Hello hello and welcome back to the women rocking real estate podcast, I’m your host Jen Percival and I am so grateful that you’ve tuned in today.

We’ve only got 2 more episodes before we wrap up 2019 and head into next year and I’ve got some exciting stuff planned. I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I’ll read a book or listen to a podcast and I get so inspired to implement what I’ve learned and I’m really good for a little while and then I slowly start reverting back to my old habits and feeling less inspired and motivated and I need another pick me up. Well I’m going to be launching a new daily video series in January called Morning Motivation minute and I’ll be releasing a quick video everyday with a message to get you motivated, refreshed and feeling inspired to have a productive day with an intentional focus on something. Who can’t find a minute to get their day started off on the right foot, so I hope you’ll make it a daily habit to watch in 2020. You’ll be able to find them on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

Alright, let’s jump into today’s episode.
If you’re a realtor who is tired of not knowing where your next deal is coming from and is wanting more predictability and stability in your business, then you already know that online marketing is the answer.

Creating a successful online marketing strategy is the key tipping point that will allow you to leverage your time, impact more people and grow your business.

If you want to say goodbye to old school tactics forever and make the ultimate shift from struggling to generate consistent business and feeling uncertain of what you should be doing…. to automating consistent leads in your sleep. Then online marketing is how you can do it.

Even though the reasons to pursue online marketing are obvious, the path to doing it successfully is anything but.

Perhaps you’ve made the commitment to try and have been posting daily on social media and occasionally written a blog and boosted a few listings on Facebook. But even with the best intentions, most Realtors who haven’t been taught online marketing strategies end up executing the strategies inconsistently, allowing competitors to swoop in and make inroads while they remain sidelined.

Here’s why most realtors abandon the implementation. Without a super clear, step by step roadmap, most get completely lost. They fall victim to the paralyzing tech hangups, a time-sucking sticking point or lack of clarity over exactly what they need to do next to to start generating online leads.

Here’s why this is irreversibly crippling. As an already busy realtor with clients to serve, you literally can’t afford to veer off course. And the moment you get lost with your online marketing efforts, it’s almost impossible to recover. Therefore creating and executing an online marketing strategy is one of the few things in your business that you need to get right the first time. And luckily for you, there are actually very few realtors out there doing it right. In all likelihood, your competitors have either failed at creating an online marketing strategy or they’ve created something that is ineffective and not generating business.

Which means, even if you’re late to the party, there’s still a golden opportunity for you to jump in and start automating leads in your sleep. That is if you can avoid the same deadly online marketing mistakes that your competitors are making.

So today we’re going to be talking about the 5 Mistakes Most Realtors are Making with their Online Marketing efforts so that you can avoid them and never have to hunt for business again.
That’s where I got to and that’s what I want to teach you today.

Mistake #1 – Not Understanding How Online Marketing Actually Works

Mistake number one is not understanding how online marketing actually works. Online Marketing is not doing random ‘things’ like writing a blog or posting on social media, or sending out a newsletter or boosting a listing on Facebook. Doing things randomly and haphazardly will not generate business for you. Instead, online marketing is about having a strategy to build your local authority and then using a variety of tools to consistently amplify that message across different platforms. It is about building brand awareness first, then consideration and ultimately conversion and you can’t do that by randomly doing things here and there. You know the saying any publicity is good publicity? Well that doesn’t apply with online marketing. Just doing anything, is not beneficial. If you’re not doing it properly, you’re wasting your time and money.

So how do you do it properly, well that goes beyond the scope of this episode, but if you’re interested in learning more, I walk you through my exact 5-step formula in my Free Online Marketing masterclass which I hold a few times a year. You can sign up to be notified when the next webinar will be open for registration.

Mistake #2 – Not Owning Your Assets

Alright moving along to mistake number two that Realtors often make with their online marketing efforts and that is not owning their assets. When it comes to online marketing, your biggest asset is your website. That is the hub of your authority building content and when you create unique, valuable and relevant evergreen content on there, it has the potential to generate leads for years to come .
However so many agents fall victim to the easy route and they essentially rent a website from either their brokerage or a third party provider, instead of building a website that they own.

It’s kinda like renting vs owning. As a realtor you know it’s usually better to own your home and grow equity vs. Renting and paying your landlord to build their equity right?

Websites are the same thing. You need to own, not rent and then you need to use your site to establish your authority through content that is unique to you. When you do it this way, you start to generate your own leads, instead of having to buy them.

