A survey by HomeGain ranks the top marketing practices and preferences utilized by real estate agents in order to generate business in 2012. The following survey, based on responses from over 500 agents, also shows interesting variances in agent marketing preferences from the previous year.
Passive v. Proactive Marketing Methods
The survey illustrates a widening gap between the amount of business conducted through passive marketing methods and proactive marketing methods, often referred to as lead generation activities. More passive marketing techniques like word-of-mouth referrals, leads from a broker/manager, and print advertising are more dependent upon business coming to the agent. Although referrals (8.9%) and leads from the brokerage (5.8%) both ranked high, these more passive marketing methods amounted to only 22.9% of the total preferences of the agents surveyed.Conversely, lead generation activities are performed by agents to outwardly initiate contact with a target market. Lead generation methods include events, mailings, prospecting, email campaigns and other technology-based mediums. These proactive activities made up the overwhelming majority of the total marketing methods utilized by agents in the survey.
Technology on the Rise
Comparing year over year the survey reveals that a variety of social media channels like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+, Youtube, blogging and other online mediums made substantial gains as agent marketing preferences. Online lead generation services moved up from #10 up to #6 in 2012, where as print advertising fell dramatically from #8 down to #15.
Online Lead Generation System Example:
Keller Williams Realty's eEdge
