How to Create the Perfect Real Estate Marketing and Lead Cultivation Platform (a Tutorial) - Part 2

Last week, I shared part one of building the perfect real estate marketing and lead cultivation platform. If you missed part one of my article, you can read it by clicking here.

Let's pick right up where we left off and address the last four critical considerations related to the creation of this platform.

4) It has to be multi-channel

It might be enticing to just find one great product (a mass email tool, for instance) because it does take time to research and select many different tools. But never lose sight of the fact that there is no "one size fits all" type of marketing vehicle. This is because there is no one type of homeowner in the world. Everyone responds to different things.

To have a truly successful platform, you must have a little bit of everything. You want to have a comprehensive platform that includes email marketing, text messaging, print marketing, inbound marketing and social media.

5) Data integration (across all platforms) is KEY

No matter where your leads are coming from (your website, your broker's website, your email system, Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, open houses, etc.), ALL data must flow seamlessly into your platform in an automated fashion. If you have to manually do any data input, you do not have a good platform. This is a critical step and there is no wiggle room here.

6) Acquisition is important. Analysis is CRITICAL

You have spent a bunch of time and money in the hopes of getting visitors to your site. Once you acquire the visitors, being able to analyze their behaviors and being able to use that information to further assess their needs is critical. Make sure you have proper analytics tools built into your system that will do this. This means going way, way deeper than a tool like Google Analytics can offer you.

For instance, you want to be able to track and be notified whenever a lead comes back to your website. You want to be able to track all the listings they are looking at when they are on your website. You want to be able to even track things like how many leads are signing up for listing searches off of banner ad clicks vs. organic search, or what percentage of mobile users are sharing listings with their friends vs. desktop users. You want to be able to ask a question about your leads and prospects and easily get the answer.

All these things are valuable as they will guide how you create content and where you create it.

7) Don't lose sight of your main objective

Granted, this is just a brief overview of how to put together a pretty complex, end-to-end platform. Even so, I am sure you can see that this can become very intricate, time consuming and possibly expensive. While you are spending all your time researching and building out this platform, remember not to lose sight of what your main objective is and always should be--selling homes!

You have to sell homes. Nobody will take care of you and keep you in business except yourself. While it might be fun to research, learn and implement all these things, for many agents it's not feasible, practical or financially viable. If you fall into that category, there is no shame in this. Just recognize it and look for pre-packaged all-in-one platforms that might solve your needs.

In closing

Truth be told, there are many "all-in-one" platforms out there. I like to think that by having a dedicated concierge agent at your disposal, and by making our system run on the same, easy to use and understand interface, across ALL your devices, ours happens to be the best. Whether you choose to go with our Concierge Platform, choose to build your own, or go with another third party, keep this list of necessities in mind to ensure you get the right platform and you grow your business faster than you ever imagined possible.

To view the original article, visit the Leading Agent blog.