As a real estate agent, it’s important to not just market your properties, but always be marketing yourself and your business.
You are effectively your own business and it’s critical that if you are to grow your brand you continue to engage in a wide variety of marketing efforts.
Here are 10 tips you should be doing to continue to expand your reach.
1. Maintain an Email Newsletter
These days there really is no excuse for not having your own email list and newsletter. An email list is not only a very powerful marketing tool for your properties, but it’s also an easy way to continue to keep your personal brand in front of a host of buyers.
Over time, buyers that make their way onto your email list will eventually become sellers. You’ll also be in line to get referrals from people in your local area.
At Eagle, we provide easy to use email marketing software for real estate agents that allows you to work in volume, so you can focus your time on prospects that are ready to act now. Click here to learn more or request a free demo.
2. Leverage Social Media
As a real estate agent, developing and maintaining a social media presence is incredibly important. It creates a fantastic opportunity to build a personal brand while providing expertise in the field.
Social media is cost-effective, however, there is a time component that many agents might not be able to manage, so don’t be afraid to outsource this area of your business. A few hours spent scheduling some posts at the start of the month can go a long way in providing long term benefits to your business, with the dual benefits of boosting brand awareness and generating leads.
The most effective way to use social media is to be consistent and work to a routine. It’s quality over quantity – and so for example a weekly update on what is happening in your local area is a great way to build trust with your audience. By creating content about things that are happening in your suburb, it shows that you know your area, but also care about it. Learn more about Facebook marketing in this blog article.
3. Make Your Own Videos
Everyone has a smartphone with a camera in their pocket, and the great thing about them is that they're very good at making short videos. For time-poor real estate agents, simply shoot a quick video every time you successfully sell a property.
You can then upload these videos to your social media profiles, so prospective clients can get an overview of your real estate business and how you operate it.
When you're out in the field showing properties to potential buyers, make sure you keep the video rolling on your phone.
If you capture an amazing shot of the sunset over the water as it reflects off a shiny new kitchen countertop, for example, turn your camera around and show it off! Your audience will love seeing the properties you show and the things that go into giving them their best shot at selling fast and for the best possible price.
4. Ask for Referrals
If you don't ask, you don't receive. One of the most effective ways to get yourself out there is to ask for referrals.
Creating a referral network with other professionals in real estate and related industries can be a fruitful way to generate business. But this takes time, so be prepared to build relationships with people and always do an outstanding job, and it'll eventually happen.
Make your request easy for them, to ensure it is simple for people to give you one good reference. You can do this by providing them an electronic copy of the form they need to fill out, or set up a simple landing page on your website. This allows them to quickly fill out the form on their own computer, ensuring that all the information is correct.
5. Partner With Local Businesses
As a real estate agent, you need to take advantage of every avenue to build your brand and make connections with people in the area.
One powerful way to do this is by supporting local businesses or sports / community groups. If you want to become a successful agent, you should be focusing on an area and become an expert in that location. You should also understand how that location relates to the surrounding community.
The best way to understand all of this is by knowing who lives there and where they work. The businesses around your area are going to have a lot of contact with people in your community, and it could be a good idea for you to support those businesses or sponsor a local sports or community group, as a way of building relationships with the people who live there.
6. Educate
So the best way to market yourself is sometimes not trying to market yourself at all. When you're an agent in a competitive marketplace, it can be hard to get your name out there. Every other agent seems to be doing the same thing: creating content and social media posts that feature their photography skills or list of services, promoting how great they are.
You want potential clients to notice you as someone they need to use to sell their property. But here's the thing: no one wants to be sold to - what they do want is local knowledge and advice, delivered in a way that would benefit them if they ever needed real estate services themselves.
Think about how you can show people that you're an expert on their region, or point out some ways that your service is different from the other agents in your area. This is how you build trust with your potential clients. Instead of talking about yourself all the time, show them what you know. And when they do need someone to help with real estate services in the future, they’ll already know who to turn to.
7. Speak Regularly
One of the best ways to build trust with potential clients, especially in an industry like real estate, is to speak at property-related events or even start your own. By putting your face out there and building your brand as an expert in your field, you’re maximising your exposure in the right way.
8. Optimise Your Website for Content and SEO
For real estate agencies, creating quality content is a must. What this means will vary depending on industry and agency. For most, that means providing local area guides and information on recent sales in the area. The added benefit of having high-quality content is that you will benefit from some degree of search traffic over time. There’s a lot to consider when it comes to SEO, but it all starts with having relevant content that your audience wants to engage with.
The bottom line is that showing people that you know your area, is far more important than telling them. Quality localised content is also much more likely to be shared across other channels than generic content that isn’t focused on your locality. Learn more about optimising your real estate website in this blog.
9. Focus on a Niche
A niche focus can be a very effective strategy for real estate agents. By narrowing your focus to a more specific property type or geographic area, you can become the go-to agent in that area. It’s far easier to stand out from the crowd and market yourself as an expert if you are able to target and cater specifically to your ideal audience.
Your goal is to become known as the ‘go-to’ agency for a particular region or property type by proving your expertise and providing excellent service in that field. People respect knowledge and want to feel as though they are working with the best in their field.
Many real estate agents fall into the trap of trying to attract too many clients at once, which can be detrimental, as you risk losing potential clients to a competitor who has a higher level of expertise in that field. Use what you have a natural gift for along with your skillset, and become the expert of that niche.
10. CRM Automation
Time is a luxury that few within the real estate industry can afford to enjoy. If you're a seasoned professional with a number of established clients, you know this all too well. You've built your business by forming relationships that make clients want to work with you, and by working hard to keep them happy; it's this interpersonal work that makes real estate agents stand out from the rest.
As your business grows, though, so does the amount of time you spend on administrative tasks that don't help you build those relationships. Time spent manually processing requests and other documents is time taken away from relationship building activities that drive new business, and from assisting in the sale of properties. It's time wasted.
Get Ahead with Eagle CRM
A quality Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution can help you stay on top of those tedious tasks and take much of the hard work out of them. It will save you countless hours every week and keep your focus where it belongs: on your clients.
By automating processes and taking care of a lot of the backend work for you, a CRM will free up more time so you can take control of the interpersonal business.
Get ahead today with a CRM that works for you. To get started with Eagle Software today, simply book a demo at any time, we would love to help.
