How One Agent Built a Marketing Machine

Most of what Premier Agent Jason Farris learned about marketing he learned as a clown.

No joke – a clown.

Before he started selling homes 10 years ago, Jason was the guy at kids’ birthday parties juggling tennis balls, performing pratfalls and tying balloons in the shape of animals.  

Real estate agents and clowns have more in common than you might think, Jason said with equal parts humor and seriousness from his Fresno, CA, office.   

Clowns, like agents, need to understand key connection points with their audience, he said.

They both need to ask themselves: How can I get people to relax? To trust me?

To choose me for the job again and again?

Finding your edge

When Jason started out in real estate a decade ago, he was hungry to land clients just like every other agent, he said.

But instead of chasing listings and churning through a one-off pipeline, he decided to build a media company brick by brick.  

“If people are buying a taco from me, they don’t need to trust me,” Jason said. “But if they’re spending $200,000 or $400,000 on a home, they want to trust the person they’re working with.”

But how?

Jason reflected on what motivated him. It was relationships and connection-building.

Then he examined why someone would want to work with an agent.

In 2008, sites like Zillow were blazing a new trail of transparency in real estate. An agent’s value, he realized, was no longer in access to the MLS.

It was in their understanding of contracts, their negotiating skill, and, most importantly, their knowledge of local neighborhoods. Jason loved to write, so he decided that telling stories about his beloved city of Fresno would be his portal to earning trust.

Positive energy leads to positive outcomes, he said, so he created a website – and later, branded his company – under the name FresYes.com.

It’s been a huge success. Last year, his team of more than a dozen agents generated nearly $118 million in sales. He’s already beat those numbers this year, with $162 million in sales to date.

Jason now has 25,000 newsletter subscribers and his website averages about 10,000 unique views per week, he said. Given the demands of his schedule, he’s hired seven writers to produce stories for his website.

Jason is eager to share what he’s learned with fellow agents and offered four tips on how to build a content marketing machine.

1) Choose your own marketing mission

Think about how you can be a voice for your community, Jason said. When he launched FresYes 10 years ago, he focused on becoming the hub of good things happening in Fresno.

His goal was to change the reputation of a city that had long suffered in the shadow of San Francisco to the west and Los Angeles to the south.

His timing was fortuitous. As the fledgling site got its footing, the city’s local newspaper pulled back on lifestyle coverage. So Jason seized an opportunity to fill that void. He began writing restaurant reviews and highlighting upcoming family events. He also wrote about citizens doing good in the community.

He meticulously tracked click-through rates and time-on-page. Over time, he started to notice something: The more he wrote, and the more he shared on social media, the more his pipeline grew.

Soon, FresYes.com became the engine of Jason’s business. The product he was selling was houses, yes; but that was secondary to his focus on community-building, he said.

This strategy was key to actually selling more houses, he said, because once people trusted him as the local expert, they were in.

2) Become an early adopter

Jason attributes his success to his insatiable curiosity. In the mid-2000s, he started exploring Twitter while it was in its infancy. He snagged the FresYes handle, which now has more than 4,500 followers.

With the recent growth of voice-activated technology, Jason has started using Alexa as a marketing vehicle. He began running weekly challenges on Alexa this summer.

Anyone with an Amazon Echo or an Echo Dot can subscribe to FresYes Realty to get updates on the Fresno real estate market, as well as information on what’s happening in town that weekend. Subscribers also get the chance to participate in weekly challenges to win prizes.

“People have less time now,” Jason said. “I know from tracking the time they spend per page that they’re reading our stories less than they were when I started.

“But what more people do – myself included – is listen to a podcast or send a (voice-activated) request to Alexa.

“You need to reach people where they are … and that is constantly shifting.”

 3) Get obsessed with data

Understand who your audience is by paying close attention to their likes and dislikes, Jason said. He recommends building a database and recording every detail you can about a person.

Take, for instance, the various contests he runs. He will tell readers about a burger restaurant he loves, write a review and invite people to send in a photo of their burger.

When they do, he or a member of his team scrupulously records their name, their email address and tags them with the word “burger” in a database.

The next time FresYes.com features a story about burgers, they get an email from FresYes Realty with that content, he said.

“They get a relevant story and boom – you create connection,” he said.

Another way to build a database is to simply ask people about their likes and dislikes, he said.

“People love answering questions about themselves. Send an email asking what they love. You’ll be surprised.”

4) Prepare to play the long game

This rule is crucial. When you’re building a website, the disappointment factor is primed to hit overdrive, Jason said.

“It takes months – years – to build a loyal following,” he said. “That’s hard to stomach, especially when we’re all used to getting what we want now.

“Patience is the name of the game. And so is change. What worked back when I started 10 years ago doesn’t work now and it won’t work tomorrow.”