As a realtor, there are a lot of different areas of your job that you need to focus on to put food on the table. You need to know how to gauge a buyer’s interest, in order to ascertain how interested they are in your listing. You need to establish trust between you and your clients, so they know you’re worthy of their business. It’s also important to manage your sleep schedule well, to ensure you’re effective as a realtor
These are just a few of the many different skills to master if you truly want to establish yourself in the real estate game; but few of these skills are as important as bringing in new clients. Whether you’re trying to find property owners ready to sell or buyers seeking to buy, finding clients is crucial to your success as a real estate agent.
There are a lot of different skills that you’ll need to improve if you want to really maximize your client base, and none of them are easy to master. Building your client base can be difficult, and because of this many newer real estate agents ultimately fail in the real estate business, giving up and changing professions.
But never fear! We’ve gone ahead and compiled some of our best tips and tricks so you can take your real estate selling game to the next level. It won’t be easy but with the help of the tried and true advice we’ll be sharing here, you should be turning over more listings in no time. Let’s get into it!
Use online advertising
Almost everyone with a real estate agent’s license knows that advertising is important. No matter where you live, chances are you regularly see lawn signs and billboards dotting the lawns and roadsides in your town. If you’re a real estate agent, chances are you may have put one or two up yourself!
However, the world has come a long way since lawn signs and billboards became commonly used by realtors. While these are still very effective ways to advertise your services, they are hardly adequate as your only means of advertising. So where should you advertise then, you ask? The answer is: the internet!
In our modern world, the average individual spends a significant amount of their time on the internet. Whether they’re using a smartphone, laptop or tablet, your potential clients are, likely as not, far more likely to be reached by an ad on Facebook than they are to be reached by a lawn sign on someone’s front lawn. It’s the classic dilemma of traditional marketing vs. modern marketing!
With the targeted advertising tools available from most social media platforms and search engines, advertising to your desired demographic is easier than ever. What’s more, it’s also much cheaper than you might think. Do some research, and start putting out targeted ads to reach your desired audience; you’ll thank us later!
Know your target demographic
While online advertising is a very effective tool for real estate marketing, it can only be used to its fullest potential by those who know whom they are advertising to. Tailoring the approach and scale of your online advertising is best done when you know your target audience, and how to best market to them.
If you’re new to the real estate game, you might not know who this target demographic is, or how to even go about figuring out exactly who they are. In short, your target demographic is composed of the people you want to work with. This depends heavily on the area in which you work, and the agency at which you are employed. Do some research, and ask a real estate area in your area to find out.
Once you know who you want to work with, you have to find out the best way to market to them. Individuals from different age groups and social backgrounds respond differently to different advertising tactics and strategies and have completely distinct buying behavior. If you want to effectively grow your client base, you’ll need to do in depth research on what type of advertising works best with your potential clients.
Up your photography game
One huge factor in online advertising is photography. How you present your listing has a tremendous impact on how quickly your listings sell, and how many new clients you are able to pull in. After all, this is one of the biggest factors when potential clients are deciding whether or not they want you to assist them in selling or buying property.
There are several different ways to go about improving the photos on your listing, but the two simplest options are to hire a professional, or improve your own photography skills. While both of these will cost you in time and money, both will lead to a noticeable uptick in clients.
The first option, hiring a professional photographer, has plenty of upsides, with the obvious downside being the cost. Besides this hurdle, hiring a professional to do photography for your listings will save you time and money that would have been spent buying equipment and putting it to use. It’s quick and easy, and goes a long way towards getting you new clients.
If you want to go the DIY route, you’ll need to invest in some photography equipment such as a DSLR or drone and classes or self-instruction so you can use it properly. This will likely be more expensive than hiring a professional photographer at first, but with time it can provide you with more control over how your house is presented, at no extra cost.
Hire a writer
If you want to truly round out your listings and make them look and feel as professional as possible, you may want to consider hiring a professional content writer to write your listing descriptions. This has many benefits, and does a great deal to paint your listings in as positive a light as possible, which will bring in buyers and sellers alike.
Hiring a content writer will also save you the time and trouble you would otherwise spend trying to write compelling and positive descriptions of your listings, without being dishonest or disingenuous. Finding the appeal of a listing can be difficult at times, but there’s no one better suited for the job than a content writer.
A great way to utilize your new content writer is by starting a blog. By blogging about your real estate career, you’ll be able to establish a personal link between yourself and your clients. It can also help you gain friends and family as clients, if you decide that you want to provide this service to these individuals.
What’s more, having a writer in your employ can also be of great help when you need to figure out exactly how you are going to market a listing. A good content writer knows their audience and how to tailor their content accordingly, and you can use this to help you devise advertising and marketing strategies.
Get good at networking
As a real estate agent, one of the best ways to get clients is by networking. Networking isn’t as much of a science as it is an art; there’s no easy solution, or simple trick. Networking is, quite simply, learning how to use your social skills to gain contacts who may prove useful to you in selling real estate, building a reliable and effective team, and finding new clients.
So how do you go about finding these contacts? Well, like we said, there’s no easy way to go about it; just frequent community functions, meet new people, and start talking. Improve your social skills, be persistent, but not aggressive, and start adding contacts to your contact’s list. Then, when you need someone’s help, give them a call. You’ll be glad you made their acquaintance!
Conclusion
Getting more clients can be difficult. They don’t grow on trees, as the saying goes! You’ll have to put in long hours and do some hard work. Strengthening your social media presence, improving your advertising and upping your photography skills or hiring a photographer will not be easy or inexpensive.
However, if you do put in the work and show the proper motivation and dedication, you will see results. Not immediately, but results will show. And then, when the calls start rolling in and people start contracting your services, you’ll start selling more listings and making more money. And that’s what it’s all about, right?
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