There are more ways than ever for realtors to connect with clients. This is both a blessing and a curse because while there are many ways to run a successful business, you have more decisions to make to find the best solutions for your career.
The most successful realtors will study the available options, test them out for themselves, and continue improving with new techniques to reach the top of their game. For big results, you’ll need to learn as much about marketing to your audience as possible.
Happy Clients Tell Their Friends
Let’s start with the type of marketing that is most easily forgotten by many. It’s old school and it works. We’re talking about reaching new clients through word of mouth, or social marketing.
When you better connect with the clients you have, when you do the very best you can at your job, you will be trusted by your clients. Happy clients want to be able to give recommendations to their friends. When they’re pleased with how you’ve treated them, they want to spread that around to their friends. They feel like they’ve got an “in”.
Going the extra mile and remembering your clients birthdays, sending them a holiday card, and small touches like a “Welcome Home” or “Congratulations” gift can really stand out in a clients’ memory. These unexpected touches set you apart and gain you the recommendations that can build your business.
Digital Marketing for Realtors
It should come as no surprise that this is a big one. Digital Marketing requires a lot of work but can be an efficient way to connect with your audience. Homebuyers today expect to be able to contact their realtor online. Most clients who approach a realtor will have already done research online and/or through watching television shows and have some understanding of what they are looking for in a home purchase.
As a marketing realtor, you have a greater responsibility to be knowledgeable about your local market to answer the more informed questions from your clients. You also need to be available where your clients expect to be able to find you.
Social Media As a Realtor
The first step is to have your social media set up. Any accounts you set up should have your branding in mind. You should have notifications set up so you know you won’t miss any client inquiries.
To keep your accounts active, it can be helpful to use a tool like Hootsuite to schedule your posts. Consistency is key. Ask fun questions to encourage engagement from your followers. Prove you are a useful resource by sharing helpful tips for finding homes in your local area.
You will want to set up accounts on Facebook, as most clients have an account there. Instagram is a great place for real estate where you can post photos and where many of your millennial clients will message you.
Learn how to use Google My Business. You can update about twice a week to keep your page looking up to date with relevant information for your clients. When people search for you, this may be one of the first things they see from you.
Cost Per Click Advertising
You can run cost per click (CPC) ads on sites like Facebook and Google Adwords. This lets you pay to reach a targeted local audience with ads directed directly at them. The more you learn about running CPC ads, the better you’ll be able to catch people searching for information relevant to your business.
Have a Great Website
When your clients search for you, they expect to see a website. At the very least, include your branding and some brief information about you. Link to your social media accounts.
You can take this a step further by building a content-rich website with helpful information and keywords. If you do this, you can learn search engine optimization techniques (SEO) so your website will begin to rank for targeted keywords and bring a continuous stream of traffic to your website. This will take some work but can pay off over time.
Bring Your Message To Their Door
You can use direct mail as a cost-effective way to deliver your marketing materials directly to your potential clients. Many realtors will ignore this opportunity because it seems too complicated. But direct mail services have grown more advanced over the past decade and this can be done fairly easily and cost-effectively, making it an untapped resource that can give your career an edge.
For direct mail, quality matters. You want to be putting your best face forward. This means you want a quality card stock with crisp printing. According to London Circular, your potential clients should pick up the postcard and think your business looks professional, legitimate, and like someone, they would want to work with.
Ideally, you want to find a complete direct mail service, meaning a company that can both print your cards and mails them for you. This will cut out work for you, which is a considerable benefit. It also means that by hiring one company, you can better trust that your postcards will be taken care of and not get lost in the mix. If you print them and then have them delivered to a mailing service, there is more room for error. You can also benefit from the experience of the direct mail company in terms of getting your postcards efficiently mailed to your clients.
Services like WisePelican.com are ideal for realtors direct mail needs. They have templates you can use to easily create your postcards with your own branding for a custom look your customers will remember. Their postcards are 6 x 9 and glossy, so they stand out as professional and with enough room for your message.
They don’t have order minimums, which is significant for a few reasons. Without an order minimum, you can work within your own budget. It also means that if you want to create unique messages for different neighborhoods you are targeting, you can run multiple direct mail campaigns either at the same time or over the course of a few months as you learn more about what works for your clients.
Direct mail gives you the opportunity to target your audience with custom mailing lists, which is a service Wise Pelican also provides. You can upload your own list of addresses or use their online tools to draw out a custom neighborhood line and reach the people you want to see your marketing message.
You can use the space on your postcards to inform your targeted audience of information relevant to them. Tell them about the neighborhood market value. You can offer them a free home valuation. Use your mailer to give them information relevant to them and create a memorable connection.
Keep Expanding And Improving Your Marketing
With all of these techniques, the key is to keep at it. Be consistent. Track the results from your campaigns so you can see which marketing messages earned you the best results.
Remember that you are playing a long game. The work you do today may pay off immediately or a while from now. The more you do and the longer you stay at it, the more you will learn about effective real estate marketing and the more your business will grow.
Try these marketing techniques, keep learning more and improving, and reach the success you dream of for your business.
