Hey welcome back to this week in marketing. Today, i've got a special guest, monica carr orange county. California, listen to this 61 transactions closed in pending last year, 82 million dollars in volume coming mostly from her database and her geographic farm, and today i want to have you bridge the connection between your database and farming, because it's all about relationship marketing. So monica welcome to the show, hey tom.

How are you thanks for having me what a pleasure, oh monica? Thank you so much i mean you know, i anyone that's watching right now, if you're on youtube, you can probably go to another video that monica did a few years ago. That has 720 000 views where she talked about a little this farming stuff as well, but monica this is a show, that's designed to go hard-hitting, fast-paced snackable. So i want to talk about geographic farming, tactically, so the first question i have for you is you know: how did you select your geographic farm so tom? It really came from your advice at the very first summit that i attended in 2011. You did a segment about farming and you talked about choosing a farm that had a six to eight percent turnover uh, so actually how to be strategic.

So i studied the mls. I looked at the numbers. I looked at the turnover, and i chose the farm based on those numbers and also another thing in in that really struck home with me was you, you said something that was door knockable, something small enough that you could, because sometimes i think, if you bite off More than you can chew it's hard to go deep in the farm. The money doesn't allow you to do that.

So i picked a small farm in the beginning of 400 homes, a gated community door, knockable easy to mail to easy to reach out to people, and i think that's the advice i would give to anybody starting off. Instead of trying to start because my initial farming tactics, when i first got in the business didn't work, i was trying to bite off much bigger farm 3000 homes as a brand agent, and it was it just, isn't manageable. So picking a farm, that's manageable! That has the turnover to sustain the production that you want. So if you were talking to somebody today - and you know, you and i you know, talked off camera about how many homes are on the market or in this case not on the market.

If an agent was looking today to try and select a farm, it's going to be hard for them to see anything with 68 annual turnover. So what advice would you recommend? Did they go back to historical data, their own, their own transactions? What do you recommend? Absolutely, in fact that's what i did when i chose my farm. I didn't just look at the last year. I literally went back five years because i wanted to see the trend because the market's ebb and flow and there's movement, but i think the bigger the picture you have this year is just so myopic it'd be a mistake to look at the last 12 months.

So you got to go back further. I love it. Thank you for that great insight, so so, monica today, your farm is how large, so we have 400 homes. In that farm.

We've adopted an adjacent farm, that's 236 homes and with the prodding of my coach and my broker and you we are expanding our farms to include some more adjacent areas this year, because we've done the production, we've done almost 2 million in gci from 636 homes. That's pretty incredible, so someone in mia is going to say: what's your average sales price million five, two million 1.3 is our average sale price last year. It was about a million. So that's how fast the markets moved right.

It's obviously carried the prices up, but we have farms that are bred in butter for irvine california, it's you know. It was four to six hundred now it's 800 to a million um and then the higher end in my farm goes beyond two million two. Two. Two three up to maybe two five but average is one three.

So i appreciate that so for context. We're gon na talk right now for the listener about basically marketing open houses, community events, ways that you go deeper, but i think it's important for people to understand. First and foremost, what's your market share in these farms, i mean, i know it bounces. You know year over year, because only so many people are moving at a given time, but give us a range of of your market dominance.

So, and i think this is very telling pre-coveted we had a market share as high as 78 in in our farm speech. Between 57 and 78, but a lot of our farming is toe-to-toe face-to-face events door-knocking, so kovid really put a damper on that and although we continued with our mailing, i feel like we lost a little bit of touch with the farm. So as soon as last year, we were able to put on masks and go in the farm, and the community was craving the events again and we started doing them. The market shares shot up again and now we're we're roughly between 35 and 40 percent market share.

Love it, so i think it's such a great distinction, especially for some of our veteran friends that are maybe listening like oh, i used to farm but then covet just you know. I stopped doing all the things that had got me there. So, let's talk about those things so today you know it's this sense of like we're back and whether we're wearing a mask or gloves or a hazmat suit, like whatever it takes right like making. Our customers feel comfortable talk to us about marketing, open houses and community events.

If i'm living in your farm tell us all the things that we're going to experience with you in a year, okay, so tom, our my biggest thing - was creating a sense of community because i actually moved into the farm. That was my dream at the time and i lived there and i did notice that people are very private and they're working hard. They come home from work, they close the garage, so i want to create a sense of community. So what we started doing is we started hosting an ice cream truck in the park the last friday of every month.

I would pay an ice cream truck to come circle around the park playing the music like when i was a kid and we used to chase the ice cream truck and and i would put out invitations and door hangers and we would put magnets out at the Beginning of the year would save the date and those magnets would stay on the fridge all year and the kids were the ones pulling the parents out of the house to come, get free ice cream on friday after school, and we still do that. We do it. Every month, from march to october, um, that's one of my favorite events. I've picked up as many as four listing appointments standing at the ice cream truck because people know i'm gon na, be there so they'll literally wait until an ice cream truck to come.

