Leveraging Land Auctions for Growth: A Guide for Loan Officers and Marketers

Land auctions and listings are the best opportunity to originate new loans with existing customers and win new business with new customers. Auctions and listings are an excuse to reach out to existing customers and new customers alike with valuable information that is proprietary and unique to Farm Credit – it is an opportunity to show the unique advantages of working with Farm Credit and their expertise in agriculture.

Evaluating Outreach Effectiveness in Farm Sales and Land Auctions

1. How effective is outreach today around upcoming Farm Sales and Auctions?
2. Are all loan officers following a similar best practice?
3. Are loan officers leveraging the differentiated information and services the association has access to?
4. Are they ensuring that the auction and information gets to the best prospects? Or just the ones that they have relationships with?

Marketing vs. Loan Officers

Typically outreach around upcoming farm sales has been the responsibility of individual Loan Officers / FOs. However, upcoming farm sales is also an opportunity to make new personal connections with prospects and build the brand. Marketing can also play a crucial role in the tools used by loan officers, presentation of information, and tracking brand impressions. A shift to account based marketing (ABM) and account based outreach requires a close relationship with sales and marketing teams. Identifying roles and responsibilities between the two groups is an important component of a great process.

What is Account Based Marketing?

This Linkedin Article summarizes ABM as “a strategy that directs marketing resources to engage a specific set of target accounts. ABM doesn’t just call for alignment between sales and marketing teams – it forces teams to align because personalization at the account level requires sales and marketing to be in sync with account-specific messaging. The motivation? Higher revenues in a shorter time frame.

Instead of casting a wide net with their lead-generation efforts, marketers using ABM work closely with sales to identify key prospects and then tailor customized programs and messages to the buying team within target accounts”

Using CamoAg Solutions to Supersize Farm Sales Outreach

CamoAg’s unique tools and integration with proprietary appraisal datasets provide loan officers with a tool to create branded outreach at scale. A loan officer can send out an analysis to interested parties that provides access to nearby comparable sales so that a member can enter the auction with the most accurate and up to date information on recent farm sales. The report is branded to a specific loan officer including their contact information and photo – useful so that when they show up at the auction people know who they are. The following outlines the specific steps that a loan officer and marketing can take to maximize the opportunity created by every auction to drive new mortgage origination.

Loan Officers should:

1. Find the property that is for sale / auction
2. Create the Farm in CamoAg

a) Enter auction details: location and date

1. Create a CMA by choosing the nearest comparable recent sales from verified appraisal data (up to 15). The CMA will be branded with the associations colors and logo and your custom camo.ag url. In addition it will include the name and contact information of the local loan officer.

1. Create your list of current customers and known prospects based on Salesforce data by right clicking on the farm and generate the report.

1. Send each prospect a personalized note and a link to the Farm Report
2. a) This link will provide access to the CMA and access to the different layers, soil maps and all other information on the upcoming farm sales

b) It includes a one click bookmark to create a calendar event around the auction that include the address of the auction

Pro tip: track the link using a pixel to measure engagement and identify which prospects are engaging the most with the analysis. Need help on how to best implement pixels? Reach out to us! Marketing should:

1. Create a report of nearby landowners not already in Salesforce as a current customer or prospect.

Pro Tip: Use filters like aggregate acres owned to target only prospects that own significant amounts of farmland and are likely to buy more. Also filter by address type to eliminate institutional owners of farmland, government, farm management companies, energy companies, banks, and more.

2. Download the addressee list to create a direct mail campaign with a postcard, the post card will contain a QR code that takes the user to the branded CMA with the loan officer’s name and contact information.

Pro Tip: Consider putting access to the analysis behind a landing page that requires them to enter their email to see the analysis and provide them an option to opt into future emails about upcoming auctions.

Conclusion

Auctions may be seen as one off events, but they are still an incredible opportunity for marketing to make a first impression on the community and demonstrate an association’s expertise and commitment to agriculture. Given the volume of auctions that take place each year across an association’s territory a direct mail campaign for non-customers for each auction would actually reach almost all non-customers within an association’s territory. Furthermore, rather than being a generic direct mail piece about interest rates or expertise, the campaign will deliver useful, differentiated information that a prospect will remember. A good process and coordination between loan officers and marketing can ensure that your association is maximizing auctions as an event to reach out to new and existing customers alike, in addition with the integration of AgWare verified appraisal data into the CamoAg platform an association can turn appraisal data into a key differentiator to win new customers

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