Real Estate Geo Farming For Absolute Beginners

Real estate geo farming is a technique used by agents to help target leads in specific areas and regions. Also referred to as geographic farming, geo-retargeting, or simply farming, the tactic helps to set up specific parameters to target buyers and sellers in a set area. Let’s look into some of the benefits of real estate geo farming and how to incorporate it as an agent. 

Why Is Real Estate Geo Farming So Beneficial?

Geo farming allows real estate agents to target more specific areas than they would be able to with other methods like advertisements. Farming gives real estate agents the ability to target and focus their marketing efforts on locations they are experts in. This means that the time, energy, and funds you put towards marketing will be more focused and targeted toward leads. 

Specific listings allow you to find your exact target audience. For example, the generic listing of “Homes For Sale” will generate lots of traffic but necessarily those particular to the area you serve. If you hone into more specific listings like “Florida Homes For Sale” or “Miami Homes For Sale”, you’ll start to funnel through to more specific target audiences. If you make a very specific listing by geo farming, you’ll end up with a very specific listing such as “Homes For Sale 3 miles From Miami City Center”. The people clicking this listing know what they want and your listing is directly targeted to them. 

Niching Down And Why It Matters

Niching down is vital to the success of real estate agents. Like any other trade or industry, having a niche makes you incredibly valuable. It means your skills, expertise, and experience all center around a specific location so your efforts are more targeted. All the time and energy that goes into marketing is then focused on the most desired audience for leads. 

Finding A Niche Is Vital

Finding a niche will help you accelerate on the road to successful transactions. Your niche will make you an expert on a specific location and a trustworthy agent for those in the area. If you are still deciding, look at the areas and clientele with which you’ve had the most success. Chances are this is a great place to start when looking to establish a real estate niche. 

5 Niches You Should Be Farming

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Cost-Effectiveness Of Niches

Getting the word out about your real estate business costs money. Whether through bench ads, social media ads, or mailers, you have to spend money to make a name for yourself. If you target a large area, you’ll spend a lot of money making sure your marketing reaches far and wide. This is not cost-effective. Focusing on a specific area or niching down saves you significant money on marketing while helping to ensure your efforts to connect are reaching the right people. 

Tailored Content

Niching down and focusing on a specific target area and audience opens the doors for tailored content. When you are marketing to a wider area, it requires you to be more general in your approach so the content applies to everyone. With smaller and more specific regions, your content becomes more tailored to the people you are looking to target and market to. 

Tailored content will help yield better results as far as attracting leads with a greater conversion rate. For example, marketing for homes for sale in an entire state will apply to a large audience even if your listings don’t meet their needs. If you market for homes in a small 5-mile radius, the people who engage with your marketing efforts are significantly more likely to find something they like among your listings. Tailored content also decreases the competition you face in getting your marketing efforts noticed online. 

How To Start Real Estate Geo Farming

Coming up with a plan for real estate farming will help increase the probability of success. There are many ways to tackle geo farming once you establish a niche and come up with a plan. Let’s look into some of the ways you can implement geo farming as a real estate agent. 

Starting Small

Focus on a single area you want to work with and then work your way up. If you go too big, you’ll miss the benefits of real estate geo farming. This is part of the reason why establishing a real estate niche is so important. A niche is inherently specific which will allow you to make the tailored content marketed to the right group of people. 

Gaining Traction

Once you’ve established a specific target area for geo farming and start gaining traction, you can start implementing the farming technique in new areas. This way you will be able to farm multiple locations with this niching down method. Starting small is always best as it keeps things manageable and gives you a strong foundation from which to grow. 

Using Websites For Geo Farming

Your website is one of the most powerful tools for you to use as a real estate agent. Posting the right content and using various search engine optimization techniques helps your website perform well and get seen by your target audience. By establishing a niche, you have less competition and can get your website to show up for the neighborhoods you are farming. Geo farming with your website in this way can help you generate leads very quickly. This guide is very helpful for improving ranks for your website’s pages on Google.

