Spending on ads is always a big commitment.

And every agent has some concerns about this from time to time.

How much should realtors budget monthly for ads?

I always hear agents asking me how much should they advertise.

The answer depends on your own situation and where you are in your business.

My reply is always,

Advertising is not a cost, it's an INVESTMENT.

If done right, ads give you your money back in multiples.

But here's the thing.

Something terrible happens when you stop marketing: NOTHING.

Marketing budgets should be whatever your own comfort level is.

But how do you come up with a budgetary figure? Estimates?

You should look at the advertising platform to see what's the average.

For example, 5 years ago, Facebook was super cheap. You could get many leads for a measly $150/month budget.

Those days are now long gone.

$150 per month is no longer going to cut it in 2020.

Because:

• Competition for ads has shot up to the roof and is expected to continue.
• Everybody and their dog is selling ads on Facebook (yes, even dogs).
• Big companies with larger budgets than you or I are getting more serious about social media ads
• Ads are getting less effective
• People on Facebook are ignoring ads

What's the solution? Simple:

• You've got to be consistent and stick to your marketing plan.
• You cannot pause ads in the second or third month and restart ads a few months later.
• You've got to do smarter marketing by knowing which ads work and which don't.
• You have to be aware of retargeting and know how to get those who're not responding.
• For Facebook to do a good job of retargeting, you cannot pause your ads.

So you see, the fastest and easiest way to start getting inquiries today is still Facebook. This is true for most realtors.

Some of my agents spend $1,000 per month based on their own comfort level. Some have larger budgets, while others have smaller budgets.

But here's an important caveat: paid ads tend to get worse over time. That's because of 'Ad Fatigue' which comes from 'viewer blindness'. Which means, over time, viewers become less sensitive to ads.

So it becomes costlier and costlier.

That's where free traffic comes in.

Free Ads

Free content is whatever you post on your social media, which is kinda like SEO. But it has to be consistent.

I'll be covering free ads in a future post, but for now, your budget for ads depends on your own comfort level.

Get more exclusive real estate agent training here 👉 http://www.yasserkhan.sg/👈

Learn How To Get More Real Estate Leads, More Listings, More Sales, with Less Resistance AND still have a LIFE!

Yasser Khan is a real estate coach, speaker, and trainer at YasserKhan.SG who teaches Realtors how to make more Money, have more Time and enjoy more Freedom without all the B.S.

How to Get Real Estate Leads In 2020?

Leads are the foundation of your realtor business and having a constant flow of leads will help you get appointments and closings.

But many agents still struggle with getting inquiries.

How do you get more traffic and more people to reach out to you?

There's a popular misconception out there.

Many realtors think that they need to create more traffic to get more inquiries.

But the fact of the matter is, traffic is already out there. You just need to channel it back to yourself.

People are already out there searching for homes. Your job is simply to find out where they are and direct them to your website (which is a must) or mobile.

I'm going to be talking about several of these traffic sources.

There are two ways to get inquiries and leads

1. The old fashioned way (which I do NOT recommend) is to do door knocking, cold calling, canvassing and networking.
2. The smarter way is Inbound Marketing, which is to get prospects to reach out to you first. This means you become the hunted, instead of the hunter.

When you do marketing the right way, you get prospects reaching out to you. The offer you make has to be a no brainer. What this means is that the prospects love it so much that they will go out of their way to leave their contact details to get it.

Read Evergreen Guide to Real Estate Lead Generation in 2022

Which Platforms are best for traffic for realtors?

There are several platforms you can use right now to get started with Inbound Marketing.

The best and easiest way is to use Facebook ads. It tends to be the most affordable too. And you can get leads pretty fast from Facebook. In fact, one of  my agents Raama, closed a deal in just 6 hours of his ad going live online.

Then there is Social Media Marketing, which is free but kinda like SEO. It takes longer and many agents seem to spam the platforms. That's a sure fire way to get banned.

Then there is Google Ads, if you have the budget to invest $1,000 to $2,000 a month.

 Another way is to do videos on YouTube. YouTube is in fact the largest search engine after Google and everyday people are searching videos for answers. You do not need a full professional set up to do quality videos. In fact, your smartphone is good enough for the job.

Check out: 200 Ways to Attract Real Estate Home Buyer Seller Leads

How to get traffic from YouTube?

You can simply use your gmail account for the associated YouTube account to get started.

You can record yourself on camera talking about things you care about in the home buying process.

