How To Convert Real Estate Internet Leads (Zillow, Facebook, Google) – In The Know ft. Kevin Markarian

by | Mar 5, 2018 | Uncategorized

How To Convert Real Estate Internet Leads (Zillow, Facebook, Google) – Interview with Kevin Markarian

(Click The Video Below To Play)

 

How To Convert Real Estate Internet Leads

 

 

Are you buying real estate leads on Zillow, Facebook, Google, Redfin, Realtor.com or any other platforms? Then you must watch this episode of “In The Know – The Oliver Graf Real Estate Show” where Oliver talks with Kevin Markarian, about how to convert real estate internet leads.

Here’s how the video breaks down:

:44 What’s On Tap
1:43 Cracking the Lead Gen Code: How to convert real estate leads
2:13 The Biggest Challenge Real Estate Agents Face
2:56 The Biggest Difference Between Lead Sources (Zillow, Realtor.com, etc. and Facebook Leads
5:18 How to use Facebook to Build a Real Estate Database?
9:30 What Is a Facebook Lead Ad?
10:00 The mega successful real estate list ad strategy
11:21 They’ve Clicked The Ad, Now What? (How To Auotmate Everything)
13:40 Best Tools To Help Agents Stay Top Of Mind
15:50 Why Did You Hire THIS Guy Over Everyone Else? (The Shoe Salesman Story)
17:06 Automate and Outsource “Persistence”… Be Everywhere
19:10 How Follow Up Boss and Agent Legend Work Together to convert real estate leads
23:40 How To Build a Real Estate Team With Your Lead Overflow
26:10 Killer Craigslist and Yelp Strategies for Realtors

LEARN MORE ABOUT KEVIN HERE: KEVIN MARKARIAN

Kevin shares some inside tips on how you can:

  1. Automate Your Real Estate Business
  2. Get More Real Estate Leads on Facebook for Under $2 a Day
  3. Secret Real Estate Strategies That Cost ZERO Dollars You Can implement Today

Want more In The Know with Oliver Graf? Check out these episodes:

Sell 100+ Homes Per Year with These Prospecting Tips – https://youtu.be/W0ZKfxcvLIQ

Ten Commandments of a Real Estate Top producer – https://youtu.be/3rpgfu40Jng

How to Leverage Your Title Rep to Grow Your Business – https://youtu.be/paPmuQp6sAw

FULL TRANSCRIPTION OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN MARKARIAN BELOW:

Oliver Graf:  Welcome to another episode of In The Know. Today, I’m going to be talking with Kevin Markarian who is one of the admins of Lab Coat Agents, and also a mega-broker that’s expanding his team very quickly. We’re going to be talking about how to generate more leads on Facebook for as little as $2 a day, how to automate everything, and we’re going to be talking about a couple of secret strategies that costs $0 that you can implement in your business right away. Let’s do it.

We’re here at the JW Marriott in Palm Springs. We’re going to share a couple of beers and have a good conversation. Today, I’m drinking the … What is it called? The Heatwave Amber and Kevin’s having the Poolside Blonde. They’re both from a local brewery here called La Quinta Brewing and we’re going to them a try, kick this thing off.

Kevin Markarian:  Cheers, man.

[00:01:00]

Oliver Graf:  One of the main reasons that I wanted to have Kevin out and kind of talk to him because he’s really on the … I want to say cutting edge of real estate lead generation and automation experts and just really being able to build a system inside of your business to bring in a consistent stream of leads and then turn that into a pipeline that’s fully automated to help him and his realtors grow their business.

A lot of people struggle with, “Where do I get more leads? How do I get more leads? What do I do to make the phone ring? What do I do to get more opt-ins?” Why don’t we just start there like how did you go down the road of cracking the lead generation code?

Kevin Markarian:  Well, it was because I moved to San Francisco from a completely different market and I knew nobody in San Francisco. I had to figure out a way to get business fast. One way to do that is through online lead generations. Those are people that are interested in buying and selling properties. They don’t necessarily need to know who you are. We just started really, really heavily investing in the portals, in Google, now in Facebook and social media.

If you think about one of the biggest challenges a lot of agents face is being able to drum up business. Like that’s a big challenge. There is one way to solve that problem, and that is through lead generation. It doesn’t have to be always be paid. You can lead generate through your own sphere of influence. Just about saying top of mind or reaching out to people and at the end of the day, we’re in the communication business. We’re in the communication business. It’s like we’re here to help people and stay connected with them and try to help them achieve their goals.

