With New Graduates Entering the Workforce, Don’t Forget About Gen Z!

As a real estate broker, it is vital that you always keep your eyes forward in order to continuously attract new up-and-coming talent. In the last few years, much of the conversation around recruitment has been focused on Millennials because of their unique characteristics and the fact that they are currently the largest generation. However, Generation Z is entering the workforce right on their heels. Generation Z is those born in the mid-nineties through 2015, and are now between the ages of 6 and 24. As a savvy, forward-looking broker, you need to understand what makes them tick and what role they can play in your brokerage, too.

What Gen Z Agents Will Bring To Your Brokerage

The generation following Millennials has its own list of unique traits and it’s a good idea to understand them, especially as you may find more and more of them joining the ranks of the working class and becoming members of your brokerage team:

1. They’re Very, Very Tech-Savvy

If you think that Millennials know all there is to know about technology, watch out because this generation is even more immersed. While Millennials grew up during the emergence and development of the internet and social media, this generation was born with it. Obviously, there is no replacement for valuable one-on-one interactions and relationship development. However, it is still important to have tech-savvy skills that will empower your marketing, brand, and ability to stay in touch in an efficient and cost-effective way. If you are feeling lost with the newest elements of technology and social media portals, any Gen Z’s you hire are sure to be able to help navigate.

2. They’re Pumped Up

Not enough can be said for the value of an agent that brings energy and enthusiasm to the table. Those two assets are particularly strong within Generation Z. As their broker, you can expect them to be eager to learn from and listen to you, which helps compensate for their lack of experience. Look at these agents as being more pliable and willing to adopt your approach to real estate selling, while bringing new knowledge and ideas to you and your team, which will position you well for continued growth.

3. They Mesh Well with Millennials

As you already know, Millennials now make up the largest population of buyers, sellers, tenants, and even workforce. Therefore, it’s important to build a team that can bond with, relate to, and ultimately attract, Millennials. Generation Z grew up in a very similar way to Millennials, so they have a deeper understanding of how they think, what they want, what they hate, and how they communicate.

What Will Attract Gen Z Agents To Your Brokerage?

It is one thing to understand the value Generation Z agents can bring to your brokerage, it is something else entirely to know what your brokerage needs to offer to attract them. Here are some tips from the experts at Weichert on how it is done.

Education And Resources

Since they will be the least experienced generation, they will be eager to learn from you. They see education as a way for them to move up in their career and the world. The more tools, resources, and education you can supply them with to shorten their learning curve, the more they will value you. Incidentally, one of the great things about partnering with a brand like Weichert is tools, training and systems available to you on Day 1 of your affiliation. No need to grow your own; between our incredible brokerage/agent technology platform and our coaching, training and online university, brokers and their Gen Z agents will feel supported like never before.

Balance Between Freedom & Stability

Since they are new to their professional career, Gen Z will find comfort in a broker that provides them with support and stability. However, unlike Millennials that love a lively office environment, this generation appreciates even more flexibility and freedom. If you’re willing to let them work where and when they want, while being present as needed, they will be far more productive and loyal. Virtual meeting options and check-ins will go a long way with this group.

Income Potential

Unfortunately, student loans and various other debts plague Gen Z, so income is important. Being able to work with them on a business plan where they have a clear vision of what their production goals are to meet their needed level of income will eliminate surprises later. Being clear on the activities required to meet those goals will also give them direction and reassurance that they will be successful. One of the great things about a career in real estate is that it is a career with unlimited income potential. They can earn as much as the work and dedication they put in.

Grow a Brokerage for all Generations

A great philosopher once said, “change is the essential nature of all things”. Brokers who embrace change and welcome the energy and values of each new generation will thrive. It’s exactly the kind of thing Weichert can help provide guidance on to franchisees. Creating a positive culture in your brokerage that promotes honesty, transparency, and teamwork is exactly how you will grow your business and appeal to generations of all kinds. Specifically for Gen Z, Weichert offers an abundance of resources and training opportunities and a business planning tool to help them design their income goals and a plan for achieving them, plus we coach our offices on the use of virtual tools, provide them with sales meeting content and more. For more information on how to build a culture that’s a recruiting magnet, as well as get best practices and marketing tools to attract new agents, visit us at http://weichertfranchise.com.

