In my last blog, I wrote about one of the most proven marketing strategies to increase sales — sampling. Not only can you (as an agent) sample your service, you must sample to turn a prospect into a client.
Sampling your knowledge will instill confidence in homeowners that you can sell their home quickly and for a great price, or conversely, help them find their dream home and negotiate a deal.
Because of the stigma surrounding agents, you also need to sample your authenticity more than ever to instill comfort and trust in the homeowner.
Finally, you need to prove your energy, positivity and enthusiasm for real estate. After all, your clients will be spending time with you and paying you; therefore, they need to be excited about it!
As promised in my last blog, I’m going to give you 9 creative marketing strategies for sampling your service and increasing sales.
These tips are broken down by medium and put in order based on effectiveness.
Display advertising (example: bus benches)
1. How to sample your knowledge and expertise in ads
Promote how long you’ve served the community and how many clients you’ve had in the neighborhood.
Ad text: “John Smith. Serving Rosedale homeowners for over 20 years. 604-416-1234.”
2. How to sample your authenticity in ads
If you live where you work, promote that. You can also try promoting a local business you love, which might also help reduce the costs of the signage.
Ad Text: “John Smith. I live in Rosedale, and I have sat on this bench. 604-416-1234.”
Ad Text: “John Smith. I live in Rosedale and love the Roastery Coffee House. 604-416-1234.”
3. How to sample your enthusiasm for real estate in ads
Ad Text: “My name is John Smith, and I love finding and selling homes. 604-416-1234.”
Ad Text: “‘I eat real estate for breakfast, lunch and dinner.’ -John Smith 604-416-1234”
Remember, with display advertising, you have seconds in front of their eyes. The goal of your advertisement is to be memorable. Don’t clutter your bus bench with too much text. Bigger is better.
Print marketing (example: flyers)
4. How to sample your local expertise
Give your audience recently sold data, upcoming local events and tips before buying or selling a home. Just listed and just sold flyers, in my opinion, are just junk.
You can add your new listings to make clients happy and show that you sold a house over asking price. However, don’t just put that on the flyer — add other valuable information.
5. How to sample your authenticity
Shout out to David Young at Dexter Associates Realty in Vancouver for this idea: Ditch the photoshopped headshot, and try a real photo of yourself.
Example: For his Halloween flyer, Young included a pixelated photo of himself when he was 10 years old in a pumpkin outfit.
Result: 4 percent of his audience called him because they loved his flyer, thought he was super cute and wanted to say how refreshing it was to see a funny and down-to-earth agent.
Social media
6. How to sample your local knowledge
Because social media is hyper-short-term marketing, you can post lots of local information. This includes events, news articles, deals, crime reports, cool new listings, articles about businesses in the neighborhood, historical facts and more. The more you do this, the greater the effect. Period.
7. How to sample your authenticity
Share pictures and notes about what you do and what you like in life. Remember, people do business with people, and people are on social media, so use that your advantage. Be vulnerable, and let people into your life so they feel comfortable letting you into theirs.
Website
The most powerful thing you can do on your website is blog. I’ll get into content marketing another time. The main reason a blog is so useful is because you have more time, words, pictures and space to sample your knowledge and personality.
8. How to sample your knowledge
The best types of blogs are lists (for example, Top 10 lists), how-to tutorials, comparison and contrasts, and why pieces.
Your blog is your chance to go in depth into topics and showcase your expertise on a subject matter.
In person
As mentioned in my first blog, the single best way to sample your service is in person.
If you can get 30 minutes with a homeowner, face to face, you can express your knowledge, authenticity, passion, energy, positivity and genuine care for your clients easily and quickly.
Now, this does not involve putting on or going to events with lots of people. Schmoozing is for schmucks and losers. My ideas also do not include door-knocking and cold-calling because they’re both inefficient.
9. How to sample your service and win clients in person
Your goal is to get one-on-one time with a person and feature his or her story, products, services or event — somewhere.
Because of the Internet, you have many channels to help make someone look good. And there is a sea of people who want more publicity for their thing. Your job is to find the business owners, professionals, local organizations and interesting homeowners in the community and make them want to sit down with you for 30 minutes.
This idea is the holy grail of marketing for real estate. As long as you have a platform that someone wants to be featured on, you can build a relationship with anyone quickly and easily.
And, not only is this real estate marketing strategy proven to work, it’s a ton of fun. Getting to know someone and featuring them somewhere demonstrates that you are genuinely interested in helping people achieve their goals. This is the ultimate sample of your authenticity, and it quickly sparks feelings of trust and comfort in the person you’re meeting with.
Then, once someone has talked about themselves for 20 minutes, it’s only (polite) human nature to ask you what you do. Now’s your chance to sample your knowledge and stimulate feelings of confidence.
Finally, when wrapping up a meeting with potential clients, do these two things:
- Mention how you will refer them business if you meet anyone who needs what they offer.
- Let them know that if you meet anyone who provides what they need or like, you’ll connect them.
This final step in the meeting process is so important because it sparks the feeling of obligation — the No. 1 feeling you need to generate in people to build your business.
Yes, you need to get people to know you, like you and trust you. However, the X factor is the ability to get people to want to help you genuinely because you did something for them.
I hope you enjoyed the ideas on how to sample your service and create the feelings necessary to turn prospects into clients.
Grant Findlay-Shirras is the CEO of Parkbench.com and the Local Leader Real Estate Marketing System. Follow Grant on Instagram and Twitter @GrantFSofficial.
