Harvist Review: Real Estate Lead Farming Platform

Jim Gray, Lead Generation Expert9/5/2024

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Screen Shot 2024-08-08 at 10.36.38 AMIf you’ve never heard the term “lead farming” before, it’s time to become really familiar with it. Many agents just starting out or well into their careers may experience a learning curve when trying to keep up with cutting-edge marketing trends that are necessary for business growth.

Incorporating a lead farming strategy into your campaigns will help you build your client pipeline exponentially. 

Here’s how it works: 

Lead farming systematically targets and cultivates potential clients, turning initial client interest into solid leads by identifying and nurturing prospects within a specific geographic area determined by you! Effective lead farming uses multiple follow-up efforts (emails, voicemails, postcards, etc.) to help stay in contact and build relationships with your leads.

This marketing method also helps build your reputation as a local expert in your target markets by consistently providing personalized interactions, which helps build trust with your potential clients more easily.  

Ultimately, lead farming and using sites like Harvist, which provide an organized approach to lead nurturing, will likely lead to more successful client relationships, driving your business growth and profitability.

Quick Summary of Harvist

logo-harvistHarvist is a platform specialized in multi-faceted marketing designed specifically for lead farming. Kind of says it in the name, don’t you think? 

Even at a glance, you can see that they offer a suite of marketing tools and strategies to help you target the neighborhoods and zip codes you specialize in and implement a sophisticated strategy for connecting with potential leads. 

Here’s the cool part: They run the marketing for you. Your role is to set up your profile, landing pages, and voicemail scripts suited to your brand, and they implement their systems of contact. Harvist streamlines your client communication from the outset, which saves you time in the lead generation process to help maximize your ROI.

5 Key Takeaways

  1. Fully Customizable Marketing: They offer scripts and templates for you to use, but everything is customizable to make your company/brand recognizable.
  2. Offer 1-1 Onboarding: When you sign up, they offer 1-1 onboarding and support throughout to give you expert advice on meeting your business goals.
  3. Provide Detailed Lead Information: They use several methods of retrieving homeowner (absentee homeowner specifically) information to give you a more comprehensive sense of target marketing more effectively.
  4. Instant Home Evaluations Available: Interested homeowners can scan a QR code for immediate home value assessments directly from you, which is a good indication they would contact you first as a potential listing agent.
  5. They Create Automated Follow-Up Campaigns: Effective real estate marketing requires various touchpoints to nurture leads seamlessly, which they provide and execute for you.

5 Features and Why They’re Useful

harvist marketingSpoiler alert: I found Harvist to be user-friendly and promising as a platform to incorporate into your marketing strategies. I like the benefits they offer, which could save you a lot of time in marketing without compromising personalization and genuine connection. 

Here are a few of the stand-out features that I thought would be the most beneficial to consider:

  1. Fully Customizable Marketing to Fit Your Brand and Voice
    • Personalization: Ensure that your marketing materials reflect your unique style, voice, professionalism, and genuine interest in providing potential leads with beneficial information.
    • Engagement: Based on your location and the information they provide, you can create more relatable and engaging content for potential leads.
    • Flexibility: As time passes, you can adjust your templates and language to better suit what is working and what is not.
  2. 1-1 Onboarding and Expert Advice for Better ROI
    • Guidance: Personalized onboarding helps you get the most out of Harvist’s features, which is crucial when starting a new form of client interaction.
    • Optimization: They can help guide you on how to best adjust your settings and profile according to the data they have with ongoing support.
  3. Provides Detailed Lead Information for Better Target Marketing
    • Insight: Without accurate data, you would be marketing blindly, which is never a good strategy because it costs you time. They give you detailed information to help you cultivate more accurate marketing for the leads you receive.
    • Efficiency: More information helps you prioritize your lead lists, allowing you to focus your efforts on high-potential leads and saving you time and resources.
  4. Homeowners Get Instant Home Evaluations by Scanning a QR Code
    • Convenience: In my opinion, making it easy for homeowners to get quick evaluations without any hassle means they will be more likely to contact you without a moment’s hesitation.
    • Lead Generation: This feature directly captures the attention of potential leads interested in knowing their home value for free. You’re already giving them something of value that will help them in their next steps.
    • Engagement: Interaction is key, and this tool will allow them to spend more time learning about what you could potentially offer them.
  5. Harvist Creates Automated Follow-Up Campaigns Using Various TouchPoints
    • Consistency: Helps ensure that no lead is forgotten with automated follow-ups, which is crucial in turning potential leads into clients. 
    • Nurturing: This strategy helps keep leads engaged over time through several communication forms, increasing conversion chances.

Product Pricing

Their pricing seems pretty straightforward, but depending on where you are located, it could be pricey for a monthly commitment. They do offer completely flexible packages, so it seems like a good option for all budgets, with a few exceptions that I’ll go over later. 

