Toolkit Essentials: Real Estate Farming Postcards
Realtor Farming Postcard Ideas
The twenty-first century has dramatically transformed the way realtors interact with buyers and sellers.
In practice, finding a property and a real estate agent are now done virtually entirely online.
Therefore, even if a prospect lives next door, if you aren't leveraging the realtor toolkit, they won’t be able to find you.
Learn more about geo-farming here
Why You Need To Level Up Your Realtor Toolkit
Listed below are some reasons why it's a good idea to update your realtor toolkit, and why postcards specifically are a great way to take your marketing efforts to the next level.
Homeowners & Homebuyers Need Your Help
Your prospects want to find you, but they might not always know-how, or they might not be sure if you’re the right choice. It’s up to you as the agent to be visible and accessible and have so strong a brand that choosing any other realtor is out of the question.
With a help of a good toolkit, you can ensure people can find you easily when they’re ready to buy, your brand is visible in search results and on social media, not to mention you save money on print, radio, and TV advertising.
Fierce Competition
Another reason you must upgrade your marketing toolkit as a real estate agent is that it’ll help you get ahead of the competition. If you’re new to real estate, you’ll soon realize the market is very densely saturated. If you’re a veteran, you know many agents follow the same practices without trying to differentiate themselves from other realtors. What to do?
With the right marketing tools at your disposal, you can easily surpass competitors, even as a rookie, by increasing your reach, targeting only the best prospects, and especially by engaging with your audience.
Postcards Are Lead Magnets
Many realtors favor using real estate direct mail postcards. Postcards for real estate are a fantastic way to engage potential customers and raise brand awareness.
Real estate postcards can be extremely useful in a number of ways. You can easily reach out to the people in your target sales location.
Postcards can be lead magnets for your website. Gathering contact details from visitors to your website can be incentivized by lead magnets— postcards in this case— that essentially act as a trade of equal value for prospects.
They get the information they’re looking for, and perhaps some other perks, and you get their contact information. Win-Win!
Last but not least, a postcard can be kept as a physical reminder of your business and services, as opposed to email marketing, which is easily missed, ignored, or deleted.
How Often To Send Postcards To Farm?
Ideally, you should be sending out one postcard to your network at least once a month. Try to include information that provides value and is helpful for your audience. Also, ensure your headshot is on the postcard to improve familiarity.
Information could look like a quarterly sales report that outlines all that has transpired in the market over the last quarter, what the trends indicate for the future and what can be expected for the upcoming three months.
If sending out farming postcards once a month doesn’t suit you, because of budget constraints or any other reason, you can door-knock using our easy door-knocking strategy. (This works like a charm)
7 Examples of Ingenious Realtor Postcards
Source: One Step Services
This postcard has a lot to like. First off, it’s highlighting the level of demand in a community. This can be an effective strategy, especially if you’re able to differentiate the strength of your geo-farm market compared to other areas.
Secondly, there is humor. “You bring the boxes. I’ll bring the buyers” is fantastic messaging that injects humor while also indicating that you will indeed bring the client buyers.
Source: PostcardMania
This postcard has one call to action (CTA), and it works well. The agent is driving interest based on a current pain point that a seller may be experiencing. These types of postcards work very well in slower markets.
It also has the benefit of planting a seed in future sellers’ minds. It highlights that not all agents are created equally.
To improve this postcard further, we’d suggest modernizing the look and feel of the postcard but the messaging is on point.
Source: My RE Postcards
Offering a rebate has the potential to be both a competitive advantage and an incentive, similar to lowering your commission. This postcard is for brokers, agents, or investors looking for multifamily property sellers as clients.
It makes reference to typical problems faced by multi-family property owners, shows empathy, and provides a sizeable discount to persuade potential owners to get in touch.
You raise the likelihood that potential customers would contact you by promising to relieve their pain points and providing a rebate.
From: Etsy
Introducing yourself as a neighbor can naturally encourage people to reach out for advice if you reside in your target region.
