Doing the right things is more important than doing things right.
Mark Suster

The theme of this article is improving your business by leveraging your existing systems. Arnie Leedholm, a Real Estate Agent based out of Calgary, Alberta, is a great example of a man who being in the business for 30+ years is leveraging his years of experience with new technology.

#1 Not all tasks are made equal

Stephen Covey created the very well known “time management matrix”. The grid does a simple job of highlighting the important activities that we need to focus on. Often our natural inclination may be to spend more time on urgent tasks, many of which are not important. It’s a grid that successful business people rely on as a reminder of what activities to focus on to maximize the effectiveness of their time at work.

While this is a great graph to illustrate what differentiates important tasks from others, it doesn’t do justice when differentiating important tasks themselves. When you understand and apply this next principle you will begin to see your time having an even bigger impact on the growth of your overall real estate business.

#2 The majority of your results are coming from 20% of your activities

The 80/20 rule, which I’ve referred to in previous posts, is the principle that 20% of your activities account for 80% of the results. That begs the question, are you prioritizing that 20% of activities? Some important tasks effect all of your business, some important tasks effect some of your business and some important tasks effect only 1 part of your business.

Think of the difference between setting up lead generation or hosting an open house for a client. Both are important tasks, but only one of them will continue to impact your business in the future.

#3 If you prioritize your big important tasks your business will grow.

Arnie Leedholm is already a successful agent. He has a good reputation in Calgary and has many repeat clients that refer him. Nancy Wijngaarde wrote this about Arnie, “I have worked with Arnie Leedholm for many years in buying and selling real estate and he is someone I can always count on for his knowledge and advice.”

The reality is that in order for you to grow your business beyond its current size you need to go beyond your current sphere of influence. In real estate one of the key important activities that you do to grow your business beyond your sphere is paid marketing.

Arnie turned to Facebook as a way of increasing the number of clients he was reaching beyond his sphere. Arnie says he chose to use StreetText’s platform, “to help me find clients as they already had credibility with me.”

Arnies years of experience paid off. He knew where he needed to invest his time and money to grow his business.

Is paid marketing right for you?

Marketing is divided between 2 groups. Branding and direct response. Big companies like Nike and CocaCola focus on branding. But it’s expensive. Whereas, direct response campaigns give you leads but often don’t build your brand.

What if there was a way to get the benefits of both in a single campaign? Fortunately, there is. It’s called Solution based marketing. And big ad agencies like Harmon Brothers have been using it for years. Solution based marketing speaks to a problem that a person has and then provides them with a solution to their problem.

Solution based marketing on Facebook can build your brand in 2 ways. Firstly, your business page is displayed to every person that sees your ad. No different than a billboard. Secondly, you establish delight and trust by delivering on the promise and then staying in touch with them (dripping on them) over time.

The good news is with StreetText you can launch Solution based marketing campaigns on Facebook to drive leads in just a few clicks.

“I signed up to StreetText and within the first few weeks had a buyer sale and at this time after about 8 weeks, I have 6-8 very solid leads I am working with.”

Arnie Leedholm

Creating an effective campaign

Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur and VC says that you need to ask yourself these 5 questions when creating a marketing campaign.

1. With whom are you trying to communicate?
2. What messages are you wanting them to receive?
3. What is the best channel to reach these people?
4. If they receive your message what actions (if any) are you hoping for?
5. How will you handle those responses

At first glance, creating effective marketing and answering these questions might seem a bit daunting. The great news is that if you’ve been in real estate for a while you already have systems or good habits in place for handling responses to your inquiries. This is where your experience allows you to use technology to leverage it.

Here’s what I mean.

Those first 4 questions can be answered using marketing experts and technology. Whereas the last question needs to be answered by yourself.

Arnie Leedholm, a client of StreetText, is seeing success growing his business because he has experience doing the correct follow up. He already knows that he can handle responding to his leads. He’s leveraging our technology and his experience and knowledge in Real Estate to maximize the effectiveness of his marketing time and energy.

As Arnie wrote, “As in all of these types of marketing there are a lot of low quality leads, which are not the fault of StreetText. But amongst these contacts are some real gems…serious qualified buyers. If one does the correct follow up, this program really works!”

Understanding the 80/20 rule and how it applies to your business will greatly enable to you prioritize your tasks based on the long term effect they will have on your business and your life. By using this approach to audit the tasks you currently do you may be able to eliminate that some of the dreaded unimportant non-urgent activities that are only wasting your precious time