What do you look for in co-marketing partners?
Posted in Real Estate Agent Mastermind Group By Maryellen Garasky, Sunday, August 17, 2008.My husband and I run our own mortgage broker office. We have never aligned ourselves to any particular Real Estate Agent, but marketed directly to homeowners hoping to refinance or move up in life. Because we have had very good success with this, and have always been the people referring TO agents instead of getting referred BY agents, we haven't depended on Agent business.
Now, however, we are being approached by four different agents in our area who want to co-market with us.
We want to maintain true to our vision and choose an Agent of like mind, but are having difficulty in choosing which agent we want to co-market with.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to put us up on a pedestal and say we are perfect in every single way, I just want to make sure that we are creating a partnership that will be beneficial to both parties, stand the test of time, and not burn bridges.
Any advice or feedback from your experiences will be helpful.
Maryellen Garasky
Co-Owner - President - Managing Broker
KMG Mortgage Group
www.kmgmortgagegroup.com
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Submitted by Mike Sparr on August 18, 2008 - 7:28am.
Maryellen,
Unless you are talking about becoming exclusive in co-marketing with a particular agent, I think this is a great idea for you and you will benefit greatly!
Becoming exclusive with a particular agent may upset others who have and still work with you quite frequently. I think the best option would be to find a few opportunities and offer them to all agents. The benefits of co-marketing help save you on your marketing budget and also potentially double your clientèle and lead database.
Here's an example of how it has worked for a service like ours. In the last year, we've had several professionals in the mortgage industry sign up with our service to co-market with more agents. Just to give you a quick overview of how our system works; we provide a mobile advertising and lead generation service, called Goomzee Connect. Our service is a text-for-info service which allows consumers the ability to send and receive a text message to find out more information about a listing. When an inquiry is sent from the consumers mobile phone, they will immediately receive an automated text response with information about the property and the contact number for the agent and/or lender. The agents and lenders can choose to receive alerts and/or log in to the web administration where all campaigns are managed, and view the the consumers mobile number and the name of the property they inquired about.
By co-marketing with Goomzee, agents and lenders are able to share the leads they are receiving on properties.
The mortgage lenders that are using our service have not "chosen" any particular agents, they are actually offering it to many of the agents they frequently work with. This method, therefore, doesn't single out any particular agents, it gives them all the option to benefit.