Oliver Graf:  Right now, like what are your favorite lead sources and why?

Kevin Markarian:  My favorite lead sources right now, definitely I would say Facebook is one that is like the new frontier. Maybe about four, five years ago, everyone [00:03:00] was talking about portals like Realtor.com, Zillow and Trulia, which are great. Don’t get wrong, they’re just really costly. But they’re lower in the funnel too. You get what you pay for. You’re going to pay more but you’re going to get people that are going to convert at a higher level.

With Facebook, the cost per lead is so low that it’s almost like you kind of have to do it because it’s like less than $2 a lead that we’re paying on Facebook.

[00:03:30]

Oliver Graf: Right now you’re converting at $2 a lead on your Facebook campaign?

Kevin Markarian:  Roughly $2 a lead depending on the market.

Oliver Graf:  Those are great numbers and I think that almost anybody could start with a relatively small budget and win with numbers like that, like if you’re spending $10 a day-

Kevin Markarian: I was going to say $10 a day.

Oliver Graf:  … and you’re getting five leads a day, in a few weeks, you’re going to have a nice little database of people that you can work over.

[00:04:00]

 

Kevin Markarian:  And that’s it. The thing too though to keep in mind with Facebook is that there are higher funnel leads. They’re not going to be ready to convert like right now. It just takes a little bit more nurturing, more followup and just staying in front of them over a longer period of time. And the idea is to build your database because these people have clicked on property.

One of the things I like to think about with portals versus Facebook, and with Google. I like to think of portals, Google and Facebook. Portals and Google are more of like active leads.

Oliver Graf:  They are seeking.

Kevin Markarian:  They’re seeking information. Somebody goes to realtor.com to look for property, versus Facebook, we’re targeting them. They’re being sought after. We’re like interrupting their day. That’s why they’re higher funnel because they’re not seeking the data. They’re not seeking the info.

Oliver Graf:  That’s an important distinction like in terms of timeline, what are you seeing for conversions for Facebook leads and the others, the portals and  the     Googles.

Kevin Markarian: We’re still testing it out but like for the portals, like 60 days or so, 120 days. There’s a lot of people that are converting at a higher level than that. Our problem in our market is there’s no inventory. If there was better inventory, we would have a shorter conversion but with Facebook, they’re going to be double or maybe even triple the time frame. The thing really quick on Facebook is it’s a great way to build your database too.  If you just want to like start growing a database, Facebook is a really inexpensive way to do that.

Oliver Graf:  I think one of the key takeaways there is the timeline arising because I hear a lot of people when they generate leads or they buy leads, they’re like, “Oh, this lead suck. These leads are weak,” whatever, and I think what most people are missing is they’re just not ready to take the action right away and I don’t think that that means that they’re bad leads [00:06:00] or good leads. It just means that that’s the part of the process that they need to go through. Once you understand that, then you can set up systems that over time, we’ll follow up and keep you top of mind as these people are going through the learning process and the finding and discovery process.

[00:06:30]

Kevin Markarian:  Absolutely. I think a lot of agents fail in the followup. That’s really where your conversion comes in is a lot of people talk … I hear all the time speed the lead. Speed the lead, speed the lead, get back to them fast. Yes, that’s very important. But it’s also the length. It’s also duration, the number of times you follow up over the course of a week, over the course of the first day, over the course of a month, six months, a year.

One tip that works really well for us in terms of response, when we call someone and they don’t answer, one thing that really works is that when we call right back. You call and they don’t answer, you call right back, it sort of increases the urgency. So, now the recipient that’s getting the second phone call from a phone number that never seen before, it becomes like, “Okay, maybe I should answer this. There might be something going on.” It increases the response. But I just think it’s really about followup.

And then, we can only be at one place at one time. We can only deal with so many people in a given day. The key there is automation. Then you automate the followup. We can talk about that.  With automation, it requires authenticity. You can have all the best automation. You’ve got all the systems, all the CRM, all the texting, all the followup, all the stuff you’re doing automatically, the type that’s working for you that you’re leveraging technology to do these things for you, but if it sounds canned and it sounds like overly-

Oliver Graf:  Spammy, salesy.

Kevin Markarian:  … salesy and it looks like it’s fake, it looks like it’s automated, it’s not authentic, then it’s a problem. Then your conversion goes down. But if you’ve got automation with authenticity, your conversion skyrockets.

