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Are you ignoring your best prospect?

Real Estate Professionals - Now that I got your attention, please ask yourself this simple question. Immediate family and friends aside, who is your best prospect? Go ahead, take a couple of minutes to think about it… Remember, people buy from people, so it stands to reason the people most likely to buy from you are the ones who have done so in the past. Yes, your past customers are not only your best prospect but over time can become a steady source of qualified leads. According to N.A.R., about 90% of home buyer’s would do business with their agent again, but only 10% can remember how to get in touch with them!

What’s his name?

While it seems counter-intuitive, up to 90% of realtors do not do any type of post-close marketing at all. Of those that do, nearly all stop post-close marketing after 90 days. Does this make sense given the average home ownership last 8 years? No, it really doesn’t and in to be frank, marketing post close for 90 days to a prospect that is almost positively not coming back into the market may actually be perceived as an irritation and have an undesired affect on the relationship. On the other hand, nearly all realtors admit that they have repeatedly missed opportunities because they did not stay in touch with clients post-close. It may be time to take an honest inventory and determine if you are missing out on this reliable source of qualified leads.

Double your closings!

How big a problem is this? The answer is closely tied to the agent’s tenure and success rate but the longer you have been in business and the more deals you have closed, the bigger the problem. Wow, talk about being a victim of your own success!

Let’s break it down to real numbers. To keep it simple, let’s say you have been in the business for 10 years and you are closing an average of 15 deals per year. This means  you have a “likely to make a move” population of around 45 prospects in your pipeline each year. This number comes from those clients that bought/sold  between 7 and 9 years ago. Let’s assume 80% of the prospects come back into the local market and 90% are willing to use you again – this works out to about 32 prospects a year.

Ironically, in this example, just a 50% close ratio with clients you have already sold would effectively double your current volume of business.

Stay in Touch by Being “The Resource”

So now you understand you need to stay in touch. So all you need to do is send a birthday card, a football schedule and be sure to remind your clients of  their one year anniversary in their new home, right? Well, that might help but think about how much more  effective your efforts would be if you stayed top of mind through relevant touch points instead? This is where we can help. CornerStone Title now includes our digital closing documents with every closing. This includes amazingly convenient digital access to all closing documents for your clients (they love it). Our digital closing documents  also includes a built-in “forever marketing” system that keeps you top of mind with you customers by keeping them up-to-date with critical updates on information specific to their property. You contact information is  displayed in each email and every time your customer accesses their closing documents.

The Silver Bullet

So we’ve laid out how to automatically stay top of mind for life with every customer you close, the only thing  left to do is to actually identify the precise moment your customer is coming back into the market. This sounds too good to be true and unfortunately, it probably is. However, it is possible to notify you when your client accesses any of their critical closing documents which is the leading indicator they are making a move to buy or sell. For example, your client logs into to CornerStone’s digital closing documents system to access their mortgage – you get a notification. Granted, they might just be downloading their documents for some light poolside reading, but let’s face it, not everyone finds closing documents as interesting as we do. 

For More Information

If  you would like to learn more about how to effortlessly implement and maintain a comprehensive post close marketing system that alerts you when your customer is considering buying or selling, you can watch our digital closing documents video here.

Boost Website SEO with Free Real Estate Videos

When is the last time you tried to explain title insurance or closing costs to a client? Was it a fun, entertaining and engaging conversation? Probably not for you nor your client. CornerStone Title has a solution and we’re offering it free to any Florida real estate broker, agent, mortgage broker, loan officer or builder. It has been said many times that a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes a video, even a simplistic one, can be worth one hundred thousand words.

Check out the Videos!

Check out these two videos  that provide a quick, entertaining explanation of both “Title Insurance” and “Closing Costs” and then read on to discover how these videos are going to help you get found and convert more of your website visitors to buyers and sellers.

CornerStone Title: What is Title Insurance?

CornerStone Title: What are Closing Costs?

Video Increases Your Website SEO (search engine optimization)

In addition to being a great resource to your prospects and clients, these videos are killer marketing tools. By embedding these videos on your website, you drastically increase the odds of being “found” by search engines. Websites that include video are 53 times more likely to appear on page one of Google. Even if you have existing video, these videos will further enhance your videos ranking. We have embedded keywords into the video related to Bradenton and Sarasota Real Estate and these will convey SEO points to your site.

Videos Makes Your Website Sticky

Additionally, these videos make your website more “sticky” by keeping visitors on your site longer. The average time spent on your website is a key metric to use to gauge how effective your site is. The longer visitors spend on your site, the better. When they are on your site for an extended period of time, the likelihood they will visit other pages goes up and the chances they are going to bounce off to one of your competitors sites goes down.  Translation, you create additional opportunities for your site visitors to contact you, do an MLS search or bookmark your page.

Technical Details

You can include the videos on your site in one of two ways. First, you can simply add a link to the YouTube url and direct your visitors there.  Another approach, and the one we recommend, is to embed the YouTube code directly into your site. This provides a much cleaner look and will result in more views. You can see samples of embedded video in this post or on our resources page.  Depending on your technical abilities, you may need the assistance of your webmaster to get this done. To get the link or embed code or for technical assistance, drop me a line at tom@cornerstonetitle.biz or call me at 941.744.0492.

What’s the Catch?

Oh, I forgot to mention there is one little catch.. If you are going to use the videos, there is no charge but we do ask that you include a link back to our website at http://www.cornerstonetitle.biz. Please choose one the following link back formats:

Video compliments of CornerStoneTitle - Bradenton/Sarasota Title Company

Video provided by our friends at CornerStone Title, the Title Company of Choice in Sarasota and Manatee