If you're looking to start a geographic Farm or you're looking to market around your listings around your sales to produce more listing opportunities for your business, then no doubt you're thinking about postcard marketing. But wait, do you have the right plan? You may think postcard marketing is a bygone. it's Antiquated and you be wrong. It comes down to like any kind of marketing medium, how well do you wield the tool? How much do you pour into your postcard marketing to get the return on investment? Whether you're starting or leveling up your Geographic Farm or marketing around your listings and your sales, Postcard marketing is a critical opportunity.

But it's high stakes. Because postcards aren't cheap, they could be cost prohibitive. Your budget becomes a factor, and so knowing the right plan, having the right strategy, approaching it in the right way is everything. If you want to leverage success from your postcard marketing and that's why today's conversation is going to be such a blast as I'll be joined by an expert interview guest, one of our rock star coaches who has a long history of success in terms of geographic, farming and postcard marketing.

And today's episode is going to change your thinking. It's going to raise your thinking about postcard marketing. So welcome to this this week in marketing. If you're new to the Channel please make sure to tap that big red subscribe button And also there's a bell right next to it If you tap that, it will turn on notifications.

So whenever we publish videos just like this, you're the first to know and therefore the first in your Marketplace to rip off duplicate, adapt and make part of your own approach. So without further Ado Let's dive into our show. It's time to talk about postcards. And I said I was joined by a rockstar guest a rock star coach in our ecosystem and that special guest is the one and only legendary.

Eileen Rivera Eileen Thank you so much for being on today! Thank you thank you for the invitation and thank you for talking about my one of my favorite topics. Well you are the queen of postcard marketing. I Mean there are several folks in our ecosystem who do very well with postcard marketing, but I would hold you in the the highest Regard in terms of you bring the most creativity and Ingenuity and Innovation to how you leverage postcards. Uh, in the pre-call we were talking about how you know we live in a day and age where video marketing is so prolific and the level of effort agents bring into their video marketing and their email marketing.

But you don't always see agents putting as much oomph into their postcard marketing. but you send out art to your neighborhoods that you serve and so I want to tap into your brain and pull out the principles and lessons of what agents can take Rip Off and Duplicate to improve their postcard marketing because it is cost prohibitive and so the stakes are high to be doing it the right way. and I'm sure as you're a coach as well when you look at agents who are leveraging postcard marketing whether it's around listings or Geographic farming, what are some of the common mistakes that you've been noticing in terms of other agents use of postcard marketing? Well, those are two different plans you just laid out. So sure if you're going to do postcards around every one of your just listeds are just sold, then you have to plan that out.

Is it a coming soon? Is it an invitation to the open house? It is. Is it a sole postcard, right? I Mean those can be one-offs that you have a system in place to mail. Um, I'm as as a coach I've been hammering my agents on opportunity around every deal they have. like don't don't be a one and done and then go over to the next one.

Be one and leverage at least two more deals from that transaction. So that's very targeted marketing, right? Print Marketing. Now, if you're going to truly be a geographic farmer, you have to. It's the art and the science.

And folks, it starts with the science. You have to plan it out. You have to get all your numbers from your title company, You need to know how much it's going to cost you every month, and you need to make a minimum commitment. Like if you're really excited about it and you want to do it and you tell me you only have a two-month budget I'm gonna tell you, we're not doing it, we're not doing it.

It's a waste. I'd rather you go out there and knock doors or throw an event. Um, but if you're in it for the long haul and you see an opportunity because you've sold more homes in this particular neighborhood than anywhere else and people already call you naturally, then you want to leverage that and the ideal plan for Geographic Farming is you have at least a six month budget and you have a 12 month plan. Hey, if you're looking to step up your marketing game, then make sure to check out marketing.

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Pro and take the courses at your pace. Watch them when you want as many times as you want and crush it in your local. Marketplace Okay, so six month budget, 12-month plan. we're gonna get into what should you be sending out.

