This article can be considered a continuation of my previous blogs,
If you have not read through that previous blog, please check it out! I’m thinking that these personal blogs are an interesting way to keep track of my overall journey, and will be able to show future clients/prospects of my motivations of being in the industry.
Regardless, here is a quick recap of what I had covered previously.
Life journey so far and eventual conversion as a full-time real estate salesperson
My strategies in planning out my time during COVID-19 lockdown
Partnership with Octane Concept Design
I’ll address the points which I have covered previously, with my current, fresh perspective.
What Now as a Real Estate Salesperson?
This article will be kept lean as I don’t really have much information to add. The previous blogs were only shy of a few months away!
However, I feel that it is important to address some of the main challenges in regards to Real Estate which I had faced.
Being 27 years old this year, one of the main challenges that I have faced is the constant struggle of business expenses.
Just like all businesses, it is important to keep track of outgoing expenses to sustain a business. Forget all the flashy expenses, I feel that real estate agents are actually trained to be very financially prudent!
We are a group that is most susceptible to market momentum. Since we are self-employed, we are being paid on commissions for a successful transaction and not on being consultants! But many of us do enjoy consulting people on their real estate purchases!
Real estate prices technically trail behind the stock market. If people are not transacting, where can we draw our income from then? Inadvertently, this trains us to be hardy people and to squirrel away savings into our coffers when the times are good.
In addition, times are changing and the old ways of prospecting which require plenty of funds, need a modern twist. Therefore, I’ve decided to combine the new school, with old-school!
Planning My Time Post-COVID-19 Lockdown
New-School:
Focusing strongly on organic, digital marketing. This simply means “advertising without monetary investment”. In layman speak, if you somehow wandered onto my page without clicking on a paid advertisement. I’m doing it right!
It’s basically a careful calibration of many factors, in order to generate organic traffic, such as optimizing keywords, backlinking, guest posting. This is all so as to gain the favors of Google, who in turn will hopefully place me on the first page of a search query!
Of course, this is not to dismiss to wonders of paid advertising! It will work wonders if my future prospect and I are in a rush to obtain a unified resolution.
These are the best way for a client to kick me in the behind for immediate action instead of hearing me drone on and on endlessly on my articles haha!
I’m very careful with my expenditure for Facebook advertising though, and the second reason for the ads is to also increase more readership to my blogs.
This will hopefully drive my organic marketing engine.
Old-School:
Doing the old methods of prospecting homeowners who are interesting in selling, through cold-calling and door-knocking.
I do follow up with FSBO listings too, which means properties on sale by owners. However, these are more challenging as they are being marketed by a large number of agents.
What I’ve Learnt from Both Methods
Simply, it is important to put yourself in front of your future clients. You will have to constantly be at the top-of-mind priority for anything in relation to real estate, which relates to marketing 101.
Clients that I’ve acquired through the old-school methods will not be familiar with the content that I’ve provided online, which is an important source for customer education.
In the online space, a good balance of instant call-to-action (e.g. Facebook ads) and customer education materials are required. This is to break the monotony of heavily focusing on either one!
In a way, you can consider this article in a category of its own, completing the trifecta of Estate Magnates blog categories, a mind into the writer himself (me).
Viewings?
Clients definitely still have a preference in physical viewing of the property prior to the sale, and I don’t think that it will change anytime soon. Virtual viewings definitely do have its place. However, when a client is considering to purchase a home that they are going to live in for years to come, they will for sure make the effort to come down physically.
How’s the Partnership with OCD?
The acronym for Octane Concept Design (OCD) was totally by accident but it was so memorable that my business partner and I decided to leave it. The birth and naming convention of OCD was due to several reasons;
We absolutely love cars and we feel like it is a nice nod/recognition to it, and will instantly be a talking point for our car-loving clients 😂
Octane is a fuel terminology, which refers to a rating of how much compression a fuel can take before detonating. Likewise, it reminds us to always give our best to clients no matter how challenging a situation and to push forward an explosion of ideas for them.
The acronym (OCD) is highly memorable and we hope that it will have strong brand retention in the customers’ minds.
I’m generally the silent partner in this company, and not customer-facing. However, I do handle behind-the-scenes paperwork and marketing.
There are times where I feel OCD services will be a good fit for EM’s clients, and I’ll casually refer them.
So far, it’s been great! Clients love it!
