Real Estate Marketing 101 – Pinterest for Real Estate…

When we think about social media for marketing we often think of the big 3 – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, a number of other social sites and applications like Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Vine and more have emerged as excellent places for real estate sales professionals to market themselves.

We created this infographic to help you better understand how you can leverage Pinterest to promote yourself and your client’s listings. We hope you enjoy!

If you would like more information about other mobile tools and apps for real estate that you can use to not only market properties but also research them, visit www.myvimo.ca or follow us: Twitter: @myvimo, Facebook: facebook.com/myvimo. 

Real Estate Lead Nurturing Tips

It is undeniable that real estate is one of the most competitive industries to work in. When it comes to marketing, costs often run much higher because there are so many professionals who sell real estate, thereby driving up the cost of advertising.

The big players who have deep pockets to spend can dominate, so it is crucial that when we think of the leads we generate we don’t only think of them at the time we generate them – but instead continue to think of them moving forward.

Lead nurturing is critical.

The cost of acquisition is high and not every person who responds to your advertising is necessarily ready to buy or list their property. Homeowners seek out information at different stages in the buying cycle, which in the case of real estate would begin with thinking about buying or selling a home.

Just because a prospect provides their email address or, in the case of representing a buyer, goes out to see properties with you, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are ready to buy.

It is imperative to stay on top of your client, remaining fresh and relevant in their mind. You can do this by ensuring that when you do reach out to them you are providing some value so they want to hear from you and receive your email – whether or not they are ready to engage you at this moment.

This can be done through the production of content that matters. A great example of this is leveraging features in your tools like ViMO. The Market Intelligence Report is customizable and leverages land registry data to keep prospects informed about recent sales activities and neighbourhood trends. This is an example of something you can generate and send to clients that provides them with information they are interested in and keeps you fresh in their mind.

You may also choose to offer something like this as a secondary call to action on your website. A client who is not yet ready to buy may be interested in subscribing to receive a Market Intelligence Report in their particular neighbourhood or another neighbourhood that they are interested in.

When you have content that offers value – the sky is the limit and there are so many ways that you can leverage it.

Lead nurturing means making the most out of new leads generated but we should never forget about the value of your existing client base. Ensure that all leads are entered into your CRM and that you have a plan for nurturing them. These should include not only prospects whose emails are new acquisitions but also existing customers. Your existing client base represents your promotors and should be considered a free sales team - never mind the fact that they may need to buy or sell a home in the future – they also can refer friends and family to you. The beauty of this referral business is that there is no cost of acquisition and the client comes in recommended to you already.

To summarize – good lead nurturing means:

1.    Having a secondary point of contact on your website to convert clients who may not be ready to engage you and including an offer of some form of content of value

2.    Having a plan to nurture leads that features more value content. What are you going to send them on an ongoing basis to keep you fresh in their minds?

3.    Don’t forget about the existing client base – they are still leads too!

ViMO can help you when it comes to lead nurturing. Find out more at www.myvimo.ca.

2 Months Post Electronic Document Signing Has Come into Law – Are You More Paperless?

All good things come in time and as you likely known, Ontario has joined the rest of Canada amending the Electronic Commerce Act to allow for the electronic signing of documents in real estate. You can reference the Act here: Electronic Commerce Act, 2000, S.O. 2000, c. 17 | Ontario.ca http://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/00e17#s31s1.

In a nutshell, what this means is that if you work in real estate your clients can now sign documents, such as purchase and sale agreements, listing agreements, representation agreements and more, electronically. Many real estate documents involve offers and counter offers and so this change will make negotiating real estate contracts for easier and less user intensive.

Real estate processes and workflows have largely gone in the digital direction in recent years. So many activities, from property searches to performing due diligence, largely occur online and results are stored electronically. The real estate industry can now join the many others, like the mortgage industry, in a move towards paperless.

Now, instead of having to create paper files for customers and keep track of signed documents, you can ask your client to sign electronically and these documents can be stored on your computer along with other digital files you have associated to the client.

Some real estate sales professionals have commented in social groups that they enjoy their face-to-face interaction of meeting with clients and fear that electronic document signing could reduce this aspect of the real estate sales process. However, taking advantage of electronic signing of real estate documents doesn’t mean that you have to have them electronically signed by email.

When meeting a new client and collecting identification and other pertinent documents, you can use mobile apps for real estate like ViMO to review the documents together on your tablet with the client signing on the tablet, vs. having pre-prepared forms.

This change also makes it much easier to stay organized and put together records. You know that often when meeting a client and reviewing pre-prepared forms, clients will want to make changes and adjustments. Now you can simply apply those changes to the documents directly on your tablet vs. marking up all of the documents, turning them into a scribble pad.

While some real estate sales professionals are buzzing with excitement over the changes and are taking steps to go paperless, others are not even aware of the change to the law and all the potential benefits that it means.

Do you see the changes to the Electronic Commerce Act as a positive change for the real estate industry? Tweet us at @myvimo or comment on Facebook at www.facebook.com/myvimo.

Interested in signing documents electronically – find out about the ViMO mobile app for real estate by visiting www.myvimo.ca.

Is Canada in a Recession Again?

This seems to be the question of the moment. We began the year with extremely low oil prices which had major impacts on the economy and dollar. In January of this year, the BOC reacted to the performance of the Canadian economy and reduced the key lending rate by .25%, making it .75%.

Coming into June, Reuters reported that “Canadian home prices rose to a record high in June from a month ago, the sixth consecutive monthly increase, and were up strongly from a year ago as Toronto and Vancouver held momentum, the Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index showed on Tuesday.”

In the lead up to the scheduled July of 2015 Bank of Canada rate announcement, many economists began to comment strongly on the state of the Canadian economy. Most were calling for and even predicting another rate cut while at least one publication reported that a TDCT economist went as far as to say that in the first half of 2015, Canada was in a recession.

In July’s rate announcement, the Bank of Canada, while not agreeing that Canada was in a recession, did drop the key lending rate a second time for 2015 by another of .25% making it only .5%.

The BOC’s reasoning behind the rate cut – short points:

·         Global growth faltered specifically in the US and China – this has dragged down the price of some commodities that are important to the exports.

·         Downgrades in business investment plans in the energy sector and weak exports of the non-energy commodities were also strongly considered.

The BOC admits that in the first half of 2015 Canada’s GDP did contract, however they believe that growth will resume coming into the second half of the year – primarily in the non-resource sector of the economy. Aside from the energy sector, consumer confidence remains high and labour markets continue to improve.

If Canada is not in a recession but is headed in that direction, what impact would a shift in supply and demand mean to the real estate industry? As it stands the small decreases in Canada’s lending rate should have the trickledown effect of making it cheaper to buy a home.

Even with most of the banks, economists were in agreement in July that Canada could be headed for a recession if not facing one already, yet Canada still saw strong home sales for the 6^th time in a row in June.

There is no doubt that reducing the interest rate is one way to stimulate the economy, and, where housing is concerned, make it more affordable to buy. With that said, Canada’s lending rate coming down to .5% does not give much room to move moving forward. What’s your take? Do you think that poor performance in other sectors of the economy will eventually have a spillover effect into the Canadian housing market?

Share your thoughts by tweeting @myvimo or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/myvimo. For more information about ViMO please visit www.myvimo.ca.