What's your process in terms of how you approached your postcard marketing I Want to slip back to the point you made? you took my bait I Talked about around your listings or a geographic Farm You're like, well, those are two different plans and I was like yes because I think it's often conflated in terms of oh, postcards or postcards? Well, postcards. That's like saying video is video I Don't know, it's all about the message. It's just another marketing medium and you hit the point perfectly about around listings and around sales. That's more of a one two three punch strategy to elicit the opportunities that may be around the edges of the sale you just had.

Because we know the adage when when a property sells one or two more sell behind it. The question is, who do they remember and if your marketing isn't strong enough to be memorable, then it's maybe not you. But then there's the idea of geographic farming, which is a long-term commitment. So I'm hearing you say the biggest mistake agents make when it comes to postcards is me misunderstanding what level of resolve and commitment they should be bringing with them to the process.

Did I paraphrase Well, Yes, yeah, that's exactly. It's critical that they're clear with that and their ability emotionally and financially. And you know emotionally in terms of discipline meets their goal you can't come up with this pretty plan. and you're so excited about two postcards go out and now you're running four different directions and it has nothing to do with The Farm.

Well, and you made a comment earlier before the recording was on about uh, when you market for business, you get busy and business makes you busy. And so there's also I Think the plan has to also be your commitment to it because eventually you should start getting listings and opportunities Absolutely, and a lot of Agents slip themselves onto the agent roller coaster where all of a sudden they neglect their marketing because they're focused on the business. And this is not the kind of marketing where you can start and stop and start. and stop because you're losing massive momentum.

Aren't you 100? It's just it's a waste of your, your heart, your energy, and your money. It can. It's all about consistency Again, we Hammer that in over and over and over again. But it particularly applies to geoforming.

It does so consistent to be wildly successful. The single greatest factor is consistency. Well, so let's talk strategy for a moment. Uh, we've already juxtaposed the difference between mailing around listings versus mailing a geographic farm and the commitment differences.

Let's just go super high level, 30 000 foot view. Strategically, when you talk about postcard marketing and I'm using that as an umbrella term postcard marketing, it's the utilization of postcards in your marketing. Whether it's farming or around listings. Super high level.

What is the strategy? and how do you measure your success? Because you already talked about it could be a long time before you see results. It could be months before results come in. How does somebody measure success when it comes to postcard marketing? Return on investment. You set goals, You set the plan.

How often are you going to mail? What are you going to mail? How are you going to enhance your mailing? Are you going to or knock the community that you're farming to? I Certainly hope so. Are you going to shop in the community or farming to? Are you going to go to the Starbucks and hang out with your laptop once a week? You know, with your branded shirt on. Those are all subtleties that help you progress at a quicker rate than just because. We know a lot of people who have check equity and while that sounds like a great thing, if they don't engage and get involved in the community and have their personality and themselves in the community, they're not going to get the best Roi that they can get.

So it's a combination of both. It's Sweat Equity and check Equity That's a great Point We've talked on the show numerous times about the power of multi-channel marketing magic. When you Market through multiple channels, it reinforces each respected Channel and therefore it makes the marketing more memorable and has greater effect. Just doing postcards alone is insufficient.

I Could say the same about just doing any kind of just doing open houses is insufficient. It's the multi-channel combination that really reinforces the ICU everywhere effect. We've talked about that numerous times before, but it also makes me think of the picture of geographic farming whereby you plant the seeds. but at some point you've got to go pick the grapes off the vine so to speak or they wither away and those opportunities go away.

And I Suppose that would manifest you at the coffee shop, hanging out with the locals, you door knocking you, putting on events you getting involved in. the HOA There's got to be some kind of a how do you actually pluck the opportunities that you have fostered through your nurturing efforts of geographic farming. Yeah, I Want to mention one thing because um, we have. We have a broad audience, right? that follows you I'm at the top of the list.

Um, and the first thing you have to do very very first thing before you even start geofarming is you need to know the community. So what I teach when you're looking at a Geopharm is I Tell them and I hope that these terms translate for the country because I'm in California But we do a map search. We put a line around it. We send an email to Title and say how many Sfrs are within these parameters now.

