Mistakes That I Learned from Geo-Farming

Transcript:

Geographic Farming is a really great idea when you’re in year 3, 4, 5, or 6. It’s quite painful to start right out of the gate, and I really wouldn’t recommend it. I’m going to tell you what I did and warn you how painful it can be.

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Discover Publications
When I started I was sending out a 12-page color newspaper for 54 cents per copy and I was sending it to over 10,000 homes (Purchased from Discover Publications). I’d suggest going hyperlocal with your content and only sending out 2,000 to 3,000 copies. Pricing will be higher, but I think 3,000 is the minimum. It’s easy to get vendors to pay for them if you get creative. Talk to some local restaurants or businesses and strike up a deal. I stopped doing this, although I loved the concept. You’ll have to hire some local writers, and you can get them to work for next to nothing. Start as small as you can, and then commit fully to see if anything comes about.

Listing Grabber
We then shifted to Listing Grabber, and 9-10 months into the farm we got some good results. We’ve actually attributed nine listings to their service. You need direct response elements, and you want to build authority with the same homes. However, this is a 2-3 year process, so don’t attempt geo-farming if you’re not committed.  

We also just did a review with Listing Grabber, and apparently 35% of the homes were doing 55% of the feedback, so we’re actually cutting our numbers and targeting the correct homes. We were in 20 subdivisions and now we’re only dealing with seven. They advise that when someone responds to your materials that you deliver a packet to them. These postcards aren’t very sexy, although they do work. I’d recommend following their system and finding someone that it’s working well for.  

You can’t forget that farming usually comes later in your business. First you should focus on FSBO’s and expireds, the 60-touch system, and eventually you can get into farming. Once you have some traction with farming, you can begin to do some digital farming in order to supplement your primary farming.