Best Practices for Postcard Farming

[welist4less]

I'm just getting started with a postcard campaign with my partner, and was wondering if someone could help me with best practices?

What size postcard works best? There seems to be a standard small size and a large size. Obviously, the large sized post card costs more.

If looking for listings, does a "Just Listed" type postcard work? What else seems to work to get new listings or referrals?

Would anyone kindly share some text or layouts that seem to work well?

Thanks,

Jeff

[kensmith]

Who do you plan on sending the postcards to? Farming, FSBO's, Expired, .....?

[welist4less]

Initially, the thought was to farm.

I would be grateful to hear if FSBO, Expired or other targets result in the best response. Obviously, it is going to be different in each market, but I've never farmed before, so minimizing my learning curve and getting started in the right direction would certainly help quite a bit.
Thanks,

Jeff

[kensmith]

Target marketing to someone you know is going to buy or sell is always going to have a better response. BUT it will require more work as you have to find these prosepects daily and also need to do more than just mail to them.

For farming you need to find an area with high turnover, look at the total home that sold in that area last year, average days on market, and the average sales price. With those numbers you can figure out what area to target. Then you need to make sure there isn't an agent that really owns the market in the area as it is much easier to get into a market that doesn't have one or two agents that do 60-80% of the business. It is really hard to go against an agent that has a high market share as their signs reinforce all of their other marketing efforts.

Then you need a good system. Plan on a farm size that you can mail to for 18 months without any deals coming in. The #1 mistake most agents make with farming is that they stop to early.

Anyways I have to run, feel free to ask more questions if you have them.

[SanDiego]

I have recently run into this same thign and the TOM FERRY group (SSI) that I just joined had someone who does 4 times a month... just listed or just sold or hello or whatever, and they have sales after sales...
I am getting my farm going too.. right now....
And the best thing I can contribute to this post is to RESEARCH WHO you are going to farm too...
If you are not the top agent in the market.. why farm into thier areas.... Farm the less "farmed areas"... It's my best advice to get into it.

[welist4less]

Thanks eveyone for responding.

I'm curious about voumnes. For instance that broker who is doing 4 mailings a month, is that 500, 1000 or more each mailing and I imagine that he rotates his lists. I curious how often a a prospect gets a postcard? Once a month, twice a month.

Obviously, it is going to take some trial and error to sort this out in my own farm area, but rough parameters would helpful.

Finally, as to specifics and research. Looking for high turnover is one thing. How do your quantify if someone else 'owns' a farm area already. Is it by the number of signs on the streets? Any other tips on the research angle.


Thanks - Jeff

[kensmith]

To get things started at least every other week, once a week at the start would be ideal. As your name becomes really known in the area you can start to do less often, but never less than monthly IMO.

As for if someone owns a market, just do a search for all listings in an area. Look at who the listing agent is for each and figure out if anyone agent has over a 25% market share, if so you might be better off looking at another area. If 2 or 3 agents have over 50% I would also stay away from the area as that would mean you are going up against 2 or 3 agents that already have their names known in the area. This doesn't happen to often so finding another subdivision shouldn't be to hard.