Sales and Marketing Funnel

Marketing is a necessity in real estate. It works behind the scenes to build and strengthen relationships for your business. This is your typical AIDA Marketing Funnel. It illustrates the stages you have to go through in order to create clients with your marketing: Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action.

Awareness

We tend to start our marketing efforts in the awareness phase attracting prospects into the funnel. This approach works to build a client base by increasing public knowledge of you one message at a time. Since you’re creating relationships with these prospects, it takes a lot of work and resources, but long-term, the results can be very beneficial. To make the awareness stage a success, implement broad messaging where people will see your name repeatedly in a variety of formats – video, print, social media, email, billboards, bus benches, online display ads, etc. 

Interest and Desire

The interest and desire phases of the funnel often overlap because the ultimate goal is similar. You want prospects to recognize you are the person to talk to about real estate. You want them to seek you out because of what they’ve seen and heard about you. Messages are stronger in these stages and focus on your unique value proposition – what you have to offer that will solve their problems. Share your successes through information like personal sale statistics and client testimonials so people see you get the job done. You want to answer the age-old question of “What’s in it for me?” Effective mediums include personal connections, informative ads, videos, email, print, paid search, etc. You can use our Business Builders and Just Listed or Sold cards to assist in the Interest and Desire phases.

Action

With the action phase, you have the opportunity to guide people to personally connect with you and your business. Offering market comparisons, free home evaluations, personal meetings, sending Mini Mags etc. all encourage prospects to work with you. This is also where your sales prowess comes into play. Selling leads on your skills and expertise shouldn’t be that difficult if you’ve created a trustworthy relationship with them over the trek through the marketing funnel phases.

Experts state it’s about 5x more expensive to get a new customer than keep an existing one. Therefore, keep your sphere of influence (past clients) at the top of your plans when it comes to marketing. Someone who has worked with you before or knows you and your business well doesn’t have to go through the awareness or interest phases of the marketing funnel with as much guidance as a prospect. They can head straight to the action phase when they have the need. They do have to be aware of you but that comes from consistently keeping in touch with them. If you keep in touch regularly, your relationship builds and they become loyal advocates who generate repeat and referral business for you. When they refer you to someone they know, that person jumps into the desire/action phase of the funnel saving you time and resources.

Take a look at your marketing and what phase(s) of the marketing funnel you connect with. Do your messages and methods of connecting work with what you’re attempting to do?