Imagine a scenario where you’ve got a brokerage provided website and you spend years creating content that has great search engine optimization and it’s generating regular leads for you….and then you decide to change brokerages and you lose your website and all that content and all that search indexing and all those leads and you have to start from scratch all over again.

Always own your assets, especially your website. The easy route is definitely not the best route when it comes to websites. Short term pain for amazing long term gain, not to mention the fact that it’s not nearly as hard or expensive as you think. You can build a gorgeous real estate website from scratch very affordably.

Mistake #3 – Not Being Consistent

Moving along, to mistake number 3 which is probably the most common one and that is not being consistent with your online marketing efforts. I know that you’re busy and that your schedule can be unpredictable, but in order for your online marketing efforts to work, you must be consistent. I cannot stress this enough. If you execute haphazardly, it is all for naught.

In order for you to be consistent with your online marketing, the process you follow must be easy, fast and streamlined so that you know exactly what to do and when to do it. And then you need to commit to doing it. You have to make it non-negotiable.

One of the ways to do that is to form a habit around it. I won’t go into all of the details but there is a lot of misinformation around forming habits. Everyone thinks it takes 21 or 30 days, but there is actually zero evidence that it’s true. In fact, there are books that reference each other and they were circular references.
Everybody was referencing each other’s books about how long it takes to form a habit, but nobody had an original source.

So there is a group in Australia that actually did the research and
They found on average it takes about 66 days to form a habit which is much longer than people think and keep in mind that’s average, so for some people it takes longer.

The point is, for most people, it’s taking two to three times longer than they expect to actually have a habit stick so they stop focusing on it and giving it energy too soon; therefore, they don’t form the habit. That’s why most New Year’s resolutions fall apart in February.

So what ever online marketing efforts you decide to implement, do it consistently and have a plan to help you form a new habit around it, for a minimum of 66 days.

Mistake #4 – Relying too Heavily on Social Media

Alright, mistake number 4 that Realtors make with their online marketing efforts is relying too heavily on Social Media, particularly instagram. I think this happens because it’s probably the easiest type of online marketing you can do, so people gravitate to it. It’s finding a picture and a caption and some hashtags and you’re done right? No. There is zero value in putting content on your social media pages if there is not an intention behind it. Is it to get likes? Is it to grow your following? Is it to drive traffic to your website? If you don’t have a strategy of what you are trying to accomplish with each post, it’s not going to help you grow your business and that is ultimately why you are on there.

When we spend too much time on social media, it’s at the expense of things you should be investing more time into. As well, it goes back to mistake number 2 which was about not owning your assets. I’ll go back to the analogy of it’s kinda like renting vs owning. You are renting those platforms, you don’t own those relationships and you are at the mercy of their algorithms around getting your content out.

I heard from someone who recently installed an app that unfollowed people, when they unfollowed her – which unbeknownst to many is against Instagram’s terms of service and her account was shut down. She had over 4000 followers, but only had 150 of their email addresses. It was a devastating loss for her business. So don’t fall into that trap. Social media should only be used to amplify your marketing strategy, it should never be used as the foundation of it.

Mistake #5 – Not Investing in Affordable Advertising

Alright last but certainly not least is mistake number 5 and this one probably has the most impact on how fast you can start to see results of your online marketing efforts. It is when agents don’t invest in affordable online advertising. The only advertising that most realtors do on Facebook, is boosting listings. If you’re not using Facebook or google’s extremely powerful advertising platform to build brand awareness, consideration and conversions, you’re missing a huge opportunity to grow your business.

It’s also one of the cheapest forms of advertising. You can literally spend $5 and reach 1,000 people. To reach that same number of people by print, would cost you at least 22 times that. And you can reach your exact audience or you can retarget people who have already engaged with your business.

Don’t get me wrong, you can throw away loads of money on Facebook and google if you don’t know what you’re doing. But for those who are willing to invest some time to learn how to use the platforms properly, it can be a huge asset to your business and one that will speed up your online marketing results.

If you are interested in learning more about this stuff, make sure that you register for my FREE online marketing masterclass. You’ll walk away knowing exactly what you need to be doing and why, to start generating automated leads with online marketing. You can find the link on my website at womenrockingrealestate.com it’s right at the top of the page.

Alright ladies that brings us to the end of this episode, as always make sure you hit that subscribe button if you don’t want to miss out on any future episodes and if you’re enjoying the podcast feel free to leave a quick review. I read each and every one of them and they truly make my day.

I will see you next week and remember the more you learn the more you’ll earn.

Until next time.