Tell me they want to sell their house and then on top of that we do quarterly events. So we'll do a movie night in the park event, which is a blast. We have face painters and balloon artists and we sponsor a disney or a pixar movie. That's family, friendly and we'll do a photo booth, and all of it literally is just to give back and create a sense of community for everybody, we'll have the in and out truck there and it's all complimentary i pay for it.

All i mean i'll spend, you know anywhere from five to eight grand on these events um, but the reward - and the return is priceless because i get a chance to literally get in you know into community with the neighbors and they the kids run up and hug Me and i've got pictures of the same little boy in my farm year over year and we're doing the back-to-back photo where he's now going to be almost taller than me, and he started out way down here. So you know i want them to think monica carr when they think homes community, whether they need to move, sell, buy rent. I want to be top of mind for that, and those events are huge and then obviously we do at christmas. We do santa in the park um, we do our cook tin, delivery, annual cookie tin, which, by the way in december, we dropped over 900 cookies right about 900, probably um, and i will tell you within 30 days we had five listings from that face-to-face connection.

At the door with the cookies, so i haven't abandoned what got me here, which is the face to face and the door knocking which for me, is a big deal, because that's where i connect with the families um. But then we we sprinkle in all the other stuff and as far as open houses go we're very known in our farm, for our twilight, open houses, we do sushi sake and sweets events, and so every you know. If i, if i launch a new listing wednesday's broker preview thursday, we'll do the twilight open house - and we really do that for the neighbors. So they can come see the house.

Everybody can be a looky-loo and they're invited to come, be a licky lou and i get a chance to have wine with them or sake or sushi or just you know, shoot the and talk about the market and or talk about their kids or what's happening in The community, so it really brings it down to a personal level and that's where, where our business is coming from, you know what i love monica. First of all, you unpacked that so beautifully, and i can just imagine the person right now. That literally was pausing and writing pausing and writing and then looking at like katie up here on my team he's like smiling like i want to go to that twilight, open house right like susie, sushi sake, etc. Yeah we make it fun.

One thing i wanted to add: i almost forgot - and this is really important, so we we leveraged these events to get emails, because you said something at an event years ago about focusing on your past client and your sphere, and for me that is my farm. Is one leg of that um and i know having the emails being able to reach them via email. I mean we'll spend thousands of dollars on mailers that just get chunked in the trash and email is free, and so what we do when they come to the sushi events when they come to the ice cream truck events when they come and they're trained, i mean Our clients and our our homeowners will come up and say: i live at one two: three banana street and my email is x, and so we have a binder and when they walk up, they tell us their address. We want we flip to that page that street okay.

Is this still your email address great. We have like 80 of the emails in our farm wow, which is huge, so wow, and then with john on our team as of last year, he's an amazing. He does an email marketing campaign every saturday morning, um and we played with it. We did it on friday.

We did it on saturday. We have a much better open rate uh right now. Our open rate is what 49 40 percent open rate and that's pretty good. We're hoping to get a little bit higher than that, but but we're learning as we go.

So that's been a huge leverage, the events to connect with people and get their contact information so that you have a way to reach out to them. When you have something of value for them, so i want to just be clear. What i heard is you know. Obviously, you know the like entire sort of spring through fall, you're doing one friday a month, ice cream right, so we're this like glenda baker would be happy, we're killing them with food right and then you do multiple movie nights in the park.

That sounds like a summertime thing, and then you do the cookie delivery at the end of the year right. Someone right now is listening going what's going on with ferry, we've been talking about digital and jason, pantana and reels, and you know your google, my business page, but isn't it beautiful? It's the old and the new together. So talk about on the digital side, you started to go down the the channel of email you're, sending an email once a month. What am i receiving is that for your entire database or yeah sorry once a week for your entire database or just for your farm, so we actually hit the entire database and the farm, so the farm is part of that and they get our.

You know we do our market update report. So stephen thomas does a great job here in orange county of keeping everybody addressed to the market. We send that out people love it, they open it. If we have new listings coming soon, we may send the floor plan, say: hey.

You know check out these new properties that are coming up um, you know so that they have a chance to see inventory and be able to maybe get in line right as these homes are getting prepped to go on the market and then typically we'll do video. We start with a video of the week whether it's me doing a market update or me. Giving a past client experience an interview with somebody. So we try to do a short little video at the top so that people will open it and click on it and and be involved.

So i'm on your email list and i remember being back in orange county. I don't know eight or nine months ago and literally texting you and saying your video game and email marketing is on point. What advice do you have for someone? That's listening who you and i both know, a weekly email with all the other campaigns. We're doing is how you stay top of mind, and it's free.

