While effective marketing is essential for every industry, few professionals understand the need to stand out against the competition as much as real estate agents. With hundreds and even thousands of agents to choose from in each state, getting the word out about your experience and expertise is essential to gain new clients in today’s market. This couldn’t be truer in a small state like Rhode Island with such a fierce housing marketing.
Unfortunately, being a successful real estate agent requires much more than being a strong closer and maintaining a friendly demeanor with clients. It’s also about being social media savvy in a fast paced and digital world, and finding creative and unique ways to create a professional brand around your services.
Though marketing might not be where your interest falls as a real estate agent, it’s simply necessary to prosper at your work. Once this is understood, the question now becomes, how can I successfully market myself? How can I get my name out and be more visible than my competitors? Here are 10 marketing tips for real estate agents to start reaching more potential clients.
1. Study your ideal audience
If you had to pick your number one lead source, or place that your incoming clients most frequently find your information to connect with you, what would it be? What age and income bracket results in the most homes purchased in your region? Do your clients tend to be first time home buyers who are still learning about the home buying process, or is that a smaller percent of your preferred clientele? What size homes are you most successful in selling and why?
These are all just some simple questions to shift your attention to understanding your client. As professionals in any industry it can be almost too easy to get caught up in the details of our jobs and forget about what the customer journey really feels like. Being able to present yourself professionally while touching upon common concerns with relevant language at your big lead generation websites and even events means that you are going to attract more of your target audience. Once you successfully understand them, figuring out how to reach them becomes a whole lot easier.
2. Make a plan and a budget.
gs, it can be very easy to both overspend and underspend on different aspects of your marketing plan. Maybe you broke your budget on your overly ornate yard signs and then went with flimsy and templated business cards and skipped social media ads entirely. Once you’re armed with an understanding of your ideal client and how to communicate with them you should be able to set an adequate budget based on your priorities. This will help ensure that you can support your marketing efforts in a way that is sensible and sustainable as you grow.
3. Build your brand from the ground up
usinesses with a specific product to sell. Even individual professionals need to present a clear brand voice with symbols that are recognizable. A consistent font with your name, a website design that matches your business cards, a catchphrase that really hits home with your target audience, these are all examples of branding factors that you should be thinking about. While you may already have a few of these things in place, taking the time to make a comprehensive marketing plan from the ground up is the best way to ensure that you’re presenting a clear brand voice that is personalized and recognizable to your followers.
4. Ensure you are consistent
Once you have the budget, the voice, and the plan, you need to make sure you execute everything consistently. This means making sure all of your information is up to date across all search engines and listings, making sure your logo is consistent on all social media platforms, and making sure all of your old business cards are recycled and you’re only handing out the most up to date information moving forward. This helps you present as dependable. 
images. The idea that something is better than nothing doesn’t exactly ring true when you’re trying to sell the image of someone’s happy future in a new home. Work with a real estate photographer if possible, or get a decent camera and take the time to learn how to use it.
6. Create a social media plan and execute it
edia profiles, but running them can be another thing entirely. Use a social media publishing tool such as Hootsuite and get your posts scheduled out in advance. Determine how many posts you’d like a week. Remember that frequency is key, but having good quality is also important. Take a look at your content and find some supplementary images and blogs online that will add value to your clients, but save you the time of content creation.
7. Test everything you do
Getting information about what is working and what isn’t is key. Take some time to review your social media performance and take note of things like your top performing post and the post with the most comments and shares. What worked? If you want to take this a step further you can even send your clients a questionnaire a few weeks after working with them with questions about their experience and get information on how they found you. This will help you improve on your client interactions and find out more useful information about lead generation all at once.
king events is key. Go to agent meet ups in your city, join professional networks, and develop a great way to explain what you do in just a few sentences. This will help you meet other successful agents in your area and also tap into potential for new referrals by putting yourself out there more.
9. Make friends with your enemies and get information
now more real estate agents in your region. This allows you the opportunity to talk shop and learn from whatever unique marketing ideas they’re seeing a return on. Decide how much of your insider tips you’re willing to share and mingle away. Setup lunch meetings, coffee dates, and try and make genuine connections at local networking events in your industry.
10. Make contacting you as easy as possible
l to not only have multiple ways of being contacted, but also to quickly follow up on any messages. You don’t want to lose a client because it took longer for them to hear back compared to your competitor. Make yourself available via email, text, phone, and even social media direct messages and comments. Download the apps on your phone and setup the push notifications in ways that you’re comfortable with and attentive to. If you’re worried you won’t be able to keep up, pursue auto replies to buy a little more time with a friendly greeting and a message that makes your potential clients feel valued with a clear expectation on when and how they’ll hear from you.
These ten tips are really just the beginning. Once you’re started thinking about marketing about something requiring a strategy and testing, you’ll be on your way towards continued improvement and the return on your investment is sure to come.