This blog is originally posted here - https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/with-new-graduates-entering-the-workforce-dont-forget-about-gen-z/

Are You Using 3D Tours? Now Is the Right Time to Try Them

Although we may never have imagined how the world would be impacted by COVID-19, one thing that is for sure is that the real estate industry has reacted dynamically. One of the most obvious ways in which real estate agents and brokers have had to pivot during this challenging time is to go from making virtual and 3D tours a nice-to-have to a necessity in marketing listings. In fact, even buyer agents are finding themselves giving virtual tours of listings. If you’ve never used it as part of your marketing strategy, now might be the time to look into this technology. They may become a staple long after restrictions subside. Here are a few reasons why the experts at Weichert believe they should become an ongoing staple in your business.

How COVID-19 Has Changed The Status Quo

Before the outbreak, adding virtual or 3D tours using technology by companies like Matterport or Ricoh Tours to let buyers tour the property was a luxury. However, the cost of producing these and the equipment needed has become fairly reasonable and there is no reason not to use it. Most brokers who have invested in them will speak to the positive impact they can have on the ability to deal with an increasingly virtual real estate industry.

What are the upsides? By being able to share the tour digitally on social media and email, you can increase overall exposure for the property. You can also reach potential buyers who may normally not have been able to attend an open house due to distance or scheduling conflicts. Because 3D tours give viewers a better idea of the space and flow of the home vs. still photography alone, viewers will get a better idea of whether a particular property is really a potential match for them. This also helps make the process more efficient, so you are spending additional time showing the property only to those who are most serious about it.

What Should You Include in Your 3D Tours?

Just like with any piece of marketing material, 3D tours are not all created equally. If you really want your virtual and 3D tours to spark deals, you need to be strategic with them. Just like when you are taking professional photos, make sure the home is staged properly and free of clutter. Make sure to capture all the best aspects of the home, including the exterior. Here are some other things to include in your tours to increase viewership and conversion rates:

 Give Them a Reason to Watch: When promoting the tour, make sure you include reasons for people to watch or engage. In this, there is an art to really paring down the excitement of the listing to a soundbite which is something most agents are well acquainted with doing. Let potential viewers know what they will learn during the tour and how they will benefit from the tour. You may even want to host a contest and announce the winner during the tour if you elect to do a live version.

 Promote Lifestyle Benefits: Rather than just listing off the characteristics of the property, let your narration explain how the property provides a specific type of lifestyle. Don’t just tell them what the house has, but showcase how they benefit from what the house has.

 Provide a Call-To-Action: Make sure you include a strategic and easy call-to-action at the end of the tour. This could be to schedule a private tour, contact you for questions or anything else you want the viewers to do next.

How To Get More Leverage With 3D Tours

Just because you may be hosting your virtual tour on one platform does not mean that you shouldn’t also use it on others. Share your tour to all of your social media accounts, a blog post about the listing, your email newsletter, and any other marketing materials you produce for the property. Furthermore, you can give your tours a popularity boost by including relevant hashtags along with your posts on social media and boosting these posts on Facebook.

While it is still uncertain how much longer it will be until people are comfortable freely going in and out of properties again to view them, you can be sure the use of 3D and virtual tours are here to stay. The brokerages that adapt will become stronger as a result. Weichert and its affiliates know first-hand how important it is to evolve sales practices and adopt new technologies as they become available. It keeps the entire team ahead of its competition while empowering them to do more.

To learn more about how to grow your business with a Weichert franchise go to weichertfranchising.com.

