Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
If you are looking for more success as a realtor, this guide can help. Here is a guide on how to become a top realtor in your local real estate market.
Did you know that a record number of real estate licenses were issued between January 2021 and January 2022, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR)? That's because, during the pandemic, many restaurants, and other businesses closed down, resulting in folks searching for a new way to make a living.
This doesn't mean that all newly licensed real estate agents will survive in the competitive industry. If you want to become a top realtor, despite the healthy dose of competition, read our tips below.
If you wish to get clients in the millennials and Gen Z age group, you can't use traditional marketing methods. However, this doesn't mean that you should start making make-up or dance videos on Tiktok (although you can if that is something you are interested in).
But you must include social media in your real estate marketing efforts, whatever platform you choose. Also, realize that video creation has to become a permanent fixture in your weekly schedule since many of your clients will come through Instagram and Facebook, and video is the way to garner the most attention on those platforms.
Besides using social media to build your prospect list, you will also want a marketing budget (start with a smaller budget and build up over time). Use this budget for advertising on the radio or billboards next to subway stations and other high-traffic areas.
Or you can use it to hire a marketing assistant focusing on all the real estate marketing efforts so that you can focus on sales and prospecting. Think outside the box regarding your marketing budget—don't get stuck in a rut with it.
For example, this Toronto real estate agent made a Squid Game billboard and went viral because of his creativity. He poked fun at how unattainably expensive the Toronto real estate market is, and people related quite a bit to his message.
Spend some time each week brainstorming creative ways you can get to your target market. If you can make it, so it's also funny and humorous, then kudos to you.
Do you know what you need to do when you get a new lead or prospect through all your sales and marketing efforts? There's a general flow that these prospects should follow, so you can fast-track them into buying or selling a home with you.
But if you don't have a real estate agent checklist for prospects, they are more likely to slip through the cracks, as you forget about them or they forget about you.
Add them to an email list or a prospecting list, where you contact them at least once a week, informing them of what the market is doing and how they are missing out by not listing with you. And keep them in the loop when a property in their area of interest comes up for sale.
You want to ensure that they think of you first when it comes to their property buying or selling needs. This is one primary way to become the top real estate agent you wish to be.
The more professional you are in the real estate business, the more successful you will be. Don't think of it as a hobby or a part-time gig that you engage in until you find something else better to do.
If you play your cards right, real estate could become quite a lucrative job. But you have to take it seriously for that to happen.
Make sure you figure out what your expenses are each month and complete your income and expense statements so you don't overspend yourself out of the realtor job. Plan to pay your costs in full each month, so you are not worrying about that and can focus entirely on building your new real estate business.
Read business books like 'Profit First' by Mike Michalowicz, which teaches you to build a small business in a way that you aren't stuck in a rat race grinding away each day to no avail.
Lots of businesses, both online and offline, focus on building a sales funnel to get a constant influx of new leads. That's something you can do with a real estate business as well.
Instead of having an online sales funnel with emails and shopping carts, a lot of your sales funnel will be external and in the real world. For example, you could have a plan for what paraphernalia you will send to your new leads once they message you for the first time. It could be brochures or emails, or both.
And then, you can build a plan for how you will move these prospects along the funnel over time so they don't get stuck in one zone or abandon their plan to buy or sell a home with you. It does require a bit of forethought and analysis, but once you are set in this regard, you can stick with it as-is for a while.
Learn from the best real estate agents out there to become one of them. That's a trick that few use.
You might worry that top realtors will not want to share their secrets with you or might be too busy to network with you. But most real estate agents who have made it are happy to spend some time with newbies to give back.
Also, everyone likes to boast or brag about how far they've come and how they did it. So why not take advantage of this by offering to take top realtors out for lunch or coffee? Or you could even do a Zoom call with them so that they can save on travel time.
Either way, prepare a list of questions beforehand so you don't waste their time. And send them a gift afterward to thank them for their precious time.
Take notes while they speak or record the conversation with their permission so that you can relisten and capture all the nuggets. Finally, don't waste the advice they have given you. Apply it right away to your real estate business, so one day, someone can come to you and ask you if you can provide them with advice on how to be a top realtor.
This is also research that's not done quite often but should be. If you know why other real estate agents fail, you can use this information to ensure you don't make the same mistakes.
There's no point repeating history unless it works in your favor. Study the successes of others (the point above), but also study the failures.
You could do this by speaking to real estate agents who dropped out of the business or went bankrupt after a while. Then, as above, you could take them out to lunch or coffee and pick their brains.
Take notes and plan how not to repeat the failures and mistakes of these real estate agents.
The real estate market stays pretty much the same from one year to the next. And that's why you can use these similarities to build automation into your business.
The more you can automate mundane tasks using real estate technology available on the market, the more you can focus on sales and prospecting tasks.
Don't waste your time. Instead, start automating your email list, prospecting, or social media scheduling, or hire others who can take care of these tasks for you, so you don't have to worry about it.
This way, you can focus on your strengths and delegate all those tasks that you aren't good at or bore you to tears.
Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to the real estate market. The more you know, the better you can navigate this treacherous and competitive real estate business.
That's why we have created Realty Biz News. Here you can find hundreds of articles on everything you could need to know to build a successful real estate business.
Follow the tips above to become a top realtor and if you want more, check out our blog and keep learning.
