Growth Hacking Strategies for Real Estate Professionals
Growth hacking is what real estate companies and independent professionals need when they want to go bigger and faster, yet they have limited resources to do so. Hacking into rapid growth and scale isn’t about getting into your competitors data, as the term may suggest, or taking unethical short cuts. Rather, it is about finding smarter and easier ways to scale. Some will say that technology is a key component to growth hacking, but many forms of offline guerrilla marketing tactics could also apply. The real estate landscape is increasingly becoming crowded with more agents, investors, title companies, mortgage lenders, and other professionals. Some are far better funded than others (by billions of dollars), and have been entrenched for decades. Still, there is plenty of room and potential for innovative newbies that can bring value and are willing to hustle. The key to success in the real estate industry today is an audience. It is what is most scarce. Despite the media hype, inventory is plentiful if you know where to look. Buyers and capital may not appear to be as abundant as it could be for many. This has most Realtors and investors focusing on list building. List building of all types is essential and important, but there are some great and easy hacks for doing it quickly, rather than starting from scratch and clawing your way up just one contact at a time. The secret ingredient here is tapping into existing pools of prospects that are already out there. Your real estate business and income will obviously grow far faster if each contact or marketing piece connects you to hundreds of targeted prospects, rather than sniping them one by one. For example; fishing with a net verses a single pole. So how do you do it? 9 Growth Hacks for Real Estate Pros: Google Adwords is one of the best advertising tools for real estate. It instantly allows investors, Realtors and brands to tap into Google’s giant-sized amounts of search volume. In fact, Adwords can be used to corner all of the Google search traffic for any given niche or long tail keyword. It does require some investment, but it delivers concrete results and can be scaled on demand. Definitely a tool you’ll want in your arsenal. Facebook has become so contentious for real estate marketers, we won’t even discuss it here. Twitter may, unfortunately, be headed down the same tube, but it still remains incredibly powerful for now. With a couple of apps, real estate pros and companies can quickly tap into the existing followings of targeted prospects and engage them via Twitter. This means instead of going after individual Twitter followers, which can be expensive, tedious and time consuming, each move can connect to thousands. Ice this with savvy hashtag usage, and Twitter could quickly become one of your best growth tools. LinkedIn is often underutilized by real estate professionals. However, beyond the ability to gradually cultivate your own personal following and spread your content, LinkedIn groups offer the potential for instantly tapping into large groups of prospects, private lenders eager to loan their money, and other real estate professionals actively looking to trade referrals. Consider that some individual real estate events and expos are frequented by thousands of investors and buyers equipped with billions in cash to act on deals. Organizing your own events is great, but why not benefit from the thousands or millions invested by others to bring these contacts together for you? With YouTube and video so popular, it only makes sense that it is a great platform for growth hacking too. There are plenty of ways to leverage it, from setting up your own channel to in video ads and creating new content that will be shared. Getting into the mainstream media and news is great for positioning, but it also means getting in front of vast numbers of consumers and potentials referral sources. The good news is that this is even easier than ever. While some spend vast amounts of resources trying to craft the right content and reaching out to bloggers, journalists and editors, this has more often than not just become another factor that comes down to cold hard cash. Trying to get a journalist to notice you among the thousands of emails they receive every day and get an editor to publish you, when others are paying upwards of $4,000 for sponsored content positions can be futile. However, there are online press release distribution channels which can get you in the news for less than 10% of that figure. Referrals are golden in the real estate world. They make conversions easier, and make for far more profitable deals. With a little negotiation you may be able to trade email and social messages with others. Have them promote you to their lists, and you do them same. While there has been a lot of talk about print readership declining, niche magazines, especially those with an off and online presence, can also put real estate brands in front of high volumes of prospects fast. Spokespeople are used in all types of industries in order to leverage an existing celebrity’s followings and prestige. Why not for real estate too?