"The things I learned at the very beginning of my days in real estate I've found to be the most important: focus on connecting with past clients, sphere of influence, repeat, and referral business. Vyral is how I do that. Touching those people is the lowest cost, but has the highest conversion rate, of anything I do."
--Vyral Client Chris Upham
Chris: A friend of ours recently moved next door and she didn't use me as her agent, which was unusual because most of my wife's friends use me. Nevertheless, last night she told us that she referred us to a friend and that she had been bragging all about us. She specifically told her friend all about the cool videos we do. Apparently, what pushed her from knowing us and liking us, to trusting us for real estate, were the cool videos Vyral has been doing for us!
John: Excellent, we'll take it! Did you get a listing from her referral?
Chris: She has referred a buyer to us. I'm going to be honest with you, within the last 24 hours I've probably had five people send a note telling me they want to talk to me about real estate. This is awesome because I didn't really have it like that before. I really think our efforts with Vyral are paying off.
John: You started with us back in late 2012, stopped around June of 2013, and returned again at the end of 2014. What about Vyral has changed?
Chris: All along I totally believed that video is important. What you guys are doing is strategic - in terms of helping us touch our database, send them relevant content, produce videos, and create keyword rich blog entries. Ultimately, the reason I stopped the first time was I was really being held accountable by my coach to dial, dial, dial. I was trying to balance my time and figure out what I should do, and I ended up focusing on phone calls instead of the Vyral program. At the time, I knew the way Vyral was set up - that everything was done for us - but I was spending too much time writing blogs and shooting and editing videos myself when I didn't have to. It would take me eight or nine hours to get out a single email; even though Vyral is designed to give me more time, I was wasting my time doing what you guys were trying to do for me.
Flash forward to 2014. Again, through coaching I came to the realization that I had been neglecting my past clients and sphere of influence for repeat and referral business. We know that repeats and referrals is the cheapest business to get, the highest converting business to get, and the highest return on investment. It wasn't until I saw somebody's conversion tracker that it really hit me. Some sources converted at a rate of 1% to 5%, but the sphere of influence was converting at something like 16%. You need to have those higher converting lead sources in order for the whole balance of your business flow to work out right. I hadn't been doing anything for my past clients and sphere of influence, so my coach recommended I tap into that. That brought me back to Vyral, and I'm super glad that it did. In the past, I felt I needed to do it myself in order to get the quality I wanted; now, I feel you guys have really beefed up your staff, systems, and processes to the point where the product is outstanding.
First, when Frank said the business was moving toward webcams and interview-based videos, I was skeptical about the quality. Well, it turns out HD webcams are of a spectacular quality. Plus, it wasn't until I heard someone else mention that during the 30-minute coaching call you're shooing your video. I was blown away by that. We turned on the camera, started a screen share, and started talking about a topic. You guys then edited the conversation down to make a short and informative video. Rather than spending a couple of hours shooting and editing my own videos, it was all being done in a few minutes on a scheduled call.
The video editing has really improved. Before, I felt I had to do it myself if I wanted title bars, intros, outros, and music. Now you guys are doing it and doing it at a very high level. All the things that I have been trying to do on my own, you guys are doing really well now. In the past, I also felt I had to write my own blogs, but I've noticed you guys now have really good copywriters. There's nothing that replaces me as a local real estate expert, but I feel your copywriters really get a good head start on the blog based upon what I've done in the video.
The way you guys distribute it is fantastic. You get all my contacts - from Facebook, Outlook, Google Contacts, LinkedIn - and download them in one place. You do it all during the set-up process and keep them there for us to use in the future and make it easy to update. I think in the past my personality was wanting to go through and scrub the list and get rid of people I didn't think knew me well enough. I ended up not having time to get into it, and you guys told us to stick with the list we had, so we did. The emails go out to all these people and we get reports from you that are really helpful. I'm finding that there are people who are taking action because of these video emails who I probably would have scrubbed out of this contact list. One, for example, ended up befriending me on Facebook and I've seen him searching multimillion-dollar homes on my page. I probably would have deleted him if not for you guys.
John: In terms of ROI, what are you seeing?
Chris: I kind of have a reputation of someone who has spent a lot of money on real estate systems and websites. I've spent A LOT of money in real estate, and I usually see a less than 1% closing rates from the lead to the closing. That's great, we've probably made a lot of money off that small percentage of leads. But past client, repeat, and referral business is the highest converting because all the people know me, trust me, and like me. The Vyral videos are the cheapest things I do in a given month - there are other things I do that are five to 10 times as expensive. We're getting hundreds and hundreds of leads from random online sources, but just this last week I had about 8 friends of mine come to me because they saw my Vyral videos, and will use me as their agent at some point later on.
John: What would you say to someone who is on the fence about hiring us?
Chris: I would say do it. I would tell them the very first thing I ever learned in real estate: come up with a list of 200 hundred people that you know and connect with them on a regular basis. Build a "met" database of those people and send them emails that aren't impersonal and canned. For me, my Vyral videos serve as the foundation of those touches. The things I learned at the very beginning of my days in real estate I've found to be the most important: focus on connecting with past clients, sphere of influence, repeat, and referral business. Vyral is how I do that. Touching those people is the lowest cost, but has the highest conversion rate, of anything I do.
No comments:
Post a Comment