People who enter real estate take a risk because, for most realtors, a paycheck isn’t guaranteed. To be successful in the industry, not only do you need the intrinsic characteristic to hustle, but you also need a marketing strategy that complements and feeds your hunger. Unfortunately for some, traditional advertising isn’t cutting it anymore.
That’s why realtors should avoid traditional advertising practices and rely on marketing strategies that differentiate themselves within the market.
Why Traditional Real Estate Marketing Isn't Working
Many realtors rely on traditional marketing techniques like placing ads in local newspapers, adding signage to bus stops, or buying ad time on local T.V. or radio channels. While these techniques were great ten years ago, they aren’t very relevant now.
Ask yourself:
- When is the last time you picked up a newspaper?
- Do you still watch cable T.V. with the commercials or do you skip over the ads during cable and rely on streaming for interruption-free viewing?
- If you’re at the bus stop, are you looking at advertisements or looking at your phone?
As consumer behaviors have dramatically changed over the years, advertising has been forced to evolve to keep up. Consider these five techniques for modern advertising.
1. Target Your Marketing
Cold calling, blindly emailing or knocking on doors used to be a common tactic for new realtors to start growing their prospect list. However, these are time-consuming practices with little return. That’s because it’s hard to discern who actually needs a realtor before reaching out.
Luckily, technology has evolved far enough to help us get a little more time back during lead generation with targeted advertising and prospecting.
Realtors can now target specific demographics and geographic locations by taking marketing actions like:
- Placing ads on Facebook
- Purchasing ads on Google
- Creating e-mail drip campaigns
By narrowing the audience to qualified leads, you are working smarter, not harder. It’s easier to grow your list when your leads are actually looking for your services specifically.
2. Cater to the Age of Convenience
Real estate is a relationship-based business. And for veterans in the industry, building relationships face-to-face is key. While nothing replaces in-person communication, it’s entirely possible your consumers want to communicate with you through multiple channels.
For that reason, you must rethink client communication. Real estate agents use apps to:
- Make appointments online
- Sign paperwork electronically
- View homes virtually
- Ask questions, digitally
By providing clients with multiple channels to communicate with you and for you to conduct business, you become convenient for them. In an era of convenience, accessibility is critical to accommodate your clients’ busy lives.
3. Remember, the Market is Dynamic
Especially over the last 10 years, the real estate market has experienced its fair share of ebbs and flows. It’s important to note that keeping your foot on the marketing pedal, regardless of the economic outlook, is important, but, it also might require that you change your messaging.
When the real estate market is hot, marketing might feel relatively easy. A marketing message with a single unique value proposition and contact information might generate enough leads for you to sustain yourself with.
When it’s a cold market, marketing can be a bigger challenge for real estate agents.
Consider creating personas, or descriptions about types of clients you might work with, so you can designate different marketing messages.
For instance, one client may be desperate to sell to stay afloat, while another is more agile and ready to take advantage of the economy. By creating unique messages to each of the buckets of clients you work with, you can attract a more diverse pool of leads.
4. Leverage the Relationship
To be successful as a realtor, you have to earn the trust of your clients. That’s because realtors infiltrate many parts of their clients lives throughout the relationship. Real estate agents are educators of the market, counselors during stressful times, financial advisors when determining a budget, credit repair specialists, and life coaches as your clients determine the biggest investment of their life.
To navigate life phases together, the client must have built up a substantial amount of trust for their realtor.
This trust can translate into a mutually beneficial friendship. The better you treat your clients, the more they will be inclined to refer you to their network for friends who may also be looking to buy or sell a home.
5. Focus on the Customer Experience
Customer service shouldn’t be a burden, rather, consider it a way to build your affiliate marketing. Not all of the clients you work with will be beacons of financial health. But, that doesn’t mean financially unwell clients deserve less than the best from their realtor.
A unique approach to real estate marketing is to target consumers earlier in the buying cycle, to extend the lifetime relationship.
That means, if clients aren’t pre-approved or prequalified because of their credit history, rather than sending them away, it’s an opportunity to build and improve the customer experience. Real estate agents can offer credit repair services to help improve client experiences and in turn generate more leads.
Though the sales cycle might be longer, investing in your clients from an earlier stage in the relationship can help generate more trust, and help you close more deals.
Are you ready to shake up your real estate marketing techniques? Learn how credit repair can add a unique value proposition to your repertoire and expand your lead pool.
