Real Estate Marketing Guide
Build your Brand
“Brand is how you differentiate yourself and win customers when you’re in a “commodity” business” – Gary Vaynerchuk
Your Brand vs. Your Listings
As a real estate agent, you will both sell and promote your listings, but you will also sell and promote yourself, aka, your personal brand. To be noticed, you will need to be savvy in marketing, be organized, know your market, know your customers, and have a genuine interest in helping people.
Your brand is comprised of your listings, your visual brand identity, your reviews, your headshots; everything that points to your quality of service and your recognizability.
As important as it is to promote your listings, it’s equally as important to promote, advertise, and build your personal brand in the process. For one, your brand is longer lasting than a single listing sales cycle. Homes come and go, but your career and branding is a lasting force in the marketplace. You plant your stake in the ground and claim territory for your personal brand, because you’re in it to win it!
Many real estate agents come and go, it’s the ones that show they're serious that end up with more business. Word of mouth, seeing positive reviews, connecting with your mission, vision and purpose is what draws clients to you. Consider your listings, your products, and your brand is the overall experience of buying and selling with you as an agent. What customer experiences do you provide? Are you easy to work with? Is your knowledge of the market superior to your competitors? Do you do the best showings? Do you have the best open houses? Are you the master of your niche? Are you a master negotiator that gets top dollar every time for your clients? Do you know your neighborhoods so well that you can make the best recommendations for nearby attractions that other agents cant?
Build Trust
You build trust in the real estate business by being consistent. You network, you post on social media, you give the best customer experiences, you go the extra mile for clients, you show everyone you work with your why, your mission. Trust is built overtime. You will have to do more in the beginning to prove yourself and this is ok because it helps contribute to your reputation. Your dedication to building trust and your brand is what will set you apart from the pack of other real estate agents out there.
Factors for Clients Choosing an Agent
39% of sellers who used a real estate agent found their agents through a referral by friends or family, and 27% used the agent they previously worked with to buy or sell a home, according to the NAR.
This goes to show you how important your reputation is. When you go above and beyond providing great service to your clients, it can pay o dividends in the way of additional, consistent business as happy homeowners spread the word about your great service.
Some additional factors for determine how buyers and sellers select a real estate agent:
Trustworthiness
Recommendations
Good reviews
Are you a member of a real estate association?
How long you have worked in the area
Any awards or acknowledgments
¾ of buyers would work with their same agent again or recommend them to others – but it’s good to ask!
Know the neighborhoods well (aka you’re a local expert!)
Can answer questions about surrounding schools, HOA rules, and regulations, parks, attractions, restaurants, traffic, the current market climate, and trends. Ultimately what your customers expect is getting the inside scoop on the area and feeling confident that price is the best it can be.
Understands current market trends.
You can easily talk about homes in your client’s price range that are available, you know how many days on average homes in the area have been on the market
# of completed sales in the last year
They make time for clients
Putting your clients first is a great way to keep them happy! They want to know you’re always available to show a home, answer questions, meet them, or provide tons of assistance in the process. Clients also work for an agent that spends time on the search process retrieving relevant listings that match their criteria and truly understands their client’s needs. Data shows that the most successful agents are the ones that treat the job like a full-time job and work more hours than the part-time agents who treat the job more like a hobby.
Your average sale to list ratio. This ratio compares the final sale price of a home to the initial listing price. To determine this figure, divide the sales prices by the latest asking price. You’ll end up with a percentage. A good sign of a quality agent is one that has a proven track record of getting the best price for sellers and the lowest price negotiated for buyers.
Credentials - Some specialized niches have their own specialized certifications. They receive special training above and beyond their real estate license. Also, real estate brokers have more experience and training designating them to be able to own and sell properties whereas a real estate agent can only work for a broker. Examples would include senior citizen real estate specialists, accredited buyer's representatives, and certified luxury home
marketing specialists.Repeat business: Sellers who definitely would use the same agent again: 48%
Find your Niche
When selecting a niche, pick one you have some level of specialty expertise in, such as selling ranch homes because you have experience growing up or living on a ranch. Perhaps your passion for surfing leads you sell beach homes. Rather than serve all clients from every walk of life, it’s smart to downsize and specialize on a particular target market.
