What is educational marketing?

Educational marketing is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to build trust and unlock more buyers and sellers for your business.

But how do you do it?

Well, you got to understand that a lot of expert marketers use what's called "The Curiosity Gap." That's where you pose a question or you put a statement out there and then it makes people curious about knowing the answer.

Now we fall into this curiosity gap all the time — from headlines to news soundbites that are trying to get you to watch the news at six o'clock, book covers, wine labels, and all kinds of things create curiosity in us. But when we look at our knowledge quest as human beings, we're always driven by not knowing and the power of wanting to know what we don't know, right?

So here's an example of this:

One of my good friends, Scott Lewis, a superstar realtor that I work with put this post out. And it was simply about the...

Something interesting that you might find surprising that it relates to real estate, but fertility rates in the US have gone down dramatically over the last hundred years. In America today, we've actually had another 1% decrease.

We have the lowest birth rates than we've had in a hundred years.

Here are the numbers:

For every 1000 women in America aged between 15 and 44, there's 58.3 births. And you compare this to World War Two, when all the baby boomers were born, that number was more closer to 140 births! So huge difference in the numbers.

Now, how does this relate to real estate? I'm going to share with you now. Here is the the data today:

Looking at buyers who have children under the age of 18 in the home, the share of that group has declined from 58% in 1985, all the way down to 33% in 2020. So there's a much smaller group of people buying homes. It's actually the minority, not the majority, who have kids under 18 at home.

So you need to...

You are sitting on one of the best CRMs on earth — but you probably know that.

Facebook is absolutely your best CRM on earth. And then Instagram comes second and LinkedIn is third.

All of these social media platforms give us an insight into what's happening in people's lives.

Now how do you use that information? A lot of us just get up, drink our coffee every morning and scroll through social media meaninglessly. But you don't actually look at it as a CRM.

I want you to look at your social media differently. Look at it like it's a CRM Strategy Feed.

That means, I want you to look for "life changes" — meaning new jobs, new babies, retirements, and college graduations. Or people that are sick or going on vacation. There are many different scenarios where people have life changes — even divorces and engagements.

There's so many different life changes that people go through and today it's all public. Every single thing is public.

Now, when...

You learn something new every day in real estate. Even after 31 years in this business, I'm still learning.

I learned something fascinating this morning based on a study from Zillow:

In the last half of 2020, the number of listings taken week by week were about even with 2019.

There's a sense that there's a lot less listings in the market as a result of of us not taking as many listings, but it's just not true.

In the last half of 2020, we've taken as many listings as a nation as we did in 2019. But it doesn't feel like that.

So why doesn't it feel like that?

It's like if you own a grocery store and had a delivery guy come every Friday to fill your shelves with the same order. But what has changed is the number of buyers walking into your grocery store and how many products they're buying each time they come in.

If more buyers are coming into your store and buying more products from your shelves, it's going to seem like there's not as much on the shelves...

8.9 Million people in the United States have moved during the pandemic. What's interesting is when you dive deep into those numbers. 85% of those folks have moved outside of Metro markets or moved away from Metro markets. They're moving into suburban and rural markets instead.

According to the United States Postal Service, large cities lost the most people during the first seven months of the pandemic. They're seeing people move out of some of the most populated areas and relocating to the suburbs or rural markets.

Now, what does that mean to us? That means that we have an opportunity. There's a seismic shift happening in the real estate market and the real estate world may never be the same. We should be leveraging this as an opportunity. Maybe one of the biggest opportunities we ever have in our real estate career is happening right now in 2021. The market is shifting.

So how can you leverage this? One way is by focusing yourself around relocation....

So one question that you might be getting occasionally from buyers is "I'm going to wait until we see a lot more foreclosures hitting the market...I know they're coming."

A couple of stats that has been recently reported in thew news is that 12% of mortgages across the country had recently been delinquent. Buyers see the headline and naturally assume we are heading back to a 2009 kind of market cycle where there's going to be a ton of foreclosures.

That's not true. Why? Because this is a completely different market environment. 

The first reason reasons we won't see a massive surge in foreclosures is because of the CARES Act, which was created in response to the COVID pandemic. The CARES Act includes a provision which forces lenders to offer forbearance to people that are in financial trouble. Forbearance allows borrowers to skips payments for a period of time or pay interest only payments. It started with a 180 days and it's now been extended for another 180 days. So a...

The National Association of REALTORS recently conducted a study of buyer types and one group has accelerated to become the clear winner in purchasing housing.

While it's easy to throw money at marketing that may or may not be effective savvy agents go where the data takes them. Watch the video to learn three ways to quickly target today's biggest buyer pool as well as which group of buyers is shrinking quickly.

Will you discount your fees so I can buy this house? 

A conversation that is happening more and more frequently is when a buyer asks you to reduce or remove your buyer side commission on your listing and pass the savings on to them. 

Their argument is that they will simply "represent themselves". Of course the reality is that you will still be the one writing the offer, negotiating the sale, opening escrow, arranging financing, attending inspections, negotiating inspections, attending the appraisal, and attending to a million other unforeseen bumps along the way until you reach a successful closing. 

So how do you respond to this request? Watch this quick video for three scripts to use in the field. 

Do you need more leads, more listings, more buyers, and more closings? 

Explore Mastery Classes:

• Open House Mastery 
• For Sale by Owner Mastery
• Expired Listing Mastery
• Sphere of Influence Mastery
• Business to Business Lead Generation Mastery

Weekly...

Have you ever wondered what buyers and sellers think about the market? 

Inside the quarterly HOME Survey from the National Association of REALTORS we learn the answers. This quarterly report reflects consumer feelings about the housing market. It includes views on housing as a good financial investment, whether home ownership is part of the American Dream, if now is a good time to buy or sell a home, and perception of home price changes.

You can read the whole report by clicking this link:

https://www.nar.realtor/homeownership-opportunities-and-market-experience-survey/2019-q2-homeownership-opportunities-and-market-experience-home-survey

You can also watch this quick video and see how Jim not only breaks down some of the numbers but provides scripts for talking with both buyers and sellers!

Do you need more leads, more listings, more buyers, and more closings? 

Explore Mastery Classes:

• Open House Mastery 
• For Sale by Owner Mastery
• Expired Listing Mastery
• Sphere...

According to a recent study by Trulia.com - "Among the 100 largest U.S. metros, conditions in 50 are now shifting in favor of buyers, a ten-fold increase from just five metros a year ago. They determined this shift by examining an average of three buyer/seller balance-of-power indicators and analyzing how they’ve changed in the last year (from January 2018 to January 2019): the share of listings with at least one price cut, the monthly median days on market, and the sales-to-list price ratio (how a home’s final selling price compares to its list price). All three have shifted in favor of buyers.

This shift also shows up in other common housing metrics. Homes sitting on the market longer, for example, can also help push up monthly measures of inventory because home shoppers can count on listings remaining active for longer, giving them more options at any given time.

The shift in favor of buyers is also happening where home values have risen the most over the past six...