• Tell stories.
• Talk about your experiences.
• Share your own experiences of buying a home
• Explain why you are a realtor
• Demonstrate results

The key with YouTube, as with all platforms, is CONSISTENCY.

Yes, life happens, but you should get back on track and post when you're able to do so.

Make it a point to be consistent, share stories and provide value.

The downside of getting traffic from others

Here's something from my personal experience that will save you a lot of time.

The traffic that you get from Google or Facebook, whether free or paid, is ultimately theirs.

It's not yours. You can only direct it to yourself.

It can dry up. Quickly.

When I was  starting online marketing in late 2009, I got Google Slapped. Hard. Literally thousands of businesses went bust overnight.

You're always at their mercy. Their platforms, their rules, their agendas. Not yours.

The sooner you realise this, the faster you can protect yourself.

The best way to protect yourself

The absolute best way that I know of is to build your own LIST.

This is something almost no realtor is willing to do.

They keep on buying sms lists from vendors whose only goal is to keep agents dependent on them.

But when you build and grow you own list of buyers and sellers, you have an asset that keeps growing.

It will keep giving you business for years and you will never be at the mercy of platforms whenever you need to get leads and business.

That is the secret to how you can get more real estate leads, in 2020 and beyond.

Check out How to Get Real Estate Seller Leads for Less Than $20 a Day?

Get more exclusive real estate agent training here 👉 http://www.yasserkhan.sg/👈

Learn How To Get More Real Estate Leads, More Listings, More Sales, with Less Resistance AND still have a LIFE!

Yasser Khan is a real estate coach, speaker, and trainer at YasserKhan.SG who teaches Realtors how to make more Money, have more Time and enjoy more Freedom without all the B.S.

Are you the type of agent who ONLY wants to work with Qualified leads?

Meaning, ready-to-buy home Buyers and Sellers EXCLUSIVELY?

Maybe, putting it quite bluntly, because you might be starved for cash?!

Or maybe because only qualified leads make you money Right Now!

So that's why you don't want to wait for the unqualified ones... because they're a waste of your time and your money. You're not sure if they're really going to buy or not. They might be playing a waiting game. Or they're waiting for the market to improve... Sitting on their hands, always waiting...

I can understand that impatience.

And even I personally used to be like that.

But, I've got something to tell you!

And you may not like to hear it, but I'll still tell you anyway.

If you only want Quality Leads, who buy right now, who make you money now, then prepare to be disappointed!

The Low Hanging Fruit is often the FIRST to Get Eaten

Every other agent is also after Qualified Prospects! Yet, is that your entire business strategy?

That's a very SHORT SIGHTED Strategy to build your business on!

Because you've completely burned that bridge, those prospects won't choose you when they become ready 6 months later or 6 years later!

Believe me, given enough time, almost all so-called Unqualified, unready Prospects turn to Qualified, Ready Prospects.

Unless you have a way to be right there in order to catch them then, you will miss them.

It's not your fault, because all the training courses out there fail to teach agents this critical strategy.

And I Made the Exact Same Mistake Too

Here's why.

When I was an agent, I was busy chasing prospects who I thought were more serious than others.

I would call someone up and based on their answers, would try hard to get them to see me in an appointment.

But those prospects who didn't pick up the phone or hung up on me or were not willing to meet up with me yet, I wouldn't bother them again.

I didn't like them. They were too tough to work with.

• Always complaining
• Always disrespecting me or my profession
• Always putting me down
• Always throwing stupid objections
• Always making my life harder

After about a year in my realtor career, I fell in love with the other type of prospect.

The ready-to-buy-right-now buyers and sellers.

They were the EASIEST prospects to work with.

• They were very polite
• They agreed with me most of the time
• They threw few, if any objections
• They liked me
• They listened to me

The entire time with them, from start to finish, from first contact to closing, went very smoothly.

It was a joy to work with them.

So I naturally shifted to chasing only qualified prospects.

But then, something quickly put a stop to my plans for an easy, success-filled life as a realtor.

And I quickly realised that a huge majority of them already had built a relationship with an agent. I found that only after I asked them.

What I had failed to notice was that every realtor and his upline loved that prospect too!

I Couldn't Compete With That.

Me, a complete stranger, versus someone the client already trusted and like, was just too much competition for me.

So I had to quickly change strategy, or die.

At the time, I had barely started to close several deals in a row, after struggling for months and months. My savings were all gone and I was relying on my mother for food and transport.

My confidence was at an all-time low. So, getting easy prospects was like Oxygen to me.