Identify target personas
When choosing your niche, you’ll want to narrow it down as specific as possible. Your niche will consist of a very specific region or a very specific demographic, such as luxury homeowners. You will create fictional personas for your ideal clients that will help you dene your niche down to their specific interests, hobbies, desires, and make them more relatable because they will be representations of people you are going to be working with. Taking the time to get very specific about who you are helping will help narrow your focus of expertise.
As an example, Lake house Larry; loves golf, boating, an outdoor kitchen and patio is an important entertainment area, he needs golf cart parking in the garage, wants good schools, enough bedrooms for the kids. Above all else, the home is a refuge and escape from the office or indoors and plenty of outdoor relaxation and recreation.
Chances are if you’re in the same group as Lake House Larry, this is a niche you’re particularly interested in because it’s one you can relate to, you can speak with almost native fluency the language of your niche, and easily identify homes that meet the needs of your clients. This makes you inherently more successful because you’re not missing the mark on what your target market. In short: you get it.
Getting to know your target customers and to begin thinking like they think will help you to better understand the decision-making habits of your customers. You will be able to relate and sympathize with their needs, wants, and desires in the home they buy or sell.
In addition, getting into the person of your typical seller will also provide you a customer-centric perspective in understanding the reasons why people sell and what their goals are in selling.
Additional factors to consider when selecting a niche:
Geographic area (aka farming area)
Customer type ex. seniors
Property type ex. Golf homes, coastal homes
Individual qualities: What sets you apart? Ex. focus on artists, or finding homes for athletes, ex. Other skills you bring to the table from your previous experience
When you choose a niche, you become a specialist in that category. While you have narrowed your focus to a particular segment of the market, you’ve also deepened your skills and expertise making you the expert.
Study the key demographics for your niche in your target area
Another reason for finding a niche is selecting one that is underserved so you can come in and dominate the market. Whatever your target market, seem to become the best and the “go-to” real estate agent through your understanding of the market.
Deciding to specialize as a buyer’s agent or a sellers agent can help you focus on what you enjoy doing more. Do you enjoy helping families find a home and negotiate the best deal for your clients or are you more interested in helping a seller get the top dollar for their listing?
Study your demographics in your area. Identify an underserved demographic you feel you can identify with and help. You may decide to begin specializing in this demographic.
Follow news stories about market trends. Look on Google for city and neighborhood data like schools, crime, hottest neighborhoods, average home prices, etc.
Pick a niche that makes you happy. If you’ve always loved ranch homes, become the go-to agent for ranch homes in your area. Be the guy or girl people go to and trust when looking for what they want.
Get certified in a niche
There are many national real estate organizations devoted to specialized niches. For example, you may become a certified senior housing expert or a professional international relocation certified agent.
Remember, you specialize in properties, not people. So discrimination based on demographics is illegal. Your property specialization should actually gain you business, even though you’ve narrowed your clientele, you will be the one they contact first.
Brand Identity
In real estate, you are your own brand. By strengthening your reputation through positive reviews and word of mouth, your value in the marketplace will increase. The more people that can associate your brand and your name with an agent that is a professional and does the best job for their clients will spawn repeat business and new clients flocking to you.
Your brand consists of:
Your vision
Your goals
Creating value for your client
Your mission statement – your reason for doing what you do, why should people work with you
How you can help
Logo
Brand personality – what are you all about?
Colors you vibe with
Fonts for your business card
All of your visual aesthetics, messaging and listings coming together on your website
Branded email templates
Slogan - Coming up with your own personal real estate slogan can simply be what special service do you provide to your target niche. For example, something as simply as “selling beach homes for top dollar” or something clever like “making dream homes a reality”.
Reputation Management
What better way to connect and relate with the public than building a strong public relations strategy!
