Top Secret Social Media Marketing tips for Real Estate Agents and Brokers

A good real estate agent or broker is likely focused on serving customers and closing sales, not building and implementing a comprehensive social media marketing strategy. In this day and age though, a realtor who doesn’t have a social media presence is missing a huge opportunity to come to the top of their prospect’s mind when it’s time to buy or sell a home.

It’s time to stop focusing on simply closing deals in the short term and focus on building a brand that will have homebuyers and sellers coming back every time they make a big decision to change their lives around. Believe it or not in this day and age buying or selling a home is not necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime kind of deal.

Still, when it comes to social media, the average realtor probably doesn’t know what to do. Most realtors will hire someone else to get the job done without knowing what to look for in an agency. They may also try to put together a content strategy themselves that doesn’t really work. The material suffers, the prospect is left confused and the realtor doesn’t ultimately end up turning that prospect into a home buyer or seller. At least not under their watch.

Take this list of social media marketing tips for real estate agents and brokers seriously as a starting point for developing a solid social media strategy. Anybody working in this industry who does just that will be ahead of the local competition.

The Top Social Media Marketing Tip for Real Estate Agents and Brokers

Facebook first launched in February 2004. Creator and current CEO Mark Zuckerberg built the platform for college students. He started with his roommates at Harvard and the website spread across campus. Zuckerberg had tried to create similar social networking sites before with limited success, but Facebook was taking off. Soon the platform would spread beyond Harvard and enter the lives of other college students around North America and the rest of the world. Still, even as it was getting popular, Facebook was only for college students. Users could not sign up with anything other than a university or college related email address. Back then the earliest social media marketers had leverage because they possessed the ever valuable first mover advantage on generating traffic and building brands.

Juxtapose the early beginnings of social media with what’s happening today. These days any working professional who isn’t on social media crafting and implementing a robust content marketing strategy and focused on building a long-term brand is falling behind the times. Real estate agents and brokers are in the business of showing off properties and making them look their best. After all, anybody that loves a nice house can tour an open house, but at the end of the day agents and brokers only get paid on sales.

Fun Fact about Facebook

Did you know that millennials, AKA people born in the mid-80s are considerably more likely to buy a product or service because of an ad they saw on social media? This is important for realtors and brokers to know because people born in the 80s are now in their mid-30s. They are advancing in their careers and earning more money, starting their families and saving for education for their kids. What are they also doing? Buying their first home. A savvy real estate agent or broker well want to be the first point of contact for people in this age range. Not just for the sake of making up for sale, but because people in that age range will eventually be buying an investment property, a vacation property, upgrading to a bigger home when they have more kids, or downsizing to a smaller home when they’re ready to retire.

Catching homebuyers when they purchase their first home gives the realtor or broker the opportunity to make a sale and earn commission yes, but also to forever stick in the minds of homebuyers who will always remember their first big life-changing purchase. Though many people view buying a home as something you only do once or twice in a lifetime, the reality in any business is that keeping in touch with somebody who has already made a purchase with you is always worth it.

In most businesses as much as 75% of customers come back for a repeat purchase. While that mostly applies to smaller goods and services as opposed to real estate, we’ve just established that throughout a person’s entire life they may need a realtor or broker on many occasions.

Content Marketing on the Two Most Popular Social Media Platforms

Remember what we just talked about in the section above and how important it is for real estate agents and brokers to target people in their mid-30s? That means being present on not just Facebook but Instagram as well. One of the most important parts of creating engaging content and deploying a strategy on these platforms that really resonates with the target audience is to understand their journey and understand all the common questions they would like to get answered.

Thinking back to a time when you yourself might’ve purchased your first home and what a big deal it was to you might help. Buying property is something we only do a few times in our lifetimes if we’re lucky and there are so many things to consider when taking that plunge. Even renting a property and moving out for the first time is a big deal.

Evaluate the unique value proposition that you and your brokerage hope to get across to your prospect. Provide them with the answers to their undying questions. Give them solutions for their biggest stresses. Be a problem solver and operate from a place of service. Don’t try to sell yourself. Build a tribe by giving to others first and eventually, the ready to buy prospects will look to you as the expert. They will look to you as the leader and you will be the first person they phone when it’s time to go house shopping.

People Buy People, Not Just Properties

It’s long been set that people don’t just buy products and services, they by the sales person making the sale. People are always much more likely to buy from someone they trust. That only makes logical sense. When making the decision to put down $500,000 on a house, there’s just so much at stake and so much to consider:

• How big do you want the backyard to be?
• Where will the kids go to school?
• Do you want to renovate or buy something brand-new?
• Is this a temporary living situation? Is this an investment property or are you settling down for the next 25 years?
• How do you know one of the biggest purchases of your life is the best deal for you? How does it compare to the rest of the market?

These are all questions that a trusted real estate broker or agent has to be able to answer. The degree to which one can answer these questions and express those answers in their marketing determines how much a realtor or broker can develop trust with prospects through social media and the content they create.

Showing prospects a human side of yourself is also more than just answering questions and building trust. It’s about showing those prospects your personal side. Share means of things you think are funny or thought-provoking. Put together a blog post about the first time you bought a home. Talk about your family life or why you love the local sports team. One of the reasons social media is so valuable as a business is because the founders of Facebook and other popular platforms know that people are always more likely to buy from a friends than they are to buy from a stranger. You originally got onto social media because of your friends. When it comes to real estate, aim to be your prospect’s best friend.

Being a Consistent Touch Point for Homebuyers

Conventional marketing wisdom says it takes at least seven touch points to make a sale. For most products and services that’s probably true but for big ticket items like a real estate it can take many more touch points to make a deal. A couple shopping for their first home spending $750,000 on it is definitely going to take their time to look for the right real estate broker. That’s why people working in the real estate industry who can focus their attention on nurturing relationships in the long term and developing content that builds trust over time are most likely to win the game at the end of their careers.

The game is not just to make a lot of money, but to keep people coming back for more and building a good reputation in the local community. Business is about more than making money, and marketing is about more than simply buying advertising or following some formula or sales script. It’s about being genuine, showing people who you are and what you value.

Put this at the heart of your social media marketing strategy and you’ll be the most well-known realtor in your area without doubt.