5 Sales & Marketing Tips to Help Grow Your Real Estate Business
With over 3 million people holding an active real estate license in the U.S., it can feel difficult to stand out from the crowd and grow your real estate business at times. While you can’t control the market, you can control the sales and marketing activities that you dedicate your time to. Check out these tips below to see if you have room to expand or improve your techniques!
1. Social Media
Social media is key to expanding your business and reaching prospective clients. On platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you can show listings and interact with clients. These positive interactions will travel and you may find your next client from social media. It is also a great way to reinforce your brand!
For more in-depth tips on how to improve your social media engagement, check out our article here.
2. Set Short-Term Goals
While you and/or your team likely have annual goals in place for transactions and other business KPIs, it’s easy to overlook setting short-term goals for yourself as well. Think about the activities that have helped you become successful, or that you believe will lead to success, and come up with a plan to hold yourself accountable to those tasks. How many new leads do you want to engage with each week? How many social media posts? Is there a number of marketing emails you want to send each month?
Figuring out what these kinds of goals are and committing to meeting them can help you grow your business, and help reassure yourself that you are doing all the right things, even when the numbers don’t necessarily reflect that.
3. Follow Up with Leads
The last thing you want is to lose a prospective client because you failed to follow up in a timely manner, if at all. Set up a process to ensure that you don’t miss these opportunities. This could mean setting up a dedicated time each day to make sure you return calls and emails, or even something more robust like using CRM-automated workflows (see next item below). Whatever process you choose, make sure to schedule and plan to follow up with your leads on a timely basis.
4. Utilize Your CRM
A CRM (Client Relationship Manager) is an extremely powerful tool. With a CRM you can automate processes, see important client info, store important files, and so much more. Your CRM should act as the hub for all your revenue-generating activities; everything revolves around the customer data in your CRM. The more data you can collect, the more powerful that CRM can be. You can even use CRMs, such as HubSpot and Salesforce, to automate certain sales activities that you don’t have much time for.
As an example, you could automate marketing emails to nurture leads that haven’t been engaged in a certain period of time, or implement an automated intro email to any new online leads. If you already have a CRM, make sure to educate yourself on what capabilities are available. Don’t lose out on business by failing to use and understand your CRM!
5. Do Your Research
Clients are confiding in you because you are an expert- be knowledgeable about your listings and be able to field any questions your clients may have. Have some talking points ready about the surrounding area, community, and the home itself. While this may seem an obvious point to experienced real estate agents, it can still be easy to fall out of habit, particularly when entering a new market or working with types of properties you’re unfamiliar with. Make sure you’re always doing your research, staying on top of the market, and up to date with any new trends.