I have a number then I create an Excel spreadsheet and it has every year for the last 10 years. I Don't want you to go down a rabbit hole I just for every year I Want you to go into your NLS and from January 1st, 12, 31 of that year how many total homes sold in that neighborhood And you do it for 10 years? So you have an overview of how much turnover there is, you immediately become an expert Beyond Most agents that even know the area because now you have data and you can leverage that data. Obviously, if you picked a farm where there's very, very little turnover as your coach I'm going to tell you no, doesn't make sense I Know you like the neighborhood. go visit it, you're not.

This is not where the money opportunity is. so you want to look at turnover. You want 10 years of history and then if you're going to start mailing I'd like the first six cards designed before the first one goes out because with any luck at all, if you do what I'm coaching you to do, you're going to get busy, You're going to get a deal, and then it's like, oh, I didn't get a postcard out this month. Not acceptable.

Plan ahead. plan for. Success So what's this acceptable ratio of turnover? Let's say there's a thousand homes in a specific geographic area. What's uh, what's a benchmark? I I Will not answer that question to anyone without knowing what the facts of the area are.

Because if it's if it's only five percent and you live close and their seven million dollar houses, you may want to go after it right five percent and their 250 condos, it's It's not a worthy investment necessarily. You have other options, so it's understanding the numbers of everything in that geographic area. and then ask yourself and your coach. Okay with this with this turnover, does it? Is it worth it? Is it worth it? And and then you.

just that's why you have to do the research before you before you send out a single postcard. It's critical I would assume there's other data points too. Like is there a dominant agent? Because if there's you know 30 sales a year and 15 are with so and so agent then that already cut your market share potential by 15 sales. What? What Are some other hard and fast rules You would generally advise an agent to know and consider before engaging in a farm.

um, history. So the 10-year history understanding, understanding who has market share if they're onesie choosies really studying all those clothes. Recent last year closed properties like Oh is Jason double ending. Everything Like I Know he said dominated but is he double ending everything or oh my gosh.

I Can't believe that that five of the houses it sold on this block were out of area agents, huh? right? You want? You want to look at all of that because you are going to see stumbling blocks. but you're going to find opportunity as well, right? So we have I have two clients that are specifically farming, not a geographic area. It's a wider area to anyone who's on their home for more than 30 years. Okay, because my theory is, if you own your home for 30 years or longer, chances are you don't know anything on it.

Number one: Number two: If the average person buys their house between the ages of you know, 28 and 35, these people are like, more likely to be coming up on a life change. For example, moving to the desert, moving closer to adult children and grandchildren, moving to you know, a over 55 community, right their face. they don't need a 3 000 square foot house anymore. They have a boatload of equity, so some of my folks demographically Farm Smart seems like your approach to Geographic farming or really to postcard marketing is really on the foundation of data data data.

Having the data, how would you describe? Because I have my own theories and assumptions. How would you describe your approach to your process, your creative process when it came to your mailers and your postcard strategy? Because I had this theory that a lot of agents and I don't mean to be negative sounding. a lot of agents are already busy. You talked about.

check Equity versus Sweat Equity They want to throw some cash at it. They want a proven postcard strategy with boilerplate templates that could be sent out to a farm and they're not overly involved in the process I Want to hear how you approach it creatively? um I Tuned into what caught my eye um I was so tired of them just listed, just sold and I think the first. My first creative round years ago with Geofarming was as as a thank you to I don't know a couple dozen of my clients one year I hired a photographer and right before the holidays I had them I gave them Family Photos There were appointments and they came well. it was really easy and it wasn't it I Didn't think of it ahead of time I just found myself there.

It was really easy. Jason When you came for your photo shoot with your family and you went home with a thumb drive of all these fabulous photos to say to you Jason Would it be okay if I used your the you know the family photo in a postcard and added your testimonial to it? Thanks again by the way for giving me that that review on Zillow for giving me that review on Google Would it be okay if I added the photo in the review and shared it in the neighborhood? Not one person said no old people right? So talk about demographic versus and married with Geographic I had an old couple, they must have been in their 80s. They were lovely. They like they looked like actors because they were so cute with their white hair and their wrinkles and how much you could see how much they loved each other that one on a postcard and then I have one that I share with clients often that I call the um like Ralph Lauren family.

they all match. They all the girls had bows in there like they look like something out of a magazine. um the postcards that went out from that shoot more intentionally as diverse as my clientele age, sex persuasion, what? whatever. Like my cards were real people that represented this community.

