Finding Our Why

Do you think the top-performing agents are keeping their lead sourcing cheats private? Surely carefully targeted ads offering appraisals at no cost must be key?

Real Estate Marketing has been a very interesting market to live. Very rarely do you come across an industry with 15,153 different names/brands/logos all competing for the same customer? How is anyone supposed to stand out in this sea of messages?

My first advice to any agent when discussing marketing is to ask, who do you aspire to be like? What are the top performing agents in your area doing that you are not?

I challenge you to spend an evening of this lockdown with a sheet of paper and note down the top 5 things you like about your top 5 inspiration agents? How many of the things you like are then consistent across the board? How many of these things do you have set up?

And finally… What are we going to do about it?

Now the issue… With 15,153 agents how are we going to have you noticed? In the opening statement, we said 3 things which were your name (as a salesperson this is what your customers know you for), your brand and your logo so let’s start here.

7 times you need to see a brand an image and a name before recalling it without a prompt. This is the same for real estate so let’s see how many of these elements we are able to draw together so they are all seen in the first instance.

Brand

Firstly, your brand is what defines you. This is not physical but should be the reason why someone will pick you to do business with, over someone else. Often practised within business strategies but weirdly not real estate is figuring out your value proposition. When it is difficult to find a clear point of difference you still need to be clear on why you are better than your competition. Are you the best marketer, are you the friendliest, are you the most analytical?

A great example of this is one of our favourite agents to work with. In a previous life, Dave was a stand-up comedian, gracing stages and keeping rooms engaged. With this Dave has something that other agents cannot replicate and his Value Proposition has become his engaged audience who continue to keep up with his work for his entertainment.

Dave has quickly become one of Auckland’s top performing agents with something that no one can take away from him – His brand.

Logo

Now your Logo – This can consist of multiple elements. Your logo (an icon), your logotype (name written in logo form) and your combination mark (logo & Logotype together). Your logo works to communicate your brand in situations you cannot and works with a potential Vendors psyche. If you are a strong personality something big and bold, if you are friendly something round, if you sell premium something thin and classy with sharp lines, looking to specialise in developments? have your logo resemble group builds.

It’s really nice to sit down with a designer and the one thing you get from this experience is pride! This pride means you wear your logo with heart and the deeper you can ingrain it into your strategy the more you will reap the rewards. Depending on where you are at in your career sitting with a designer may not be feasible but luckily enough there are online tools that can do an awesome job. When speaking with agents on a budget my go-to platform is ‘Looka.com’. Looka is an amazing tool where for $150 you can develop your own logo and have it complete with everything from letterheads to social media tiles.

Link: https://looka.com/

This is a lot to take in and if you have not got the first steps in place let’s get this sorted before continuing to the next stage. For our team, the next stage is the fun stuff!

Website

An observation made early on when we were given access to branches Analytics was the amazing amount of unique visitors using their website. For a small branch, this traffic averages 5,000 – 8,000 people per month while a large branch can be 20,000+. This traffic is due to each agent doing their part by sending out an email with their latest listings and other marketing functions that fuel the pool. Something to understand about this audience is that the people who are using a branches website are the people making property decisions and as they are being driven into the website through listings in the area, this is the group we want to be able to market towards.

Annoyingly when this is with the branch it is not very often you can then leverage this audience to use in your own marketing. Solution – Let’s get you set up like a branch and give you control. We have created smart agent websites that automatically create a page for your listing once it is live on your branches website and in doing so we have something to drive people into your remarketing pixels. You would never dream of starting a business without a website. So, why would real estate be any different?

Example: https://kanetaylor.co.nz/

Now, once the website is Live it does not generate listings unless you actively drive people towards the platform. It is luckily this is where we have your back!

MyListing – VPA

MyListing specialises in Real Estate Marketing and runs Vendor Paid marketing campaigns where the primary purpose is to find potential buyers for your homes. With these campaigns clicks, impressions and reach mean little next to engagements. The best way to list more property is to show you can sell property. By utilising MyListing for your Vendor Paid marketing we can do the hard lifting for you. Below is a campaign with a great number of likes but the comments are what we are most proud of.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/melvinandalyshia/posts/3581626688589374

The byproduct of these campaigns is we are getting anywhere from 200 – 800 visitors that are now looking at the listing on your website. Once the potential purchaser has clicked into your website we can now run marketing (sponsored posts and ads) to just this group, removing the need to spend money reaching people who have no interest in your service. The $ value spent to reach the person is the same however now every $ is spent talking to the right group of people!

Blueprint Studios

The final aspect of every agent’s marketing that needs to be looked at is your photo and video team! You cannot list a property without photography and in a competitive market, you will find most suppliers provide similar costs so why not be with the best.

Blueprint Studios specialises in the property as we’ll believe there is a story to be told with every property. We work to develop an agents style that is unique to them for their homes but also have the ability to support your team with creative marketing concepts and personal/team content.

Video is your best opportunity to communicate the key factors in the shortest amount of time. Compare the time it takes to go through a photo album and read a blurb next to your video and how effective it was at showing the emotional side of the home.

As we work on more of your homes we bank an amazing amount of footage that can then be put together to help you stand out. This is something our team are proactive about and these extra can provide a good laugh!

Both Blueprint Studios & MyListing work in harmony where we are able to leverage Vendor paid services, a mix of creative marketing techniques and high-quality photo and video services to join forces with your business and together make a difference to your revenue.

We are constantly on the lookout for motivated agents who share the vision and are passionate about creating. If you would like to explore anything discussed in this article get in touch and we can talk about what we can do for your business.