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...

Have you ever heard of the aggregation of marginal gains? I hadn't either until I read a story about the British cycling teams winning the Tour de France. They never won the Tour de France before 2010. But their new coach, David Brailsford, challenged them to look at everything they're doing — even the smallest things — to see if there was a way to improve it.

They started with the typical things you'd look at like their diets and exercise programs. But then he went a step further — and started looking at the pillows cyclists were using, the exact time they fell asleep and woke up, their daily routines and more to give them insight into their overall training system.

They figured out that even a 1% increase in any area of efficiency would aggregate marginal gains and finally create wins.

You can do the same thing in your real estate career. You have so many different avenues you're managing, but just getting 1% better in each of these areas can create big wins for...

Want to take a lot of listings rapidly?

The trick to do this is by targeting pre-foreclosure properties. There's 2.7 million homes in America today that are in a pre-foreclosure status. That number is so high because a lot of people have applied for a forbearance due to the COVID crisis, the struggling economy, and not being able to make their house payments.

A forbearance is where the lender gives the owner an opportunity to restructure their loan so they can either move or skip payments then make a balloon payment at the end.

But a lot of people are going into default because they're not able to get caught back up.

Here's the latest numbers we found from principal economist, Yanling Mayer from CoreLogic:

39.1% of all forborne loans are now 150 days behind payment. And 25% are 180 days past due.

Now, I don't say this to scare you that we're in 2009 again. The sky is not falling — and there are many differences between the market we were in then...

50% of clients can't remember their agent's name 6 months after closing.

In order to avoid falling into that group, you need a system of steps to follow after closing that captures people for the long haul. In this video, I'm going to explain four strategies to do this and reveal a simple system you can implement today. It's called the "3-7-30-1 System" and it will make it impossible to be forgotten by your clients.

The 3 stands for Day 3 After Closing.

We already know we should provide a closing gift and ask for reviews and recommendations after closing. That's not what we're talking about today. Instead, we're talking about having a follow-up system that makes it impossible to forget you.

So on Day 3, you want to call or text your clients and say, "Hey, I just want to follow up with you since it's been a few days since we closed. Often my clients find that if things are going to go wrong, they go wrong in the first weeks of ownership. Because of...

Do you know anybody who owns a vacation rental or a property in a place where people come to vacation frequently? There's some good news around vacation rentals and second home sales right now. Studies are showing that vacation rentals have seen a 44% gain in sales from last year.

For those of you who live in these areas, whether there are vacation rental possibilities or vacation home ownership possibilities, make a point of reaching out and farming those communities and pointing out the good news.

You could say, "A new study just came out showing that there's been a 44% increase in sales and in the market for vacation homes and 2nd Homes. Crazy question would you consider selling your home for the right price? If so, I'd love to have a conversation with you about how we can get you a premium price in this market. Give me a call, text, or direct message today."

That simple message could be a social media post, an email, a text, or a phone call. Remember, we can access those phone...

The number one way to attract clients is with high quality inventory. So what happens when you are low on inventory?

Borrow a Listing

Of course you can borrow one from your own office colleagues, which is a common technique, but you can also borrow cooperating agents listings as well. To expand this concept you might target some of the top teams in your market and give them a phone call by saying:

"Hey, I'm looking to do some open houses this weekend, I know you have some great listings. Would you be open to allowing me to do an open house on one of your listings?"

You might be surprised to find that even though they have buyers agents sometimes these buyers agents are already busy, or they don't have enough manpower to do all the open houses they need to based on their listing inventory.

For Sale by Owner Open Houses

Another opportunity, which is really outside the box is to call For Sale by Owners in your market with this quick script:

"I have an out of the box question for...

What is a mini brochure card?

These are over-sized business card sized brochures which feature a couple pictures of your listing, a few key bullet points, along with the price and address of the home. On the reverse side of the card is your contact information in the form of a traditional business card.

How do you use a Mini-Brochure Card for marketing and lead generation?

First when you take a listing provide these cards to your sellers as a way for them to provide information about their listing to family and friends. You might say:

"I am providing you with a stack of mini-brochures to provide to family and friends. I like to cover all bases with my marketing. The card has a link to my website so they see the virtual tour and HD photos."

The cards not only market the home, they market you as the listing agent. In addition they could go into a flyer box and be used at open houses. Another use for a mini-brochure is to use them when talking to the neighborhood, for...

Looking for a new strategy to start conversations with homeowners around your new listings - try this amazing technique that starts the conversation before you put a sign up in the neighborhood. This strategy will make your phone ring with more appointments and opportunities!

I picked up a tip from my marketing director, Tiffany Wilkerson. She had a flyer delivered to her mailbox. It came from a tree trimming company. This company was going to do some work in the neighborhood, but before they arrived, they sent a mailing to everybody in the neighborhood announcing that they were going to be coming soon to the area.

I thought it was a brilliant idea.

It said very simply: "Hey, my company's logging crew will be doing tree work near your home in the next week or so. If you have a large tree, multiple trees need to be removed, trimmed or need clearing work done, this would be a great time to save on that project. Please call me now for a free estimate." And then it had a handwritten...

When you have a listing that goes pending or sells most agents do a just sold or just pended postcard to the neighborhood, which is a great idea because it can trigger people to make a call to you.  But recently I heard a great twist on this approach which I thought was brilliant. 

This agent still did a postcard but he tied it back to his last open house. What he said on the headline of his postcard was this "At my last open house. I had 27 attendees and this house just went pending. All of those buyers are still looking in your neighborhood. Please give me a call. If you have any interest in selling."

What a brilliant concept because it ties the message to urgency and the last marketing you did for the house, which was an open house. Plus it shows off that you are getting results and you have real world buyers that are interested.

If we printed it out every transaction you've done over the last 12 months, you would likely see clusters in your production. This means you would see transactions that are done relatively close together, then a gap, then another set of closings, then a gap, and so on.

Why do we have gaps in production?

The answer is because we have gaps in lead generation. We get busy and we stop lead generating and every single time we say to ourselves, "I've made it. I don't have to lead generate anymore."

I know I've been there. And then we run out of escrows. So we panic and scramble, we quickly begin lead generating, and the cycle continues and continues and continues.

But this approach to your business creates anxiety. It creates stress. It creates turmoil in your business, and it's not a great way to run your business, or live your life.

The good news is we can eliminate those gaps. If we do something really simple and you already know what it is - we need to lead generate every...