Today’s RealTrending podcast features Sarah Reynolds, CEO of EmpowerHome, a real estate industry solutions provider supporting Realtors, mega teams, and core services companies. Sarah talks about her unique business model and the lead pillars that drive her success.
Here is a small preview of today’s interview with Reynolds. The transcript below has been lightly edited for length and clarity:
Tracey Velt: I want to talk to you about your lead generation. I know that you have a clearly articulated value proposition around your lead pillars. So tell me how that works, and how you developed that.
Sarah Reynolds: It started out with just a few lead pillars. We started direct mail farming in area. Then, we targeted non-occupied homeowners. Then, we started targeting expired for sale by owners. And now, we have 39 proven lead-generation pillars that get launched in each location, depending on how their conversion rate is doing.
One of the things that I learned through that process is to figure out your target audience before committing to any lead generation. A lot of agents and loan officers will start lead-generation initiatives, and then skip around. They’ll start one, and then they move on to the next one too quickly.
I got good at taking one lead-generation pillar at a time, and figuring it out so that it was successful. Once I got that figured out, I put a fence around it to where I didn’t shift people that were working on one to the next one. I also didn’t shift money.
That’s one of the biggest mistakes that I see a lot of business owners make. They shift either human resources or money, and then they don’t grow. Whereas, I developed one lead-generation pillar, made it work very, very well, then put a fence around it, both money and human resources, and then moved on to the next one.
Now we have 39 different ones that can launch in a location. Typically, we’ll launch five to six at first, get their conversion up to where it needs to be, then we add on three to four at a time.
Tracey Velt: How do you decide which ones to start with?
Sarah Reynolds: Yeah, good question. It’s all based on the market. We’re in Charleston, South Carolina, as one of our markets. Well, Charleston, South Carolina, is a move-in market more than it is a transient market from people moving out. Whereas Washington, D.C., for example, is very transient.
So, our lead-generation pillars for Charleston focus on relocation buyers and non-occupant homeowners, because a lot of people own second homes or vacation rentals in that area. But, in Dallas, Texas, we focused on mass media. We focused on a lot of sellers getting signs in the ground because Dallas mirrors DC metro in terms of it being so transient.
So we look at each market and what that sort of population is in terms of moves, and then we launch the pillars that apply to that market.
RealTrending features the brightest minds in real estate. Twice a month, brokerage leaders, top agents, team leaders, and industry experts share their success secrets, trends, and lessons learned navigating this ever-changing industry. Hosted by Tracey Velt and produced by Elissa Branch.
