Transforming agent marketing: Task-bound to scalable systems

As mergers and acquisitions grow brokerages across the industry, companies face the pressure of supporting hundreds or even thousands of agents as they scale and build their brands, modernize their marketing, and do it all with leaner teams and tighter profit margins.

I recently sat down with Christie Clark, marketing director for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Properties Group, and Glen Wellbrock, senior marketing director for BHHS California Properties, to talk about the evolving role of marketing departments and marketing technology, or martech.

Both outlined a similar story, strategically moving their marketing departments away from discrete production tasks and toward scalable systems that empower agents to build their brands within the larger brokerage brand umbrella.

The creation and revision bottleneck that suffocates marketing

For real estate brokerages and teams that want to provide marketing services to their agents, changing minds and changing circumstances are significant barriers to effectiveness and productivity. Marketing departments are drowning in an endless back-and-forth of edit requests, often for small changes to fonts, colors or layouts.

The answer? Giving agents the ability to customize their marketing collateral without all of the chaos. “We wanted a way to empower them,” Clark said, “and have our brand stay consistent and an easy access resource that the agents could use without having to pay extra to go somewhere else.”

Modernizing marketing for real estate professionals

The real estate industry is notoriously slow to adopt new technologies into what has, historically, been a paper-heavy, process-heavy business. “Agents have been doing business the way that they’ve been doing it for a really long time” is how Wellbrock describes the prevailing attitude.

To encourage adoption, Clark’s Florida team approached the rollout of their design hub of choice, MAXA’s agent-focused marketing platform, like a full-on marketing campaign of its own, creating hype-building moments with teaser videos, cross-training, internal documentation and early hands-on wins in the room during onboarding sessions.

“From the resources that were available to training our trainers first … it was really just like an all hands on deck [to] make sure everyone knew the platform,” Clark said.

Clark’s team creates momentum through recurring “collateral drops” on a structured, ongoing content release schedule to keep agents actively engaged with the system and to support consistent prospecting, social media management and print marketing.

While MAXA templates were left unlocked so that agents could lean into their individual branding elements, some essential elements were locked down to ensure compliance.

What happens to the marketing team when agents start creating?

Once the marketing staff is freed from production tasks, they have more time to focus on higher-level brand development and consultative work with agents. “It’s really about developing brands for the agent and then executing on a strategy,” Wellbrock said, “versus being like order-takers within the department.”

Now that agents are more empowered, engagement is strong. Marketing support is more valued and agents are eager to build on their successes, with nearly 50 percent adoption of monthly active users on Clark’s team.

As brokerage margins shrink, resulting in smaller staffs and smaller budgets, marketing automation isn’t optional anymore, Wellbrock said. It’s necessary to maintain service levels.

“We are able to provide top-tier marketing service, advice and products through the use of technology, which is important,” he said, “and [helps us] stave off our competition.”