Oliver Graf:   That’s a really great takeaway. I want to get into the automation and the systems in a second because the stuff you’ve built is really pretty impressive and I think everyone will get a lot of value out of that, but before we do that, let’s talk about these Facebook ads and kind of what they look like and what the message is on them.

[00:08:30]

Kevin Markarian:  The cool thing with lead ads is so, let’s say you have a landing page and you’re doing a Google ad. You target someone and they go to your landing page. They have to then register, enter their name, phone number and everything and then you get their data. Then, you can call them. The cool thing with lead ads on Facebook is that when somebody clicks on your ad, Facebook will extract their information that they’ve provided on when they signed up with Facebook, and when they click on that ad and they say, “Yes, I want more info,” they don’t have to register. Like that step is gone. You automatically get their info.

That could be a good thing or bad thing. It’s a good thing because now you have their info and you can follow up. It’s a bad thing because they didn’t enter the info. They might not feel like they’re going to get a phone call or whatever. But at the same time, they did click on an ad and they did get information from Facebook letting them know that their info is being shared with the advertiser.

Oliver Graf:  Right now, you guys are doing really well with those lead ads?

Kevin Markarian:  We’re doing great with those lead ads. We’re generating a lot of leads through Facebook.

[00:09:30]

 

Oliver Graf: Very cool. Lead ads are basically just a type of ad that you can select inside of Facebook in the ads manager where you basically, instead of trying to drive people to a website or drive people to video views on event page, you’re basically just giving them the ability to just click a button and opt-in. And so, it’s a really easy way to kind of get people to take action without really having to go through the extra steps of typing their information [00:10:00] in.

Kevin Markarian:  Right, and one of the things that a lot of the leaders in the industry are utilizing with the type of ad is … With lead ads is list, so list of houses. Find the lowest priced condos in San Diego or find the lowest priced condos in this neighborhood or that neighborhood. Find the lowest priced houses or highest priced houses, most expensive homes or best three-bedroom houses in X neighborhood.

[00:10:30]

These are some ideas that a lot of the people that we deal with, that we both know very well that are working and doing a great job with Facebook are using. Those are ads that convert really well and you’re going to get a lot of people clicking on those.

Oliver Graf:  That’s the messaging. It’s city name, homes for sale, discounts, foreclosure lists, things like that?

[00:11:00]

Kevin Markarian:  You could also talk about best homes in this neighborhood or top 10 houses in this neighborhood, top 10 four-bedroom, best views, best views in San Francisco under $1 million or whatever. These are just some ideas that you can use that you’re going to get more of a targeted audience to respond to those ads because if you get someone that clicks on that, then you know that that’s what they’re interested in.

[00:11:30]

Oliver Graf:  Now, that they’ve clicked the button and said, “Yes, I want to receive the 10 best homes under $1 million with a great view,” what happens next?

Kevin Markarian:   Then, you can redirect them to a page. We redirect them to our page that already has that data, that information that we’ve already pre-selected, pre-searched so they’re getting the info. It goes to our site. There is a-

Oliver Graf:  On your website?

Kevin Markarian:  Yes, on our website.

Oliver Graf:  Got it.

Kevin Markarian:  It’s an IDX feed website.

Oliver Graf:   WordPress site?

[00:12:00]

Kevin Markarian:  Yeah, WordPress site. Then they’re searching and then they can re-register on your site. There’s an option for them to register although you’ve already got their info, but if they wanted to register, then there’s another … Now, in our site, you can start tracking their activity and stuff like that-

Oliver Graf:  And what’s the call to action on that new page to convert real estate internet leads since you’ve already gotten their email and phone number?

Kevin Markarian:  Well, we already have their email and phone number but they’re getting the info that they requested-

Oliver Graf:  Got it.

Kevin Markarian: … but there’s still a registration box if they want. It’s not really much of a call to action with that one.

Oliver Graf:   Basically, click the button, you get their information, they get the information that they wanted in an easy to digest single page?

Kevin Markarian:  Yeah.

[00:12:30]

Oliver Graf:   That’s a lot of really good ideas on how to structure your ads and how to generate ads that are very low cost especially in the real estate space. Now, let’s get into the juicy part of the automation that you’ve set up and how the followup process looks like from when they click the button and you’ve received their information?

Kevin Markarian:  Right now, we’re using Agentology.

Oliver Graf:  Agentology.

