I have found that all too often, realtors make referral marketing way to hard. They seem to block hours and hours out of their schedules so that they can cold call clients that they sold a house for 8 years ago, when the truth is, the clients probably don’t even remember the realtors name.
I think at this point, everyone knows that cold email marketing doesn’t work either, because that is absolutely the least personal way that you can contact someone, and lets be honest, texting them is weird.
When it comes to referral marketing as a realtor, you want every single client that you work with to know you on a personal level, that way they have enough trust in you to refer you to the people that they know and love. Are they going to refer someone that didn’t do that great of a job, or that they didn’t even get to know that well? No, duh. So the real success when it comes to asking your past clients for referrals is to make sure that you did a good enough job of keeping in touch with them after the service that they feel like they know and trust you.
For the length that I have worked with realtors, I’ve come to know that it is much different than any other industry. There is a certain level of warmth and comradery it takes to achieve receiving referrals from your clients as a realtor, because even though it is a very expensive buy, it’s not the same as buying and selling a car. Most of the time, buying or selling a home is the highest amount of money a person will make or spend in their lifetime, and when you are looking for someone to make that process as easy as it can be, you want someone that you can trust. It doesn’t matter who you buy a shirt from, it does matter who you hire to sell your home.
When someone is actively looking for a realtor, 9 times out of 10 they are going to ask their closest friends and relatives who they used for their own process, and you want to make sure that in that moment, those clients remember your name. How will you make sure that your clients from 8 years ago don’t forget your name? Is it going to be through that one thank you card that you sent them 2 weeks after you helped them buy their home? No. Is it going to be vague Christmas card that they sent you one year? Nope. Is it going to be because of that weird voicemail they left you randomly out of no where a couple of years ago because they just can’t remember to follow up? Absolutely not. Is it going to be the automated emails that you send them once a month? Hell no! Those go straight to their spam and I promise you that they never see them.
The way that you perform your referral marketing is vital to how well you do business, and if you aren’t asking for referrals, well, good luck.