Elm Street CMO, Bondilyn Jolly, Discusses “Getting Back to Basics” in Inman InStudio Interview

Real estate professionals are faced with unique challenges in today’s market, making it more critical than ever to focus on the fundamentals and ‘‘get back to the basics.” Bondilyn Jolly, CMO of Elm Street, recently connected with Lauren Walker of Inman News to discuss what that means from a marketing and technology standpoint.

With 2.4 million licensed real estate agents across the United States, Jolly stated, “Numbers are upside down. Marketing is so important because the industry is more competitive, and we’re in a low-inventory market.” Agents need to get in front of their sphere and stay at the top of consumers' minds by marketing themselves through the digital world of social media or by building in-person connections in their communities.

Not only do agents need to stay top of mind while prospecting and having initial interactions, but they also need to stay in front of each lead, and remain relevant throughout the entire home buying/selling journey. Some people are ready to make a move today, and some may not be ready for 1-2 years, or even longer. It’s imperative to have touchpoints with each consumer through this timeframe, ensuring that when they are ready to buy or sell, they know which agent to work with.

Agents can utilize technology and intelligent workflows to manage these touchpoints. In fact, leveraging technology is one of the basic fundamentals of running a successful real estate business. There are several ways to leverage technology throughout this journey with each consumer, such as; adding each lead to a CRM, building intelligent workflows for touchpoints, connecting CRM to social channels for content distribution, etc. Jolly expressed, “Technology is there to supplement and complement your activities and help you manage, streamline, and automate.” The intention of technology isn’t to replace relationships or in-person connections, but instead, it helps agents stay relevant and save time by streamlining their daily activities.

Top Tips to ‘Get Back to the Basics”

• Embrace social media to market your business.
• Build connections (online and in-person).
• Understand the buy/sell continuum (every journey is different).
• Have intelligent workflows to meet consumers on their journey.
• Leverage technology to automate and streamline.

Want to learn more?

Watch the FULL INTERVIEW with Inman News for a breakdown of these basic fundamentals and more insight from the Marketing minds at Elm Street.

About Elm Street Elm Street offers a growing portfolio of real estate technology and marketing services with the goal of providing one vendor and one point of contact, fully fused into one singular platform – Elevate - to capture and nurture more leads into closed business. Elm Street's portfolio of products and services allow busy real estate professionals the ability to streamline and automate their marketing and day-to-day business objectives by offering high-end IDX websites, lead generation tools, a powerful CRM, email, social, text, and blog marketing automation, recruiting and retention tools, and more. To learn more, please visit ElmStreet.com.