In real estate, two types of marketing contribute to the sale of a property. These are property marketing and agent marketing. As an agent, it is important to ensure you are using a combination of both to ensure you are reaching your intended target audience.
Here is a run-down of the importance of each of these types of marketing, some useful tools to get you started, and how to implement a prospecting plan to target more business.
PROPERTY MARKETING (VENDOR PAID ADVERTISING – VPA)
Let’s start with the obvious when a property is listed for sale it needs to be published to be seen by prospective buyers. It is important to stress how vital property marketing is to your vendors when first meeting with them.
At iThink Property, we have tailor-made marketing packages to ensure we reach as much of the buying market as possible. Our property marketing package includes:
– Premiere listing on REA
– Platinum listing on Domain
– Listing on other major real estate websites
– Professional Photography
– Stock board
– Social media budget
– Direct Marketing
– + more (title searches, etc.)
By including all of this we can ensure we are reaching as many people as possible. All of our listings are featured quite prominently on all real estate portals, ensuring that we stay within the first 2 pages of a suburb search.
We then list the property across our various social media pages and boost them to our specific target audiences using Facebook’s advertising tools. Since we have implemented this, we have noticed a spike in enquiry feeding through from channels such as Facebook and Instagram and we have tapped into a market we had not yet visited before.
Lastly, we distribute marketing letters and promotional D/Ls to surrounding properties to notify them of the sale and success. In conclusion, if you exclude one of these media outlets, you are immediately reducing the effectiveness of your campaign. You can dramatically increase the number of potential buyers by utilising all forms of advertising.
AGENT MARKETING
As a real estate agent, you can get so carried away in marketing properties that you forget to market yourself. In order to grow and capture new business, it is absolutely vital to market yourself.
Nowadays, prospective buyers and sellers are scouring the internet to find the perfect agent to list their property. So essentially, the more prominent you are online, the more you will appear and the more trustworthy you will seem.
Getting started:
When you first start, of course, it is important to get set-up with all the essentials, such as business cards, etc, however, a lot of agents turn a blind eye to social media.
At iThink Property, we have recognised the global trend that is social media and we have used this to our advantage. When getting started, you will need to include a social media plan that will get you posting regularly and interacting with people.
Our top social media accounts that we recommend to set up are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
On social media, it is important to keeps things exciting and keeps your followers entertained. Think outside of the box and bring new ideas to the table each month. It is important to combine a good balance of professionalism and fun. We have also found that video content is a great way to capture your audience. With most of our videos getting around 3 times more views as our other posts.
Once you are set-up:
Ensure you are posting something almost every day and you are engaging with your audience. This could be as simple as asking a question, replying to a comment, and tagging local businesses. This will help you grow your audience quickly.
Hashtags, mentions, and stories! – Never underestimate the power of a hashtag. People all over Australia (and the world) follow certain hashtags that relate to their interests. If you are using these hashtags in the caption of your photos and posts (on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn). Another way to reach more people is to mention other people and businesses in your captions and tags. Also make sure you are posting on your stories regularly, as recent Instagram statistics have shown an increase in users watching stories over scrolling through the feed.
Boosting and advertising – Advertising across Facebook and Instagram is super affordable and something to consider. This will allow you to curate a certain audience to market your content based on location, interests, gender, and age.
Inspiration – Make sure you also follow other real estate related accounts. This will help you get inspiration and tips and tricks for what you can implement into your page. Also try interacting with these pages, as this is a great way for interested parties to find you.
Lastly, make sure you follow us!
PROSPECTING TIPS
To gain new business, you need to be actively seeking it out. Here are some tips you can implement into your prospecting plan that will help you win listings.
Be Consistent – Set yourself a daily/weekly amount of calls, letters, etc, and stick to it.
“10 Before 10” – 10 calls before 10 am. This could be to buyers, sellers, or even cold calls. Try and start your day with these calls, gets them out of the way and you are usually more upbeat and ready to handle whatever may come your way.
Follow Up Leads – It is important to follow up on your leads. Instant gratification isn’t always going to happen in real estate, you could be in it for the long haul. Make a note to follow up with leads – it could be in a month, 6 months, or even a year. The more you keep in touch the more you build a rapport and relationship with the person, making it easy for them to trust you when it comes to sealing the deal.
ABOUT US
iThink Property has a team of real estate agents in Ipswich and Toowoomba offering property sales and property management services. With a passion for people and property, iThink Property was conceived with the notion of building a team of good people to work in a real estate brand that did things differently. iThink Property focuses on transparency, communication, innovation and teamwork and has become a leading independent brand with unique points of difference. So whether you are thinking of buying, selling or renting, think iThink Property.
TAYLAH ANTONIOLLI – MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR