Florida Realtors Find Innovative Techniques for Luring in Florida Home Loans
As the Florida housing market dips and slows down a bit, realtors must abandon conventional methods in order to drum up business. For example, glossy magazine ads no longer seem to work for for Becky Woodbridge. This Delray Beach-based Florida mortgage broker must get more personal in her marketing efforts.
“We’re fighting for market share. Ads aren’t driving the business, and we’re getting fewer calls from our advertising,” said Woodbridge, the CEO of Becky Woodbridge Properties Inc. “That’s why I’m hitting the database hard. We are looking for innovative ways to market properties.”
As South Florida’s real estate market slows - opening up room for buyers to seek out affordable Florida home loans in the area - industry insiders are finding themselves creating new ways to reach out to potential customers. Many Realtors are moving into new marketing venues, becoming proactive in their own marketing efforts.
Aggressive Realtor tactics, solutions
At MortgageBootcamp.net, for example, electronic and print newsletters have helped drive attendance at area seminars it stages to teach mortgage companies and other Florida home loan originators how to win business, prepare documents and better serve existing customers, said Hal Hoodwin, director with the Pompano Beach company.
“These people cannot afford to lose leads to people who don’t know what they’re doing anymore,” he said.
Hoodwin, like Woodbridge, has turned more to his database and word-of-mouth efforts to drive business. Once he makes contacts, he’ll personally pursue targets with e-mail messages in the weeks leading up to his seminars.
Every 21 days, Woodbridge focuses on her buyer database with an e-mail blast or a direct mail distribution. That list includes friends, family members, business associates - ANYone who might know someone in search of a Florida home loan or listing agent, said Woodbridge, whose marketing also supports offices in Fort Lauderdale and Jupiter.
Providing Florida home loan buyers, agents with gifts
Woodbridge is sending more client appreciation gifts. She recently gave a book on Delray Beach’s history to a new homeowner there. She’s also preparing to mail USB flash drives with her logo to her database. Later this year, she’ll give away a BMW 3 Series car as an incentive to her top-producing agent.
Evidence of a slowdown across the South Florida housing market makes such techniques necessary. The goal is to offer such incentives as described above until conditions improve and Florida home loans are more abundant.