Every Salesman Thrives on Approval.

But sooner or later, I had to get out of this mess I was in.

So one day my mentor Dan Kennedy was teaching something. As I was listening, something he said made me go 'Aha!'

What was it?

He said,

"You can't force people to buy from you when YOU want them to. They will only buy when THEY are ready!"

When I heard this, I knew this was it!

I realised something else that day.

I realised buying or selling a home, just like everything else, was a PROCESS.

Therefore, it was only logical that different prospects were simply in different STAGES of buying or selling.

I was stuck on the SMALLEST section, which was ready-to-act buyers and sellers, who literally represented only 5% of the entire market!

Ironically, the very prospects I was turning away were the LARGEST percentage of the entire market.

I only needed 2 things to solve that:

1. Patience. Lots of it.
2. System. To automate follow up.

So I decided to do something about it and I ended up creating the very foundation of my Property Agent Success System that would go on to transform the careers of my inner circle of agents.

But at the time, I didn't know that.

I was simply biding my time.

And one day, it happened

It was a pleasant surprise to me when leads that I cultivated months and years ago, suddenly turned ready to buy/sell right now.

That was the day I realised that, hey, I didn't even spend any money on ads.

Thoses prospects were in my system all the while.

Being nurtured.

Until they came out of the other end, ready to buy, and I was waiting for them!

So, like how I learned all those years ago, you've got to play the long game too!

You've got to be patient and have a follow up system in place.

That, my friend, is the secret to get clients without spending money on ads.

It's 2020, and believe it or not, there are agents out there who are still stuck in the old ways of prospecting (like it's still 1990)!

They keep prospecting, prospecting, prospecting! To them, everyone and anyone is a potential prospect!

And everyone needs their services, right?

Wrong!

What's so wrong about that?

Well, people don't like to be hard sold, but they love to buy!

Step out of your shoes as an agent for a minute, and imagine that you're out shopping for a new suit. You're in Paragon and you see a suit you like. And it's affordable. So now you feel like buying it. But then, suddenly a novice salesman pesters you to buy ties, even though you're not here to buy ties. What do you do? Do you run away when the promoter is too aggressively trying to sell you their new tie collection? Or you would attentively listen to his hard selling sales pitch, loving every single minute of it? You would run away as fast as possible!

Now, why can't those very same realtors, who run away from other hard selling salespeople, still do the same things to others that they wouldn't want others to do to them?! In other words, why do something to others that you don't like to be done to yourself?

Here's the problem with us agents; it's because we're still still stuck in the Old Mindset!

Despite advances in technology, despite the viral nature of social media and despite the massive adoption rates of mobile phones and an explosion in videos, at a time when even Primary school kids are on their mobiles, the average agent is still doing door knocking, cold calling and prospecting. Mindlessly. He's not leveraging those advances in technologies to get their message out to more people in a shorter time for less costs.

But it's not entirely your fault. Every agent and his upline is also doing this, so it's hard to break away from tradition. I certainly used to work like this when I was an active realtor.

What I Realised All Those Years Ago

Here's a secret I'm willing to share with you today: Pursued Prospects Run Away!

The first time I realised this was when I was still an active agent back in 2008.

I noticed that top agents like PropNex's Mohamed Ismail were never busy prospecting for new business; they were busy servicing their clients. That's why those happy clients referred them more often. When I had that 'aha!' moment, it made total sense to me!

Because I realised, the real reason I was struggling in those days was because I was a new agent with no experience, it was because I spent ALL of my time only prospecting! I was hardly servicing my existing clients, and therefore, I only did a mediocre job of that! Bye bye referrals...

The minute I realised that, my focus shifted! Instead of 'me! me! me!', I had to come from a position of giving!

And when that happened, I had a flood of prospects wanting to buy my listings!

The New Way: Reverse Prospecting

And this is the exact opposite approach to marketing; get prospects to chase you instead of you doing all the chasing.

By reversing the traditional, outbound sales approach, any agent can now attract hungry prospects to them!

No more door knocking! No more cold calling! No more canvassing?

So how do you get started with Reverse Prospecting? You do this in a number of ways:

1. Offering a solution to a problem your ideal clients are facing right now, in exchange for their contact information
2. Repackaging your realtor services in a way that makes it attractive to do business with you
3. Positioning yourself as an information resource, rather than a hungry salesperson

Do that, and watch your inquiries and closings skyrocket without scrambling for buyers every time your agency has a new launch!