Benefits

Once you establish your website and get it performing well, it will help establish you as a local authority figure for real estate in that area. One of the biggest benefits of using your website in your real estate farming efforts is that the page will continue to work for you after you stop working on it. The content and pages will continuously get you traffic and leads. 

How To Set Up A Website For Geo Farming

Setting up your website for geo farming takes some methodology but will help generate leads quickly. The first thing you’ll want to do is set up a website, or a LeadSite by Easy Agent PRO. Once the website is established, you’ll want to create relevant pages for the areas you’d like to rank in. This is where your niche comes in. 

Neighborhoods and small districts work particularly well for building content pages on your website. For the most part, it is best to avoid cities or towns, unless you feel confident you don’t have much competition and can rank for these more competitive areas. Once everything is set up, you’ll want to share your website and content across social media to generate more traffic and leads. 

Use Direct Mail For Geo Farming

While it does seem like everything has moved to the internet, direct mail is still used for geo farming and it still works. As you may have noticed from experience in the real estate market, relationships and connections are everything when it comes to generating and converting leads. Direct mail is a great way to achieve this. 

Benefits

Direct mail opens up opportunities for referrals from local leaders as well as opportunities to build SEO backlinks from websites from local organizations. Neighborhoods and communities often rely on the same agents that they trust. Establishing yourself in the community through direct mail helps you build valuable connections and trust in the communities you serve as an agent. 

How To Set Up Direct Mail For Geo Farming

Geo farming with direct mail involves sending postcards, letters, or mailers to local community leaders. These include heads of neighborhood organizations, community organizers, residents, and anyone else who may influence the community. Connecting with the right people will help build your reputation as a local authority and trustworthy agent. 

Once you’ve started to build a relationship, foster the connection through meet-ups for coffee or lunch or helping to sponsor community events. Take an opportunity to establish yourself as an active community member. 

Template Ideas

Two methods for direct mail include communicating with those who have just listed their homes as well as neighbors to properties that have recently sold. Reaching out to these people is a great way to establish connections and build relationships with leads. Here are a few ideas of how to word each communication method:

• For Just Listed Properties:
  • “Hi, I’m Jane Doe with XZY Real Estate, and your neighbor’s home was just listed by us. Have you seen the sign in the front yard?” Pause and wait for them to respond: “Awesome! Well, our real estate company is 100% committed to trying everything to get listings sold, and we know that the majority of the time a purchaser of a new listing is often a friend of someone in the community. Do you know of anyone looking to buy or sell real estate in the near future?”
• For Sold and Geo Farming:
  • “Hi again! It’s Jane Doe with XZY Real Estate calling back, and I’m excited to say that your neighbor’s home was just sold. But there is a problem. I’ve generated so much interest while marketing their home that there are now several very motivated buyers wanting to move into this neighborhood. Do you know of anyone considering selling their property in the near future?”

Social Media Farming

Social media is an undeniably vital part of marketing and real estate these days. Using it well will help generate leads. Make sure to link social media back to your website and listings to help generate traffic and build connections. Here are some of the most common platforms and how to use them for geo farming:

Pinterest

Use Pinterest to create a community space for those in the neighborhood. Build content based on the interests in your local neighborhood and invite local leaders and residents to be a part of this virtual space. 

YouTube

YouTube is great for tours of neighborhood attractions. Link YouTube content back to your website or other social media pages to generate organic traffic for potential leads. 

Twitter

Twitter hashtags are a great way to tap into the online conversation about local neighborhoods. Join in on the conversation and post about the area to help build connections and generate leads. Check out this guide for automated posts to stay consistent and part of the conversation. 

Facebook

Facebook groups act as a valuable space for community discussions and connecting with residents. Join the conversation to establish yourself in the community and meet locals. 

Working Your Way Up For Successful Real Estate Geo Farming

Working your way up is key to successful farming. Focus on communities you already know and highlight the things about each community that you love. Knowing the community gives you a leg up in successfully acquiring leads and marketing to the right people. Make sure to secure a solid foundation before working your way into new communities so you can establish yourself as a local expert. Over time, leads will start connecting with you because you’re their preferred choice for an agent and have a solid reputation and presence in the community.