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5 Not So Sexy Offline Marketing Ideas that Bring in the Business

Jul 1, 2024

real estate agent on the phone
I must confess. I have this terrible problem. I have an innate ability to hear a nearby conversation while continuing to participate in a conversation of my own. This often gives me the opportunity to listen to cold and warm calls made by the agents in my office—their offline marketing, per se. After recently listening to a few cold calls to buyer prospects, I began to think a little more deeply about the entire cold-calling game.

What I heard was some awkward objection handling and a few agents being the victim of hangups, and this prompted me to think a little bit about working by referral (Buffini’s modus operandi); it was in that moment that I had some sort of epiphany. I do my very best to be the real estate pro that doesn’t take night time or early morning calls. As much as I can, I encourage folks to call me at my office and I encourage folks to work directly with our staff on the mundane issues. I try to keep my contact with the public (clients included) to traditional work hours—just like doctors, lawyers, and accountants.

How to Set Up a Real Estate Marketing Plan that Makes the Phone Ring

If you want prospective clients to treat you the way public treats doctors, lawyers and accountants, the first step is to get people to respect your time and your authority within the industry.

The minute prospective clients know that you are “the one” with all the answers and that you are in high demand, the tables definitely turn.

So, how can you get to that? The answer, my friends, is with face-to-face offline marketing.

What kind of marketing do doctors, lawyers, and accountants do? As far as I can figure, the very best ones don’t do much. Of course, the ambulance chasers are all over the tele and on billboards, but is that what you want to be? Do your cold calls make you an ambulance chaser?

My investigation into what my own doctors, accountant, and attorney do to obtain new business really made me think more deeply about offline marketing. This clearly isn’t anything new. But it underscored for me the absolute importance of face-to-face marketing and working by referral as opposed to the old cold-calling game. It ain’t sexy, like the new iphone 11, and it certainly isn’t happening in your email inbox, but offline marketing can definitely make the phone ring.

5 Offline Not So Sexy Face-to-Face Real Estate Marketing Ideas

Here are 5 offline not so sexy face-to-face real estate marketing ideas that could bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next year or two, and will make prospective clients call you to set an appt—in just the same way that one might call a doctor or a lawyer.
  • Create Strategic Alliances. I have a friend whose wife is a therapist. She opened a new office in a new part of town a few years back and now her appointment book is so full that she has hired 3 additional therapists to pick up the extra business. What did she do? She created a fabulous brochure about her services and dropped it off with some business cards at all the local physicians’ offices. A patient confides in physician that he or she is feeling glum. “Here’s a brochure. Call her.” You can do the same. Carefully consider who you know that would be willing to recommend your services and discuss a strategy for getting the word out. Your best strategic alliances may be with the people whom you least expect: cleaning crews, power washers, landscapers. These people talk to homeowners every day, and they hear when someone is preparing to move!
  • Ask for reviews. Hate Yelp? I don’t care, because it isn’t really about you. You need to put your emotions aside and embrace online review sites like Yelp and Google. These are the places that the consumer turns to in order to search for reviews. Make sure to get as many past clients, affiliates, and associated professionals to review your business. More reviews = more people calling you to set an appointment.
  • Ask for referrals. When appropriate, use the calls you make to a past client or business associate to ask for business. Updated a buyer on the status of the purchase transaction? Why not ask him or her if they have anyone else that they know that may be interested in buying right now—since the interest rates are so low. If they have someone in mind, get introduced immediately.
  • Get a speaking gig. Think about local community events where you might have an opportunity to provide some valuable information about the real estate market or about some other aspect of real estate, and organize a speaking gig so that you have the opportunity to get in front of maximum amounts of people with minimal effort. Maybe your significant other’s place of business would like to host a homebuying workshop, or maybe the local chamber of commerce features an event where you can provide some valuable information about mortgage rates to a large group of business professionals. When you speak at well-attended events, you have the opportunity to get maximum calls with minimum effort. (We built Short Sale Expeditor almost entirely through speaking gigs, and we are still busy to this day!)
  • Host a Housewarming Party. Just represented the buyer in a recently closed transaction? Now is your chance to work with the buyer’s lender to co-host a housewarming party at your clients’ home. Have your clients give you a list of the email addresses of invitees, send the invites, bring the food and voilà… you have yourself a massive list of potential homebuyers and home sellers.
It may not seem “sexy” to go old school to get buyer and seller leads to fill your pipeline, but if you want to get the phone to ring (just like at a doctors or lawyers office) without having to make a single cold call, consider going offline with these face-to-face marketing ideas that will really bring in the business!

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