I think you will find that the numbers above show how they chose an agent.

But what percent chose an agent vs the percent that chose a house and used the agent that was there?

I might have gotten about 30% of my business from Friends and family last year, but none of the following applied....

- Used agent previously to buy/sell a house 13%

- Visited open house and met agent 7%

- Walked into the office 4%

As near as I can tell, I get at last 50% of my business from the internet.

I am a newer agent but I have to agree with Namneet in one respect - most of the internet leads I spent time following are COLDER THAN ICE, or they are highly unqulified buyers.  Most conversations in situations where they actually submitted their correct contact info (rare) started with "I have really bad credit, no downpayment, and I need a 4-5 bedrooms house under $130,000 right now in the good school district for my kids."    ???!!! Ironically, I am happy to hear this instead of a recording that I have dialed incorrectly and should hang up and try again, or daemon-mailer telling me the email address is incorrect (doesn't exist).  

However, Lou, my "sphere of influence" as they call it here hasn't borne much fruit either - there are so many agents in this market that everyone has a sister-in-law father or cousin in the biz and I can't blame them for trying to avoid WWIII within their family.  

More of my transactions have been from call-ins to my office while I am on floor or call duty.  

Conditions change constantly in this business!  I work in a pretty good size local Romanian community.  After people heard about my success, every family had a real estate agent!  I have people fighting for my past clients constantly!  

I have had fairly good success with the internet, but like it has been said, I had to work through tons of bogus info and unqualified buyers to get the ones that are legit.  So I bought more leads, when I got more than I could handle, I brought in buyers agents who ended up closing a fair number of sales from leads I generated, but they blew as many as they closed on.  That was very frustrating.

So, what is the correct marketing mix for today?  What will it be tomorrow?  Both very good questions which make it kind of hard to plan your business for a year when it seems conditions change monthly!  And for realtors, mistakes on a tight budget can get you killed!

I am not sure what the correct answer is!  I know one thing, my daughter is graduating from high school this year, I am sending her to get a marketing degree to try to get some internal help that will not cost me two fortunes!

I get 100% of my business from the interent. I am new here, no family-different country, still developing friends so no SOI there. Hopefully some of my previos transactions will lead to referrals but for now the internet works for me. I get about 90% buyers and 10% sellers. Yes I get many cold leads, but I do get a good amount that enter valid info, more than half give email that works and valid phone number.

I am also pleased that many of my visitors return to my web sites. I am currently working with 6 great buyers all at about $800 to $1million and all came from one web site.

4 Deals closed so far this year were from internet leads last year, one came in May, 1 in August, 1 in November, 1 in December. So keep emailing them folks, it does work! And our market is slower than last year.

I think the point here, is market to whom you are most comfortable and you will succeed. But be consistent. If you keep changing how and what you do, your money and time is wasted.

Corinne.

90% of my business comes from the internet.  Most of my customers are 2nd home buyers or relocators.  I really think it depends on your area..what your market is.  Some of my relatives ARE realtors, so I can't get that market.  And, being relatively new to the area, it's taking time to build up the referal/rebuy market.  It's building...some of my relocators have friends/relatives looking to move or buy a 2nd home.

But for now and in the future, the internet is extremely important.

And...weeding through them, in my opinion, is no different than weeding through the walk ins and locals.

Since you asked where to spend the "resources", not just money, here is my two cents.

Resources = time, effort, money

Time:   Community efforts, volunteerism, work with kids (kids have parents that buy houses), sponsor sports teams, raise money for charity, go to lunch nearly every day, meet new people.

Effort:  Return every call every day, work evenings, read online and print publications, read the local papers every day, attend planning and zoning meetings, write.

Money:  Make some, spend less.  Don't spend money because someone asks you to.  If it doesn't fit the plan, say no, thank you.  If a client wants you to spend money on something that doesn't work, tell them why you would prefer to use your resources elsewhere.  A listing agreement doesn't give a client power of attorney over your bank account.

Dan,

Great advice!

Corinne,

You are doing great!  With sales in those price ranges you do not have to kill yourself with 50 transactions a year!  And all from the internet, that is excellent.

You do have a very well designed site, may I ask who did the work for you or did you do that yourself.

Did you target those areas because of the prices of the homes or is that what in prevelant in your area?

Could you let us know if you are heavily SEO optimized or are you paying for direct traffic from ppc and lead generation companies?

Just curious, how long have you been selling real estate?

Excellent advise. Great post. Thanks

I'm not doing any kind of marketing on the internet, a few directories and free links, But at any given time 35-45% of my clients are directly from website contact. Not P2 particularly, I'm sure if I follow Lonn's advice that P2 results will change. I work with a large number of soldiers and internet is all some of them have.

Namneet.  Yes, it takes time.  Like anything else.  It takes lots of time to work the web correctly.  But the payoff is that once you get there, it is like passive income, meaning you can slack off and still benefit from the pipleline that has been built.

30% of my business used to come from 800# callers and an expensive ad in a local real estate publication.  But times have changed over the last couple of years and now that same 30% is coming from internet.    

The other 70% comes from referrals and expired listings.

You have to know when to cut your losses when something isn't working.  But you also have to decide if what you're doing maybe just needs some tweaking.  

For example:  Your internet site might work well today, but not tomorrow.  Do you trash the whole internet idea or do you tweak it to suit current trends?

Analyze your business, your efforts and your return regularly and make adjustments as needed.