[00:13:00]

 

Kevin Markarian:   Agentology and they’re doing a really great job. What happens when the lead inquires, they get a call right away and we use Agentology to do that and they get a call. Within five minutes, they get a text and then we have our inside sales team reach out to them. When we respond, with Facebook leads, it’s really more about like, “How can we help you? Are you thinking about buying a home? I saw that you clicked on one of our ads, it looks like you might be interested in homes with views in San Francisco. How can we help you?”

Again, they’re higher funnel so they may not be ready to rock and roll just like right now this second, but again, it’s just about staying in front of them and staying in contact-

Oliver Graf: What does that look like? That staying in front of them, is that voicemail, mail pieces, emails?

Kevin Markarian: We use Agent Legend.

Oliver Graf: Agent Legend.

Oliver Graf:  There’s two cool tools that you guys can try out. Agentology which is a San Diego company, so shout out to them. And Agent Legend?

[00:14:00]

Kevin Markarian:  Agent Legend is really cool because it allows us to take email, texting and voicemail and package everything in one.

Oliver Graf: I’m guessing it’s probably more aggressive up front and then tapers off over time, but like how are you hitting them voice, texts, email and how often in-

Kevin Markarian: You’re right. In the beginning, it’s very aggressive. We’re calling three, four times a day, multiple times. We’re sending more than one text a day and then we’re sending in more than one email a day. Within the first week, it’s pretty heavy. Then we do taper off but we’re still like touching, and that’s where I think a lot of people fall off, and that’s why we’re converting our past or older leads at a really high level because we’re just staying in front of them. You know what? Not every client that clicks on your website or goes on to realty.com is going to buy like in the next week.

Oliver Graf:  I think you touched on it earlier. It all comes down to that timeline, like if they’re early in the timeline and you’re hitting them aggressively, they’re probably going to ignore you. But then all of a sudden, three, four, five months down the road, after they’ve gotten their financing situated and kind of gone down the process a little further, now all of a sudden, you hit them again with an automated text or an email to help convert real estate internet leads, and now it’s the right time for them where most agents have already stopped and given up a long time ago. You’ve got everything continuing and it’s fully automated.

Kevin Markarian: And here’s what … That level is the playing field between like a new agent, like me that moved to San Francisco didn’t know anyone and a top producing agent. Now, I’m on the same level with them because I’m following up. You know what? I may not have all the experience in the world. It’s okay, because I’m going to be there. My face will be there when they’re ready to do something.

I worked at a shoe store when I was really young like 19 years old and we had our own crew. We had these people that were really good at sales and stuff, and we used to sell like shoes. I remember there was a young kid that used to come in like every day and asked for a job. He wasn’t the best salesperson. One day, somebody quit and then the next day, I walked in and that guy is there. He’s hired. We’re all wondered why to the manager, like why did you hire this dude? Like he’s not good at sales. He said, “Because he was here and I needed someone and I needed someone fast.”

Oliver Graf:  He was persistent.

Kevin Markarian:  And he was persistent and I just remembered this, I can call on this person and I know he’ll fill the spot. I want to be that agent. I want to be that person that it doesn’t matter how good or bad I am, I’m going to fill that spot.

Oliver Graf:  I’m there.

Kevin Markarian: That was something that I think a lot of agents if they were to think of that and utilize that-

[00:17:00]

Oliver Graf:  That’s a great story. That clicked a light bulb in my head because we’ve all seen that worked at some point in our life where just the persistent person whether they were the best or not, got what they wanted just for being persistent. If you can outsource and automate that persistence to where all you have to do is once they raise their hand, then you get notified and those are the ones you can take action on. Now, all of a sudden, your results start to really compound.

Kevin Markarian: What’s cool about that what you just said is you don’t have to like walk in the store. You don’t have to go and do the effort. You could leverage technology to do that effort for you and that’s where it gets really powerful because you can touch so many people that just … Your grasp is so much greater, larger, because you’re leveraging technology. It’s like it’s great.

Oliver Graf:  Extremely scalable.

Kevin Markarian: It is.

Oliver Graf:  Let’s talk about the tools that you’re using to facilitate all of the backend stuff that you’re doing.

 

Kevin Markarian:   We use a CRM called Follow Up Boss, a very well-known, very good CRM. It allows us to track everything that all the clients that come in. Also, we’re holding people accountable, so we have lots of leads coming in and we’re assigning them to agents. It helps us convert. It helps us make sure that people are following up and really, a lot of agents that are part of our team are really looking for something like that. They’re looking for accountability and it allows us to stay in front of them and make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

Follow Up Boss is one of the tools. Also, if you have a team or if you want to separate your business and personal, we use an app. It’s a phone app called Line2.

