Building your Brand
A simple definition of marketing is the chance to tell your story. Tell your story often enough and it becomes your brand. Marketing
allows you to describe what makes you different from all the other agents. More importantly, you can define how people will benefit from doing
business with you.
Goal
Let's say that your overall goal in real estate is to make your customers and clients better homeowners. You determine that you can achieve
that goal by helping people understand the tax advantages, financing alternatives and investment aspects of homeownership.
How to Measure Success
You can measure your success because your contacts wouldn't dream of buying or selling a home with another agent because you take such good care
of them and make them better homeowners. They feel so strong about it that they refer their friends to you when they're buying and
selling. Ultimately, they feel so secure with the services you've provided, they start buying rental property from you.
Results
This will distinguish you from your competition and create lifetime customers while generating referrals throughout the year and ultimately,
produce a new revenue source with the same product, single family homes. You can market the same home as a principal residence or a
rental property.
Marketing Plan
Now that the goals and objectives have been established, it is time to set up the marketing plan that will make it work. According to the
NAR Profile of Buyers and Sellers, 87% of buyers would recommend or use their agent again. Unfortunately, only about 14% actually do. The
fallout comes occurs most often because the agents don't stay in touch.
The most cost effective strategy for lead generation is to establish a database of people and brand yourself to become their real estate
professional. To create top of mind awareness with them, you'll need to stay in touch on a regular basis which means a minimum of 36
times a year using various methods.
- Weekly posts to your blog increases web visibility while creating traffic to your website
- Weekly direct email campaigns to your Sphere of Influence and Past Customers to increase loyalty
- Leverage social networking to broaden your reach past your current database and build new relationships
