Real estate is one of the most intriguing professions out there. If you are looking for a new career, how does real estate not appeal to you? Once you get your license, you are able to work with dozens of types of properties, including homes and condos. While you do have a lot of competition, there are plenty of homes on the market and buyers who are looking.
Getting clients, especially when you are new to the game is difficult. You are going to start with friends and family but in order to grow your business you need to know how to network and market yourself. Networking is easy, you simply go out to any events you can find that seem relevant, be nice and hand out a stack of your business cards. Marketing is a bit more challenging whether you are trying to do it at a minimal cost or have a budget, you still have to be patient and expect to put in a lot of work.
Marketing Checklist
If you want to gain clients as a realtor you need to focus on where people are going for information and content. If someone is looking for a realtor in their area and they see you against dozens of other qualified options, what is going to make you stand out from the rest?
- Website: If you do not have a website, no one will take you seriously. Having a website is key to getting started as it not only makes you easier to find online, but gives prospects the information they need to be confident with you.
- Google presence: Once your website is up you need to list it and link it throughout Google. While search engines are not always where people go for realtors, it is where people go for information about realtors as well as to look for new properties. Get ranked on Google so it’s easier to find you.
- Social media: You can post every day on Facebook for a year and get zero likes and zero leads from it. So why keep doing it? Because someone may meet you at a networking event, love talking to you and then go to check you out on Facebook before hiring you. When they see that you have not posted in over a year they may wonder if you are a serious realtor or someone who just does this for side income.
- Website listings: There are hundreds of real estate websites, including local ones, that get high-quality traffic every day. If you are not on those websites you are missing out on serious traffic.
- Blog & YouTube page: Writing blogs and making videos is not difficult, especially once you get used to them. If you are shooting a video at a client’s house, shoot a video showcasing their house and then shoot a second one where you are teaching your audience important lessons about buying or selling a house. This gives you twice as much content to post and people will find it.
- Email capture: Mailers are great but they are not cheap. Emails are cheap and you can capture your own allowing you to market your content and services to thousands of locals in your area.
- Reviews: If someone goes on Google right now and looks for you, will they see your customers leaving glowing remarks about you? People research that before hiring someone and if you have little or no reviews up, it doesn’t look good.
Invest some time into building your website presence. None of this has to cost you thousands of dollars but you will need to learn how to manage a blog and shoot video content as well as how to create newsletters and so forth. The more you’re able to do, the better your results will be.