Oliver Graf:    Line2.

Kevin Markarian: We use it for our inside sales team and allows us to keep track of calls, number of calls, duration of calls. We can see the text messages that are sent, and it just allows us to track everything.

Oliver Graf: Follow Up Boss, Agent Legend, Line2. And how-

Kevin Markarian:  Agentology.

Oliver Graf: And Agentology. How do Follow Up Boss and Agent Legend work together to help convert real estate internet leads?

Kevin Markarian:  Agent Legend, when there is … First of all, they’re integrated, so anytime something happens in Agent Legend, so if someone raises their hand, we have a note in Follow Up Boss. We’re alerted in Follow Up Boss and in Agent Legend, which is really cool. And everybody gets notified. Our entire team are set up, so that they all get a notification when something happens, so like we know that’s where we need to be on it.

Other tool that we’re using a lot right now is RealScout.

Oliver Graf:  RealScout.

Kevin Markarian: RealScout is so awesome.

Oliver Graf: That’s the one you’re showing me earlier today?

[00:20:00]

Kevin Markarian: Yeah. If you have a database, if you’ve already generated a lot of leads or you have past clients or whatever, so our database is a lead source in itself. Now, we’re like, “Okay, I’ve generated all these leads. Let me leverage that.” I don’t have to pay for those. I’ve already paid for that. Now, let’s take those and put them somewhere where we can start cultivating them, and we can start generating some business out of it. What RealScout allows us to do is we send alerts, property alerts. And the user interface on RealScout is really, really beautiful and there’s lots of like natural language.

If somebody is interested in natural light, let’s say. There’s like natural sounding language when you send the message on a property like, “Hey, John. I know you’re interested in natural light. This property has … It’s facing south and gets lots of sunlight in the kitchen. Maybe you should take a look at it.”

Oliver Graf: You can put all that custom language in there?

Kevin Markarian: It’s automatic. RealScout does it. Another thing that they can do is like if someone is only interested in granite countertops in the kitchen. Well, RealScout, you can indicate that and RealScout will send them properties that only have granite countertops in the kitchen and that will be the first picture that shows up. What’s cool about RealScout is you can track all the opens like I showed you earlier. You can see how many times people have clicked on specific properties, how many times they’ve shared those properties, how many times they’ve saved them.

It’s just every day, we get a report and there’s like hundreds of people that are clicking and we just reach out.

Oliver Graf: You just find the people that are the most engaged, they viewed the most amount of properties and you call them first to convert real estate internet leads?

Kevin Markarian:   Yeah. We call them first, and it’s like so easy.

Oliver Graf:  They’re probably excited because if they’re at the point now where they’ve looked at 50 properties in 24 hours on the website, all of a sudden, you know that this person is moving down the funnel, becoming a lot more serious and now at that point is probably ready to have a more real serious conversation.

Kevin Markarian: Yes. And what’s cool too is they can set appointments through the system. We get six or seven appointment requests a day, and these are just people that are in our database and we’re not doing anything with them and they’re reaching out. I get a text, I’m telling you like six, seven text messages a day from people that want to see a property.

Again, there are so much technology out there.

Oliver Graf:  If you like the idea of getting six or seven text messages a day from interested people? You might want to give that a shot.

Kevin Markarian:  And that’s free. Those are people that you already have in your database that want to look at property. They know who you are because all of your info is branded. And you could do that or you could pay $150 a lead from a portal ad, so like what would you rather do? It’s just working really well. It’s working really well for us.

Oliver Graf:  That’s very cool.

Kevin Markarian:  Yeah.

 

Oliver Graf:  Let me see if I can connect all the dots here. Running Facebook Lead Ads and PPC. We’ll just call them two separate funnels. And then as they come in, they go into Agent Legend, which is sending the automated texts, emails, ringless voicemails. Then they go into Follow Up Boss once they’ve raised their hand or Follow Up Boss, Agent Legend running together at the same time?

Kevin Markarian: They go into Follow Up Boss automatically, and then they all get called by Agentology, and they go into Agent Legend. That’s a lot of agents in that.

Oliver Graf: They’re getting hit at all fronts?

Kevin Markarian:Yeah.