So I feel like the neighborhood instantly knew who I was because these are my people. Okay, so already out of the gate. use a different approach of geographic farming is what you described as a commitment. Postcards are simply the instrument you play, but your commitment is to that crowd, that audience that Arena talk to us about where you find inspiration in terms of the types of postcards you would send out.

I'm tuned into what has what has watched a commercial on television and laughed. Think about how famous Super Bowl commercials are. um you Jason pant Hannah and Tom Ferry had probably walked through more airports than anybody I know and how often are you? You know you're probably like racing but posters in the airport? Um Billboards on the freeway? Uh, something you're watching on television. These are people just like us.

If you find yourself responding to something, take a minute and think about it. It's like, okay, this has nothing to do with real estate, but I really like this approach. How can I tie it into a postcard? So the basics go ahead. There's so much there.

A couple of thoughts: One The Familiar People respond to the familiar and if you have the ability to adapt a campaign, I'm thinking about there's a postcard strategy Tom has talked about numerous times. It's the check your home's value and the postcard is simply a QR code. and the idea came from a Super Bowl commercial and the response was incredibly: High I Think it's got a level of what is this? It invokes curiosity. but I also think it appeals to the familiar and if you see specific types of campaigns Billboards something along those lines, especially if it's local and you can adapt it to a real estate context, you're already tapping into whatever mind share that campaign is already generated in your in your consumer base that you're reaching.

I think that's super smart I think it's I think it's Innovative but continue, you weren't done I Interrupted No, no, that's okay and and for your audience only. Um, I'm working on one right now. That story you just told is perfect. Where the where I'm doing a QR postcard? Yeah, and and the text on it is.

let me know if you disagree. Oh I Love it. And they scan the code and it goes to a specific web page. I assume yeah, what I be What am I agreeing or disagreeing with I'm guessing it's my home's value? Yeah, that's super good.

Now are you taking me to like a Zestimate or where are you sending me to I'm I'm standing to one of the companies that we recommend and use. Yeah, it's a home value page. so they'll scan the QR code and it'll take them to their it'll give them something about the house and then we'll show up with a complete report. Um, but again, my hope is that I get more scans just because people like being challenged to be contrarians.

Well, so it's it's interesting. I Remember I listened to Chris Voss talk I think it was Chris Voss He talked about going for the no uh, specifically going for the no so let me know if you disagree it's it's a different angle and there's so much about that. I I I'm interested to know how that performs. Will you let us know? Absolutely will.

All right. so you're taking inspiration from outside of real estate. It's not. You're not in the pond, you're in the lake of all marketing and it includes TV commercials posters Billboards Uh, it could be I don't know chalk art that you see out in front of a restaurant.

anything that strikes your fancy. And here's the point: I Want to raise to those who are watching and listening right now when I look at our ecosystem of coaching clients who are crushing it with video. For instance, there's not one person who's crushing it who's not getting their hands dirty, so to speak in terms of being engaged in the process. when I think about a Glinda Baker For instance: Glinda Whenever she's struck by an idea, oh, I gotta write it down, she's always capturing the idea because she sees through the lens of how can I use this for a video What stops everybody who's engaged in postcards from thinking the same way? You think that way, where you are struck by inspiration.

but the instrument you play is not a guitar. it's a postcard and so you will automatically transpose the idea to your medium of choice when it comes to marketing. and there's that level of personal involvement. I've never seen anybody truly crushing it in any kind of a marketing capacity who is not in some way shape or form getting themselves involved in the process.

Thoughts agreed. Well, how do we get them to do it? You're doing it right now. They're They're going to be listening to you and you're sharing the examples and more talking. And again, you have.

