Employ these marketing solutions to ensure past clients return again and again.
By Pat Zaby, CRS
Pat Zaby
Nine out of 10 buyers and sellers are satisfied with the service they received and say they’ll use the agent again and refer business to them. Unfortunately, the reality is that less than 15 percent actually do. The median agent has been in real estate for 12 years, with 12 transactions a year. Doing the math indicates that there are at least 11 lost transactions a year over the 12-year period for each agent.
Just because you sold them the home doesn’t mean you’ll be their next agent, and it’s not for the reason you may think.
Doing a good job is the foundation, but obviously it isn’t the determining factor. Maintaining top-of-mind awareness is what will earn repeat and referral business. Inconsistency and inadequate marketing costs agents much more money than they can imagine.
Content marketing provides information that consumers consider valuable. The challenge is delivering relevant and interesting content that spans the years between when they buy and sell. It needs to help your contacts and differentiate yourself as their personal voice of real estate so they’ll not only use you next time, but refer you to their friends.
The solution is as simple as 1-2-3.
1. Determine your market.
NAR research shows that 64 percent of sellers and 53 percent of buyers select an agent based on a relationship: past customer, friend or a referral from someone they know and trust. The most valuable market is the people you’ve done business with in the past and the people you know. Your database is critical to your efforts and should be given the priority it deserves throughout your career in real estate.
2. Determine your message.
The challenge is being valuable to them not only when they’re buying and selling, but all the years in between. A powerful message is that “I help people be better homeowners not only when they buy and sell, but all of the years in between. I want to be your REALTOR® for life.”
3. Market Your Message.
Once the market and the message have been identified, it must be delivered consistently through all forms of media. Direct HTML mail and social media are by far the most efficient and easiest to automate. Even though this will probably make up the bulk of the communications, in-person and phone contacts are still a necessary part of top-of-mind awareness.
As Zig Ziglar said: “If you help enough people get what they want, you’ll get what you want.” Helping people be better homeowners is very much like continuing education. It includes a variety of topics like maintenance, remodeling, saving money, energy efficiency, financing, taxes and other day-to-day responsibilities of homeownership.
Instead of the basis of your message being, “Do you know of anyone who wants to buy or sell a home?” your focus is on providing easily digestible nuggets of information that will help them now or in the future. This will keep your name front and center as their source of real estate information.
The best part of this solution to maintain top of mind awareness is that it can be automated. Whether you use an assistant or get assistance, it needs to be a system to ensure consistency. The information can be a combination of created and curated content. It’s all about branding the message so they think of you when they think of real estate.
Pat Zaby operates InTouch, a product that provides automated content marketing through personalized email and social media. For more information, go to PatZaby.com/CRS.