Oliver Graf:   Just for anyone that doesn’t know, Agentology is basically an outsource calling service and they will call your new leads for you as they come in.

Kevin Markarian: Right. It just saves us a lot of time and it’s for new leads that come in, so if you’re generating a lot of new leads and you’re not able to keep up, this is like using something like Agentology is a great way to leverage your time, basically. It’s good.

Oliver Graf: Yeah. You just mentioned you get to the point where you have too many leads. At that point, that’s kind of like going to phase two where you might want to start bringing in other agents or someone underneath you to work those.

[00:24:00]

Kevin Markarian:  Absolutely. I think starting a team … In order to start a team, you need to solve a problem, for me. For me, my problem was I had too many leads, not enough time, too many clients. And that’s a great problem to have, but it’s also a bad problem because you’re missing out on opportunities. What I was able to do is because we’re generating so many, people want to work leads. So, I just reach out to agents inside my office and ask if they’d be interested in working in some leads.

We just basically plugged those agents into our CRM and start assigning leads directly to them.

Oliver Graf:  I guess, the biggest challenge I would see with doing that because I love that idea, is just the accountability piece and making sure that they’re actually working the leads that they’re supposed to, and they’re actually following up the way that they’re supposed to. But I guess in a sense, a lot of that you’ve already automated, so they don’t need to do as much of that.

Kevin Markarian:  All the leads that are assigned go into the CRM and when they’re assigned to agents, once an agent has a lead, then they’re responsible for following up, for tracking including the correspondence inside the notes. Our note taking is like that’s how we hold agents accountable. When a lead is assigned, we want to make sure that they’re being followed up on. If agents aren’t taking notes, then we’re going to assume they’re not being followed up on. What we do is we’ll reach out to the client and we’ll just reach out and say, “Hey, this is Kevin with Marker Real Estate. I just want to make sure if you’ve had a chance to speak with Jane. I know you talked with Jane last week or whatever. How’s it going?”

Then, we get kind of a progress report from the client like, “Oh, Jane is awesome. I can talk to Jane anytime. She’s great. We’re going to look at property tomorrow.” Well, that’s good. Maybe Jane forgot to enter notes in, and that’s fine and we talk with Jane, “Hey, would you mind entering the notes?” Or, you call a client and we’re like, “Hey, how’s it going with Jane?” And they’re like, “Jane is a freaking nightmare. I haven’t even heard from Jane. I called her 15 times, she hasn’t responded.” Then, it’s like, “Okay, Jane-

Oliver Graf: Now, you got a different problem?

Kevin Markarian: Yeah. But it works really well. It’s not like no one is getting hit with a hammer or anything. Converting and working together as a team and trying to close more transactions and help people achieve their goals of buying and selling property.

Oliver Graf: Yeah. Everybody wins.

Kevin Markarian:  Everybody wins.

Oliver Graf:  I do want to talk about two quick things before we wrap up, and that’s the Craigslist strategy that you shared with me and the Yelp strategy because I think both of those are easy and relatively inexpensive for any agent to start immediately and start winning with.

[00:26:30]

Kevin Markarian:  What we do with Craigslist is I will put the photo.  We’ll put the description and then we’ll put a CallAction which is a great software. We’ll put a CallAction number in the Craigslist ad and we’ll say, “Text INFO to this number for more information.” What’s cool about CallAction is when they text you that word INFO, CallAction will scrub the internet and we’ll find their name, their phone number, their email address, where they work, their age, what their income is, do they have kids, the whole nine yards. Do they own a home, their mortgage, everything within like split second through CallAction.

Now, we’ve got all these data. They just requested INFO off of Craigslist, which is free, and Craigslist doesn’t flag it because there’s no link. It’s just a thing. It’s a number, and then we call. We set an appointment. And they want more info on the property. If the property is not available, simple. Property is not available, we have others. If it is, great. We set up an appointment. We only include the description of the property and the picture, that’s it.

Oliver Graf: Definitely don’t include the price because that’s what everybody wants to know and that’s why they’re going to text.

Kevin Markarian: Or the address.

Oliver Graf:   Or the address.

Kevin Markarian:  Right. More info, they text and then you call. It’s very simple. It’s free. It just takes a little effort to do it. We have it outsourced, but if you have the time, then you can do it and it’s really great.

Oliver Graf: Just to put a bow on that, he’s taking his property listings, making a nice graphic including a short description, putting in there “Text for more info” which is all facilitated through CallAction. And CallAction is then letting you know, “Hey, we got a new person off of this Craigslist ad,” and then you can follow up and say, “Hey, how can we assist?”

