When you’re choosing your area to start your real estate farm, there’s a lot to consider… like the clients.
Obviously part of setting up your real estate farm is choosing a prime location, but that’s not enough to ensure that your business will be booming with conversions.
That’s where real estate farming tools come into play.
You’ve already made the first decision in real estate farming by choosing your spot. Now it’s the time to create your local marketing strategy with the help of tools that make marketing more efficient.
In this guide, we’ll be looking at how marketing tools increase your efforts and conversions, and what the best real estate marketing tools you need to have on your team are.
Why Adding Tools Enhances Farming Efforts
Even though real estate farming keeps you in a chosen location, you still need help in sourcing and attracting the right leads to your services.
Certain tools on our list allow you to create localized campaigns that target prospects in your farming area so that your efforts reach the right audience.
For tools that don’t feature local SEO services, they still benefit your campaign by helping your create memorable content that catches the attention of prospects so they remember your services when they need them.
9 Real Estate Farming Tools to Start Using
So, what are the must-have real estate farming tools to incorporate into your strategy? Here are 9 to start with.
1. Canva
For your direct marketing materials and social media templates, you need to have Canva on your team.
This graphic design software website makes it incredibly easy to create or customize your own eye-catching materials that you can purchase to buy and have printed, or use for digital purposes.
The best part is that this can be a tool you add to your strategy for free, but you should note that the free tier doesn’t unlock all the perks you might need. Certain graphics, sizing options, or special effects will require you paying for the premium plan.
If you’re not tech-savvy (or even designer savvy), the best part is that this system eliminates all imposter-syndrome because it’s so easy to use.
2. Prospect Finder
No real estate marketing strategy is successful unless your efforts end up in the hands of the right prospects.
“Right” meaning prospects who fit your campaign entirely.
Thankfully, it’s easy to find the right audience you need for your strategy with a prospect finder tool like Cole Information’s Realty Resource.
The benefits of this system is that it brings up potential clients in your area based on customized search criteria, like how long they’ve owned their property, their home’s value, and more.
What’s more is that the system also brings up contact information like address and phone numbers you can use in your strategy.
3. CRM System
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System is another crucial element to a successful real estate farming strategy.
While these systems do not turn prospective customers into clients themselves, they help realtors form better relationships with prospects while also providing analytical data to better your chances at conversions.
There are plenty of CRM systems available for you to use in your realtor journey, and the best part is that some may come with a free demo so you can test it out beforehand.
The key features to look for when shopping for a CRM system to implement are:
- Contact Management: This feature keeps all of your prospect’s contact information stored in one place so you know how to best reach them.
- Lead Management: This feature shows you analytics from your leads such as where they’ve come from, what action steps they’ve taken, and more.
- Sales Forecasting: Have you ever wanted to know where you actually are with leads in your business? This feature of a CRM system shows you with the sales prediction so you can make better adjustments in your marketing.
- Social Media Integration: Let’s be honest, social media is the crux of every business nowadays. With the social media integration, you’ll be able to easier track statistics of leads who interact with your social media content and reach out to inquire more information.
- Analytics Tracking: Now you’ll get an in-depth, down-to-the-numbers viewpoint of your leads so you can make better business decisions.
One more feature we like about CRM systems that make them a no-brainer for real estate farming tools is that they keep your findings organized.
Now all of your prospects and leads, along with their data, are kept in one place for you to view anytime you want!
4. DocuSign
Real estate transactions are full of papers waiting to be signed. With a system like DocuSign, you can make the process easier for your clients by giving them a digital route instead of an intimidating in-person paper signing session.
Trust us when we say that your clients will love using this tool, which means you’ll increase your customer satisfaction rating.
5. MailChimp
If you haven’t heard, realtors are not exempt from the types of businesses who can thrive from an email marketing strategy.
So once you start one, it’s crucial that you have MailChimp on your side.
Like Canva and DocuSign, MailChimp is a business tool that’s email-focused, and helps you create, deliver, and track your emails.
It’s notable feature is their tracking analytics that disclose how your funnels perform so you can take the data and alter your emails around the performance.
Pro tip: Combine the power of MailChimp with Cole Realty Resource to create targeted email campaigns using accurate, up-to-date contact information for potential clients in your farming area.