Contact your local print, tv and radio media and let them know you are a local expert on real estate and would be happy to contribute to any articles or segments about the local real estate economy. Your market knowledge and expertise will shine and help you to become the local go-to expert over time as your face and name become more recognizable to the public.
Not to mention, these media appearances will be more great content to share on your blog and social media channels.
HARO - Sign up with HARO, Help a Reporter Out on https://www.helpareporter.com/ to act as an authoritative source on real estate related news stories. This will help increase your name recognition locally and put a friendly face to a name as someone who is an expert on the subject of real estate.
Agent photos
Professional headshots are a must for a strong personal brand. Here are some tips to produce the best agent photos to represent your brand:
Hire a professional photographer – make the investment
You’re looking to hire someone who can make the whole process easy and control the environment to get all the lighting, angles, and locations perfect so you shine as totally professional.
Talk to your photographer
Make sure they know the purpose of your photos, which will include branding that will appear in everything from billboards to business cards. Double-check pricing, including the photo shoot, editing, revisions, and any final prints.
Be sure to smile in your photos! It helps people to trust you more
Hire a makeup artist for your photoshoot
Pick a professional outfit that you feel confident in. For men, it can be a standard suit without a tie. Wear solid colors.
Purchase the full usage rights and copyrights for your photos
Shoot in multiple locations. Preferably an iconic landmark in the local community that your customers will recognize. Being photographed in the community your customers will recognize will help your brand stand out. Another shooting location might also be a plain white or black backdrop, so you have some for when you need a more basic background maybe for use on a website.
Have a friend take some more casual shots with a smartphone at your shooting locations. Gives you a chance to have some alternative versions including any bloopers!
Lifestyle, unposed headshots are also very popular because they show authenticity and come off as relatable.
Referrals
Get testimonials
Positive client testimonials can be a great asset to share on your website and social media channels.
These testimonials, as well as a strong social and video presence to appear relatable and build trust. Word of mouth is known to be the best and most effective real estate marketing strategy in the book.
When others are happily telling their friends and family about you and how much they enjoyed working with you, you essentially have a volunteer sales team promoting you. And because people trust things their friends and family are telling them, the likelihood that those friends and family will take action on those recommendations is a higher probability than from traditional marketing and advertising.
Your strategy should include asking for referrals from satisfied clients. One way is to ask for them and help your clients create them by asking them specific questions to answer. Send a short survey post-close to your clients with open ended questions like “What did you like most about working with me as your real estate agent?”
Maintain your relationships with past clients, find out how they’re doing in their new homes, and simply ask them for referrals. Follow up with your past clients regularly to ensure you don’t miss any opportunity to gather new testimonials and referrals.
One tip is to provide the content which they will repost when giving you a referral online, such as a link to your social media channels, website, or phone number. You can even create a referral program to reward past clients when they promote your real estate business.
In addition to referrals, your past clients may still need help finding real estate in the future, so don’t forget about them after the sale. Keep your past clients on a regular marketing list and keep in touch so you stay on their mind, even for future needs.
You can reward former clients with thank you gifts and cards thanking them for their business and also for any referrals they’re willing to give. The lifeblood of the real estate industry is referrals.
Reviews
There are several real estate agent review sites where customers can leave you reviews on what it was like to work with you as their agent. In addition to referrals, asking for a positive review for a positive experience will help boost your reputation online as a top agent.
Consider creating and updating a realtor profile account on the following real estate agent review sites with a short bio, high resolution headshot, along with information about homes sold and what markets you serve:
Networking
In the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, networking events have took a hit. However, personal protection equipment and social distancing still make networking possible. While you might be staying home more these days, networking can happen anytime you are out and about. Talk to and meet everyone you come in contact with. Introduce yourself to people when you go out, give them your card and tell them to follow you.
Also, virtual networking events, mixers, happy hours are great opportunities. You can also create your own community events helps to bring people together and get to know what you do (whenever those happen again, in the meantime – virtual). Creating your own online real estate community or group is another way to start conversations with your buyers and sellers and gives you an opportunity to see what questions and comments people are posting.