COVID-19 has forced many of us to adopt new ways of doing things. The good news is that some of those things have begun to normalize, like the notion of online meetings and remote learning. These two concepts mesh nicely when you’re trying to organize a homebuying seminar.
For some, attending a homebuying seminar is mandatory. There are plenty of lenders out there who want to be sure the buyer is well educated on the ins and outs of homeownership. Some won’t approve a mortgage unless the buyer attends one. This places you at an advantage. People need this service. Learn how to do it right, and you can really grow your base of potential buyers.
With that in mind, I want to present you with a content-based strategy that will help you get your online homebuying seminar initiative moving. As someone who has spent quite a bit of time working with real estate marketing clients, I can vouch for the effectiveness of a good plan. This one is very basic but can be very effective when done right.
1. Determine the Best Timeline to Market
How far out should you start promoting your seminar? That depends on whether this is your first one or if you schedule (or plan to schedule) remote seminars throughout the year. If this is your first, starting early is a good idea, and by “early” I mean at least two months out. You want to get a feel for immediate demand and get a rough idea of how much interest there is. If you’re thinking long-term, it’s important to know how much base-building you’re going to need to do to sustain attendance.
If you’ve been trying the online thing for a while and aren’t getting great results, you at least have a small base of interested attendees upon which you can expand. If online seminars are already part of your strategy and you have an established email list, a month out should be long enough to launch this kind of campaign.
2. Start with an Email Sequence
The best way to drum up interest (whether this is your first attempt at an online seminar or not) is to send out an email sequence that encourages people to book their spots for your seminar. The most effective sequences for generating this kind of interest aren’t aggressive in their marketing. Rather, they are descriptive in their storytelling.
Spin the dream of homeownership. Develop a narrative that starts with someone wanting to buy a home but not understanding the process, then drive the solution: your seminar. Hitting the pain points associated with a lack of experience in buying a home or past homebuying struggles creates good lead-ins for grabbing those reservations.
You can also motivate people to forward your seminar details to people they know who have had similar struggles or just want to do the homebuying thing right. This is accomplished through calls to action to forward and share the information in your emails. Never neglect this part, not in emails or on social media. Asking for forwards and shares is crucial to expanding your base of potential attendees.
3. Create a Social Media Group for Interested Participants
Don’t use your main social media account to promote your seminars. Either create new pages or organize new groups that are dedicated to seminar attendees. This gives you the opportunity to address questions beforehand (that you can then integrate into the messaging at the seminar) and provide a support base after the fact where questions and ideas can be shared and discussed.
If you do this, though, be prepared to be involved. Don’t just establish a group and let it run on auto-pilot. We all know how misinformation spreads on social media, and you really want anything associated with you to be associated with good information and education. For that reason, you should be involved in the discussion.
The other half of that equation is that being visible creates a sense of confidence in you from your audience. You want people looking at you as an authority, and you want your pages and groups looked at as good sources of information.
4. Give a Final Push Via Email
A second email sequence that is more marketing-based works well at this point in the process. Using a strategy like the Four Day Cash Machine can be highly effective in driving attendance. It uses marketing concepts like scarcity (“we only have a few slots left”) and urgency (“your registration by Sunday midnight is mandatory”) to get people to commit.
Be sure to include callbacks to the messaging in your previous sequence. Remind people why they want to do this and why you should be the one who guides them through the process. A little aggressiveness here can go a long way toward building excitement and retaining attendees.
5. Stay Organized
The most important element in this process is your involvement and your level of organization. Be sure to do a dry run with a few of your agents or employees to ensure familiarity with the platform you’re using (Zoom, Skype, etc.). This will help you present a smooth, well-run presentation that leaves people feeling educated and informed. When meeting time comes, start on time. I cannot stress how important this single element to this actually is.
Get Help with Your Content
While I think a conversational format can be a good strategy with this, I also think that integrating some well-organized, scripted content can go a long way toward keeping the conversation on target, setting a good pace, and ensuring that all the points you want covered get covered. For that, you might find that the help of a professional real estate marketing copy firm like BeezContent quite valuable.
If you like the idea of what I’m presenting here but don’t think you can manage all of the marketing copy needed to do it right, contact us. We’re here to help you develop the content needed to make your online homebuying seminar a success.
