I built my first real estate company on the back of a monthly newsletter.
Before we go further, I should give a little more background on my original newsletter. It was 12-pages long. I wrote the majority of the newsletter myself. It was an extremely time consuming monthly project. I would estimate that the newsletter required 30 to 40 hours of time each month from start to finish.
Here are a few of the goals I had with my original newsletter:
1. To lock clients to my business. I had a large team of agents and wanted to ensure clients stayed with my business when agents left. There is obviously a great deal of turnover in our business and my mission was to keep the clients regardless of the agents on my team.
2. To position myself as an expert. Expert position makes selling homes a great deal easier. It allows you to control your time and your commission rate. I worked hard to earn this positioning.
3. To create new passive income streams into the business. These streams included affiliate products, other side businesses I had started, and new services we offered within my real estate company.
There were other goals buried within my newsletter, but these three were always primary. Today, as I get back into real estate, I’m rethinking the newsletter and will be using a different approach going forward.
The main problem with my original newsletter is that it didn’t offer much leverage. I couldn’t reuse, or recycle, the newsletter once it was sent out to our clients. The time and effort invested couldn’t be reused in the future as the newsletter was locked in the past month(s).
Since my goals are different today, my new approach for the newsletter is as follows:
1. To create an “evergreen” sales asset that can be used going forward for lead generation and conversion.
2. To sell a specific property and collect a commission.
3. To create an awesome automatic follow-up campaign for all new leads generated.
The basic idea is to prepare a new newsletter “report” each month. The new report is jam packed with content and highlights a specific investment opportunity within my marketplace. This investment opportunity is a home that represents a good value based upon the main theme of the report. The report would be delivered to my database just like a newsletter would. Since the report is jam packed with content, it has the same impact as the monthly newsletter would typically have.
However, the “report” could then also be used as a new lead generation and conversion tool going forward. I would simply prepare new lead generation advertisements offering this new report for free. These new advertisements would be put into action through the normal marketing channels of Facebook, Google Adwords, etc.
As this process moves forward, I would have a new marketing campaign to leverage each month. Each new marketing campaign would bring a consistent flow of new leads and clients. The process all starts with the targeted client I want to attract. Here are a few quick examples:
1. First time buyer
2. Investor looking for multi-family properties
3. Investor looking to buy single family rentals
4. Sellers who can’t sell their homes
5. Investors looking to achieve financial freedom
6. Luxury home buyers
Each month, I select a new target client and write a great content report. The new content report is sent to the database and it’s also turned into a new marketing campaign to attract and convert the selected “targeted” client. These new marketing campaigns can be turned on or off depending on the flow of sales and their effectiveness.
In addition, the prior months “report” can be used to setup an amazing automatic follow-up campaign to these new leads. Someone requesting this month’s report will also receive the prior month’s reports over time as the follow-up campaign is delivered to them via email. Since these “reports” are jam packed with great content, the emails will be opened instead of instantly deleted.
As I write this article, I am about finished with my 3rd report. Once complete, I’ll send this report to my database. I’ll also create new lead generation advertisements and will put them into play within the next week.
While this 3rd report is in process, I am now personally working with clients attracted by the first two reports. I am also currently still generating new leads from the two marketing campaigns offering these two previous reports for free.
Although I’m early in the process of this new newsletter approach, I can actually feel the compounding of this marketing. Each report continues working for me attracting new clients with each passing month.
As you start to think about your goals for 2015, consider shifting your “newsletter” to targeted content reports. I think you’ll enjoy the lift your business receives with each passing month as your marketing efforts compound over time.
8 replies to "Rethinking the Monthly Newsletter?"
Rob, curious, how you define the difference between a news letter and a report. It seems similar. Is the difference in that you are writing more ‘evergreen’ content that can be used over and over again, vs a more time specific format?
Is the distinction that each month you write a report towards a specific audience with useful content, that report can be sent to your regular database as the latest monthly report, even if it isn’t an area they are interested in, and additionally it can be used to generate leads specific to that report?
When you say “The new report is jam packed with content and highlights a specific investment opportunity within my marketplace” are you talking about a specific type of investment or a specific property for sale at that time?
Thanks
Kevin
Rob
First, a quick thank you for your work. Back a few years ago, your marketing ideas were some of the best and I used them to make a lot of money. Still do… Thank you.
One of the biggest issues I see in marketing today, is that many marketers give away free consulting- by mistake, in the name of providing content they think their client needs in order to convert them to revenue events.
In real estate brokerage, I have found that if I follow a simple marketing doctrine, I don’t get tempted to provide too much free consulting. I market to generate a lead in order to convert that to a face to face appointment. That’s it.
As part of my sales process, I work off the doctrine that I am looking to disqualify a prospect rather than trying to sign them up for something. (Years ago, I invested a lot of time and money in the Sandler Selling system which I cant say enough good things about.)
If you are operating as a solo agent, you must be mindful that your cost of services in terms of the time you spend putting a deal together is largely the same. So doing a $80K rental house or a $800K apartment takes nearly the same amount of time. What I am talking about here is really pipeline management. As a result, it is wise to market to generate leads to fill your pipeline with the types of deals that will give you your volume requirement in terms of deal size and number of transactions.
In the past, I have generated great leads, converted them and ended up with a stable full of small deals that because extremely time intensive and yielded small fees. Conversely, I have had years where I had a much smaller pool of closings that generated the same fees or even more. The latter leaves you with way more free time….
However, since some of the lead generating activities are so easy and simple and provide such great lead flow for smaller deal sizes, it seems crazy to walk away from that low hanging fruit. As a result, I started referring these smaller deals that did not fit my pipeline to other agents. The result was great in that I still generated a fee without doing all of the heavy lifting on a small deal.
Id be interested in hearing your thoughts on free consulting and pipeline management in the future.
Would you be open to sharing your latest newsletter?
Great question. I am putting the finishing touches on the third one today. It is pretty specific to my market, but could probably be edited for other areas. I have received many emails asking if I would be selling these monthly reports. To be honest I haven’t put much thought into it. I would want to include the lead generation advertisements too. I’ll think about it.
Rob,
I love this idea. You could also put the monthly “theme” in an envelope and add an auido CD interview on the topic to use for a Referral Kit. The Referral Kit could be handed our by your current clients or partners that have a referral for you, but do not know how to position you. Would be great for networking groups such as BNI, rotary, chamber, etc.
The CD or podcast interview would definitely be a great way to kick this idea up a notch!
A great idea…will look to implement that idea asap!
Carlos
Always find your info very helpful and thought provoking……thank you!!