This blog is originally posted here - https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/are-you-using-3d-tours-now-is-the-right-time-to-try-them/

How to Grow Your Database With Email Marketing

With so many flashy new technologies and social platforms competing for our attention, it is easy to forget the tried and true value of email marketing. Not only is email marketing still one of the most powerful ways to build a captive audience and stay in touch with your database, but it is a cost-effective way of doing so. Email laws and strategies, however, continue to evolve. Agents and brokers need to understand the rules and best practices to effectively market themselves via email. Here is what the experts of Weichert want you to know about the best practices for broker and agent email marketing.

Develop Your List, the Right Way.

Following the fallout of data breaches a few years ago, new laws have been put into place to protect consumers from predatory practices through email marketing. One of the laws states that a person must opt-in to receive emails from you. In fact, in most cases having a double-opt-in is best because it ensures that the person truly wants to be emailed. Therefore, you should never purchase a list of people to cold-email because you will be violating these laws and potentially dealing with people who have no interest in you or your services. Furthermore, if you use email marketing software to send mass marketing emails to a purchased list and get a high number of bounces, unsubscribes, or abuse complaints it may prevent you from being able to use email marketing entirely through a process known as blacklisting.

Attract New Email Subscribers

The best way to develop your list is with a slow steady strategy and honesty. Start by building a lead magnet that is valuable to your target audience and then offer it for free in exchange for them opting in. A good lead magnet can be a free informational class, a whitepaper on how to sell your home in a down market, market information, information on a particular property, or anything else that is timely and relevant.  To cover yourself, send them an automatic email confirming that they subscribed to accomplish that double-opt-in. Once you’ve captured them, make sure you segment them in your database as much as possible based on their behavior as a subscriber. For example, if you have two lead magnets (one for buyers and one for sellers), those people should automatically be segmented to their respective lists when they sign up. This will allow you to tailor the content you email them and increase your open, click-through, and conversion rates.

What Should You Serve Up to Buyers & Sellers?

Once a person opts-in to get emails from you they should immediately get that opt-in confirmation. From there, they should be put on an automatic drip campaign of steady content that is relevant to their reason for opting-in. For example, if they downloaded a book about getting their house ready to sell, they should keep getting information that is valuable to sellers and prompts them to contact you for help. Their segmentation in your database will also indicate if you should be sending them listings, just sold, or any other type of property listings.

How to Improve Open & Click-Through Rates

The first challenge in getting conversions from your email marketing is getting people to open your emails. You can give yourself the best shot at getting people to open your emails by optimizing your subject line using the free headline analyzer by co-schedule. From there, you need to make sure that the content is relevant to the subject line and attention-grabbing. If it doesn’t solve a problem, help achieve a goal, or entertain your audience you may be disappointed in the results.

Let’s say you want your subscribers to read your newest blog post which explains how hard but important it is to set the right price on a listing. The subject line should communicate the potential loss or gain they will achieve from the article. Then, the body of the email should act as a teaser of the blog post with a strong call-to-action to read the blog post. Be careful that you don’t only use your email list for advertising because it will hurt your open and click-through rates. Make sure you are providing content of value as well.

Integrate With Your Real Estate Website & CRM

Setting up powerful email campaigns, coordinating lists, and keeping track of all the leads that come in, as a result, can be tedious, time-consuming work. That is unless you have a fully-integrated technology platform like myWeichert. At Weichert, we provide our affiliates with the technology that incorporates all the best elements of a great real estate CRM, but has the ability to create those “lead magnets” to build your database, then uses sophisticated marketing automation to segment and nurture those potential clients for you. From pre-programmed to customizable campaigns, emails can be sent to your various audience segments automatically and in a timely fashion based on almost any criteria. Its direct integration with your IDX website and database also gives you the ability to set up property search alerts to feed buyers listings based on criteria you establish. A complete smart technology platform like myWeichert takes much of the guesswork and delay out of using email marketing while maintaining a level of personalized contact that other real estate CRMs and tech platforms do not provide.

As an agent, and especially as a  to make sure you are getting the most out of your marketing tactics, such as email marketing. And if you are looking for a true partner, Weichert and a tool like myWeichert may be just the solution you’re looking for.