You have to. Some people aren't artists, right. Some people are just brilliant producers. CEOs And they hire an artist, right? They should hire an artist.

Or they're really creative people. which I am and I stink I Won't say the other word I Was going to say like opposite, not my strength. So I hired an Ops manager when I was running my brokerage I You know, live whoever you are listening to this. live in your strengths.

Whatever your strength is, live in that because Dis-c If you're really high and you're really good and you have discipline and you listen to Jason you listen to Tom And you listen to me. You're going to succeed in this business and make enough money that you can hire people for the things you don't like. That's right, that's right, that's good stuff. It's like you coach for a living, isn't it? It's good stuff.

I Think the one, uh, unassailable truth is whether you're an artist or an entrepreneur or an operator or whatever whatever your profile is in terms of how you conduct yourself. I Agree that you play to your strengths, but to do that requires unwavering self-awareness You must know where your strengths are so that you can fill in where you have voids all right now I Want to jump into your process? Let's talk like tactics for a little bit here. I've got a couple more questions that I really want to get through and the last one I want to get to that we'll save for the end is what are the top headlines you have in mind. but I'll save that for those who watch until the end.

All right, talk to us about the system of farming of postcards. What's the optimal frequency of sending? Um, the optimal frequency is I don't know a lot, right? A lot. So the question becomes if you're going to start farming next week So what's your budget that you have in place for the next six months? Okay, okay, I have a coaching client Fabulous coaching client in Hawaii who wanted to start geofarming. Very, very successful has never geofarmed before.

We laid out the plan and he did four postcards in four weeks. Okay, a lot. four postcards in four weeks. Because my theory is, if you if financially you can do it.

by the time they get your fifth postcard, they go oh my. God Jason Again, and guess what? you just won. You have market share in their brains when they just look at the postcard and say Jason again. So he did four consecutive in a week than he did every other week.

And in his case, now, he's only going to one month, one second, month, two. So it's one, two, one, two, one, two for the rest of the year. Well, and I suppose another variable is what other marketing is layered with your strategy. What else are you doing? If you have a billboard at the front entrance for instance, you're getting all that frequency of Impressions every single day, over and over and over again.

It's interesting. Uh, have you heard of the rule of seven in advertising before? Oh, I know I've heard you talk about it, but remind me please. So the rule of seven is a generic principle in marketing. It says it takes seven times of hearing the same message for a customer to take action on it.

so it's seven instead of six. Well, I was gonna say whether it's seven or whether it's six is debatable. The the major principle here is frequency to get remembered. Oh, they're not going to see it the first time, the second time, the third time, it's going to take a few times of reminding them.

I'm curious. Did your client send the same postcard every week Or was it a sequence of varied messages? There, it was a sequence of varied messages, but one side was the same. because what is your thought process on sending the same postcard or sending the same postcard every so often? Um, I think that you have to send something that's consistent with the image and The Branding And then I think every so often I do it four to six times a year I send what? I call As A Disruption piece. Are you referred to it as a disruption piece because 85 percent of the pieces I send out As soon as they pull stuff out of their their mailbox.

they know it's Eileen right? Whether it's a just listed, it just sold a testimonial because of the size because of the colors, because it's my farm, they know it's me. So once a quarter I want them to pull something out that doesn't get thrown away that they go. What is this? Now with that in mind, you made mention of there's some brand Association You see some similar overlapping, repeated images or logos. What are the most important elements on the postcard? What needs to be there? Well, it depends a little bit on the on the postcard right? If it's if it's just sold I Got tired of doing just Souls What needs to be there is the story The Credibility I Was successful in helping his family.

but when I got tired of them I started replacing them with testimonials from the family. So now I had a photo of the people instead of the house. Okay, um, I had one family that was moving out of the area that they allowed me to use an image of their baby right? and a great message of you know, grateful that this is where I started. I'm taking Mom and Dad to Virginia Okay, so so it sounds like from your experience, one images matter.

you put a profound a profound ranking status on images. But what's interesting is you are a very people-centric person. You prefer people images versus houses. and I got to tell you I look at a lot of postcards and I often saw this is me being cynical I'm like sometimes like do we not know what white space is because they're just littered with stuff and so I guess I could also rephrase the question and say what are the most important things not to include on a postcard because I believe a lot of times the message gets drowned and they're being just a littering of too many words and images and graphics and whatnot.