Kevin Markarian: Yeah. It’s very simple.

Oliver Graf: Very simple.

Kevin Markarian: And free.

Oliver Graf: And free. And you can literally post every single day, multiple times a day. You can hire a virtual assistant to do that stuff for you. And what’s interesting about that, because everyone thinks Craigslist is dead because they took the hyperlinks out. And as soon as they took the hyperlinks out, like the number of real estate posts dropped like 75% overnight.

Kevin Markarian:   Which is awesome.

Oliver Graf:   Which is great for the people that are still using it, and have come up with innovative new ways to get that client information off of there. I love that. That’s easy to implement. Anyone can start that pretty much right away.You’re blowing it if you don’t start that right away because it’s free, and it’s very easy to start. Let’s switch gears and talk about the Yelp strategy that you shared by basically keyword gaming Yelp.

Kevin Markarian:  Yes. I learned this from my good buddy, Jason Walters. And what he does is … You’ve got your Yelp reviews, and when you ask for Yelp reviews, it’s really important to ask for certain words to be used. If I’m asking you for a review, we just sold a house, everything is great. Would you mind including in your review great realtor in San Francisco? Kevin is a great realtor in San Francisco.

Oliver Graf:  Best San Francisco realtor.

[00:26:30]

Kevin Markarian:   Best San Francisco realtor or any search word, keyword that you think people are going to look up when they’re looking for an agent. Ask your clients to include those words in the review because then when somebody goes to Google, best realtor in San Francisco and you’ve got like 50 reviews, and they all say best realtor in San Francisco, well, guess what’s going to show up? Your Yelp review, your Yelp profile.

I know Jason is generating tons of leads through Yelp and he doesn’t even pay.

Oliver Graf: Think about how easy that is. Just simply ask your client to give you a review on Yelp, which you should be doing anyways. And then instead of just asking for a Yelp review, ask them to add the keywords that you’d like to rank under anything and there’s probably a hundred if you use Google Keyword Planner that you could figure out. And then because Yelp has such good Google juice, they rank high under a lot of stuff and so if you’re able to stuff your keywords into your customer testimonials, you’re going to rank under those keywords and that’s a pretty cool little strategy.

Kevin Markarian: Yeah, and it really works. And while you’re at it, you might as well, when they’re posting reviews on other sites, use the-

Oliver Graf:    Same thing.

Kevin Markarian: Yeah, same thing. And we should all have our profiles, like the basics. Get your profiles done online, your presence online. It’s so important. When we talk to leads, I’m talking to them on the phone and I can literally hear their like keyboard, they’re googling it. They’re looking me up and like we’ve talked about it. We talk on the phone, like they tell me they’re googling me.

If somebody is looking you up, they don’t know who you are, or even if they do know who you are and they see your profile and it’s like it’s not consistent with that of a real estate professional, then how much confidence that person going to have and want to work with you?

Oliver Graf:   While on the other side, if they google you and you have 50 five-star Yelp reviews and you just have people raving about you, then obviously, your conversions are just going to improve.

Kevin Markarian:  Yeah, and people are going to want to … They’re going to feel comfortable with their biggest asset in your hands. Online profiles, there’s lots of agents that I know that like don’t even have a profile online, like a Facebook-

Oliver Graf:  Which is crazy.

Kevin Markarian:  Yeah. One other tip too is on your phone. You know how or like on your email, you know how you can enter your name in your email, adding the word realtor at the end of that, so that whenever people see your name in their phone, it will say like, “Oliver, My Realtor.” It could be like …  You can put My Realtor-

[00:32:30]

Kevin Markarian:  Just little things. Again, it’s just to keep you stay top of mind with people so that they know that you’re a realtor and then you end up being that kid that got hired at the shoe store because he showed his face nonstop. I just want to be that kid. I want to be that kid for all of my clients, all people out there.

Oliver Graf:  It seems like you’re doing a pretty good job at it.

Kevin Markarian: Thanks, man.

Oliver Graf:   That’s kind of a wrap for us. Let’s have one more sip of these amazing beers. I hope you got a lot of information from Kevin. He shared a lot of really good stuff. I hope that you can go out there and win with it. Now, you’re In The Know.

Kevin Markarian:  Cheers.

Oliver Graf:  Cheers.

Kevin Markarian:   Cheers, man.

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