For more information about the Weichert suite of technology and marketing tools go to https://www.weichertfranchise.com/best-real-estate-crm/.

How Instagram Can Help Your Real Estate Game

June 9, 2020BlogMichele Watson Edit

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If there is one thing that real estate agents understand, it is that there is an art to the hunt for quality real estate leads. These days, more and more people are turning to alternative house hunting methods like social media when it comes to looking for their future homes and an agent to work with. In fact, it may surprise you to know that there are many people turning to Instagram to connect with a real estate agent and begin their home search. However, if you are like most real estate agents, you are probably wondering if there is any real value to building a strong presence on the visual social platform. In today’s post, you will discover several reasons why it might make sense to invest in leveraging Instagram.

It Is The Perfect Real Estate Platform

If you are finding yourself with a little extra time on your hands right now, use some of your time to get acquainted with using Instagram. Whether you are a broker or an agent, developing a following on this platform is going to be more important than ever as you seek to develop relationships with younger generations of clients.

Instagram is all about visuals. As a real estate agent or broker, you are lucky to work in a very visually stimulating industry which makes it easy to create quality Instagram content. There are opportunities for you to take pictures and videos that will appeal to your target audience at almost every turn. The key is to create content that is both visually eye-catching and interesting. For example, rather than just show a before/after picture of a renovation, give some interesting information about the renovation and include some relevant and hyperlocal hashtags with the post to help it get found.

The Demographics Of Instagram Will Surprise You

With each new social media platform that hits the scene, it can be easy to judge its relevance by the initial audience demographics. For this reason, many people still think of Instagram as just a fun picture sharing app for Millennials. However, these statistics straight from Instagram illustrate something very different:

• 1 billion Instagram monthly users as of June 2018.
• 500 million daily Instagram Stories users.
• 110 million Instagram users in the US.
• 34% of Instagram users aged 25-34; 31% are 18-24.
• 51.2% of the global Instagram user base is female, 48.8% male.

As you can see from these numbers, there are a lot more than just Millennials on Instagram. In other words, there are members of your target homebuyer and home seller audience on Instagram and they will consume content from someone, so why shouldn’t it be you?

Instagram Is Great For Starting & Nurturing Relationships

The most important thing to understand is that the only way to be successful with Instagram marketing is to look at it as a relationship-building opportunity more than just another advertising platform. The beauty of Instagram is that it gives you the chance to connect with people you may have never met otherwise around a shared interest in real estate, as marked by hashtags

Meeting New People: Let’s say you are targeting first-time homebuyers and newlyweds in Chicago. You could search the hashtag #ChicagoNewlyweds to find a never-ending list of people that match your target market demographics. Start building relationships with these people by connecting with them, liking, and commenting on their posts with valuable feedback and sharing any relevant advice you can offer. It also helps to have a specific offering ready for the demographic you are targeting. In this case, something like a free e-book about how to go from “I do” to Homeownership in the first year would work well.

Staying In-Touch: You should make it a point to connect and interact with as many members of your sphere and database as possible. As you scroll through your feed, make a point of taking a few moments each day to leave valuable comments and start conversations. The more you focus on valuable, relationship-building interactions, the more productive the platform will be for business.

Creating Visual Content Is Easier Than Written Content

If you are someone that struggles with regularly writing thoughtful and valuable real estate blog posts, Instagram may be just the content marketing solution you’ve been looking for. With Instagram Stories, you can easily create smaller, bite-sized videos that take people behind the scenes in your world of real estate. In fact, the more you treat Instagram like a blog, the more likely you are to build an engaged audience.