Yeah, I love what you just said because the thing is, even though we do just listed just sold especially to get established in a farm if the house. If I just sold your house and it's in my neighborhood and I'm sending a postcard to the neighbors, they already know what your house looks like, right? They drive by your house every day on the way to work. So while I want to make note of the success story, it's much more effective to use a photo of you and your beautiful family and for me to say thank you I'm never I never come I shouldn't say never maybe once a year I never come off in print as braggadocious. Number one, it's not my style so it's pretty easy for me, but it's like I want them to see you because you're the guy that they're the hero Donna Miller hero's journey Yes, yes exactly.

Let me get your thoughts on this. So I do a lot of presentations and I make a lot of slides and I subscribe to the teaching of uh Nancy Duarte She's uh, great. Great slides and presentation, tips and advice and training and so forth. She has a few rules that I've always subscribed to.

One of her rules is your audience should be able to absorb the message of the slide in less than three seconds because if it takes them longer than three seconds, they're no longer listening to you. they're reading the slide. My feeling is the image is what is the incentive for them to read the story. Um, right, they like they in in this case versus when you're presenting and teaching to a big.

it's like sure, Image is the Hulk and then they'll read the story so we should layer it. So then we can say the mistake we see in postcards a lot is you don't see the hierarchical weight of image, headline text, body text. You just see a whole bunch of headlines. Is that a fair characterization? I Have a big post idea that an oversized postcard that the front of it got a ton of attention.

All it said was what if that what if is what made them turn it around and read the paragraph. All right. Final question, You ready for it? It's the one. We've all been sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to ask.

when you look at the marketplace now and you've already dropped a lot. A lot of great like headlines, and well, that's a clever idea. Just a lot of stuff. What are one or two headlines or approaches an agent could consider taking? Now that's likely to have ubiquitous impact in their postcard marketing, regardless of where they are for a second.

I would say challenge your thinking. don't look at other people's just listed and just sold and come up with something. Tune into what what you have a reaction to and if if you're in a relationship, part of a family, a marriage where you have different opinions, ask the other person I Don't care if you don't like what they say, that's a different perspective. When you're doing marketing and farming, you can't just design things from what you like and what you know because the family members that disagree with you are more like your clients than they are like you.

So take that temperature reading. Ask people outside of the industry, we get so lazy and complacent and again, one of you Tom somebody coined it. Rip Off and duplicate, right? We used to talk about that all the time, right? Oh, look at that. Great marketing? Okay, go ahead.

you can rip off and duplicate it. r d it, right? Well, yeah, sometimes you're so appropriateness for that. But don't limit yourself to one opinion. Your farm, whether it's 500 or 5, 000, is a diverse group of individuals you want as best you can, to be neutral enough and and clever enough that you get engagement from it.

did it. You know that it's just it's different. somebody stops and looks at it. It's good stuff.

This has been a super fun episode and I could talk to you all day about this stuff. Uh, some of the takeaways where you're challenging, thinking and assumptions is and how you approach the craft of postcard marketing. It is your microphone to communicate with your audience. Your audience is your farm.

I Think a lot of Agents could breathe new life into their postcard marketing efforts if they looked at it with that level of what an opportunity it is to Market to these neighbors versus what can I get from them. It's what can I give to them and over time that will pay you dividends in listings and referrals and opportunities. Uh, Coach Eileen you're the best! Thank you so much for being on today. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your experience and your ideas.

And Innovation uh what a fun! We'll have to do part two of this. We'll have to go back in and do more postcard marketing. Uh I Want to know for those watching and listening in the comments, what were your top takeaways? what changed your thinking today concerning postcard marketing and what are your questions so we can line up Episode number two of Postcard Marketing until next week. This is this week in marketing.