Realtor’s Fatal Flaw: Believing that Marketing Doesn’t Work

Misconceptions About Marketing

What does marketing mean to you? To many Realtors, it means either ‘prospecting’ - ie knocking on doors or getting around Do Not Call laws to legally continue cold calling - or ‘advertising’ - sending out lots of direct mailings and postcards and running ads in newspapers. Many Realtors start off with prospecting and then when they get sick of how frustrating and time consuming the process is (how many people do you have to talk to before you find an interested buyer or seller?), turn to advertising, believing that to be the better way.

And so they try advertising in the local newspaper. Unfortunately, they never take the time to learn anything about their prospects’ needs and end up saying a generic message that sounds like “I’m #1 and I would do a great job if you give me the chance. Please choose me.”

Then, there’s the direct mail, which isn’t that much better than the advertising. Here, agents send out countless “Just Listed” and “Just Sold” postcards and flyers that are randomly generic - with a picture of a house and the Realtor’s picture on it. And the famous - “Thinking of Selling? Call me to find out how much your house is worth.” Yada, yada, yada. No real value. Nothing that actually gives a clear benefit to the reader. Everything talks at me - never to me. And no one gives me a reason to go with them. Sure, you say - but I offer a free personal tour or I give them a report on how much their home is worth. But what Realtor doesn’t? Why are you different? What do you offer that others don’t?

And so this ‘marketing’ cycle continues until the agent gives up or reverts back to other ineffective methods in the cycle.

Client Focused Marketing

This isn’t marketing - it’s pretty much just a waste of your money. Marketing is a system that starts with careful planning and targeting of a particular group of people with similar characteristics. Marketing is about getting to know what prospects want, who they are, and what they need. Marketing goes beyond statistics - sure the average person may own a home for about 7 years, but does your target audience? What do they do for fun, at work, with their families? Who are they? If you start to see each as an individual and cater your marketing to them as if you were having a personal conversation with your college buddy, Jack or your grandmotherly neighbor, Sally, your marketing will become more effective.

Marketing is about educating prospects about what you do and who you are. This is far more than “I’m great! I have so much experience! Hire me now!” It’s about building rapport and educating prospects even before they call you. With the right offer, you’ll see a greater increase in lead generation. Notice I said “with the right offer” - offers should be tailored to your target audience, and many people don’t want to have to call you or schedule a consultation before they receive information about you and your services. Offer something of value and let them download it from your website or mail back a reply card. If they’re interested after they’ve read your material, you now have a pretty good lead who is already educated about what you do - and has willingly contacted you first.

What Can You Offer?

As I was brainstorming with one Realtor recently, we were looking for something he could offer to potential buyers that would demonstrate his knowledge of the area and portray him as the expert. This Realtor had been in the business for over 10 years and was completely adamant about not giving anything away free. He wanted to make sure there was always a ’string attached’ so to speak - meaning the person had to go with him before he gave away any materials. Interestingly, many of the fairly standard features I suggested for his website, he shot down - although if you go to Yahoo Real Estate or Realtor.com or do a Google search, that information is publically available and is on most Realtors’ websites. He was also against anything that might differentiate himself through his knowledge of the area because that info could get into his competitors’ hands and he’d lose his ‘competitive advantage.’ Interestingly, he couldn’t see that by differentiating himself and demonstrating his knowledge of the area to his target audience, he’d be building a far greater ‘competitive advantage’ - (ie building his personal brand in the area) than by keeping that knowledge to himself and hoping to sell to anyone that agreed to talk with him.

Differentiate Yourself

Marketing is about differentiating yourself from the competition. If you can’t give people a good, convincing reason to choose you over your nearest competitor and say it in a paragraph or two, you need to rethink your marketing strategy.

And in today’s marketplace, the internet makes large amounts of information available for free or at least very cheaply. Most information isn’t as hard to get as you might think, which is why you have to offer something that your prospects want - something they’d find interesting or helpful… otherwise, they will go somewhere else.

If you combine the two - differentiating yourself in a particular niche and giving away information that is relative to that niche - you begin to build a reputation as a knowledgeable expert. As your reputation grows, so will the number of prospects who want to work with you.