A good example will be the commercial property segment, where reinstatement and fitting out works are constantly being required. We have recently completed reinstatement works on a commercial project, which was born out of necessity from EM’s client!
Another segment that we are attempting to address is in the private landed market. We feel that there is still a lack of transparency in regards to private homeowners who are intending to rebuild their homes.
It is generally not feasible to bridge this huge disconnect between the Real Estate and construction industry. My very first step is to release the following guide, in order to clear some of the biggest misconceptions that are in the market today.
Things That I’m Proud Off Through the Past Year
The Right Leadership and Teammates
The COVID-19 situation had caused stronger headwinds to the growth of both industries (real estate and construction), and attempting to navigate both at the same time seems absolutely nuttiness!
Ultimately, I’m extremely blessed to be given good support by NAVIS team leader and co-founder Stuart Chng, who have shared freely and generously his wealth of experience. I am appreciative of his efforts to helping us navigate the complicated space of digital marketing and pushing us forward when we are feeling sluggish.
No single realtor has an answer for every difficult question but my fellow teammates sure cover over 90% of these issues with great expertise! Do check their blogs out, they have personally given me plenty of inspiration on prior articles that I have written.
Holland Property - Danny Han
Last but not least my upline, mentor, and friend, Lim Li Yuen and Carol Liew for their strong consistent co-broking network and support for all my questions.
Honorable Mentions:
Chang Wei Quan - Best business partner anyone could have.
Christopher Widjaya - Close friend and my voice of reason during these tumulous times.
Website Ranking
From March till present, these past six months have been a challenge. This is due to making a personal promise to myself to generate at least 2 articles per week, be it an honest property review or real estate investment article.
I bet you are interested in the progress, too right? Here’s a look at my website performance so far.
So here are what these terms mean.
Impressions – Basically what Google shows you if you search a particular term related to my article. E.g. You search up “rebuild landed properties”. My Guide to Rebuilding Landed Properties for Private Home Owners might show up as a potential search result for your query.
Clicks – From the search result, my article might be what you are intending to search for, and when you click into it to read, Google recognizes it as a click.
Average CTR – It means an average clickthrough rate. 1% means out of 100 impressions, 1 click is done. Anything above 2% is above average, 1% means more work is still required.
Average position – Out of all search queries done, where does your site rank on average? To be on the first page of google search results, you will need to be within the top 10 search results.
My results are not spectacular by any means, but there is consistent upward momentum. I’m glad my efforts are being reflected here!
Octane Concept Design Recent Projects
I’ll make this brief as this blog is more in relation to real estate matters. However, it is worth a mention as every win for OCD is a win for EM too. I consider both entities to be tightly bound together, like two peas in a pod.
Every successful OCD project provides me with the funds required to keep EM’s dream alive.
Future Direction
Octane Concept Design
The direction of having a joint partnership with OCD still remains similar to what I have mentioned before. That being said, the lifeline of any business is good cashflow. OCD should be pulling enough weight in its own industry so that it will be able to give to EM more than its taking.
Video Marketing for Estate Magnates?
I’m aware that more real estate marketers are moving towards the space of video marketing. I do agree that this is a fantastic way of connecting to viewers. However, the main challenge I feel is that usually video viewers are more interested in casual property viewings and light-hearted matters, and serious topics of discussion (which is more towards my aim) should generally be written down to prevent misinformation.
In addition, my blog still needs far more work, and focusing too much on other areas will result in a drop in quality production.
I do acknowledge that there is room for creative marketing in real estate, and we are now just scratching the surface on what it can eventually be.
Once the time is right and EM is well poised to generate video content, I will move towards importing most of our content to the video medium, as well as exclusive new ones like vlogging.
I’m aiming for this move some time by Q2 2021.
Summary
Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to read this article! It is very humbling that you are interested in the Estate Magnates journey!
It is a slow ride to the top, but we will get there! Estate Magnates will be the driving vehicle of the grand vision of what I intend Singapore’s real estate industry to move towards.
Estate Magnates aims to narrow the real estate knowledge gap by providing our readers applicable, realistic steps to exercise on their own for their next real estate transaction.
If you do require additional help on your next transaction, feel free to call/WhatsApp me (Joshua) at +6596329840 or email all enquiries at estatemagnates@gmail.com.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, organization, committee, or other group or individual. The author does not accept any responsibility whatsoever for any harm or loss arising from accessing or relying on information contained in this blog post.