Meet Jarrod.
He began his real estate career at 23, in Bulimba Queensland, and started building a profile from nearly nothing. Even though Jarrod considered himself social media savvy, it didn’t take long to realise he didn’t have the time necessary to focus on his clients and his marketing. So, he enlisted our help.
Jarrod’s now 25 years old. In only 24 months, Jarrod’s database has grown to over 25,000 contacts. He has over 1,500 Facebook followers, 11,000 LinkedIn connections, and nearly 3,000 Instagram followers.
In total, his audience has grown from 0 to over 40,000 in just over 24 months.
As well, Jarrod has sold 110 listings, all of which add up to over $81,995,000.
Let that sink in: 40,000 contacts in 24 months, and 110 listings worth nearly $82,000,000.
Impressed? Would you like to know his secret? Dedication, a strong team, and a proven strategy.
Actually, the strategy is quite simple. His team focuses on raising brand awareness, engaging his contacts, and identifying leads. We sat down with Jarrod during a recent training event, and he shared some tips that we thought might interest you.
Raise awareness
The first step of any marketing strategy should be raising awareness, or creating your profile. “It’s all about building a base,” Jarrod says. He focused on gaining likes first, and he found promotions particularly helpful. “One of the best ways to increase your interaction is through giveaways, and competitions. My best one was a fishing trip.”
He encourages his following to “Like, share, comment, tag a friend, and naturally the organic reach will come.” He also works closely with his clients to expand his organic reach. “Have your vendor share it, and encourage their family and friends to like and share it as well. Then sit back, and watch your audience. Your organic reach will grow. It’s exponential. It’s the gold.”
Jarrod describes the purpose behind his marketing efforts as “creating sufficient brand awareness in my market place, and building such a profile that people started calling me. If you ask the right questions during inspections and call backs, and you have the right marketing touch points through your database emails, bus stop signs, paid ads on social media, it will produce sufficient leads.”
Engage and nurture contacts
It’s not enough have a large database, or to create a following on Social Media. Once you’ve built an audience, you need to keep them engaged. Jarrod jokes that his most popular posts are of his French bulldog Winston, but under this chuckle lies an important principle. “People want to engage with a human,” he states. “People don’t want to see your ego. My database has significantly increased overtime, and that’s made me more conscious of giving better content. Your unsubscribe rate can jump pretty quick, so it’s pretty easy to lose your audience.”
When it comes to engaging his clients, Jarrod’s team focuses on delivering relevant content through email and social media, while also showcasing Jarrod’s human side. “Instagram is a great, colourful, bright way to show off who you are as an individual and what you’re doing in the community.” Besides Winston, his Instagram is littered with listings, photos of his brilliantly colourful socks, and images of Jarrod in the Bulimba neighborhood. “You have to be really engaged in your community. Relying on social media alone will not do it all, but it will help, and it definitely will give you your best return.”
Some may be surprised to learn of Jarrod’s success using Instagram. While many experts dismiss the platform for its young user base, Jarrod saw a natural relationship between its photo and video focus, and his content. “People engage more with images and video content on Instagram then what they do with Facebook… 10 to 20 times the engagement. So, in terms of building an audience and putting really nice homes, pictures, and architecture, that’s a really good place to build and engage.”
Jarrod cannot stress enough his dependence on relevant content. “You can spend 2 to 3 hours at a time trying to find a post that people will actually engage with. That’s where my iRealty team and my expert come into play. They have a library of content that pulls from a library of resources.” As well, Jarrod dedicates much of his content to providing value to his audience. “If you only ask for business, you will lose followers. Give. Give. Give. Give. Then ask for business. If you do that, they will stick around, and they are likely to come to you when they want to sell.”
Identify and engage leads
According to Jarrod, he “doesn’t wait for the phone to ring, but the goal is not to make cold calls.” The most important, and valuable part of his strategy is found in identifying leads and making contact. Otherwise, his efforts in branding and engagement are all for nothing.
Jarrod’s social media activity softly reminds his contacts who he is, and why he’s successful. As a result, he has “phone calls coming in saying, ‘I want to sell my home.’” However, many of his leads come from calls to action that can be found throughout his emails and social media posts. “If you ask the right questions, have the right marketing touchpoints through email and paid ads on social media, they will produce sufficient leads.” Referring to his email leads, Jarrod gets excited. “You can pinpoint who opens what, when, how many times, and you can receive alerts if people click on listings, two or more times. I will then jump on the phone. That’s not a cold call.” Part of the reason for Jarrod’s excitement is discovered in what he shares next. “I get hundreds of lead alerts, to the point where, because my database is so big, I am not managing them as I should. I am too busy and there are too many leads coming through for my team to handle. So, my next step is to hire somebody who specifically handles buyers, and specifically deals with iRealty’s lead alerts.”
This steady flow of leads has helped Jarrod focus his time where it matters most. “Listing presentations and buying appointments. They are the two things that I do. I buy and I sell. Full stop. That’s all I do. My team does the rest for me.” Jarrod knows receiving the lead is only the first step. “Your likelihood of securing a listing is definitely determined by how quickly you contact them. If you’re the 5th person to call, well what does that say? But if you call within 5 minutes, and you’re the first agent on the phone, that person’s going to be pretty excited, and the rest of the agents are in line behind you.” Once he’s in the door, Jarrod uses his social media presence as social proof during his listing presentations. “Going in and selling yourself is all about identifying your point of difference. There it is: social media.”
Because of his digital marketing efforts, clients are already returning to Jarrod and offering referrals as well. “People will only come back to you, or send others to you, if they know you are still doing what you’re good at, which is real estate. So how do you keep front of mind with your contacts? Social Media.” Like most agents, Jarrod treasures return clients and referrals more than other leads. “They are quality people. They’re gold. That’s your referral, you know, when they say, ‘You sold my sister’s house.’ You can’t ask for more.”
The Results
With hard work, an effective strategy in place, and a solid team to support him, Jarrod has achieved incredible results in the last 24 months, and the future only looks brighter. “I went from an audience of 0 to around 40,000 across my platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, my database, and it’s growing on a monthly basis.” If you would like to learn more about Jarrod, his team and his strategy, you can sign up for iRealty’s Social Media Training. We sit down with Jarrod, and discuss the specifics behind his plan, and provide a clear system for others to follow. Call us at 1300 855 982 to reserve your spot today.
For a guide to developing your own Digital Marketing Strategy, click here.