What other tips have you found to be most effective with email marketing, whether it's subject line or video first versus non-video saturday versus friday, give us some more insight there. Well, thanks to john he's, the one sending out the emails in the videos - and he looks at the data right so he's always studying the trends and what's getting what people are clicking on, he can literally see what they're clicking on in the email so that we Know do more of that and when we started putting the floor plans on our coming soons, that was a game. Changer people want to see what i mean. A picture of a house is great, but they can tell by a floor plan if it's going to work or not, and and so things like that have been really good and the marketing update as well.

A lot of people seem to be clicking on that. They want to see what's happening and the videos are getting watched and i try to put in little bite size under 60 seconds if we can just a quick snippet of what's happening in the market and then obviously the editing that john does is great makes. It keeps it involve, you know, people involved and tom. You know me, i was very slow to embrace the video um technology was not my because i am a toe to toe person.

I love the connection with people and i i realize it's not. How do i do it? It's who do i hire to do that, because that's not what i do right. That's not what i'm good at so go an entirely different direction with us and share with us, because you've been farming since 2011 share with us the mistakes to avoid knowing what you know now, hey do not do these three things, five things, one thing whatever it Is well, i would say, the the i actually got in the business back in 2004 and i tried farming then and i bit off a farm that was way too big. So i didn't have the budget to mail consistently um, i didn't have the pieces outlined in advance, so i didn't have a system, it was kind of hit or miss and it was a catastrophe.

You know when you're slow and steady you win the race. So if you have to you know scale back the farm start with 400 get that manageable. Then you can grow to 600. 800.

1. 000. 1500, as the budget feeds itself, because the turnover in the production will then start paying for the events. I didn't do events.

My first year, you know, i did cookie tins and i did door knocking. I did the sweat equity stuff, but at the end of the first year when i realized okay, i've, you know made 150 000 in this one farm. Now i can take a portion of this and invest it in the next year's marketing and so having a budget for that and just planning for the events. So you know what you're gon na do throughout the year in advance, so like in january, we met with the hoa boards of the farms so that we could get their buy-in.

We presented our proposals, i attend the board meeting, i you know we we let them know what we're doing why we want to do it and they're very cooperative and that helps the first year. We didn't do it that way and we got slapped on the wrist. So i learned like that's a great that's, a great insight yeah if you've got a board and the other thing i had the first year we did hot dogs and we literally had rented one of those hot dog. You know burnt things from par party central or something, and somebody complained that we were selling food and we were that we had food anyway, so we now we do food trucks that are licensed.

We don't handle the food, we don't do it picnic style like we just we delegate that and and get people that everyone's gon na love like in and out truck, who doesn't love that right, so so the first big one i heard is like, maybe not looking At the data biting off too many homes making it manageable and then once you start creating some revenue and i loved all the sweat equity stuff, because you and i both know at the end of the day, if you're willing to hey monica right. That goes a long way like making phone calls to your database versus just sending an email goes a long way um, but then i loved how you said and then hey, i generated 150 000. I'm now going to take a slug of that and reinvest it back into the farm, and i think that for people is the key. So what would you say to the person? That's like you've heard it before at one of the events someone walk up.

Oh, my god, monica you know, i saw your video on tom's youtube, channel you're. So amazing you know, but i started a farm and it didn't work. What do you say to him? Well, i would ask him what they did right, because i think the key is what is the turnover there? Because if i was farming somewhere that had one percent turnover because everybody loved living there and wanted to be carried out in a box as they like to say, then that's not going to work. So i think you have to it's it's kind of math.

In the beginning, right like look at the areas you're considering and you know, sometimes everybody wants to sell the big, expensive houses, but those don't always churn. Sometimes it's the bread and butter, the condos, the tri-levels, that people buy and they're like. Oh, i lived here two years and all these stairs i need out and those are very lucrative churning farms. So if you're looking for and then it's nice to have move up, farms where you can take buyers, sellers that are selling the tri-levels that now want to detach condo.

And then the detached condos want the driveway in the backyard and if you've got something in each price point, then you can dominate because a lot of times you can make matches among your farm with before things even hit the market that is so insightful and every Every great geofarmer says the same exact thing so monica for the people that want to reach you what's the best way for them to reach out. If they got more questions about all things, farming absolutely well. Obviously you can reach me on instagram at monica carr. My email is monica monicacar.com and my phone number is 714-402-4212 well.

You've said that a few times that was good all right, well, monica thank you so much and hey this is this week in marketing. Our job is to bring you the tools and the strategies in the marketing that works. You decide which ones you're going to implement. I think this one is a no-brainer thanks.

Monica thanks tom uh.