It’s a competitive market out there, and what your paging service isn’t (or is) doing might be costing you thousands in lost business. Here are the three biggest reasons why paging services are killing your business:

1. Paging Services are Out-Dated

Sure, paging services served their purpose by providing a real voice at the end of the line in an industry where it would otherwise be impossible, but times changed long ago with the advent of mobile phones.

These days customers perceive paging services as just another barrier between them and the information they need. The added step of calling a paging service, then waiting for a call back can be a frustrating and often futile experience. At least leaving a voice mail gets it to the doorstep of the right person - a page could end up just about anywhere.

2. Paging Services are Unreliable

It’s happened to all of us - we’ve sent text messages that haven’t gone through as expected. The same is true for paging services, and unless you’re willing to check the paging report thoroughly every month, be prepared to lose some business from incorrectly paged leads.

Not only that, but what if the paging receptionist (who’s making minimum wage) makes a typo in the phone number from that inbound lead? Goodbye commission cheque.

3. Paging Services are Unprofessional

Here’s one of the most irritating voice mail greetings a Realtor can have:

“Hi, you’ve reached the voice mail for Sam Prochazka, Realtor serving the Greater Calgary area. I’m currently serving other customers, but please leave a message and I’ll return your call at my earliest convenience. If your call is urgent, please page me through my office at 123-456-789…”

So - I can leave a message, or I can call another number, potentially hold for several minutes, have them send my Realtor a text message that may or may not get through, then have it end up at the exact place I’ve just called? I’ll go elsewhere, thanks.

What Top Producers Do

The bottom line is that top producers realize that every “service” between them and their customers is a barrier. They realize that EVERY phone call, from inquiry to motivated seller, is a potential commission and should be treated as professionally as a listing presentation.

Top Producers I’ve spoken to do the following:

1. They make sure their office paging service gives out their cell-phone number (even the evening services)
2. They work at a brokerage that has extended hours
3. They advertise their cell phone numbers
4. They present realistic callback times in their cell phone voice mail greetings

RealPageMaker has released the first version of its Campaign Manager tool that allows customers to schedule periodic email updates to be sent to their customers. The Campaign Manager is integrated with the Client Manager and is accessible through your Back Office.

Campaign Manager

How should you design a good campaign? The main thing is to make sure it’s interesting to your customers and directs people to visit your website:

• Include links in your campaign messages to your blog, and direct people to subscribe to your blog feed
• Include information your customers can use in their real estate endeavors - investment information, mortgage rates, insurance/mortgage brokers, pre/post purchase information, etc.  Whenever possible, direct clients to read this information on your website.
• Don’t make the messages look like advertisement - no one likes spam
• Keep the messages short and simple - people don’t have time to read more than a few bullet points
• Make headlines enticing - if you’re linking back to articles on your website, make the link titles in your campaign message enticing, i.e. use, “Get a mortgage rate that’ll make your friends jealous,” rather than just, “Mortgage Information.”

We’ve recently been looking to staff some sales positions here at RealPageMaker and decided to try using Facebook.com for a few days to promote our employment opportunities. Here’s what we found:

1. Facebook does not have a traffic estimator

This is an important omission. Google Adwords provides tools that generate estimates of click-through traffic volumes your ad will get based on your cost-per-click bid. This allows you to get a rough idea of how many visitors your campaign will generate.

Facebook suggests a bid range (Google does not do this) and seems to assume that as long as you bid in this range you’ll spend roughly your daily budget (they clearly say that you will not exceed your daily budget). Here’s a screenshot of the traffic analysis Facebook gave us for our careers ad (we’ve run it for 4 days so far):

Facebook Ad Summary

Over the last 4 days we’ve used about 67% of our daily budget ($25.00) which means that we’d achieve more traffic by increasing our cost-per-click slightly. With Facebook we’ll need to do this over a few days - with Google we could do this immediately.

2. Facebook advertising allows you to target geographically like Google, but also allows you to target specific ages, and educations. Check out these example advertising campaigns I priced out (estimated traffic based on our experience of using 67% of the daily budget):

Chicago (including 10-miles surrounding)

Target: men, women, older than 30, all education levels

Potential ad reach: 441,000
Estimated Cost Per Click: $0.56
Estimated Traffic: 30 visits/day

Target: men, women, older than 30, ONLY College grads

Potential ad reach: 10,480
Estimated Cost Per Click: $0.66
Estimated Traffic: 25 visits/day

Vancouver (including 10-miles surrounding)

Target: men, women, older than 30, all education levels

Potential ad reach: 172,240
Estimated Cost Per Click: $0.33
Estimated Traffic: 51 visits/day

Target: men, women, older than 30, ONLY College grads

Potential ad reach: 2840
Estimated Cost Per Click: $0.08
Estimated Traffic: 209 visits/day (might be difficult to achieve this)

Google Adwords allows you to target search terms very specifically, whereas Facebook doesn’t. Google also has sophisticated search term tools that Facebook doesn’t. Google doesn’t let you pick who clicks on your ads though, whereas Facebook does. Facebook’s ad platform, while not as rich, is easier to use and quicker to sign up for.

Soon I’ll talk about some other experiences we’ve had with online advertising campaigns.