People now spend nearly an hour a day on Facebook and social media, scrolling through posts and chatting on Messenger. This figure is up from 20 minutes a day back in 2015 and is a number Facebook is intent on increasing further. Kylie Davis therefore asks the question: Why do agents still invest so much time and money in outdated practices like letterbox drops?
Research shows that people touch their phone 2,617 times a day – the equivalent to 145 minutes, not just on Facebook, but doing anything and everything.
Compare this to the amount of time people spend rushing to their letterbox to eagerly pore over the latest flyers and junk mail, and open their bills.
Wait? You mean you don’t do that? Not even for five minutes a day? Wow. Okay then, so answer me this – why do real estate agents continue to spend so much on generic letterbox dropping? Why on earth do we persist in engaging with a practice that is becoming so irrelevant we don’t even spend time on it ourselves?
I’ll answer for you. Because it’s familiar. Because it feels safe. Because you know how to do it. Because it’s physical and tangible. Walk down a street and stick flyers in letterboxes and you feel like you’ve done something purposeful – you spent an afternoon trying to win business. And how’s it working for you? One lead out of 100 flyers? Is that really going to make you a million in GCI?
At the recent REIQ Tech Day, it was highlighted that one of the greatest challenges today is not about trying to understand all the technology that is pushed upon us, but being flexible in our approach.
“The old world was complicated and you needed expertise to succeed,” said Greg Dickason from CoreLogic. “But the new world is complex and now you need adaptability to succeed.”
How can you be more successful and innovative in an ever-changing world? The trick is not to focus on making the latest do-dad or upgrade. The trick is to focus on yourself and to make time in your week, not to do the familiar, but to try and learn something out there that is new to you.
Want to win the technology race? You don’t need to ace writing code or launching an app. Instead focus on your own adoption of new ideas that are already around you. Look at ways you can ace execution of just one thing well. Put an hour or so a week into doing that, rather than spending an hour on something familiar.
Let’s use the letterbox flyer example. What would happen if you actually fished where the fish are? What would happen if you put information about your business in the place where people are now spending an average of 50 minutes a day, instead of the place where they put five seconds of their attention as they strip out the junk mail and place it straight into the recycling? Would that improve your conversion?
What would happen if you spent the two hours a week and the cost of flyers creating content that was helpful and useful to property owners, that helped them research the area or better understand the value of their home, and posted that on Facebook?
According to Techwell, video converts 40 per cent better than any other content on Facebook. What if you upped your conversion rate from one per cent for the flyers even just a few points closer to 40 by getting more comfortable creating video? Wouldn’t that be a win?
You can win the tech race, not by being the first or the fastest to adopt but just by being prepared to practise the most regularly until it too becomes as familiar as dropping a letter into a box.