It suggests that you are well-versed in the regional market, readily accessible to customers due to your close proximity, and invested in maintaining the neighborhood's quality of life just like the present homeowners are.
Even if you frequent your farm area and take part in activities in the said area as a way to establish a connection with the region even if you don't live there, you can still identify yourself as a neighbor.
In any case, this is an illustration of how to present yourself as a local real estate specialist using a basic postcard template.
From: Etsy
Eye-catching postcards are memorable. This ticks the box for eye-catching! Also, it has a warm human element to the messaging. It’s showing the receiver that you’re a real person with a personality. Also, it’s drawing attention to your farming community by stating, “I’m also your neighbor.”
This is one of the best examples of blending your personality with your marketing which will separate you from the pack. What we love most about this one is it’s not generic and conveys a friendly approach.
Source: Help-U-Sell
One of your most effective tools for attracting customers in real estate is positive testimonials from previous customers. Sellers who want to navigate a difficult process easily develop trust when they receive this kind of postcard.
They can also be successful when marketing to leads from for sale by owner (FSBO) sales or expired listings, whose owners may be cynical or reluctant to work with an agent.
When it comes to major purchases like a home or piece of property, testimonials are crucial in determining who a person chooses to work with.
One of the biggest financial transactions a person will ever do is buying real estate, therefore they want to work with a person they can trust.
From: Real Estate Marketing Magazine
This postcard speaks to the current questions on buyers' and sellers' minds. You’ll notice the postcard explains how rising interest rates impact homeowners, buyers, and investors. This allows the reader's eyes to be drawn to the transaction type that most suits their needs.
What we love most about this postcard is it’s using education to communicate value. This is one of the most effective ways to actually get folks to call you: show them you know the market.
How To Find Vetted Postcards For Realtors?
Using real estate farming postcards can help you generate leads and increase brand awareness in a specific location. To ensure your business stays on top of mind, your postcards need to be eye-catching and memorable.
This isn’t to worry you; if you aren’t too much of an artist, and feel you cant make appealing postcards on your own, there are many places that offer ready-made and ready-to-print postcard templates.
All you have to do is make some necessary tweaks, hit print, and your mailers will be ready to send out!
Etsy
Etsy can be a great source of farming postcards for agents. In particular, the designs tend to add more personality than your traditional postcards for farming.
There are plenty of options, and most are highly cost-effective. This is due to many of these templates being available as Canva templates. We also love that these can be delivered instantly since they are coming from Canva templates from the Etsy seller.
PostcardMania
One of the best platforms to source your postcard from is PostcardMania. The website takes most of the grunt work off your plate by creating quality postcards and sending them out directly to the most qualified leads in your mailing list without you as the middleman.
Browse their realtor marketing category and pick and choose the designs and styles that call out to you the most!
Canva
If you are a creative person and would like your postcards to reflect your style and personality, you can create DIY postcards for free with Canva. You can choose your favorite templates from hundreds of options or you can craft your own postcards from scratch— the possibilities are endless.
And the best part? You can access all this and more for free!
Browse through 200+ templates and pick what feels right to you!
Pinterest is another great platform where you can find thousands of innovative ideas for mailers and postcards. While the platform does not enable you to personalize the postcards or mail them out for you, it is a great way of finding inspiration for your next postcard.
Additionally, Pinterest also enables you to discover other platforms, not on this list that can help you create the postcard you envision.
Scroll through endless templates and ideas and you’ll find your perfect postcard soon enough!
Summing Up Real Estate Farming Postcards
Knowing how to market your business is a deciding factor in how well you’ll do as a realtor.
Learning how to use the many marketing tools effectively will give you the leg up you need to get ahead of competitors.
One of the most effective ammo in your marketing arsenal is farming postcards.
Sending farming postcards on a regular basis will help you establish a solid name for yourself in your local community.
This exhibits your competence and dedication, which are a surefire way of generating more business from leads in your target area.