Introduction

Geographic Farming, or geo farming for short, is a new addition to our lead generation offerings. This feature aims to help Chime users dominate their local markets by boosting brand awareness and driving cost-efficient lead generation. This feature provides city-specific data, including sales volume, sales price, competitor market share, and GCI potential. 

Note: This feature is not available in Canada

Summary

• Why Use Geographic Farming?
• How Should I Choose a Farm?
• Selecting a City
• Analyzing the City
• Adding a New Campaign
  • Setting up the Farm
    • GeoFarm Lists
  • Choose Subcampaign Designs
  • Display Information
  • Track Your Campaigns

Why Use Geographic Farming?

Geographic farming is a proven real estate marketing method you can use to focus your lead efforts on a single city. It involves identifying a local area and marketing directly to that area. When done correctly, farming can help you identify opportunities, increase brand awareness, capture leads, gain listings, and earn referrals. One technique that has been used for many years is to select a geographic area and send postcards to households in that area. These postcards may contain market statistics, and recently sold homes, and often encourage homeowners to work with you as their agent. While real estate agents have been using Geo Farming for years, it still works because it makes strategic sense.

1. Farming helps you gain awareness locally: This strategy will be useful to you if you want to become the "preferred agent" in a particular market. As you put more effort into marketing to a specific city, over time and with the right marketing, you will become known for that area.
2. Farming gives you a consistent plan: A farm will tell you the exact marketing demographic and the geographic area to focus on. In Chime, we provide a steady 12-month recurring plan with preset postcard templates. All you need to do is choose a farm and set up the campaign, then the postcards will be sent out each month automatically.
3. Farming connects the ideal clients: By working in a smaller area, you can learn more about the movements, lifestyles, and interests of potential local sellers, and help you connect with customers smoothly.

How Should I Choose a Farm?

Step 1: Select an area that you want to target. The Chime system will provide the market analysis information.

Step 2: Look at the Turnover Rate. This indicates the number of homes that sold over the past 12 months, divided by the total number of homes in the selected area. Generally, a 5%-7% turnover rate is considered acceptable. 

Step 3: Look at the Absorption Rate. This indicates the number of homes that sold over the past 30 days, divided by the total number of active listings in the selected area. For example, if the absorption rate is 3%, that is, only 3 listings are sold each month. You need to make at least 33 listing appointments to get 1 listing. This number indicates the competition, your stats, and the market stats.

Selecting a City

To get started, first locate Geographic Farming in the Campaigns section of the CRM.

Enter the name of the city you want to target in the search box or select the pencil icon in the lower right corner to manually draw an area. The selected city will appear on the map. Once the marketing area is an adequate size, click "Start Analyzing". 

After analyzing the area, you will receive some information:

Analyzing the City

Once you've selected your city, we provide some key data points, as shown above. These data points are defined here:

• Total Properties: The number of properties within the selected boundaries
• Total Sales: Total sales amount in the selected area in the past 12 months, based on MLS data
• Average Sales Price: Average sales price for all sold listings in the selected area in the past 12 months, based on MLS data
• Average GCI: Average GCI for all sold listings in the selected area in the past 12 months, based on MLS data
• Turnover Rate: The percentage of homes sold in the selected area in the past 12 months, based on MLS data
• Absorption Rate: The percentage of homes sold in the selected area in the past 30 days, based on MLS data

This section also outlines what agents hold market share in the selected area, and how you stack up against them. This will give you insight into whether or not this is a good market for you to break into! If you're ready to move forward, click "Save" and give this City Marketing area a name.

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding this topic or any others, please reach out to our Support Team via email at <support@chimeinc.com> or by phone at 1 (855) 981-7557.