In general, this is what I saw on their website for pricing:

  • Flexible Packages: Pricing depends on the package you choose: Full Farm or Absentee Campaigns.
  • 12-Month Commitment: Billed monthly, with a year-long commitment.
  • The Cost is per House: Once you set your farm area, you pay $1.25 per house per month. Larger home settings receive a slight discount per home.

With their one-on-one onboarding, you should be able to get a good sense of what will work for your budget and determine a reasonable goal for your ROI. That being said, there are some great reasons to consider incorporating a site like Harvist into your budget and a few reasons to do more research before committing. 

Let’s go over a few that stood out for me:

3 Biggest Pros for Using the Siteharvist pick your product

  1. Exclusive Leads (HUGE!)
    • Quality: More likely to receive high-quality leads more apt to be in or near to decision-making time.
    • Conversion: Higher chance of converting exclusive leads with less competition who will be more loyal to you.
  2. Campaigns Are Created for You to Save You Time
    • Efficiency: Time is money! You don’t have to stress about scheduling and creating marketing campaigns; they set up and implement automated campaigns for you.
    • Focus: Allows you to focus on other important aspects of your business and give more attention to clients who are near closing.
    • Professionalism: Ensures that you’re not scrambling to pull something together for all of your clients and will have professionally designed and executed campaigns.
  3. Provides a User – Friendly Dashboard to Track Your Leads Easily
    • Organization: Keep all your leads organized in one place where you can also keep your notes on communication.
    • Visibility: Provides a clear overview of your lead pipeline so you can keep an eye on how successful your campaigns are in generating interested leads.
    • Tracking: This makes it easier to track the lead status and follow-up actions so you can better prioritize your focus and stay informed on your next communication method.

3 Biggest Cons

  1. Costs are Calculated After You Select Your Farm and Determine How Many Houses You Would Like
    • Budgeting: Planning your budget without knowing the exact costs upfront is harder, but you it can scale before committing.
    • Variability: Costs could vary significantly based on your chosen farm area.
  2. Could Be Competitive in Smaller Cities
    • Limited Leads: Smaller cities may have fewer leads available, which might make this platform not as useful for you.
  3. 12-Month Commitment Might Be a Long-term Risk
    • Flexibility: Limited flexibility if you want to switch services, cancel, or adjust your budget commitment.

Who it May Be Helpful For

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    Agents in Large Urban Areas

    • Abundance of Leads: A larger pool of potential leads could help you narrow down your expertise neighborhood by neighborhood.
    • Exclusive Leads: In more competitive markets, you would likely benefit from exclusive access to a group of leads in your farming area.
  2. Tech-Savvy Agents
    • Efficiency: Appreciates automated and tech-driven solutions.
    • Integration: Benefits from CRM integration and detailed dashboards.
    • Innovation*: Open to trying new and innovative lead generation strategies.
  3. Agents with a Strong Brand Presence
    • Customization: Leverages the fully customizable marketing features.
    • Engagement*: Uses brand strength to create more engaging content.
    • Consistency*: Ensures consistent branding across all marketing efforts.

3 Types of Agents It Wouldn’t Be Good For

  1. Agents with a Limited Budget
    • Cost: Monthly costs can add up, especially for smaller budgets, and investing in a more sophisticated CRM or new IDX Website may be higher on your priority list at the moment.
  2. New Agents Just Starting Out
    • Experience: Might not have the experience to fully utilize the platform for lead nurturing effectively through a multi-channel marketing system. Still worth learning, but all in time.
Experts are here to help (FREE)

Speak with an industry expert agent advisor. Together we will find the best solution based on your goals and needs.

Product Alternatives 

As agents, we’re always brainstorming new methods of lead generation, and if you want to do a little more research on tools that could help, below are two that I would recommend considering:

1

Best for Only Seller Leads

A+
  • Get leads instantly
  • Integrates with dozens of technology platforms
2

Best for Solo Agents

A
  • All leads within 50 mile radius
  • Platform uses 400 million data points
3

Best Pre-Foreclosure Leads

A
  • Seamless integration with existing tools
  • Full contact information included

Summary

I hope this review helped give you a sense of whether Harvist stands out as a potential marketing tool for your long-term business growth. Their customizable and automated marketing, detailed lead information, and ongoing support throughout your lead building efforts rank it high on my list of effective tools. 

While the pricing and long-term commitment might be considerations, the benefits of exclusive leads help mitigate that facto with promise for a larger ROI than you might expect.

About the Author

Jim Gray got licensed in 2013 and sold 57 houses in his first year. Over the next 6 1/2 years he went on to sell 437 homes with a small team. He went on to manage the lead generation department of the 13th largest expansion team at Keller Williams and designed lead generation and conversion systems for 60 agents in 7 locations in 4 states that drove 600 home sales in a 2 year period. Jim currently does real estate team development and coaching for some of the largest real estate teams in the country.

Last Updated: 9/5/2024