The real estate industry is a crowded and competitive space. Having said that, unless you’re carving out a brand new sector, so is every industry. In real estate, the key to success is not about reinventing the wheel but rather figuring out ways to get noticed and be remembered.
Here are 5 tips to get you started on your standout path to real estate success.
- Create a branded agent website.
This may seem overly simple, but the important word in this tip is “branded”. Many real estate agents are still riding on the coattails of their brokerages with a spin-off website that looks and feels exactly like the broker’s site except that it includes a headshot and brief bio.
This presents an opportunity to set yourself apart.
Develop your own professional website that showcases your brand, not your brokerage’s. Think unique content, eye-catching visuals and added value for visitors. The most critical part of this exercise is defining what that personal brand looks and feels like. It’s soul-searching time!
- Have a solid communications strategy.
This matters more than you might think. Remember that real estate is a people business and a relationship business. Your people are your contacts and your long-term success depends on the relationships you build with them. Think of how many times you’ve purchased something or worked with someone on a project, and then quickly forgotten them once the transaction is over. A communications strategy ensures that this no longer happens.
The beauty of living in a digital world is that, more than ever before, there are convenient and unobtrusive methods to communicate with your contacts including emails, text messages, e-newsletters, social media, e-book offers and video marketing. Develop a strategy and decide on a schedule that works for you.
- Identify your specialty, stick to it, and make sure clients know it.
This ties right into your brand. Who are you? What are you good at? Where is your territory? Do you focus on a particular type of home? Which neighbourhoods do you know like the back of your hand? What can you offer clients that other agents can’t?
Here’s your bread and butter. Your secret sauce. And once you figure out what it is and how to describe it, marketing those differentiators will make you stand out. For example, let’s say you focus on loft condos in a specific neighbourhood and you guarantee your response time to clients is never more than 2 hours. These are a few of the attributes you build your brand and marketing communications around.
- Implement a lead capture and nurture campaign.
As a real estate agent, you meet and speak to numerous people on a regular basis. But what happens next? Do those people become leads in your database or not? If they do, are there actions you take afterwards in an effort to turn them into clients?
- Lead capture is when a person becomes a lead. If you’re face-to-face it might be getting their name, phone number and email. On your website, it can be an email-catch when they sign up for your newsletter, a lead capture form that collects their data, or an opt-in request after they read a blog post. Most importantly, have lead capture practices in place.
- Lead nurture is everything that happens after you capture your lead. It’s the process of building those relationships we talked about earlier. The end goal is to turn leads into loyal, paying clients. For example, if someone signs up for your e-newsletter, send them a ‘thank you’ response. Understand the different client personas and groups, and develop targeted content to nurture each. Use multiple touches to stay top of mind in various ways such as social media, video messaging, whitepapers, interactive calculators, direct mail or personal texts.
- Be highly-responsive and always follow through.
We’re all busy. And we’re all impatient. The faster you respond to new inquiries, interested leads and loyal long-term clients, the more you show your contacts how much you care about their business. Quick response times also demonstrate your consideration, respect for people’s time and excellent organizational skills – especially if you do it consistently (because not everyone does, and that’s yet another way to stand out).
Whatever you say, whatever you promise, whatever you claim to deliver, follow through. Do what you say, fulfill your promises and live up to your clients’ expectations. This makes people trust you and rely on you – the perfect recipe for happy, repeat and referring clients.
IXACT Contact is a real estate CRM that can help you set up and implement these strategic tips and many more. When you have the right management tool backing your business, it’s easier to do what you need to do to stand out.
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