6. Realtor Website
Your realtor website is a crucial real estate farming tool since you can use it in several ways to build your business. The primary way is to morph it with local SEO.
Local SEO is a tactic you can use to make your website and content discovered upon localized searches prospects are making.
For instance, if you’re a realtor in Des Moines, Iowa, a local SEO keyword to include on your site (preferably in the headings) is: [YOUR NAME], Des Moines Realtor.
Putting locations in your headlines and on geo-pages within your blog content, you’ll easily be found when prospects go to their favorite search engine to search for your services.
Other than the headlines, blog content on your site is a big area to incorporate with local SEO in your geo-pages.
Geo-pages are landing pages centered around your specific service area (or farming area) that become a top search on search engines when enough prospects read your blog posts.
Keeping our Des Moines example in mind, an excellent local SEO geo-page you can write on your site for the blog page would be: How to Sell Your Home In Des Moines, Iowa.
Another one could be: Tips for Selling Your Home Fast in Des Moines, Iowa.
As you can see, there are endless ways to use your realtor site to benefit your business. Other than using your headings and blogs to include local SEO, another way to make the most of your site is with a contact form on the front page.
Contact forms are a great way to garner leads fast since it asks them to include their name and contact information for your to keep to reach back out to them in the future if they aren’t ready to take the first step in their real estate journey when they first inquire.
7. Social Media Ads
The great thing about using social media to market your services is that, like SEO, you can use ads to target a specific region.
Some platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, allow you to create paid ads that send these advertisements to an audience in your chosen geographical area, but there are other ways you can mimic this feature without paying for it.
For instance, local SEO comes into play by putting specific keywords and location-based keywords in your content.
There are other features on social media too such as geo-tagging that allows you to tag your posts in a specific area so audiences find it that are in the same location.
8. Direct Marketing Materials
Not every tool you need for your real estate farming strategy has to be one that’s digital.
You can incorporate a direct marketing campaign into your farming strategy, and the best tool for this is direct marketing materials.
Even in 2024, homeowners are still happy recipients of memorable directing marketing mailers that catch their attention.
By sending these out to homeowners in your farming area, you’ll be reminding them constantly of your services and showing them open houses in their area that could be of interest to them, and lead them to signing with you.
9. Block Parties
Another non-digital real estate farming tool you need to add to your list is block parties.
Block parties, hosted by you, are a powerful way to level-up your real estate business since it actually puts you in a neighborhood or other area of your geographical real estate farm, which then allows you to meet a plethora of potential clients.
When planning a block party to use as a real estate tool, consider the following to make the most out of your campaign:
- Goal: What’s the goal of the block party? Is it to introduce yourself and your services to the area? Showcase a neighborhood that contains a few of your listings? Land a few buyers? Knowing the goal beforehand gives you insight on who to target.
- Serve Food: It should be obvious, but one way to make your block party stand out is to serve food for guests. Though it’s truly an investment, consider having your block party catered to really stand out amongst your guests.
- Spread the Word: Let your guests know about the block party weeks in advance by posting about it on social media, sending a reminder via email, hanging up flyers, or mailing out postcards.
- Gather Contact Information: As you host your block party and begin to meet those in your area, make sure you have a sign-up sheet available for prospects to leave their names and contact information for you to use later.
- Film Content: Show off your awesome block party on social media by posting highlights or a live story. This marketing campaign will catch the eyes of prospects and appear as appreciative to those who came.
Pro tip: Use Cole Realty Resource to identify potential attendees in your target neighborhood and send personalized invitations to increase turnout at your block party.
Conclusion
Adding tools to your real estate farming strategy can make the workload easier and more efficient.
By streamlining the process and creating eye-catching marketing materials, you’ll be well on your way to tilling the best real estate farm in your service area, and find the right prospects to target.
Ready to take your real estate farming strategy to the next level?
Cole Realty Resource offers a powerful prospect finder tool that can help you identify and reach the right homeowners in your target area. With custom search criteria, access to real cell phones and emails, and the ability to create custom Facebook audiences, you’ll be able to list more homes and stay ahead of the competition.
Don’t waste time chasing the same leads as everyone else. Try Cole Realty Resource today and discover how easy it can be to find the homeowners most likely to list with you.
