Global markets and trends in technology continue to reshape our real estate world, with dramatic changes in transactions and the way we agents help our clients and manage our listings. A potential client now has so much competing information right at their fingertips that agents need to become a personable and truthful knowledge base. Real estate professionals and companies need to change the way they market and brand themselves — otherwise, their success will be short lived.
Here are two areas in particular that every real estate professional should invest in:
Marketing Photo And Videography
Drone photography and video have experienced a boom in the last year or so. Every agent and potential client wants to see these images and videos on a listing. And any agent or photographer knows that it's not as simple as point and click. People want clear, expressive HD photos and videos.
Agents need to be sure to use the proper equipment when capturing stable, high-quality images. Don't go for the cheapest option on drone and video. Remember that these images and videos should be on every outlet a real estate agent has to market homes. You need these visuals to make heads turn and mouths drool over your property to get that home sold for your client.
When it comes down to what will work best, you really have to do your research to find out what you need and how you will use it. Like I do, you might decide to tap into your local market of professionals for assistance — and some good networking opportunities to boot.
Marketing On Social Media
Agents should utilize every possible outlet to stay top of mind in the local market. This generally means having a strong presence on social media. Start using Instagram, Google+, Snapchat, Twitter and of course Facebook, if you are not already. Social media is amazing to get your brand out there, not to mention the advertising opportunities. But don't stop there: You can also use it to find referral partners in real estate and beyond (e.g. landscaping contractors). The main goal of social media is to become, well, social and brand yourself as a local expert through daily communications.
Facebook has over 2 billion monthly users, 214 million of whom are in the United States. Over 50% of U.S. users are between 18 and 44 years old — the age range in which people commonly buy homes. Simply having your face and name on more posts creates name recognition, an important part of branding.
Your client base will also grow if you join groups on Facebook and start getting recommended by your clients to other people daily. It's even relatively easy now to create ads on Facebook. If you haven't already, start a business page, and be sure to post quality content and invite everyone you come in contact with to your page. (It's even better than TV advertising because people never leave home without their smartphones today.) Your Facebook page should be geared more toward buying and selling and less toward personal branding and should have your relevant business information on it.
Instagram has over 700 million monthly users and is the fastest growing social media platform. Unlike Facebook, Instagram is primarily a media sharing service and is the largest storage of photos on the internet. It's a social media marketing tool that agents should not neglect.
Tailor your Instagram page to your real estate business by posting pictures of your properties, yourself at a lunch meeting or more casual photos of you at work — and even photos with your competitors. This helps you reach a wider group of people that you may not have had the chance to connect with, including those in your competitors' sphere of influence (SOI). Others reposting and tagging photos allows you to connect to their audiences as well, so make sure to talk to them while you are fresh in their head.
Instagram also has a direct messaging (DM) function that makes it easy to capture leads and new referral partners. My agency, in fact, just recently turned a DM into a seller. The seller found one of our posts and DM'ed to ask if we sold homes in the Newport News area. We responded with, "We sure do, when were you thinking of selling?" What happened next was an agent-seller meeting at the property two days later and a signed selling agreement followed. So try and use anything and everything at your fingertips to help you find more and more clients and referral partners.
Don't be scared to use all of the tools at your disposal. Use as much technology as possible to build your personal brand, your SOI and your business. If you don't keep up with technology you may see yourself doing less in production. Social media is too easy to learn and to easy to grow upon to not use it to reach your goals.