Weichert has recognized that in order to stay competitive at the agent or the brokerage level, you must be ready to embrace new technologies, tools, and processes that allow you to better serve your clients. In fact, when you keep an open mind to new technology, it will allow you to more efficiently invest in the relationships that lead to healthy real estate business. For more information about the technologies and systems that Weichert uses to give their affiliates an edge over the competition go to https://www.weichertfranchise.com/

Why Online Reviews Are More Important Than Ever

Any broker or agent can claim to be the best, but they can’t expect strangers to believe them at their word. Having client testimonials and reviews are a practical way of showing what marketing experts refer to as “social proof”. In fact, reviews and testimonials have become so important that a consumer survey conducted in 2019 by Bright Local indicated that 85% of consumers are basing their buying decisions on reviews or testimonials from past customers. But now, virtual buying and selling are becoming part of the new normal. Since they might not be able to meet with you in person to get a comfort level, consumers are going to want to “shop” you first before engaging. Having a solid list of reviews will ease their minds and make them more comfortable with working with you virtually. Here are some best and worst practices that you can adopt to maximize the effectiveness of your brokerage reviews.

Which Reviews Are The Most Valuable?

Just as not all real estate brokerages are created equally, reviews vary in quality and value. While it is smart to try and collect as many reviews as possible, it is more important to get the types of reviews that will make a real difference in your real estate rep. As a rule, there are three things you should look for in every review:

• Relevant: The more relevant a review is to the services you provide, and the people you want to attract, the better.
• Specific: It is great when people say something positive like “Great company – highly recommend”. However, detailed and specific reviews like “Great negotiator who went above and beyond to make our closing happen on time, despite many challenges…” will go further.
• Recent: A review from 3 years ago won’t carry the same clout as one from last week so work consistently to collect new reviews.

Quality Reviews Vs. Quantity Reviews

Research by Yelp suggests that people will look at the average star rating for your business before diving deeper to read the long-form reviews that people leave. With that in mind, you need to consider the importance of carefully avoiding any negative reviews below 4 or 5 stars. One way to do this is to ask for feedback from clients prior to asking for them to provide a testimonial. That way, if there are any areas in which they are not 100% satisfied, you have a chance to correct the problem and make them your happiest client yet.

Since reviews might often be given at the agent level, you can also consider investing in review programs that allow your positive agent reviews to roll up to your brokerage review rating. After all, if you go to the trouble of hiring the best agents, that effort should be reflected in how the brokerage is perceived in the public eye. You can leverage that not only for attracting new clients but for attracting recruits as well.

Don’t forget to collect stars and testimonials from your agents and staff as well! Remind them that for every 5-star review on your business, there will be more leads coming through the door for them. If your agent is not comfortable providing you with a 5-star review, you can address any concerns they have and increase their loyalty to your brand.

Don’t Fear Negative Reviews

There may be times when someone leaves a negative review or testimonial. If they do this publicly before you have a chance to address their concerns, be swift to respond. Reply to their review by expressing your genuine concern and offering to do whatever it takes to make them happy. When you do this, you show anyone reading how much you care about your clients’ satisfaction and that you will take action to back it up. This can actually be a powerful way to build trust with skeptics who tend not to trust reviews when they are all perfect. And if there is a trend of negative reviews, it may be a signal that you have some work to do.

Distribute Your Reviews Far And Wide

Reviews won’t do anything for you if people don’t have the chance to read them. No matter what platform you use to collect your client testimonials, you should repurpose and add them everywhere you can to get more value from each one. A few strategic places to repost your reviews include:

• Your newsletter
• You email signature
• Your social media profiles
• Your brochures
• Your websites
• Your listing and buyer presentations
• Your educational content and lead magnets
• Your media kit

Ultimately, good reviews are going to come by going above and beyond in servicing your clients. This means personalized attention, diligent follow-up and meeting, or better yet, exceeding expectations. At Weichert, we arm our affiliated offices and agents to do all of that by providing tools, such as myWeichert, our smart tech platform. This integrates contact management with a level of marketing automation that is unparalleled in the industry, helping agents follow up the right way, at the right time. These kinds of tools coupled with Weichert coaching, best practices, and resources, help you and your team service your clients and support your business goals every step of the way.

For more information about how you can grow with Weichert, go to www.weichertfranchise.com

This blog is originally posted here - https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/why-online-reviews-are-more-important-than-ever/