a community or neighborhood newsletter is another way to build your geo farm. It doesn't matter if it's printed or a digital version. A newsletter offers a service that will headline your name and contact information to the community you're targeting.
How To Succeed In Building Your Geo Farm
There's more to building a geographic farm than meets the eye. Geo farming can help you list more FSBOs and expired leads. Remember that you don't need to sell your brand to every person in the community. Being too pushy will turn people away as they run when they see you coming. No one likes to push into a sale.
Farming and prospecting can work together to help build your business. Begin with a location to farm and utilize your contacts in that area to prospect new leads. This will enable you to build your client list and ultimately, your business.
It's time to put your real estate skills to the test and start applying your efforts in your community- Your geo farm begins with building your brand. However, the most crucial part of your farm is YOU! However you look at it, the bottom line is that it’s up to you to build your brand.
Why is this so important?
Building a brand will help you propagate more referrals and constitute a strong business. Once you've harvested a healthy geo farm, you'll prospect new leads as the word gets out about your services. Because you've chosen the real estate profession, you'll have more time to focus on your business and personality as you try to attract more people to your services.
Cultivating Your Geo Farm
Now that you've got some real tools to put into place, you'll need to do the footwork. Cultivating your geo farm will take some work on your part.
If you're going to succeed with your geo farm, you'll need to begin with building your brand and then building relationships. Although old-school marketing isn't dead yet, take advantage of these marketing schemes.
You can also use technology to your advantage. With the new advances in technology, you need to jump into social media and reap the benefits of using these platforms as a marketing tool. There’s a fine line when using social media platforms, so be cautious...you do not want to appear too pushy.
When using social media, begin by building friendships first and build around that. Of course, it will be obvious you’re trying to build your brand, that's the whole point of advertising your services, to begin with.
Wrapping It Up
Now's the time to attract new prospects as you continue building your geo farm.
Remember to use the above techniques to cultivate and grow a successful "farm"!